Colorado

I got into St. George, UT Sunday afternoon and it was 105 degrees. Won't be cutting back on my idling time that day. I delivered the first of 4 drops in St. George on Monday morning. I was carrying vinyl siding. When I first started carrying these loads out of Ennis, TX they were all loaded on the floor and it would sometimes take up to 8 hours to get unloaded. Now about 50% of the loads are on long 10' pallets that can be pulled off pretty quickly.

After unloading I drove up near Orem, UT and spent the night and I had 3 drops beginning Tuesday morning. Orem, West Jordan and Ogden. I had all 3 drops off in 4 hours. I was then offered a load going to Riverside, CA, and they then took it back about 5 min later. I guess they realized that my truck was not a California truck. California keeps passing laws about clean idling trucks and APU's (auxiliary power units, a small generator that runs on diesel and cools and heats your cab. It only uses a fraction of the fuel that idling your truck does). No one can keep up with them. You buy a rig all outfitted out so it will be legal in California, and 2 years later they change the law and make what you just spent $120,000 on obsolete. My company went out and started putting the APU's on all their trucks back in 2007, and within a year California said they weren't good enough and started fining trucks that were using them for cooling their cabs in the 100+ deg heat. Now the newer trucks have a battery system, but those will go dead in 8 to 10 hours and you have to idle the truck 3 hrs to recharge the batteries. Can't win.

They gave me a load from Ogden going to a drop in Parker, CO and final drop in Colorado Springs, CO. Would hope to see David when get in there, but being a work day and I deliver at 8:45 am, I will most likely be unloaded and on way to pick up another load before noon. Same thing happened last week when I went in to Springfield, MO where Merna lives. No time to stop long. Do better if can visit when I am passing through a town than when I deliver to one. We don't wait for the next load to come along very often.