Home Sweet Home

Wow! I can't believe I haven't blogged since last Tuesday. We enjoyed our time in Great Falls. We got a rental car for a day and found a bar with pool tables to hang out in for awhile. It was fun and the food was good. We played some casino games and lost a few bucks. LOL Every other business is a casino there and I think they define casino as a business having 3 or more electronic games.

I hit WalMart to get groceries the next morning before returning the car and withing 1 1/2 hours of going back into service we were called for a load. They asked us to deadhead 800 miles to Winnipeg to pick up a load that would then go to Kentucky. We agreed to do it because the miles were good and it would get us within a few hours of home. Since we would hit the border about 3 am, we asked dispatch to confirm that the port of entry they were routing us to was open 24 hours. They confirmed, but I could tell by the voice in the background that they hadn't checked it out, they were just assuming. Well we got fuel at the last possible place before the border and must have got some bad fuel. We started having problems and losing power. We nursed it to the border because for 50 miles we had no cell service. Lo and behold, the border crossing is only open 8 am to 9 pm!! Had they let us go to the one we KNEW was open we would have gotten fuel at a more reputable establishment. So now we were sitting at a closed border with a truck that didn't want to go over 30 mph! Thank goodness at the border we picked up the Canadian wireless (read EXPENSIVE) service and could call our truck owner to see what he wanted us to do.

Our owner is responsible for maintenance and repairs so he told us not to cross the border until the truck was fixed as Canadian repairs would be really expensive. We nursed the truck back to the nearest town and parked in the Freighliner dealer lot waiting for them to open. Dispatch kept bothering us because now we would be late for pick up but there was nothing we could do. The dealer finally opened, wasn't very helpful and wouldn't even say he could look at the truck maybe until Monday!! We found a garage across the street and they got us right in, replace our fuel filters (that had ice in them) and we were on our way but the load cancelled. Then we found out that because we were unable to make the pickup they weren't going to even pay us for th 600 miles that we had driven!! At this point we had been out 24 days and were tired so we started heading across North Dakota towards home.

We got another load later in the day from ND to IL that delivered Friday morning. We ran it and then seriously headed home. So, here we are...the truck is due for an oil change so we'll probably take care of that before we head out. I need to work on the taxes and Alex's FAFSA too.

Stay tuned and hope to have some exciting posts soon!! LOL