West Memphis, AR - Continuing Insanity

Unsurprisingly, things have continued to remain chaotic. I left somewhat later this morning than I intended (though I did desperately need the sleep), only to find a massive line at the truck stop on my way out. I needed to use the scale but the line for the unleaded was so long that it had actually blocked the truck entrance off entirely. A quick look at my atlas and truck stop guide revealed that there was another Pilot truck stop about 40 miles further down the road and there were no government scales along the way.

So, of course, I went along. And as I suspected, I was overweight. Because of how close to the weight limit I was, I had to play around with the fifth wheel.For those of you who don't drive, it's hard to even convey how much of a pain in the rear this is; the truck lurches violently forward or backward when you're trying to move it, making the sort of small, controlled movements I needed impossible. Each notch is only two inches apart and the truck displayed a tendency to jump four inches at a time when I needed to make the adjustments. As such, it took over an hour and a half to finally get it where I needed it, to get re-weighed so I could prove the weight was legal, and to get back on the highway. This meant that I wasn't going to make it to Little Rock like I'd originally planned, especially since I needed to get a couple things fixed at the operating center here.

On the bright side, I'm doing laundry right now and had a lovely catfish dinner for $6. On the not-so-bright side, I have 500 miles left to go on this run that must be delivered tomorrow and a message came across the Qualcomm today saying freight is soft across the entire country this weekend. I'll probably end up going to another operating center after I deliver the load, even if it is a fifty mile drive, because I don't want to be stuck with a layover out in the middle of nowhere. Besides, I don't think there are any truck stops nearer than that; they seem to like sending me to places that are way off the Interstate lately. It'll all make sense tomorrow, I suppose.

Also, not directly related to trucking, what is it with gasoline prices? As the photo below shows, sometimes just going across the street can save you 42¢ per gallon. Yes, that Pilot is selling regular for $3.77 while the Shell is charging $4.19. There was another big line at Pilot while only one person filled up across the street.