other dog

I'm an idiot- but it could have been worse- much worse. I was spraying the vinyl siding with the garden hose until the Gladys Volunteer Fire Dept. got here, hoping it wouldn't ignite. I was about to lose the battle when they got here. I had several cans of gas in there, oil, hydraulic fluid, spray paint, my new leaf blower, several chain saws...

As i've mentioned before, I have pretty much no use for unions. As we all learned in school-right? unions were much needed in the early days, because before unions any company or business could literally treat their employees any way they wanted to- "if you don't like it,leave!" Then, as time marched on unions became more powerful-bigger,stronger, faster- until the unions could pretty much treat the company or business any way they wanted to- "we want more and more and more for doing less and less and less!" I mentioned U.S. Steel on here the other day, i've said how they quit loading me at Copperweld Steel in Warren ,Ohio 30 minutes before the shift ended when they had one more lift to load because "it's in their contract", when i'd been there all evening and half the night already. Union greed put them out of business, and when you see a sad story on TV or in the paper about "the rust belt", and how all the jobs are gone, I find it hard to feel any sympathy when I pass the old Copperweld mill and see weeds covering everything and buildings falling down- because they did it to themselves!..and they treated truck drivers like assholes too. And i've got this set of books called "The Trucking Pioneers" - ...and I made a list of these trucking companies that are now out of business all or at least partly because of union strikes against them. ...and while I was doing all this, my shed burned down, and almost the house-

And...........Oldsmobile it is. ...and it could be yours-

If it is it's buffessionally done, not poorly photo chopped like I do.

I've got to go to Petersburg to load today, maybe i'll take a closer look at it. And speaking of dem birds, I see Vinny (U Model Nut) is on facebook now. Somebody hit the nail on the head as to their theory why Vinny wasn't on here much any more, but I forgot who it was. I didn't see a single picture of the U model, but he's surrounded by a bevy of beautiful women in just about every picture...yeah, it's true- he's the man!

I had nice scenery too! It was this one here-

I was in the Walmart store last weekend and noticed that they had premixed two cycle gas in there. I didn't even know you could buy it like that- it was $4.97 for a quart bottle. According to my math that's nearly $20 a gallon. I had just bought a 6 pack of 2 cycle oil at the Stihl store, for probably about $6, a gallon of non ethanol is about $2.25 around here, you can get a gallon oil jug out of any trash can for free to put your gas in, so I did not buy the pre-mixed gas for my leaf blowing machine. I went to a stew at my brother's last weekend. He has an old Galion motor grader that runs and works, but he said they haven't used it for a while. It has a mighty 4-71 Detroit Diesel in it too. He had the stew down at their hunting cabin- it was not as good as my stew this year, last year his was better. Ma said "I didn't know it was a competition." I said "it's not, but mines was better." mines- his'n- Saw a nice load of logs going up some mountain in West Virginia. I made a Milton mill roll run after I unloaded that load of 60' tubing in Petersburg. Some rolls on the ground at Gerdau in Petersburg- I saw Greendash in Petersburg too. ...and some automobiles.

Crap, now I gotta find a new spot to camp.

...and the obviously photo-chopped picture of large doesn't fool anybody- here's the real picture.

...and the obviously photo-chopped picture of large doesn't fool anybody- here's the real picture.

...and the obviously photo-chopped picture of large doesn't fool anybody- here's the real picture.

...and the obviously photo-chopped picture of large doesn't fool anybody- here's the real picture.

No, but it might have been down around Washington Crossing.

I crossed a bridge in Bucks County one time. Cost H.H.Moore over 4,000 bucks because I crossed it- almost cost me a week end in jail. Those crooked bastards! ....and it was very hot that day, i'd been inside a side kit trailer for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Jevic's been gone a good while now. I never loaded at Portsmouth, but we used to load at Empire Detroit in Dover, Oh. a lot in the '80's. One of the worst thing about U.S. Steel was how slow they were, and being union of course, they couldn't care less how many hours-or days- a truck sat there waiting to get loaded. But when you pulled in the building at Empire Detroit the coil would be swinging in the air, the crane operator just waiting for you to stop so he could set it on the trailer. I loaded at Homestead Works before and it wasn't too bad, but Gary, In. and Fairless Hills, Pa. were horrible places to have to load.

I just asked our safety man, and he said he thinks he did work for Jevic. I tried to call Jeff, but I got no answer. Jeff knows everything.

I loaded at Lackawanna a couple of times, neither was a pleasant experience...come to think of it, I never had a pleasant experience at any U.S. Steel plant.

Here's one that slipped through the cracks- a big Mack truck sitting in a field somewhere.

You're right about that.

Yes indeed. I always thought I was careful around that pipe, but i'll be even more careful now. I still would like to know exactly what happened there. Each layer of pipe is banded together and there's a wooden chock nailed to the 4x4 at each end of the row of pipe. If the loader was unloading the front stack, no bands should have been cut at the rear.

Thanks Mike.

I haven't been taking many pictures lately, not as many as usual anyway. I did see a land beaver in the road last weekend when we were pulling in the driveway. Some people call them groundhogs, but my son always called them land beavers. I saw a trailer at the shop with no axles under it. They're inside the shop, right in front of the forklift. They're refurbishing the tandems, and they said it's easier to just take them out where they can get to everything easily rather than do it under the trailer. Harvest time in Indiana. I took a 60' load of beams to Columbia City, then had to go to Marseilles, Il. ...to get this 60' load of tubing. It had to be fully tarped- meaning everything. The beams going out had to be tarped, but only what's on the trailer. I had to tarp what was hanging off on this load. I had to use three tarps, I even woke my co-driver up to help tarp it. And, sadly, we had a driver get killed at a job site this week. He had a load of the pipe that we haul all the time and from what I understand he was winding his straps up on the opposite side of the trailer from where the loader was , which is very dangerous, but they said- and again, i'm not sure who "they" are in this case- he was at the back of the trailer and the loader was at the front. I don't know if the loader man bumped the rear stack, if the bands were already cut, if it was one piece of pipe or the whole stack, I just don't know. But his son drives for F.L.M. too, and he said his Dad was always very careful around that pipe, and always made him stand in front of the truck when they were unloading together. http://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/news/local/2016/11/11/coroner-trucker-dead-falling-pipe-dover/93636360/

I did too Mike.

Yes, to roll those beams out. I'd like to take a mill tour one time and see exactly how they work, but they won't let you do that now. They used to give tours, but not any more.