other dog

...and I was gonna get a haircut at Wal-Mart last weekend,and I think the girl ran a couple of customers around me so I left,and I had an appointment today to get one at 10:30 and got in at 10:29 so I cancelled.Besides,I don't look that bad...do I?

that's -hey,do you have espn or what?-the last thing I did Thursday,before I went back up the road.Got my check and went by the bank.

I feel your pain...many times over the years i've taken a truck back to the dealership (usually Truck Enterprises,Roanoke,Va.) knowing something wasn't right only to be told "there's nothing wrong with it-it's supposed to be like that". Many times.

I can't top that title Paul,you're engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed man if you think I could,so i'm just gonna surrender now.

I did a while ago.He's around here somewhere.

Thanks guys,enjoy the Superbowl,i'll be on my way to Fremont,Ohio with a load of kyanite.

well...not really,that I can tell anyway,but I don't wake up in the middle of the night coughing,or in the morning with that horrible bad taste in my mouth,so that's certainly all good. So actually,yeah,I guess I do.

just in case anybody was wondering,this is me,right now-what?..nobody was wondering?.. so,nobody cares where I go or what I do,or what I look like?..well,never mind then,i'll just be here-it relaxes me

sounds like everything is just like it oughta be...or like it used to be anyway.I used to like to look in my mirror and see a big cloud of smoke every time I changed gears in that 5 speed.

Sounds scary man. Is that whole road curvy like that? I'd be scared shi!le$$. That's me though. I see what your saying about the picture with the sign closest to you. I could probably imagine how steep that curve is maybe.. naw,that was the worst curve,but yeah,it's all crooked like that and up and down all the way across.

A Flintstone is any descendent of Fred Flintstone,originally from Bedrock,Pa.( between Breezerock and Somerrock,Pa.) Fred and Wilma Flintstone's only child was their daughter Pebbles,who married "Bam Bam" Rubble,son of Barney and Betty Rubble,Fred and Wilma's closest friends. Though it was rumored for years that Fred was having an affair with Betty,it was never proven.Even though Fred had no male offspring to carry on the Flinstone name,he was rumored to have had dozens of illegitimate children who went by Flintstone,and after Pebbles and Bam Bam divorced,Pebbles started using her maiden name again,and all 14 of the children she had after the divorce were named Flintstone.Most of the bunch ended up in Maryland,about 12 or 14 miles east of Cumberland,where the town was named Flintstone,and is still known by that name to this day...glad I could help. ...just goes to show 'ya,no matter what the question is SOMEBODY's got the answer here! ...and it's all true

I guess if you look at the picture with the 11% grade sign closest to you-over to the right is the side of the mountain it looked like you were gonna run off the side of. Remember I was coming the opposite direction from here-I would have been meeting myself in the picture-and had never been on this road before. I momentarily lost the road,until I looked out of the passenger side window.I was driving the orange and white Mack seen in my gallery. It had a 300 with a 5 speed,no power steering,and of course no engine brake,and loaded with steel coils. That's why I say the picture doesn't show how steeply the road climbed in that curve,I couldn't even see the curve until I was in it,wondering why there hadn't been a sign or something saying "road ends,right here right now...you're S.O.L."

yes,that's the only way they load them because that's the only way they can unload them.they load all three at once-that's actually 3 separate coils-but they unload them one at a time. you have to leave the chain over the front one until they get the other two off,so they don't accidently bump it and knock it over. one driver didn't and when they knocked it over he had to bring it from Roanoke to Concord,stand it back up with the fork lift,then take it back to Roanoke. Those are the coils they make truck frames out of.

...well,it's different from "Saturday" anyway. It's someone else's turn to use that anyhow. I took a load of piling to Point Marion, Pa. Monday. It's on rt.88 just across the Pa. line a little ways from W.V.,near Morgantown. Yeah,one of THOSE jobsites-you had to pull down there,back down a hill to the crane right on the riverbank,then since there was ankle-deep mud everywhere they had to pull you out with another truck after you got unloaded,then you had to back up another hill and onto the bridge while they stopped traffic for you to get out. I had to go from there to Macedonia to load,so I went up rt.88 north to rt.21,then west on 21 into West Virginia. 21 is a pretty good road across there. It runs into 250 and I took 250 to Moundsville,then rt.2 north to the interstate. First time i'd been on that part of rt.250 in years-about 27 or 28 in fact. I saw the "Thelma and Louise" turn I mentioned before was a 15 mph curve and the grade was 11%. The curve has been widened since then,i'm pretty sure. And I don't think the guardrail was there. And I know the trees weren't up over the guardrail then because it just looked like open spaces ahead when you were coming up to the curve,and the road just looked like it ended,right there. And I think it was at least a 20% grade then...and I don't think it was paved ( now i'm kidding ) I took a picture of the curve with my 35mm I keep in the truck,but haven't got it developed yet.Hope to do that today and get the picture on here.I don't have my scanner hooked up,but I can take a picture of the picture with the webcam. After that journey I went to Triadelphia,W.V. with a load of beams. Delivered to the West Virginia department of highways shop. After I got unloaded I asked the guy that signed the bills if they ever went down rt.250,like from Moundsville to Fairmont. "Oh yeah,all the time" he said."They didn't send you that way did they? If they did,boy you got *%#@ed! That's not a good way to go in a car,much less a tractor and trailer...'course we go on lot's of worse roads than that,-"(he liked to talk,wish I'd had longer to chat with him) . I said "oh no,I didn't come that way-I went across there in 1980 or '81 and said I wouldn't go back across there bobtailing- I was just wondering if it was still bad and those tight turns were still in Cameron and Littleton,turns I could barely make with a short wheelbase cabover Mack with a 42' trailer". He said one town,Cameron I think,had changed things and he wasn't sure about the other.I only remembered the one town,and don't even remember the name of it,but like Bollweevil said it took all the room that was there to make that turn. I came into town going south,and to stay on rt.250 I had to make a left turn right in town and the road (street) was narrow,pole on every corner it seemed,cars parked on all sides it seems. He said " well ,you must remember the hard right turn onto the bridge at the bottom of the mountain,that was a hard turn to make,a 90 dgree right onto a narrow bridge at the bottom of about a 2 or 2 and a half mile downgrade-lot of trucks wrecked right there.Lot of truck drivers got killed on that road-looks like a short cut on the map,or their dispatchers would send them that way". No,I didn't remember that turn onto the bridge at all.The two things that stuck with me was the curve coming out of Moundsville and that left turn in that town. I mean '80 or '81-that's 27 or 28 years ago any way you look at it,and it's hard for me to remember what I did last week sometimes.The road atlas shows 250 as a designated truck route today, but unless something's changed I just don't think I could get across there if I wanted to now,driving a 42' long Peterbilt pulling a 48' spread axle trailer. These pictures (pretty bad-I really need to hook my scanner back up,but I usually use the digital camera ) show the curve going north on rt.250 heading towards Moundsville,the 11% 1 mile sign,Moundsville down below after the sharp curve,and a load of the coils I load at I.D.S. in Macedonia,Oh. all the time for Roanoke,Va. As with the steepness of a hill,the pictures don't really show how steeply the road drops away to the left in the pictures-I was going to take a picture of the septic tank truck in front of me after he went around the curve to show it,but he pulled over right in the curve and stopped,so I went around him. I did look at this spot on Google Earth and it shows everthing very well,especially if you rotate it around until you're looking at it from the north,then tilt it towards you-awesome!

maybe a little,but not much-at least the concrete that's still on it is clean! I'm gonna do as speed said and leave it alone and just put it in the "trophy" cabinet.

You're going to have to move quick if you want the big Peterbilt. Looks like it's going to a new home in Oklahoma. (hopefully!) It seems that we have finally met up with a real serious truck buyer. Thanks, Paul VS That's OK-i'm like the old saying "too broke to pay attention"

now that's what I had on the '79 F-model I drove. Not a "real" Mack I guess,should've been a Brockway,had a 350 Cummins with a 10 speed overdrive. I bought a 5'' straight stack at the Toledo 5 truck stop and put it on there. Sounded great,but H.H. didn't think so.

I picked up one of them little free papers you see all the time at truckstops,and the owners of the movin' on KW were taking it to Pittsburgh power for some work - it originally had a 903 cummins in it,but I think they were changing it to a 444 or something. I'd have kept the 903, I drove one in a '74 co4070A IH and it sounded great.They're probably just going to show it anyway,they wouldn't need 800 horsepower anyway,and for just being cool,a V8 Cummins would be awesome. What paper was that in? I'd like to read about that, and I'm with you about the v-8 cummins. I never heard one but always figured they sounded great. uhhh...gee,I just don't remember,but they're always at fuel stops and truck stops-oh,"Movin' Out" I believe it is.Like a little newspaper.Don't remember the date,but it was like last fall sometime i'd say. As in "sounds you miss"- a 903 cummins is right up there. Maybe you could get a 555 in a Terra Gator,but a 903 gets you a "huh?..what's that?"

'sallright...have at it!

arrright,y'all need to slow down. Y'all are replying before I get done commenting here.

I picked up one of them little free papers you see all the time at truckstops,and the owners of the movin' on KW were taking it to Pittsburgh power for some work - it originally had a 903 cummins in it,but I think they were changing it to a 444 or something. I'd have kept the 903, I drove one in a '74 co4070A IH and it sounded great.They're probably just going to show it anyway,they wouldn't need 800 horsepower anyway,and for just being cool,a V8 Cummins would be awesome.

if everything works here,these are a couple of hills that a truck driver can appreciate as being very,very,steep and the pictures show it. The Kenworth is the original one used in the "Moving On" tv series. So,what's that got to do with 36 degree banking? Bristol has 36 degree banking in the turns,and that's steep too...Besides,Paul was getting annoyed that I was taking all the good blog entry titles, a.k.a. whatever day of the week it was. It gets harder and harder to come up with a new and catchy title all the time you know. And another thing-I've been known to criticise drivers who graduate from "truck driving school" and hit the road already having forgotten more than myself or most everybody else has ever known about driving on this blog,and today when I was anylizing my new "Wheels of Time" I came across the article about Joe Becker. This entire issue is about drivers and companies who recieved golden achievement awards,with 50 or more years in the trucking industry. Joe Becker is 79 and still trucking. In the mid 70's he started a truck driving school in Minnesota.He offered a 6 month, 1,200 hour course for interstate drivers and a 4 month 900 hour course for intrastate drivers. You had to log 5,000 miles with an instructor to graduate,but I guarantee you those drivers knew what they were doing when they hit the road. He eventually closed down his training school when others offered shorter courses. I know they say there's a driver shortage,but the "new breed" attitude of these guys coming out now is something else.Not all,but a lot of drivers are so hateful and arrogant-nothing like the commaradorie-oh forget it,i'll never be able to spell comaraderie-that there used to be. Where drivers used to be quick to help each other,now they're quick to cuss each other out for the least little thing. Unreal...what happened?

I'm off 'til tomorrow.Neal asked me Friday when I called in empty at Orville,when he gave me my pick-up number for IDS and told me I could unload in Roanoke whenever I got there, if I wanted to talk to Todd then about a load for Sunday.I told him no,i'll just call Monday-i'm not really into working 7 days a week.I've got lots of bills to pay like everybody else,but if all you do is work,what's the point? I mean you've got to be off once in a while. I left Saturday when I went to Wisconsin,got back Friday,and left again Sunday and didn't get in 'til Saturday. This right here is my biggest enjoyment of the week.

oddly enough Joe I once googled "Cannonball"/tv series just to see what I could find on it,because i'd seen cannonball GMC's at Hank's and just barely remembered the tv show. I went through about 20 pages of websites before the tv series was ever mentioned,and when I finally did find it it said no episodes were known to exist today.I thought that was the end of that story,but it wasn't long after that when I saw the robert's hard to find videos "Cannonball" reference on BMT. I ordered 2 DVDs with 2 episodes on each of them,all that was available. p.s-what the heck does she know anyway?