Getting Hosed

Lori's starting to feel like she can't catch a break.

After finally getting the last part of the coffee creamer load to Sam's Club this morning, the trailer Lori was pulling somehow managed to cut through the air hose leading from the tractor to the trailer, resulting in a complete lockup of the trailer's brakes. Headquarters told her to get the trailer to as safe a location as possible, unhook it so "road assist" could come pick it up later, and then head over to a local mechanic who would be waiting for her.

While all these challenges are frustrating, it's a great learning process. Situations such as this are a fact of life in the trucking biz, so it's best to just roll with the punches and not let them get you down. If they do, then over-the-road trucking is probably not the business to be in.

Fortunately, installing a new air hose is a fairly quick process so Lori was able to get back on the road to her next pickup location: Great Lakes Cheese in Hiram, Ohio where she picked up a trailer that was all ready to go with 31,000 pounds of sharp cheddar cheese headed for Kraft Foods in Allentown, PA.

She had to stop the truck around 11:00 p.m. for her 10-hour break near the Ohio/Pennslyvania border. Tomorrow morning it'll be back on the road for the rest of the trip to Kraft.