Lori delivered her frozen pizza just south of Portland early Thursday and received her next load assignment shortly thereafter; trees and plants to be picked up from four wholesale nurseries. It seems the area around Portland has quite a few nurseries that ship plants all over the country, most of them run by the same Japanese families that started them many years ago.
Nurseries loads are a little different from what Lori is used to; no big lots with lots of trucks and fancy loading docks. Basically, it's just pull the truck into a dirt lot and wait for the workers to load the plants into the trailer. This load is a combination of some fairly large trees in wooden boxes and flats of plants.
As she was going from one location to the next, Lori had to go through a weigh station - and was asked to pull to the side for a Department of Transportion (DOT) inspection. The officer looked at Lori's time logs, her trip paperwork, and the entire truck and trailer from top to bottom. Unfortunately, he found a defective brake slack adjuster so Lori got a "fix it" ticket. This particular problem is something that a driver can't check as part of their daily visual inspection so Prime won't "ding" Lori. She will have to bring the truck into the yard at Salt Lake City, though, to get the problem fixed.
The delay at the weigh station meant Lori didn't make it to her fourth pickup location before they closed at 4:30 so she spent Thursday night near Portland and made her last pickup this morning before heading back along the Oregon Trail. The load is eventually going to Springfield, MO but Lori is going to drop it off in Salt Lake City for a team truck to pick up and take the rest of the way.
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