Uwe Blog: Game over

Uwe Blog: Game over

Southbound Farm to Market 159 in Millican Texas. I was out riding around when I stopped to take a pic of this sign. It's a favorite of mine thanks to the railroad crossing in the background and the Holga style effect applied.

Part-time Blog Anyone?

Lone Tree in Allenfarm TX

Wow. It's been nearly a year since I have posted on this blog. Too long if I'm going to have people actually follow along. I think a re-tooling is in order.
I have a Motorola Droid X and it has a fantastic photo app called Vignette.  It makes people believe that I'm a good photographer or something. I'll post a pic with some info and a possible story behind it and I will try not to take 9 months between posts!
Stay tuned...

Saturday Night!

Actually, It's 4 minutes into Sunday as I type this. The day is over and time for bed. But before I go, I figured I should type "something".

A pal of mine just turned 30 and we went to a local bar to watch the UFC fights and had a few drinks. I'm not really into the whole UFC thing but hey, it's a chance for me to get out of the house for a couple of hours and hang with the guys. He had a drink that I've never seen before: I didn't catch the name of it but it was a half pint of Guinness and a shot of Baileys and something else in the shot. You drop it into the Guinness and it "tastes like ice cream". I might have to try that sometime when I'm not driving.

Anyhow, My new fenders for Flight 59 came in on Wednesday. I was tracking the shipment via e-mail notifications since it left California. I had it set to deliver at the freight terminal I work at since the delivery required a signature. I was there til 11:30 before I left on my route. My 1st stop was the Texas A&M Vet. Teaching Hospital and when I got there, SAIA Motor Freight was there. I flagged him down and sure enough, he had my parts on his truck! I hopped into his trailer to help him move the 3 BIG boxes out of his truck and moved them onto my truck. I toted them all over my route the rest of the day then when I got back to the terminal I loaded them into my pickup and took them home. The parts were in excellent shape.

I finally settled on a color for the truck. This is breaking news and you heard it here first: PPG 2001 Plymouth Prowler Orange! Check out Dave Thompson's 1958 GMC painted that same color. Oh and it has a '55 front clip but yes, it's a '58...



I can tell you this: His truck is WAAAAAYYY nicer than mine is for sure! I'm just glad I can have such a cool old truck even though I cant spend money like its no big deal.

Flight 59

So I bought this truck back in the summer of '06. A '59 Chevrolet Apache that was overall in pretty good shape. Like anything nearing 50 years old, it would have some issues. Heck, I'm 36 and already have issues: A bad back, aching shoulders etc. but that's beside the point.This '59 would shine. I bought her for $3400 and went to work on her. Around $1300 later, I had a good looking ride although I cut corners to get her up and running. Another $600 or so later, she was much more responsive after some transmission work. Since the paint job was done over shoddy prep work, it started to show quickly. The rear axle developed a crack (I'm guessing it was from her previous life as a drag truck in Memphis TN). I sent her to my pal Woody who is outside San Antonio. There he shored up the mechanical side of things as well as made sure the wiring from bumper to bumper was solid.

Now it's time to do the paint and bodywork RIGHT. I took her to my Brother-In-Laws house about a month ago so he could pull the truck apart and "do it right". I live in a neighborhood that has a Homeowners Association that frowns upon vehicle restorations ongoing as it may reflect negatively on the community (BLAH). Bro-in-Law is in "the Sticks" so he can do whatever he wants out there and I wish I could have that freedom too.

 Bro-in-Law informed me that the fenders (front and rear) were riddled with cancerous rust and it would be cheaper in the long run to buy new fenders. After some hand-wringing, I made the purchase:



I should be getting the parts Wednesday or Thursday and plan on delivering them this upcoming weekend.

More info to follow. Here are a few vids from the torrid history of "Flight '59":

The L.T.L. Life

This is not where I actually work. The trees are too green.


So I work at a freight dock or terminal or the more "sensitive" named "Service Center" as most trucking outfits call them now. My job is simple: come in in the morning (6-7 AM), load up my route and deliver it. Deceptively simple.

Here's how it actually goes:

Arrive at 6-7 AM.

Help unload inbound trailers from Dallas and Houston (this can be a pain as things shift and topple in transit).

Figure out how in the heck I'm gonna fit all this crap into my 45' trailer.

Leave the yard hopefully by 11:30 with 15+ stops only to have to wait at the 1st stop because they are on lunch break.

Receive stops to pickup from the dispatcher and have to work around the newly acquired freight while still trying to deliver the stuff I originally loaded in the AM. (Kinda like playing Tetris)

Get back to the terminal and unload the picked up freight onto an outbound trailer to Dallas or Houston.

Punch out and go home for a cold one and a shower.

The 1st 2 weeks at the job were tough. I didn't know where anything was despite living in the area for 7+ years. My last job was ALL out of town stuff (All over Texas and points beyond). I knew where restaurants and shopping was but that was about it. To be honest, towards the end of the 2nd week I nearly threw in the towel and went back to my old job! I'm glad I didn't because I became more used to the route as it has pretty regular stops and I have Google Maps on my Blackberry to help me find my way.

I have done this type of work before. Kinda. I worked for Con-Way in Ft. Worth 2 different times back in '95 and again in '97. Up in Ft. Worth, pretty much every place had a dock to back up to and those who didn't had a forklift on the ground to get the freight. The places I go to now are MUCH MORE RURAL and they require a liftgate and a pallet jack for me to get the freight off. Instead of nice 40x48 pallets of freight that are easy to deliver, I get those with an endless combination of oversized / overlength goodies. 22' long bundles of pipe. Tractor implements. 15' long crates of who knows what. You have to plan for those things and how to get them off the trailer at the customers location. I had 2 crates that were 7' tall, 10' long and 1' wide (wrought iron gates for a ranch) and needless to say they were a challenge to get off the truck but me and 7 other guys did it. Couldn't have done it without them.

So the job gets easier. Just a little bit. There are those days where I can't get all the stops delivered but overall, I'm faster than I was when I first started this gig. I'm 36 and I'm pretty sure I couldn't have started this job 5 years from now. My body would surely give out by day 5.

The Things That Interest Me Might Interest You...

Who knows, it just might.

Welcome to a part-time blog. It wont be daily or weekly. I will not have a scheduled update. I'll try to keep the sporadic posts interesting though.

My name is James but everyone calls me "Tex". I have been on YouTube for quite some time. In November 2006, I launched the YouTube channel "texolot" with trucking videos that I made to keep the job from being totally boring. Little did I know how many others were on YouTube doing the same thing and many more would follow. I canceled "texolot" and created 593Films .


I was driving an 18 wheeler up until April of this year but I now have a local LTL (less than truckload) job driving a daycab with a 45' trailer. I cannot make videos at this job so I guess that my trucking video days are over. 593Films remains although the videos will be of other things.



I created YTTrucking.com . It's purpose is to act as a main starting point to find truck drivers who make trucking videos. There is a list of nearly 300 drivers from all over the world there.



The other internet "thing" I did for awhile was the Texomatic Trucking Podcast. There are around 100 episodes featuring yours truly commenting on whatever was going on in my mind and on the road at the time. I may resurrect the podcast in a few weeks since I can't do videos anymore. Time will tell...

So, what is this blog all about? Stuff. Stuff that piques my interest at any particular moment: Texas Rangers Baseball. Truck driving. Hot rods. Beer. Music. Texas. Random items fired at will.

Enjoy,

Tex