A good Good Friday, but not for freight

Updated Apr 11, 2012

I learned today about Artisteer automated web design software. Learned by purchasing and using it.

Diane and I woke up this morning at the Triple T truck stop in Tucson, Ariz. We relocated there yesterday from Las Cruces, N.M., to improve our chances of getting freight but it did not look good. Today is Good Friday. It looks like we may be spending Easter in Arizona.

We were encouraged and surprised yesterday by the number of load offers we received while sitting in Las Cruces. One load got dispatched to another truck because that truck called in more quickly than us when the offer came over the Qualcomm unit. That is rare. Usually agents call trucks to put them on loads.

The other calls we received were all for good loads but for one reason or another that freight did not go on our truck. It was too tall or too wide. Once again, at our former carrier, we never saw the loads we missed because they would not fit on our truck because their computer screened them out before dispatchers would call. At our present carrier, our truck specs are on the computer for agents to see but, almost always, they prefer to call and ask us about our truck dimensions over looking at the truck specs on the screen.

While we got no freight to haul yesterday, we were pleased to see several good-paying loads offered. That meant freight was moving. We were not without hope, even sitting in remote Las Cruces. Had it not been late in the week and coming up on the Easter holiday, we might have stayed. But with that in mind, we moved to Tucson.

The phone and Qualcomm was silent all day today. Not a single load offer was received. While we would rather be hauling freight, I used the time to continue work on my web site upgrade.

A friend told me about Artisteer software and I bought it after downloading and previewing a demo version. It’s good. I won’t go into details. Interested readers can read more about it here. I’ll just say here that this product is a wonderful web development productivity tool that will save me a ton of time.

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It takes time to learn new products like WordPress, Artisteer and Scrivener but the investment is well worth it. All three are coming together into a great productivity and quality package that is helping me write my book and develop the web site that will support it.

As business hours waned it became increasingly unlikely that we would be dispatched today and more likely that we will lay over in Arizona over the Easter weekend. The Triple T truck stop has a lot going for it but its parking lot is only partially paved. Trucks driving in and out of there kick up a lot of dust. It’s not a pleasant place to park for long.

We moved to Eloy to spend the night and probably the weekend. Eloy is still close to Tucson and not far from Phoenix. But the main reason we drove there was to be close to the truck stops and washes there. Tourist fun is a possibility this weekend but it is more likely that I will happily lose myself and all sense of time in book writing and computer work.

Diane loves to read. She can happily spend an entire day reading. That’s good since it now appears she will have a day or two to do exactly that. She has hundreds of books on her Kindle. While I sit on my side of the dinette table in our sleeper at my laptop computer, she will build a nest of pillows on her side and read or set up her laptop to surf the web.

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