Chicago - You Gotta Love This Stuff

I started back to work this week after a nice long Christmas break. First load took me from Richton, Mississippi up to Aurora, Illinois. Then my next load was a triple pick-up that started in Downtown Chicago then the next two were Addison, and Lombard. If it hadn't have been 8 below zero it might not have been so bad.

I made it into the downtown Chicago area (West Side), and somehow managed to get my rig through the challenging maze of tight turns, low bridges that will open up the top of an eighteen wheeler like a sardine can, and unemployed people hanging about on the street corners. I don't care what numbers the government puts out about our nation's unemployment numbers – I don't believe them – they are disingenuous at best. Any truck driver who makes his way in and out of these big inner city areas can see it right before his own eyes – there are a lot of people out here drinking beer and hanging out in the streets on the government dole – it's sad, forgive my digression into politics.

Okay, so everything went really well despite the cold weather. I started out at about ten o'clock and left Aurora working my way into the inner parts of Chicago. I got to the Overton Gear Company which is an old company that is located in an area where there is mostly residences now, and everything is so tight in this part of town that they don't even have a place where you can park your truck to get loaded. So they told me to pull over to the side of the road and they would load me right out there in the street! Here's what it looked like as we blocked the street with my truck while the forklift was loading 2 gears and 2 shafts weighing in at a total of 15,000 pounds on my truck.

After that I proceeded to Addison, and they loaded 2 more gears and 2 more shafts exactly like the ones I already had. While on the way to Addison my dispatcher called and said they had canceled my third pick-up which didn't bother me at all considering the bitter cold weather we were working in. So once I got loaded at Addison I started working my way out of the Chicago area and turned south. Thankfully this load is bound for Houston, Texas. I'm now down just south of Dallas Texas putting in a ten hour break so I can get started in the morning for my final destination.

As I was heading up to the Caterpillar plant in Aurora with my first load of the week My day took a drastic turn - I had nice weather as I left out of Missouri where I took my ten hour break. This is what I saw after I had been driving for the first few hours.

Then the further north I went into Illinois the roads began to get icy and I saw at least a half dozen Jack-knifed rigs in the median and probably twice that many four wheelers stranded on the sides of the road where they had slid and could no longer move due to the Icy base down under the snow cover. The folks at the Caterpillar plant seemed a little surprised that I made it when I pulled in with their product. The grumpy fork-lift driver was not overjoyed that he had to unload me either. Here is what I was looking at, while trying to thaw my frozen extremities inside the cab of my nice warm truck, while he was getting the materials off.

It's all in a days work!

Great pics. Thanks for sharing! I always enjoying hearing from you.

Hi Old School, must have passed you on my way to Laredo TX,, left Chicago (Live next to Midway by 60th and Cicero) monday 3:30 pm in the snow storm. I was bringing Jet turbine parts to Laredo and returning with a rebuilt turbine hot section for my Exhibition Jet race car Business. Ran I57, I55, I40, I30 to I35 and back, 2800+ miles in my Ford Escape, Got Back to Chicago Saturday afternoon. It was 29 degrees Thursday AM, in San Antonio, the Palm trees were crying, also a lot of construction on I35 ,, I see Big trucks downtown Chicago alot,, What a pain,take care , Dan

Awesome pics!!!

I don't care what numbers the government puts out about our nation's unemployment numbers – I don't believe them – they are disingenuous at best

...at best is right. I think they're blatantly fraudulent and they certainly don't tell the story of how many people are not collecting unemployment but are not making enough money to support themselves either. Maybe they're working part time, maybe full time but still requiring Government assistance. I don't think I know anyone these days that's raising a family completely off of their own wages. I think almost everyone I know is getting assistance of some sort.