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So I’m sitting in a small truck stop in north central Illinois. I have a problem.
I picked up an excavator at the shipper in Rockford and it’s HEAVY. I just scaled it and I’m 14 on my steer,62 on my drives, 54!!!! on my trailer tandems and only 26 on the stinger. This is not good.
So….it’s time to shim.
I look up and there’s cop cars. Lots and lots of cop cars. Disco lights like in the seventies.
Not my problem. My problem is I have to shim. How do I do this?
So I drag out every piece of lumber that I have and build ramps in front of the rear wheels of my trailer. The goal is to get the trailer’s rear up in the air as far as possible. Four inches would be nice….six would be better. That way I can “spread” the spreader bar.
After an hour or two of hot sweaty work I accomplish this. It’s getting dark. The disco lights have consolidated. I manged to put about another inch of shims between my trailer and the spreader bar. I lowered the ride height on the trailer neck to decrease the anticipated increase in weight there, as well as remove the overage that already existed.
Now I need to weigh. I really should wait until tomorrow to weigh. The cops are swarmed all around the scale. If I move I’ll probably loose my parking space since the place is filling up. But I won’t sleep a wink not knowing if I’ve got it right or not, and I really need to be able to leave at first light.
What to do?
A security guard comes walking over. Now that I’m done working she comes to visit. It seems that there has been Union Trouble in the neighbor hood. She’s been hired to “watch the cargo” to prevent any union thugs from slashing airlines, airbags and what not. The union thugs had been doing that. It seems there is a windmill project nearby that the Union wanted a piece of so they were muscling in. Unions do that. Not a word about it on the internet or in the news.
AHA! I think. The solution to one of my problems. I draft her.
“Guard my parking spot while I go weigh” I told her. (you have to be firm….Security Guards respect that)
After some hemming and hawing she agreed.
I pulled out and around and up to the scale. The cops were still in the way. They had this one dude spread eagled on the ground.
I gave the air horn a tug and they looked up. I waved them away from the scale. You have to be firm. Cops respect that.
They moved, I weighed, and pulled on back around to my protected parking spot, thanked the guard and went in to get my weigh ticket.
The weights were OK so I come back to the truck and went to bed.
Flash forward to today. I’d delivered the load in Harligen Texas yesterday and was heading back to Houston empty. I have to go thru the “wetback check” on Highway 77 heading north.
Done it a million times, here or elsewhere.
This time was different. It seems the drug dog alerted at my truck.
I was required to exit the truck, they patted me down, I was escorted to a holding area while they searched my truck. All very polite and all but tense. Very tense. This is NOT the time to be firm. I don’t care about respect. The guy has a gun and he’s nervous.
They didn’t find any thing naturally. My attempts at humor fell flat. I went on my merry way.
Drugs.
I’m getting really tired of drugs. I don’t use any drugs except caffeine (coffee and chocolate) , some ethanol(beer) , and some nicotine(ceegars). All legal last I heard when used sensibly. I could care less what other’s do. I figure more people have died in Ted Kennedy’s car than…..well never mind.
I say we call off the “War on Drugs”. Surrender and go home. That’s what we did in Viet Nam and what were doing in the ‘stan now, right?
Prohibition proved what works and what doesn’t work. We should learn from that lesson.
Doesn’t matter if Mrs. Grundy doesn’t like it. Tough.
Less nervous young boys with guns facing down annoyed truckers that way.
It amazes me how union thuggary never gets reported in the news. Its like the playground bully that the teachers ignore. @ironshield
The "news" supports the narrative. Their function is not to report what happens but to influence the way people think. If something happens that does not match the 'narrative'...it goes unreported or it's SPUN.
I agree, I also think they make up stuff.
What does it mean to shim?
stick a little piece of steel between the trailer and the stinger...it changes the angle of the dangle thus changing the weight distribution. An eighth of an inch can transfer a lot of pounds..
OK interesting that you can get that much leverage.... but why would you want to transfer the weight?
laws
Big pharma wanted the war on drugs. So they could get rid of things like Peregoric, Spirits of Turpentine, Spirits of Ammonia, Tinture of cannabis, DeeWee's Carmenative, Asphetitia, Groves tasteless chill tonic, Black Drought, and many other forgotten remedies, that were replaced by big pharmaceutical pills. The US army actually began using Peregoric again, in Afghanistan- because it worked much better than nexium and Prilosec for keeping stomach acids under control. This is why the older people are more healthier than the younger people, and more resilient. The younger people have been exposed to nothing but chemicals whipped up in a big pharma lab, and the people 65 and older have no had as much exposure. I remember as a kid- nobody had diabetes, nobody had an inhaler, nobody was morbidly obese, but now, everyone is on some sort of medication. Im 51, and Im fixing to change out my insulin pump in a few minutes. It sucks.
actually diabetes (I have it too...I'm 67) is caused by eating too many carbs. Carbs is the same thing as sugar once it's ingested. The digestive system can't tell the difference...so..
WHAM!!!
there goes that pancreas..again...and again..and again...
until finally...it quits.
The best thing to do for diabetes...is ONLY eat meat cooked...eat everything else raw.
Ive had kidney failure 3 times from Post streptococal Glumerlo Nephritis and this is what caused my diabetes. I stay away from carbs, eat a little meat as possible and eat raw vegetables and avoid cold cuts, anything Hormel, Oscar Mayar etc. Its my belief that Diabetes is caused by switching from cane sugar to corn syrup as a sweetner in most foods. If you go to the international food isle in Publix- you can find Latin coca cola- sweetened by cane sugar. ( I only drink water or tea or coconut water) Another handy thing to have is a bottle of Siemens 10-SG test strips. It performs 10 tests of your bodily functions from a small urine sample, and you can buy them on amazon for about $30 for 100 strips. tests Glucose, Bilirubin, Ketones, Specific Gravity, Blood, pH, Protien, Urobilogen, Nitrates, Leukacites. My kidney function is around 30%, and I am doing everything I can to stay off dialysis, which sucks. you have to go every 2 or 3 days and you feel like crap after its over. Finally I was able to not have to go after careful diet control and the VGO insulin pump.
My childhood sweetheart and first wife died from a genetic kidney disease. It also got here grandmother, her mother and her brother. Her sister is in bad shape (already had two transplants) In the eighties I was the'taxi driver.' I transported those who needed it to the hospital, dr. or dialysis clinic.
By the mid nineties they'd all died.
I'm not a fan of the nineties.
Eating watermelon and the white rind of the watermelon down to the green part will help heal your kidneys. So will cantaloupe and honeydew melons. I was offered a transplant- but declined after finding out I was going to be on the hook for $50k a year in anti rejection drugs. Plus they leave the old kidneys in place and put the new kidney in the front of our stomach. At leas that's what Mayo clinic does in Jacksonville. I lost my uncle in march to kidney failure, but it was his own doing. He was on dialysis and started drinking hard liquor. H thought it was going to make him feel good, but it hurt like hell, and they tried to use dialysis on him, but it didn't work. He was only 54. My endocrinologist changed my VGO pump to Tresiba in june, and after a month of use, I had a heart attack and a stroke in my sleep, and paralysed my right side, but its getting better. Then I discovered that Tresiba is basically Novalog insulin with sodium hydroxide added- a kill drug- Agenda 21 in action by big pharma. It even says that theres sodium hydroxide on the paperwork in the box. Sodium Hydroxide is LYE. Why would they put LYE into an inulin injection? To kill you off, that's why. Nice try- better luck next time. Im sticking with just plain Novalog, as it has a 3 day life out of refridgeration, where as Humalog has only 24 hrs. This year, eight people in my family have died from stroke, kidney disease, heart attack and cancer. And I don't plan on being number 9. Google Tresiba stroke- and you will be shocked at what you find. You mentioned that you had diabetes, so I was just giving you a heads up- if your doc decides that you should "Try this new once a day injectable" DONT
wao Say No To Drugs.................. Drug free nation
not happening.
People have been using drugs since the dawn of civilization.
It's not really a war on drugs.
It's a goverment employment program.
Lookit all those government employees they 'need'