The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

We’ve had a dedicated lane running from California to Pennsylvania and back for over a year now. We ran it ourselves in the beginning, fine-tuning the route and the fuel stops until the whole thing ran like clockwork.

Eventually we handed it off to a team we’ll call the Rock Stars. They live in Alabama but have family in California, and they love this lane. It’s easy to see why — it’s an OTR truck with two and a half days off every week. Dedicated routes are the unicorns of trucking. They’re not for everyone, but they’re coveted.

When the Rock Stars need time off, we find cover. Clockwork.

The Rock Stars asked for two weeks off for their wedding anniversary — a trip to Hawaii. Of course we said yes. The catch was timing: all of our trucks were already out. So we did what you do. We jumped in our Ford and drove to California ourselves. The Rock Stars flew out of California instead of Alabama, since it’s shorter and cheaper to Hawaii from there, so we said aloha to them and aloha to their truck — a 2024 Kenworth T680. Basic spec, no frills, but she’s still a NextGen, and this used to be our truck once upon a time. We love her.

Week One: The Good

It started auspiciously. The load to Pennsylvania was only 21,000 pounds, light as these things go, and we rolled off the FedEx yard around 1 a.m. — early, the way I like it. I’m the night driver, and there’s a particular feeling to sliding back into a routine you know as well as an old pair of slippers. It just felt right.

Anyway, if this were a movie I would just hit the fast forward button and you’d see the I-40 fly right by. Winslow, Arizona, Oklahoma City, Knoxville and just like that we were in Pennsylvania.

The Bad

Pennsylvania was not as kind on the way back. The pickup was almost 32,000 pounds, and that’s about where things started to go sideways.

A little backstory first. Back in June, this truck needed new steer tires — those are the front tires, for the un-indoctrinated. Love’s had a newer brand in stock called Ralson, and we went with it. At the end of July, the tread on the driver’s side peeled off and the Rock Stars needed a roadside replacement.

This trip, the passenger side went too, just after we crossed back into Tennessee.

At first we had no idea what was happening. We were getting a transmission code and something was banging around under the truck. Nothing else looked wrong, so we called a wrecker and arranged a tow into Knoxville. When the wrecker hoisted the truck, the mystery solved itself — the center tread of the tire was completely gone, and the transmission was fine. We paid the wrecker for his trouble and called Love’s for a roadside tire instead.

When the shop mentioned Ralson again, I said absolutely not. I’d had the driver’s side replaced with Hankook back in July, so I had them match it. Consistency matters more than a slightly better tire price, especially after the tire you already have has burned you twice.

Then there was the headlight. The peeled tire tread had taken out the passenger side headlight assembly, and on a NextGen T680 you can’t just swap a bulb — it’s the whole housing, or nothing. We called around. The only one in stock anywhere near us was at the Kenworth dealer in Knoxville, for $3,000. For a headlight?!

Ed had a better idea. Our other 2024 T680 — driven by a team we call The Show — was parked on home time in Atlanta, and Ed had brought all the keys with us for exactly this kind of emergency. We drove to Atlanta, swapped the assembly off their truck, and ordered a replacement for $400 to ship straight to them. It had been a long day so we decided to cut our losses and bed down for the night.

We’d planned a small detour before any of this happened — a stop at the brand-new Dolly Parton travel stop that had just opened in Tennessee. With the tire chaos, it felt like a plan that had quietly died. But we woke up the next morning, tires fixed, headlight sorted, and thought — why not.

You can read what we found at Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop here. It was a genuinely lovely break after a relatively short day of driving.

Fast-forward Nashville, Oklahoma City, Winslow and back to California.

Round Two

We had a day to kill before the second pickup, so we grabbed a hotel room and did the housekeeping that piles up on the road: laundry, dishes, groceries. Small luxuries.

The second load came in at 32,000 pounds again. Right at the start of this trip, one of our teams — we’ll call them the Texans — hit some road debris on I-40 near Winslow. After grabbing our trailer, we decided to stop and check on them on the way through. They’d torn up a fuel tank, but nobody was hurt, and they were able to limp it along on one tank until we could get it replaced. Fast-forward Oklahoma City, Knoxville, and everything seemed to be clicking.

The Ugly

We were running about an hour ahead of our usual pace and feeling good about it when we hit a wall of traffic on I-81 MM308 in Virginia and we were only two hours from our drop.

Nothing moved. Every thirty to sixty minutes, one lane or the other would creep forward a couple hundred feet, then stop again. Ed gave up around midnight and went to bed. I stayed on duty.

Around 1:30 a.m., VDOT workers came through, helping cars and smaller vehicles turn around and head back to the previous exit. One of them stopped by the truck and told me it was going to be a while — I should try to get some sleep, and they would knock on the door when things opened back up.

The dogs had other ideas. Thumper and Rocky heard the stranger’s voice and immediately sprang into action, alerting Ed to the intruder. Truck security is officially their job, and yes, it’s tax deductible — we’ve written about that before.

I walked the dogs on I-81 that night, which is a new one even for us. Then I put myself in the sleeper and tried to rest. It’s hard to fall asleep, or stay asleep, knowing you’re parked in the middle of a highway with a vague promise someone will knock on the door. I had visions of waking up to horns blaring as trucks had to go around me.

The Morning After

I gave up tossing and turning around 7 a.m. A neighbor in an industrial-looking van waved at me; I waved back. He shrugged, then seemed to call his wife to show her the traffic. I felt for the guy — I can only imagine how that conversation went.

After 11 hours, VDOT came back through around 7:33 a.m. and we started rolling again.

Here’s what happened, according to state police: a vehicle merging onto I-81 south failed to yield. A tractor-trailer struck it, crossed the median, and collided with a northbound truck hauling oxygen tanks. The impact and fire caused the tanks to explode. Both truck drivers were killed.

Driving past the scene that morning, the pavement was scorched black and there were mangled, unrecognizable pieces of trailer still sitting on a flatbed at the roadside.

Leaving PA heading south we passed the spot again, and it was still a mess — northbound traffic was backed up all the way to exit 306.

The rest of the trip was its own kind of test, with several more tractor-trailer involved crashes. It was a rough week on that stretch of highway. Fast-forward Knoxville, Oklahoma City, Winslow, Arizona — where we actually stopped for fuel — and I just couldn’t help but sing a few lines from “Take It Easy.”

Long Drive Home

We rolled back into California the next morning, a quick stop at Blue Beacon and a thorough cleaning of the interior, and she was ready for the Rock Stars. Then we climbed into the Ford and started the long haul from California to Florida on I-10, hitting almost every Buc-ee’s along the way.

The Rock Stars made it back safe from Hawaii and had a wonderful anniversary. We spent a while on the phone trading stories — theirs about parasailing off Oahu, ours about tires, headlights, and a night parked in the middle of I-81. Not exactly a fair trade, but that’s the job.

Every driver has weeks like this one, and most of them don’t get written down. This one did, because it was a good reminder of what the miles actually cost — and what they’re worth.

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If you enjoyed this article, please check out our other stories from the road and our Trucking 411 articles — Keep the Shiny Side Up!