Cheeseland

"I'm going to Cheeseland, Cheeseland, the
Dells and Door County..." parody of "Graceland" by Paul Simon, dunno who sang it (sorry)

So, what can I say about our hefty neighbors to the north? I mean, besides the fact that they talk funny? Well, they do make fine dairy products, beer, and bratwurst up there. See, I'm starting off nice! Anyway, I've been going up there for basically as long as I can remember, sometimes to deliver, almost always to pick up (you guessed it!) CHEESE! We pick up all our mozzarella from a little dairy in the central part of the state (can't say which) - most of it is for
our own distribution center, but not all. Some truckloads get shipped off to Ohio, Georgia and other states. There must be other cheese suppliers for our company, but I don't know who/where they are. But again, it's the whole thing with the backhauls; cleaning out the trailers,
pre-cooling in the summer time, etc. The nice thing is that they're open good and early (5:00am I think) so you can get your last delivery off, and go right over there - kind of a pain to get to -
still, sometimes you have guys in there before you & have to wait, it's all part of the job. They load you up w/20 pallets usually on a 45foot trailer, and yer off! Of course you have to scale, 'cause it's about 38, 39K they put on, but they have one right there that you can use for free - you gotta scale each axle, the subtract the weight, etc., but it beats paying the $10, & $11 at a truckstop. I mean, the only weigh station you worry about is the Racine scale, which is not always open, but better safe than sorry. I always used the "7-hole" rule that I spoke of earlier, and I would slide the tandems before I got loaded, and damn if it didn't scale out perfect every time. That's on a 45 footer, 48's might be different, but not too much.
I haven't had to go pick up mozzarella on my current route, thank God! But there's other chit, like frozen thin crusts in Green Bay and parmesan in Plymouth. Oh, joy! I guess it's not too bad - both those place are real efficient, so you can get in & out relatively quickly, so I can't bitch too much. Yeah, so I'm coming south the other day, just having done my pickup in Green Bay, and lo and behold, I come up to the scales at Manitowoc. No problem, 7:00 am almost always closed, right? Not today. So, I roll in, turn off lights, roll down windows, roll onto the scale. I know I'm not heavy, 'cause I got 8 pallets at just over 10k. But the guy says "OK, pull around for a routine inspection." I'm like wtf! So, I bring all my paperwork in, everything was fine, just a routine check. The trooper was the nicest guy, so it was just the incovenience of having to stop. I have never been stopped before, so I was shitting my pants there for a minute. Now with the big inspections coming up (6/5 - 6/7) I can understand. Shit, I'd rather be certified legal than have to dick around with getting red flagged or something, ya know? I'm actually surprised the guy didn't inspect my brakes. Anyway, 15 minutes later I was rolling again, so no biggie.
Look, I rail against the Cheese-dicks and YaHeyDer and the ultra-Germanics of WI, but I really got no problem with any one person or place. I mean, I lived in Sheboygan for a year and a half.
It was an experiment that failed miserably, but it wasn't anyone's fault, except maybe mine & my wife's. Our daughter was like 1 1/2, and the place we were living was becoming more and more "dangerous" (you notice these things when you have kids). So, my old man lived up in Sheboygan, a wholesome-enough place, so we took the plunge. Well, it was a nightmare from the start. I couldn't find work, at least nothing in the "white-collar" area, where I was used to being at the time. The employment office said that 42% of all jobs in the area were in manufacturing.
That's quite a bit! So, I found a customer service job at a furniture manufacturer; that whole
period of time was a friggin' nightmare. It was winter, I had the car, so my wife and baby daughter were stuck in the house. Plus, as the downstairs tenants, we were responsible for shoveling the snow, mowing the lawn, etc. WTF! The idiots upstairs didn't have to do a damn thing. Well, I got fired from the furniture place after 3 or 4 months; I just didn't get all the engineering bullshit they made us learn. But, looking back, that's ok. I found a job at a window-screen company, where I was "working", ya know; simple pretty mindless stuff, which was fine.
Then, I come home one day, and the wife's gone, she took the kid & moved back to Chicago without warning (that's a book by itself). She left me the dog to take care of though, geesh!
Anyhow, 6 months later, we reconciled, I moved back to Chicago, and the "experiment" was over. Our biggest complaints was that the things we were used to (24 hr. grocery store, for example) they just didn't have up there. It seemed everything closed by like 6 or 7pm, and nothing was open on Sundays, except the churches of course. The weather was kinda cold there, too, 'cause that part of WI juts out into Lake Michigan (check yer atlas) so the cool lake breezes come in and freeze ya!
But it's done; now it's just a drive-by. I had a couple friends I stayed in touch with, but eventually, well, you know. So, now I'm just up there part of Thurs. and Fri. - everything has gone fairly smoothly, maybe except for the weather, but that's coming around, too. I really can't complain too much. Just glad I'm not in Michigan. Anyway, the talk of keeping me out in IA for three days, with one overnight in Chicago (my previous schedule) has become more serious, so it appears I won't be long for America's Dairyland.

More soon,

Steve

P.S. All you drivers watch out for the roadside inspections (see above) 'cause I'm "crappin' you negative"