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Old 02-10-2008, 05:59 AM
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I had work done at the NK yard about a year ago, but it was emergency qualcom work, I guess I just assumed I could get a service there too. I know better now.

As far as the York terminal goes, I've alway heard they do/did good work but I do believe that terminal is no more, or a least will be soon.
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Old 02-10-2008, 06:33 AM
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Originally Posted by Bumper
Well hell, here I was all set to apply for the Western Regional too....

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Stop it, You're killin me, I can't breath :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Old 02-10-2008, 04:29 PM
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Well they are on my list......way down at the bottom, but on the list!

Actually, I am awaiting word from Tru-Line on a LA-Vegas run and if that falls through I have spoken with Pride for a WR job too.
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Old 02-10-2008, 07:29 PM
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Originally Posted by Bumper
Well they are on my list......way down at the bottom, but on the list!

Actually, I am awaiting word from Tru-Line on a LA-Vegas run and if that falls through I have spoken with Pride for a WR job too.
As a wide receiver?
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Old 02-10-2008, 08:57 PM
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Yeah, you start out at England as a Tight End and after they are finished with you, you can then go over to Pride as a Wide Receiver.......
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Old 02-11-2008, 04:18 AM
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Originally Posted by Bumper
Yeah, you start out at England as a Tight End and after they are finished with you, you can then go over to Pride as a Wide Receiver.......
Too funny Bumper. After a long football season I was used to seeing WR meaning a wide receiver.
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Old 02-11-2008, 04:19 AM
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Hey, I used to work for Crete, you just know I have a sense of humor!!
:shock:
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Old 02-11-2008, 04:27 AM
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Hey, I used to work for Crete, you just know I have a sense of humor!!
:shock:
True, very true. And I work for them so I need a sense of humour too. :lol:
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Old 02-12-2008, 07:24 PM
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WEEK SIX
Monday February 4th through Sunday February 9th


Well, it’s Monday and home time is history. Amazing how fast it goes.

I throw all of my stuff into the truck and let dispatch know that I’m ready for a load. I can usually count on an hour, or maybe a little less to get all my stuff situated before I get a load offer and assignment. Not this time, less than 5mins later I get a load assignment along with a message “need this load picked-up ASAP, it’s a missed load from the day before”.

Great, just get in the truck and I’m already behind the 8-Ball. It’s a crappy short load that will deliver late today and probably leave me with no load till the next morning. Oh well, better than getting a load up to PA (in hind sight PA might not have been such a bad place), which is where I usually go after my home time. This is a live load that is 70mi away and is due in eastern KY (389mi) by 14:00. That’s not going to happen. I send a message that I’m on my way to PU the load, but it will be late. Dispatch acknowledges this and asks me to let them know when I can have it there.

Most of the trip is on back roads and I finally get to the customer by 17:00(wow, is this in the back woods). It is another drop/hook and they are waiting for me when I arrive. I drop the trailer in a door and do an MT call. I see allot of preloaded Crete trailer on the property, so I send in a message “do you want me to deliver one of the loaded trailers here or get an MT”. I’m now dealing with night dispatch and don’t expect a rapid response, not that they are less helpful, just a bit understaffed I believe. I end up waiting about 30mins and finally get a 2 load offer. Both are preloaded trailers from the customer that I am currently parked at. Cool, no deadhead. I was short on hours for the day and didn’t have time to PU a load and try to find a place to park on top of it.

Load 1 was going to the Chicago area (540mi) and it had an appointment delivery early Wednesday morning. I’m not particularly fond of that area and the miles are so-so, could be worse I guess (I had no idea how much worse at the time).

Load 2 was going to Tracy, CA (2535mi), BINGO! This is a 2pm appointment delivery and isn’t scheduled until Saturday. That’s 5 days away and by the time I’m unloaded I’ll be looking for a load later in the afternoon. There’s a good chance I’ll be getting my load the next day. I think about it and realize I would probably be better off with the IL load, but opt for CA. Just can’t turn down a cross country trip. One thing I didn’t really think through was the trip across WY and Donner Pass in CA. I knew things could go bad this at this time of year, but chose to ignore my better judgment. This would prove to be a bit of a mistake.

Once again, I’m under a load that I can take my time running and get there with limited effort or I can run hard on a very tight schedule and make it close to my destination and do a 34 reset and have a clean slate Saturday. Big surprise, I decide to push and take off; I have a couple of hours left on my clock for the night.

Tuesday starts at 6am; I see that I can make it to our Kansas City terminal within my 11hr drive day with a little time left. This way I can put the truck in the shop for its overdue A service while I’m taking my 10hr break.

The day is abnormally pleasant hovering around the mid 60s, this is February right. That all changed when I hit St. Louis. It was 55 on the east side of town and a rainy 33 on the west end and it continued all the way to KC. According to the radio the rain was suppose to turn to snow any minute with accumulation of 3-6 inches by morning. I knew I should have taken that Chicago run!

I made it to our KC yard by 5pm and put a work order in for my truck. The shop manager said they were busy, but would try to fit it in before closing time of 11pm. If not it would not be until the following morning. Oh well, if they can’t do it tonight I can always stop by the Salt Lake City shop on my way through.

While I was waiting for the truck to get worked on I decided to heat something up in the lounge microwave and pull out the computer and see what I could do about catching up on my update for the previous week.

The lounge was filled with the normal chatter that one seems to encounter when you have a room full of drivers, including the obligatory know it all who was determined to depart his entire lifetime of truck driving wisdom upon all that would listen. Not that any of us had an option, it was a small room and he had a very boisterous voice. Basically, the normal “I don’t take crap from anyone”, “I told dispatch what they could do with that load”, laced with stories of ridiculous exaggerations, etc. Surprisingly enough he also was complaining that his miles were horrible, wasn’t even getting 1500 miles a week (as believable as his other stories). I’m sure it had absolutely nothing to do with his charming personality. When he asked me about my miles he all but called me a liar, at which time two of the more mild mannered individuals in the room rallied around me and said that they too were having no trouble turning out 3000-3500 a week on a fairly regular basis.

This seemed like a good time to redirect my attention to the computer and withdraw myself from the attention of Mr. Happy. As the night continued I realized it was after 10:30, looks like my truck didn’t get worked on. Oh well, I’ll stop by the Salt Lake City yard on my way through and try my luck there. I begin gathering my things and am pleasantly surprise to hear my truck number being called out on the load speaker. Well I’ll be, they actually got to my truck. KC tends to be one of the better shops in our system; at least it has been for me.

Turns out the weather guy knew what he was talking about. The rain had turned to snow and there was already 2in on the ground. Looks like tomorrow is going to be a blast. By the time I get settled in for bed it’s almost midnight and although I can start running at 3:30am I opt to set the alarm for 5hr (I generally sleep no more than 5-6 hrs a night) and give the road crews a chance to clear the way before I get started. This pretty much shoots my chances of getting in a reset before my delivery, but with the snow storm ahead I don’t imagine I’ll make good enough time to do that any way and there is no point driving tired on challenging roads.

Wednesday starts at 5:30 and I am pleased to see that there hasn’t been much of a snow build up, an extra inch or two at the most. Maybe things won’t be as bad as I thought. It doesn’t take long to dispel that silly notion. Within 10 miles I find myself on what I can only describe as horrendously treacherous roads with less than desirable visibility. Kansas City may not have received much snow, but is seems like there was a foot of fresh snow being blown around further north this morning. There is a variety of vehicles in the ditches included 7-8 big trucks. At one point there were actually three of them, one behind the other in the median. It looks like they were following tail lights and just hung a left.

;


I don’t know what it is about Missouri road crews, but they could stand to take a lesson or two from the Iowa boys. By the time I reached Iowa the sun was finally coming up and the roads improved greatly, although they were far from clear. I exited I-29 at Hwy 2 to go through Lincoln and was held up for about 30 minutes as a wrecker finished pulling a jackknifed CFI truck out of the ditch.

The rest of the day went well, once I made it to I-80 the roads were no longer a problem and I headed across NE with Cheyenne as my goal for the night. As I drove along it become apparent that the roads were in bad condition last night. Many trucks and cars were still I the ditch and there was evidence of a number that had already been pulled out.



I arrived in Cheyenne and stopped at the POE (point of entry) to show my permits and was surprised to see a sign on the door that I-80 was closed. Not a big deal at the moment since I was out of hours anyway, but when I asked about the duration of the closure I was a bit setback when the officer said it could be days before they would reopen I-80. Son of a #@%^, I knew I should have taken that Chicago load.

With that bit of good news I headed over to our terminal (not one of our biggest, but the newest with comfortable amenities as far as Crete terminals go) and grabbed my shower gear and computer and planned on spending a few hours out of the truck. This plan is quickly squashed when I went inside. Apparently this terminal is no longer left unlocked at night when the office personal go home (it was now closing time). I can only assume it has something to do with past driver conduct or a vandalism issue. Why not, this day is just full of good news. I decided to drop my trailer in the yard and bobtail to the truckstop down the road for a bite to eat.

By the time I’m ready to hit the sack for the night it’s about 11pm and I decide to check WyDOTs website for road conditions and am surprised to see that I-80 has been reopened. How I miss the days when I could “adjust” my log book. It would be very advantageous to get going now before they shut the road down again. As it stands I can’t start driving until 5am. With that in mind, I retire for the night and hope for the best.

Thursday starts with me waking up early; I’m very antsy about the roads and want to get going before things get bad again. The winds tend to pickup during the day. A quick check on the web shows that I-80 is still open. As soon as I’m able to start I run over to the Pilot and fuel up. My fuel solution has only approved me for 85 gals, but there is no way I’m driving across WY in this mess with half a tank and I top her off. One last call to 511 road conditions let me know that the roads are still open and I’m off. I must have gone a whole 20-25 miles down the road when I came across a road condition info sign and guess what it said “I-80 closed at Laramie”. Son of a @#%@#.

I get to Laramie and there are trucks everywhere, most of them were still parked from last night and didn’t know the road had been opened while they were sleeping. I didn’t want anything to do with trying to find a spot in a truck stop and found a place on the side of the road next to a Pilot, at least I can take my shower now.

A mere 5 hours later the word went out and the race was on. There is nothing like watching 1000+ trucks trying to get out of the same one or two driveways at each of the truckstops. This being the primary reason I chose not to park in one to start with. While I was waiting I had pulled up a local map of the area and found a back road and was able to get onto the Big Road with relative ease. I was west bound and down and I was leading the pack (not for long of course). I just stayed on the right side and let all the big boys fly by. I was in no real hurry; I knew it was just a matter of time before the roads would get bad anyway.

I wasn’t disappointed; the wind was horrible from the get go and as the road headed down into the valley blowing snow became a real problem. Visibility was horrible and a number of times it was reduced to almost zero. It was slow going but at least I was moving. I just had to get past Rawlings before they shut the roads down again and I should be good to go.

I managed to get through the worst of it and once Rawlings was in the rear view the only concern was the wind. Thankfully I had a heavy load that was holding up well to the gusts, although the fuel mileage was taking a beating.

After 3hrs I decided to take a quick break at a rest area to stretch the legs a bit, a decision I would soon regret. I was there no more than 10 minutes and when I got back on the road I noticed that there was no longer any east bound traffic. Not a good sign, I didn’t know if traffic had been stopped because of the roads behind me (defiantly no picnic, an accident waiting to happen) or if the roads ahead where bad. As it turned out, east bound traffic was being stopped at Rock Springs because the road I had just past over had once again been shut down.

Once I made it past Rock Springs I was able to get east bounders on the CB for some info. According to everyone that I talked to it was snowing a little just ahead and I would have to deal with some snowpack, but nothing to worry about. Sisters was also reported to be clear with light snow and mostly wet roads. I’m thrilled by this and was patting myself on the back for making it through the last small window of opportunity. I should be in Salt Lake City in a few hours (yeah right).

It didn’t take long and we started hitting snow, not terrible but heavier than I was expecting, much heavier actually and it just kept getting worse. Before I knew it I was in a full fledged blizzard and then everything went to he!!

This was not good. As a matter of fact this was absolutely horrendous. I have never seen a storm come on this fast. We were supposed to be out of it by now according to reports from numerous drivers that had just been through here in the last hour. And as bad as it was it got worse. Visibility was all but zero and the CB was starting to sound like a battle zone. Dozens of drivers were shouting (everything from stressed yet calm to total panic), we were doing our best to inform each other of road conditions, accident locations, sections of total white out, what lane we were in, mile marker(if we could see one) how fast we were going. Anything to avoid becoming one of the many, many accidents that were piling up everywhere. At one point I was in the right lane, I think, going about 20 MPH and was passed by a flatbed doing at least 40 (I have NO idea what was going through this bozos head). I got on the CB to warn him that he was practically on top of a 3 car accident including a Highway Patrol car blocking the left lane and now would be a good time to start breaking. He didn’t answer. I just hoped for the best and slowed down. I also heard something about a right lane blockage just past that involving a big truck.





Just about then I was hit by a complete white out that lasted at least 5-6 seconds (not exaggerating in the least). That may not seem like long, but try closing your eyes and count to six and pretend you’re driving a semi at the time. It was the most horrifying, helpless experience of my driving carrier. I wasn’t worried about driving off the road, I was going slowly enough that I could react to the rumble strips (ok, maybe that’s a bit optimistic), but I was certain that I would be slammed into from behind. All I could do is grab the mic and warn about my situation.


; ;

Shortly after making it out of that mess, less than ¼ mile down the road I came up on the tail end of that flatbed that had passed me. Now he was on his radio (he later told me he didn’t realize his CB volume was turned down). He had just managed to miss the truck in front of him and was trying to explain something about needing a clean pair of britches, and there we sat at a dead stop in the middle of the road. The snow was so blinding that I couldn’t see the front part of truck in front of me. Once again I’m on the CB with warnings. All the time this is happening there are many, many others in similar situations. The CB assault was nonstop.

Shortly after we started rolling again I came across the 3car accident involving the Patrol car. It was pancaked between the other cars, but it looked like everyone was out and OK. The flat bed that had flown by me a little earlier had just enough time to swerve around it and was now on his CB telling about his harrowing experience (you would think he would learn, unbelievable). I had just enough time to tell him that he was coming up on a right lane blockage and he apparently just missed that one too. Along with this bedlam there were dozens of cars and truck in the ditch. Amazingly there were no rollovers from what I could see.

Somehow I managed to make my way through this disaster, slow and stead gets you to the end of the race, and eventually started to see a slight letup in the weather. This whole thing started getting out of hand around the 60 MM and one hour later I was looking at the 45 marker wandering what the he!! had just happened. That is one experience I never care to go through again.

Anyway, the roads where by no means good, but after that last hour I felt like I was on easy street and from what I was hearing, once I made it to the 30 MM I would be home free. “Nothing but wet roads”. Yeah, sure, I’ve heard that before. But this was coming from east bound drivers that had just been their 20 minutes prior and apparently the weather was holding out on the Sisters. I keep my fingers crossed and forge on.

My heart beat had actually returned to normal (or at least close) and I was once again feeling confident that the worst was behind me. Then came MM35 and a big road condition sign flashing, “I-80 closed ahead, all traffic must exit”. Son of a #$@!.

I am stunned, so close. I can’t believe my luck. I actually watch the plow driver lower the gate and close the road in front of me. I am actually the very first truck in the line. It turns out that there was a jackknifed rig with injuries just up the road. I can’t help but reflect on my stop at the rest area. Had I not stopped I would have made it through. But then again, I may have been part of one of the accidents too.

;


The sickening part of this became apparent later in the night. The road had been closed down from MM 3O to MM 68 due to weather. We had just finished driving through that entire stretch and I was currently sitting at a gate on exit 34. I was 4 miles from and open highway. As I sit there, it occurs to me that a dedicated run to Chicago might just be what I’m looking for.

So, here I sit on the exit ramp in the middle of nowhere, no phone, no internet access. At least I have the CB chatter to keep me amused. By 11:00pm it becomes more than apparent that the road isn’t going to be opening any time soon so I decide to get some sleep. An hour later a state trooper is pounding on my door and telling me I have to move (even though this is where they told us to park 5 hours ago). I look up and see that the gate is still closed which leaves me more than baffled in my sleepy little world. I make a polite inquiry as to where he would like me to go and he points down a county road that is in worse shape than the interstate I had come off.

The next subject that comes up is the good ol’ 14 hour rule. I make a feeble attempt at pointing out the pesky little federal rule that we all live and die by; you know that one that they site as they give you $1000 fines. My plea is meet with an obnoxious “move it”.

OK, next subject. “Sorry sir, but I have absolutely no idea where that road goes, could you give me some idea of where I’m going”. He replies with a curt, “We’re clearing the ramp, go to Lyman” and walks away. Nothing like a professional! I try to give the troopers the respect they deserve, but they sure don’t make it easy.

I grab the map and see that Lyman is about 10 miles away via county road. Un fing believable. Off I go into the great unknown on roads that have no business being traveled. After driving for about 15 minutes I’ve gone all of 2 miles and come across a little town, (turns out to be Fort Bridger) and consists of a main street that is ¼ mile long at best. At least I’m first in line; I find a spot wide enough to do a u-turn and park it on the side of the road. That’s enough for me. I listened to the CB for another hour or so, long enough to hear that they cleared the ramp and then were directing all the trucks to pull over as far to the right as possible. Any trucks in the left lane that couldn’t get over were funneled off the road so that plows could get by. What an absolute cluster F once again. Just dump trucks off on side roads with absolutely no direction. Disgusting! I finally wind down and go back to bed. Rumor has it that the road will be opened in the morning.

Well, it’s Friday morning and the sun is just starting to come up. I turn on the CB and it is chalk full of, well, lets call it animated chatter. CB rumor is that trucks are lined up single file from the 34 MM to the 58 MM. That’s 24 miles of trucks end to end. Is it true, don’t know, but wouldn’t be surprised. There are allot of grumblings from hungry and thirsty drivers. I’m amazed at how many drivers don’t have anything to eat or drink in their truck, especially this time of the year and running across WY on top of it. Personally, I could probably last upwards of two weeks without outside supplies.

As the day wears on a female Landline driver gets on the CB and informs us that she has just received a message from dispatch telling her that the road would remained closed for the rest of the day and would not be opened until tomorrow morning at the earliest. I just hang my head and cry. Not really, but you get the idea. This little bit of information is bolstered by the fact that the national guard is now driving up and down the road with fuel tankers for the drivers that are running low (I can’t help thumbing my nose at my fuel solution, it’s a good thing I topped off in Laramie) and portapots are being setup at intervals along the interstate. I finally decide to send a message into dispatch to let them know that if the road isn’t opened within 6 hours it will be a late delivery.

Hours later the unexpected happens, I start hearing rumblings on the CB. “The road is open, roll out”. Now I’ve been hearing this all day by so called humorists, but this one seems to have some steam behind it and I start getting excited. Sure enough, the word comes down and it is once again a free for all and off I go. Since I stopped at this little town just down from the interstate I find myself 2 miles from the starting gate along with a handful of other trucks that were able to find parking around me and we have an unobstructed route and are rolling down the road within minutes. The best part; its 11:30am and if I kick it I can make my delivery on time. It will be tight, but I think I can do it. I make it to somewhere in Nevada and shut down at 1am. Damn, I’m on night hours. Ick!

Saturday starts 11am and I have a very pleasant drive over Donner Pass and the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was almost 50 degrees at the summit. WOW, did they get a bunch of snow this year. Looks like 10 feet of standing snow at least. Wonder how I managed to miss those storms.

I make my delivery in Tracy, CA at 13:45 local time, 15 minutes before the appointment time. And what do you know; it’s a drop and hook. I make a notation in my book for future reference and drop my trailer. The drop part goes well, but the customer will not release an empty trailer to me, it seems they are planning on loading the ones that are on their lot later in the day.

I do my MT call and inform dispatch that I have no trailer. I’m short on hours and I know the 4hrs I have already worked today will not be taken into consideration by the computer, but do my usual wait and see what comes up. If it’s a load that doesn’t conform to my available hours I can refuse it. 20 minutes later I receive a single load offer that is a D/H PU just south of San Francisco and is a live delivery in Yakima, WA (1032mi) early Tuesday morning. Isn’t that just peachy, I’ve been listing to the weather channel and the snow is flying up there too. I’m also getting low on hours, but I look over the numbers and see that I can work in a 34 reset and hopefully the snow will move out before I get up there.

Now all I have to do is find an empty trailer. Dispatch had sent me two different addresses in the area to look for one. I head off to the closest and am in luck. I hook to the MT and wait for my load assignment. For whatever reason, every once in awhile, computer generated messages get caught up in the qualcom system. Direct messages between myself and dispatch go right through, but not messages like load information and directions (sometimes, like today, it can take well over an hour). Usually this isn’t a problem because I keep a list of every customer I’ve been to along with directions. In a case like this I can start driving and worry about getting the pertinent information by stopping at a rest area along the way once the info comes through. If that doesn’t work I can call my fleet manager to get the info over the phone. But this is Saturday, no one is in the office and weekend dispatch has enough to do without answering my calls. Unfortunately I have never been to this customer and after more than an hour I breakdown and call dispatch to get the basic PU info along with a phone number so I can get directions and take off.

I do my D/H PU, check to make sure the consignee is correct and head north. While I’m driving my qualcom starts chirping and my load assignment has finally arrived. Better late than never.

I have the hours to drive till 1am but by the time 11pm rolls around I decide I’ve had enough and shut down in Corning, CA for the night. This leaves me with 10 ½ hrs of drive time tomorrow. I can drive to a place of my choosing and do my 34reset. If time doesn’t permit that, no big deal because I will start picking up hours as of Tuesday, thus leaving me plenty of time to make my delivery. I’ll worry about the logistics of it tomorrow after a good nights sleep. I find a place to park and go find a place to eat a hot meal for a change.

When I got back to the truck I took care of a few things and as an after thought I remembered that my load assignment had come through the system after I had PU my load and was on my way north. I’ll just jot down the info before I go to bed. As I start doing this I am horrified to see that my Tuesday morning delivery, you know, the one that I have all the time in the world to get there is in fact a 2 stop delivery with the first stop scheduled for Monday morning in Seattle, WA. Holly S, that is sooo not good.
I scroll down to my load offer and there it is, in the lower corner of the screen “Stops 01”.

A quick look at the map and I see that I have over 600 miles to go with 10 ½ available and I have to stop for fuel on the way. That means I have to average around 61 MPH. That would be fine if I were running across a NV, but CA and OR have 55mph speed limits for trucks (that they enforce with a nazi like fervor), and a good portion of that is driving up and down mountains (fortunately I have a very light load, so I won’t be slowed down too much due to weight). This is going to be tighter than I like. If I would have noticed the extra stop when I received the load offer I would have refused it without a second thought, (and no, I didn’t notice the additional one page BOL attached to the bills that had the additional stop on it, my bad).

The big problem is that if I do make it to the customer, it will be Sunday night and the delivery isn’t scheduled until Monday morning. This will leave me there with no time on my clock not only for Sunday, but also no available hours for Monday and no possible way to go anywhere legally. This is not a good situation. I have the option of taking the load with a “see what happens” outlook, or calling Crete and rescheduling both deliveries, which would probably garner me a service failure. Well, I’m not going to go that route. Off to bed I go.

Well, its Sunday, showtime and I have to make this work. CA and OR are states that I make a practice of not messing with. The speed limit is 55 and I just set my cruise at 58 and kick back. That’s not going to be possible today. I bump it up to 62 (usually slow enough to get away with if the troopers are in a good mood) and hope for the best. I also make it a point to make a few stops and time them at just over 8 minutes. This way I can log a 15 minute stop and save a few minutes. One of the grey areas that is useful in these situations. If I do this a few times I should pickup enough time to get me to my destination before running out of hours. My fuel stop also works out great. I’m able to pull into the Pilot and get the only open pump left and there is no one parked in front of me. I am able to top of the tanks and be back on the road in less than 6 minutes. I’m required to log 15 On Duty for this, so in effect I’ve gained another 9 minutes. Every one of them counts today.

It was a beautiful drive through the Siskiyou Mountain range and Mt Shasta was absolutely beautiful.



After a day of tight driving I was able to make it to the customer 10 minutes over my available hours. That means I was close enough that I can jump down to On Duty, Not Driving. That was way to close for comfort. I may still end up with a log violation, but I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 safety points on the good side. If I get dinged a point of two so be it. A fair price to pay compared to a service failure. Note to self, read load offers closer in the future.

Now that I’ve made it here I have the next obstacle to contend with. Can I stay here or will a security guard try to chase me off the property. Seattle isn’t exactly known for its abundant parking options, although I’m on familiar ground. I ran a dedicated route for a couple of years that delivered within a 6mi radius of here and knew of a few hiding spots. Things work out fabulously and I am not only given permission to stay on property, I am told to open my doors, throw the bills in the back and bump the dock and the morning crew would unload me first thing in the morning. Hot damn, somebody is watching over me today. I do as instructed and wonder off and try to decide which of the dozens of restaurants I want to eat at.

I woke up at 7am the following morning when the truck started bouncing around and ½ an hour later they were pounding on my door with the paper work. I pulled away from the dock and parked behind the store for the remainder of the day. No hours available until midnight.


Looking back on this week just reinforces the way I look at setbacks out here on the road. All of the delays I encounter would have eaten me up years ago. I have since learned to take everything in stride. Driving a truck OTR isn’t something you can judge on a daily basis. It’s something you have to look at as a whole. There will be bad days, but if you just take them in stride and move on I find that things usually work out in the long run. Especially when the check comes in.

With that in mind, I'm not feeling too good about next week, don't know why. Guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

‘til next week;

Adios





WEEK SIX RESULTS
Monday February, 4th through Sunday February, 10th
Miles include deadhead

Wilmington, NC to Kimper, KY…………………………..460mi
Kimper, KY to Tracy, CA…………………………………2535mi
Santa Clara, CA to Tukwila, WA………………………….883mi


Total Paid Miles…………………………………………..3878 miles
Actual Miles………………………3969 (includes off duty bobtailing)

3878mi x .42 = $1628.76
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Old 02-13-2008, 02:06 AM
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WOW! Fantastic post! I am really starting to look forward to reading this. Keep up the great work. I am considering going back to OTR, my current local job is not pannning out and being single, maybe i should head out for anther 2 years and just save all that money for retirement or buy a house I don't know.

I do enjoy seeing the good things about Crete. I drove for knight for a while and have considered going back to them, but I remember staying out for 4 or 5 weeks at a time and still only getting 2300 miles. And I ran hard and smart, but Knight terminal compete for frieght with each other and that can make it alttle hard. But they're easy as long as u don't do a"drop and hope to god for an mt trailer"

Travel safe my friend and I look forward to your next report

Chris
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