2008
WEEK TEN
Monday, March 3rd through Sunday, March 9th
It looks like it is time to start another week on the road. Monday was my last day of home time that was spent in Phoenix, AZ. I’m not exactly looking forward to more winter driving after spending the last few days in 80° weather. I can’t wait for this winter to pass.
An early Tuesday morning flight found me in Salt Lake City and in my truck well before noon and I sent in my “ready for load” message, but wasn’t expecting miracles because SLC hasn’t been one of the stronger freight bases of late. Therefore, the “check back in 2hrs" message wasn’t a shocker. I wasn’t overly disappointed by this because it gave me time to get settled in. I spent an hour or so in the drivers lounge and heard the usual. Some getting good miles, some not with a couple of drivers in the room who had been hung up in Washington state for a couple of days. This defiantly seems to be one of the worst places in the country for Crete freight at the moment. Over all, the general consensus seems to be that the wait for freight is defiantly more prominent than it has been in the past, but for the most part everyone seems to be getting descent miles so far. At this particular time there were 8 drivers waiting on loads when one of them came in and said he had recently checked his massages and found that a good load had been offered, but he wasn’t in the truck at the time and it was pulled from him 15mins later because he didn’t reply in a timely manner. With that I decided I best spend my time in the truck until I hear something.
Once in the truck I sent another message asking for a load and ran some paperwork into the office. When I returned, I had a load offer to PU in WY (damn, I hate that state, at least for the remainder of this winter) and it was a D/H PU. What jumped out at me (in an annoying kind of way) was that the PU time for this load was anytime today. That means it’s a preloaded trailer and has been sitting there all morning while I’m patiently waiting on a load for the last few hours. I guess they were looking for a load the was closer so I wouldn’t have to deadhead 190mi (can’t really blame them for that).
Good news is that I’m rolling and my short week will start off with a decent 1678mi run to Northwest Ohio. Bad news is it isn’t scheduled to deliver until Saturday, but it’s an open delivery time so I assume it’s a drop and hook and I make plans to deliver early. A couple of good running days and I can have the load there by Thursday night and might even have some time left to PU a load afterwards. All I know is that I don’t want to be putting in an MT call on a Saturday in Ohio.
I made it to my PU and did a quick D/H and headed on down the road in anticipation of what I-80 and Wyoming had in store for me today. Before leaving SLC I had checked the weather radar and wasn’t exactly thrilled to learn that I was going to be seeing the usual windy conditions with a good possibility of snow by the time I made it to Rawlings. That turn out to be very optimistic because I hit my first snowfall 200 miles before that around Fort Bridger. Nothing horrible, but unwanted none the less and it only lasted for 20 miles or so. From there it was smooth sailing for the next 200 miles but CB reports were not at all encouraging. As I got closer to the snow line the stories of the severity and the duration of the storm was increased by every driver I talked too. From the sound of things, the storm was growing and moving east and it looked like I would be running with it for most of the night.
The storm turned out to be less sever than some of the others that I had dealt with so far this winter across Wyoming, but it still qualified as a nasty pain in the a**! Once again I was dealing with crap. One particularly nasty section of about 20 miles was a horrible sheet of ice with a handful of obligatory cars hitting the ditch. I even got to watch one up close and personal today.
A Suburban that was pulling a small trailer (with no brakes on it) was going too fast (big surprise). We came up on a lane closure due to road crew trying to clear off an amazingly large snow drift from the granny lane. This forced all traffic into the left lane and a drastic slowdown in traffic. Well, once the Suburban tried to slow down, he found out his little trailer had no plans to do the same. The trailer started to squirrel around and each swing back and forth got a little more sever. I just slowed down, pulled into the center of both lanes with my flasher on to warn oncoming traffic and watched the show. I’ll give him props though; he almost saved it but eventually lost complete control and found himself going sideways. The look on his face was priceless, I think he thought I was going to hit him broadside in the drivers door. Lucky for him I was paying more attention to what lay ahead than he was. The finale was a graceful plunge with a relatively soft landing into a foot or two of snow. Another one bites the dust. It was such a slow build to the final ditching that I actually had time to snap a couple of pics.
This weather continued for another 200 miles with varying degrees of severity. Every thing from serious ice build up with high winds to sections of near white out. I considered stopping a couple of times, but the weather report was one of continued snow and poor conditions. So, no matter how bad it was at the moment, it would just be worse when I woke up in the morning and I had no intentions of hanging around and waiting for WY to close the road on me. Nothing new for this blasted state. I finally broke out of it around the Nebraska line and pulled into Bosselman’s outside of Big Springs, NE before running out of hours. Well, that was a great way to be welcomed back from my time off.
Wednesday was an oh hum, nothing special day of driving across NE and IA with a final stop in Western IL. This got me close enough to the customer so that I could plan on making it to the consignee in the area of 6pm on Thursday (this was scheduled for a Saturday delivery) and leave me with a good 4-5 hrs of drive time available in the event that there is a load available somewhere in the area. Not likely this time of night, but I can always hope.
Upon arriving at the customer (I assumed I would be able to drop/hook) I was assigned a door for a live unload. I was a bit confused by this because I could see a few of our empty trailer on the property, but since I was so early and they were accepting the load I wasn’t going to complain. While I was waiting at the shippers window I was reading all the little signs they had posted for our reading pleasure. Two in particular stood out to me. The First one “If you are going to spend your 10hrs break here, you must sign in with the guard”. This is a good, depending on how long it takes to get unloaded and my next load offer, I have that option available to me. The second sign said “Loading hours 7:30am to 10pm, if you arrive after 10pm, you will have to wait until the following morning to load”.
I was sitting in the truck and counting the pallets (by each bounce of the truck from the forklift) being pulled off. I had 18 pallets and when they had pulled off 9 I put in an empty call (and hoped the load count didn’t come up short, not really a possibility with this particular load). By doing this, I would be able to save some time and get my next load offer and assignment while I was waiting for the rest of the trailer to be unloaded.
Putting in an MT call before being completely unloaded is not usually a good idea (nor approved of by the company) because if there is a discrepancy in the final count or if for some reason the unload takes much longer than anticipated it can cause a big problem with dispatch if you are sent a hot load and all of a sudden you're telling them you have a problem and can’t leave or your not completely unloaded yet. But with this particular load I felt confident there would be no problems and the sooner I can get an MT call in, the higher I’ll be on the load list. Minutes can make a difference between getting a load now or waiting till the next day, especially later in the day.
After about 15mins I was sent a one load offer. I didn’t like what I saw. This was a 9am appoint PU at the same place I was currently delivering to. I didn’t mind the next day PU as much as the delivery time. It was a nice 590mi run to Des Moines, but the killer part was that it didn’t delivery until Monday (it is now Thursday night). That means 590 miles over the next 3 days. That, in my assessment is total BS. I try not to let things bother me too much, but I want to know what bonehead schedules a PU and DEL like that.
I have never refused a load and I’m not going to start now, but I’m going to do anything I can to perhaps talk dispatch into a change. I started off by not accepting the load (ignoring it for now) and sent off a message to night dispatch (low expectations from this bunch). “This load will have me sitting for over 60hrs, I would rather not spend the entire weekend in the back of my truck, is there any chance of getting a different load or Tcalling this in the Romeoville (Chicago) yard, THX”
At this point I’m wound up and as close to pissed off as I generally get (because I already know night dispatch probably isn’t going to be very helpful), but make it a point to never let that attitude show in my Qcomm messages.
After 30mins of no response (that in itself is an answer) I realize I will have to make this work on my own. The delivery time on this load is an open window between 9am and 2pm next Monday. What I take from this is that they are only open M-F. If they were open Saturday the appointment would have in all likelihood be set for then. The PU for this load is here at this shipper and scheduled for the following morning at 9am. I have about a 9 ½ hr drive once loaded. That means that if I do a live PU as scheduled, I’ll be ready to roll by around 11am and the earliest that I could make it to the consignee would be around 8-9pm Friday night, therefore forcing me to sit till Monday to make my delivery. Total crap!
During this dilemma my mind went back to the sign I had read in the shipper's office “No loading after 10pm”. Well, that leaves plenty of time to load me tonight if I can catch them in a good mood. So off to the shippers office I go to tell them I have been sent a load that is scheduled to PU the following morning and inquire as to the possibility of loading tonight instead. That is answered with a sharp “What’ your pickup number”. Well I don’t have that yet because I haven’t actually accepted the load (and may actually have a different load offer by the time I get back to the truck, yeah right), and am told that they can’t help me without the number. At least this lets me know they are open to the idea if the product is available at this time.
Back out to the truck I go in the hopes of finding a new load offer, but of course I am met with silence. At this point I decide to accept the load and assume I’ll be able to load tonight. If it works out that way, I’ll be able to take my 10hr break on property, take off at 3am, drive my 9½, fuel and be able to make it to the customer Friday between 1-1:30 and hope that they will unload me.
Once I received the load information I headed into the shipping office with my newly acquired PU#. The first question the surly lady at the shipping window asked me was if I had an MT trailer? This catches me a bit off guard since she just handed me my signed BOL for the trailer they had just unloaded. So with a rather inquisitive look on my face I assure her that I do in fact have an MT trailer and am delighted to be assigned a door. The loading goes much quicker than the unload and I sign in with the guard and park in the back for the remainder of the night. Oh yeah, after accepting the load I did eventually get an answerer to my plea for another load stating that I can check with the day crew about Tcalling the load in our Chicago or Indy yard the following day. I didn’t bother telling them I was already loaded.
Friday went exactly as planned and I made it to the customer in Des Moines at 1:15pm. There was one guy there and he was more than happy to unload me and by 1:45 I had sent in my MT call (2½ days early)and was awaiting my next load offer. Within a couple of minutes I was sent a “working on it message” and was quite pleased with myself for saving what would have been a dismal 2268mi week. Although I didn’t get started until Tuesday afternoon and that wouldn’t have been all that bad for a short week.
Within 15mins I was sent a message that there were no loads left for today (no problem for me, I only had 1½ of drivetime left today anyway) and received a one load offer that was a 5am PU the following morning just up the road. The pain in the backside about this load is that it delivered to Wichita (426mi) the next day at 11pm. Another bone head planning job. PU a load at 5am, drive 7hrs or so, sit for 10 hrs and then deliver in the middle of the night. Oh well, after my last run, these are bonus miles for me anyway. I accept the load and drive up to the shipper so I can get an early start the next day and maybe they will unload me early.
Saturday starts early and I arrive at the shipper at 4am for a 5am appointment. They assign me a door, I back up, feel the truck get locked into the door, get one quick bounce and I’m loaded. Just like that. I was picking up a load of plastic soda bottles. I’ve done this a couple of times before and it’s a slick operation. What they do is have the entire load staged in front of a door. Once you are positioned they simply get behind the very light load of bottles with a forklift and push the whole thing in. It takes all of 15 seconds. I wish it was always that fast.
Off I go and arrive at the Pepsi Bottling Co in Wichita, KS by noon. My hopes of an early unload are spoiled by the guard who informs me that these bottles are JIT (just in time) loads and they don’t warehouse them. They simply take them off the truck and put them into the production line, basically making me a moving warehouse. The guard takes my phone number and tells me he’ll call when there ready. OH well.
The wait isn’t as long as expected, instead of 11pm I get the call at 8pm and bump the dock. The unload process is painfully slow and I am able to watch the new movie “Bank Robbers” (descent movie by the way) while I wait.
My MT call is met with yet another one load offer (don’t seem to be getting too many choices these days). It is now Saturday night and this load is a D/H PU in Kansas City between the hours of 9pm and Midnight on Sunday and is a two stop Delivery with my final stop in Wausau, WI (831mi) Tuesday at 11:00am. Definitely not the greatest load due to yet another bone head job by the load planers. The load assignment gives me the preloaded trailer number, so I know it’s ready to go now and I could easily deliver this load by Monday. I’ve been sitting around long enough to log a 10hr break and could head over to KC to get my trailer, but it’s late and I’m in no hurry so I decided to put in for the night.
I got a relatively late start Sunday and decide to treat myself to a hot breakfast and head over to KC to PU my trailer. My first stop is scheduled for Tuesday at 7am outside of La Crosse, WI which is less than 500mi away. I decide to get to the customer tonight and maybe they will unload me first thing Monday morning.
WEEK TEN RESULTS
Monday, March 3rd through Sunday, March 9th
Miles include deadhead
Green River, WY to Old Fort, OH.........................1678mi
Old Fort, OH to Des Moines, IA.............................590mi
Ames, IA to Wichita, KS.......................................459mi
Kansas City, KS to Onalaska, WI..........................685mi
Total Paid Miles............................................. .......3412 miles (6days, Monday = Home)
Actual Miles………………………3442
3412mi x .42 = $1433.04