[evertruckerr]

WEEK FORTY SEVEN
Monday, November 17th through Sunday, November 23rd

Well, my disastrous week is behind me and I can only hope that I won’t see anything like that again, although I am ever mindful of the increasing possibility of a repeat in the near future.

I can only hope for a better week this time around, but first things first. Time to get rid of this albatross of a load that has pledged me far too long. It was delivering just outside of Phili and had a delivery window of 7:00-13:00 and I had every intention of being at the gate when they opened in the morning and that I did. I also wanted to get into town before the rush hour traffic hit and arrived about an hour early. I was allowed to pull into the gate and wait by the dock, but was also told that unloading wouldn’t begin for an hour or so. Fine with me, I’ve been under this load for so long now, an extra hour or two wasn’t going to make any difference. I wasn’t all that hopeful about getting a load out this morning anyway. I could only imagine how many empty trucks were in the area after delivery throughout the weekend. I was anticipating another “No freight message”.

Unloading started as scheduled and within the hour I was putting in the MT call and expecting the worst. But today they fooled me and sent out a 1280mi run with a final destination of Minneapolis. Thank you, I’m going to escape the northeast unscathed. It wasn’t a perfect load, but giving the past week I wasn’t too bothered by the two stop delivery and the drawn out final delivery scheduled for Thursday morning.


My load was on a preloaded trailer and I was ready to put in some miles for a change. After a quick drop and hook I was on my way to the great north and managed to put in a little over 600 miles for the day. I actually had another hour or so of drive time when I stopped for the night, but I hit my first snow storm of the year as I drove into the west side of PA and by the time I hit the OH border the lake effect snow was in full effect and a number of cars had already hit the ditch and the roads were getting a little to greasy for my liking and I headed to the nearest truckstop for the night.

I awoke Tuesday to find a fresh 6in of snow covering the truck and prepared myself to venture out onto the fun filled roads. I had plenty of time to get to my destination for my first stop today and decided to take the two lane roads across OH and IN to avoid the toll roads. In hind sight, I probably should have stuck to the tolls because I’m sure they were better maintained than the state highways, but I was feeling adventurous. The roads weren’t exactly in the greatest condition, but it was early morning as I drove over the worst of them and traffic was light. It’s that time of the year and I figured I better get used to it.



Once I got out from under the Great Lakes the bad roads cleared up and the temperature returned to a more agreeable level. I went from a snow storm 30 miles east of Gary, IN and temperatures close to 20° to clear skies, dry roads and 40° by the time I hit downtown Chicago less than an hour later.

Once all the bad weather was behind me I made good time and put in for the night just south of Milwaukee, getting as close as I could to my morning delivery point leaving me with a short 30mi hope in the morning. I arrived Wednesday morning to delivery the first half of my load and ended up sitting around for a couple of hours. No big deal because I only had about 300 miles to go for the rest of the day. Soon enough I was once again driving down the road and had to hold up about 50 away from my last delivery. I had specific instructions not to deliver this load early and I didn’t really want to hit Minneapolis traffic this close to rush hour, plus there really isn’t anyplace to park that wasn’t out of route anyway.

Thursday morning found me ready at the customer nice and early, apparently too early because there was no one to be found, but that was fine with me. I would rather wait here at 5am than sit in bumper to bumper traffic at a more reasonable hour. Someone did finally show up and directed me to a dock that I was really hoping wasn’t going to be my destination. I had noticed this dock when I arrived and figured I would have to squeeze into it, sure enough. Tricky little blind back it was with tight railings on both sides, but I eventually managed to wiggle my way in and the unloading began.

Time for the MT call and my next load. No shortage of freight here. I’m given the choice of two and go with what looks like a drop and hook on both ends with a final destination of North Plate, NE. A fine run of 849 miles with a open drop delivery on Saturday. Very good news because I know I can deliver early and I know that they always have plenty of empty trailers sitting around and I have yet to be hung up in that part of the world without a load. But then I used to say that about AL and look how that worked out for me.


What I had assumed would be a drop/hook pickup turned out to be a live load, but it went by painlessly enough and I was finally on a solid run that I could turn and burn. This run also gave me the option of running some back roads as opposed to the Interstate routing I had received over the Qcom. The back roads would be a little slower going, but it would shave a 100 miles off the trip and I would be driving through some of my old stomping grounds from my earlier years. I went with the more scenic route and got my fill of the Midwest country side and an endless barrage of farm equipment, Ah, just like the good ol’ days.

After putting in some good miles for a change I arrived in North Plate in the late morning of Friday and put in my MT call. I was hopeful of a load that would land me in Phoenix. I have had a note on my screen for over two weeks now to get me to PHX so that I can clean some of the clutter out of my truck to make room for a trainee (and seeing my wife would be nice too). As it now stands, I simply have too much junk to make for a comfortable living environment for two drivers. I had assumed the previous load had been sent out to me to achieve that goal. It then stood to reason that I would be getting a load going south. You would think I would know better than that by now.

The load offer was quick in coming, but sent me off in the wrong direction. Oh well, looks like PHX will have to wait. I’m also a little miffed, lets be honest, extremely miffed that this load doesn’t delivery until, of course Monday. But after a little contemplation I realize that this is a 1200+mi run and I will finish out the week with a little over 3200 miles and have a fresh 70hrs at the end of the week and I realize there really isn’t anything to get riled up about. I think the frustration steamed more from my dashed hopes of getting home. I had only been out for a little over two weeks and never go home on the short of a tour of duty, but once a guy gets a whiff of home the let down stings a little.

The deadhead it longer than I’m used to seeing these days, close to 200 miles, but I attributed that to the fact that there is a lot of open space in this part of the country and off I went. The true nature of this trip came into focus some time there after however. At least that was my suspicion. Shortly before arriving at the shippers the Qcom gave me a beep. The message, what I could read of it on my dash display anyway, was from a name that has become familiar to me of late. One of the ladies who work in the training department wanted to talk to me. A call into the office had me questioning the motive of my current load offer. Maybe I’m just being paranoid and my truck popped up on the training departments screen once I was dispatch, maybe not, but I now found myself being asked to pickup a trainee along the way.

As I had told them a few times over the last two weeks, “I don’t have room for a trainee, it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to deal with the clutter.” But she was in a tight spot and I was the only one in the area that could help out and they really needed the help. I finally relented but insisted that she let the prospective trainee know that it would be a little cramp, but if he was willing to put up with it I would put him on the truck. Conditions were agreed to by all parties and I was on my way to pickup a student.

At least it wasn’t a green driver looking for 8 weeks of training. This particular driver was a current employee who had gotten himself in trouble with the safety department for a handful of “incidents” over the last few months and was being required to take a refresher course of 10days to evaluate safety and procedure. I was a little apprehensive about this because I didn’t know what kind of and attitude I would be walking into. A new driver fresh out of truck driving school is going to have a positive attitude and be ready to learn all about the new world of truck driving. An experience driver being forced to drive around the country at $600/week may not be as agreeable to the situation.

I would find out in a couple of days. The trainee was sitting in our Ottawa terminal waiting for me, but I was too far away to make it there today. He would have to wait until tomorrow, not that he had much of a choice I guess. I called him shortly there after to let him know when I would be rolling through and to confirm that he was informed of the tight quarters he would be in. The conversation went well and I found him to have a very agreeable attitude to the situation. Once stopped for the night, I spent a good two hours moving things around doing my best to make some room for my new roomie.

I pulled into Ottawa in the early afternoon after running for 10hrs. I had started out at 3am so that the trainee wouldn’t have to wait all day for me to show up. I would be out of hours for the most part when I picked him up, but I knew he was an experienced driver and I would offer him the option of spending the night at the terminal, or allowing him to drive for a few hours once he got on the truck. I assumed he would have had enough sitting around by the time I arrived and would want to head out.

After parking the truck I set out to hunt him down and went into the lounge. There were two guys in there and it didn’t take too long to figure out who he was. There was one bloke sitting at the table with a scowl on his face and another who was the one I was looking for. We made our introductions and headed out to our perspective trucks to move things around. In our conversation the night before, we had decided to put of few of my unneeded things into his truck which went a long way in making room in my truck for the two of us. While I was hunched over in my truck I heard a knocking on my door and look over expecting to see the trainee, but instead it was the surly little man I saw sitting in the break area. OK, he wasn’t all that surly, nor little, but I feel I need to give him a hard time. His question, “I over heard your name, would you happen to be Evertruckerr?” That dazed me a bit, especially since I had just been reading about Supersnacks recent run in with management and the realization that any question of my anonymity with regards to management was no longer in question. “Oh no, they knew I was coming and they sent this guy after me!” I cautiously reply an affirmation to his query and was quite amused to learn that I was finally meeting the infamous Supersnack face to face, and of all places, this little hole of a terminal. Small world.

A short little pow wow ensued as the wind blew through us, chilling me to the bone, but I was having a blast. I wish I could have had more time to shoot the breeze, but the wheels were turning and I was working with dispatch on getting a different load. The one I was under was fine with me, but if we stayed under it the trainee would get a whooping 250 miles of drive time and then have to sit in a truckstop for almost 2 days while we waited to deliver this load. That didn’t really make any sense and dispatch agreed with me and Tcalled my load.

That was followed with a load offer that would send us up to the Boston area (1088mi) with a Tuesday delivery. Not much of an improvement because we would still have to sit for over a day when we got to the customer (no early delivery allowed), but we would be putting some miles behind us. In the long run it worked out great for the trainee though. While we were headed over to pickup the load I learned that he had family in north Jersey and by doing a little rerouting of the trip that only resulted in an additional 23 miles out of route we could arrange a reset in the area and he would be able to spend some time with them. Even though he had plenty of hours available, my hours would be so far out of whack by that point that I would need a reset anyway and the load had downtime on it, so that was our plan.

I had a little time left on my log, so I drove over to do the pickup while we took some time to chat and catch up on his current situation as it related to the safety department and he took over when we were loaded. I would have been quite content to shut down for the night, but the trainee had his full 11 hour available and we had a long way to go before getting to NJ. In order to make it there with an 11hr drive tomorrow, he would have to drive at least 5hrs tonight. He was all for it and I assumed the position in the passengers seat, line 4 (on duty, not driving) and started taking my mental notes. He ended up driving an extra hour to give us a time cushion for the following day and we parked it around midnight. That made for a nice long 17hr day. Sure not going to take long to burn through my hours at this rate.

Everything went as planned and by the end of Sunday’s drive we were sitting in the crappiest Pilot I have ever come across, but we ended up where we wanted to be and this week has come to a close.



WEEK FORTY SEVEN
Monday, November 17th through Sunday, November 23rd
Miles include deadhead

New Kingstown, PA to Chester, PA(final leg)........................124mi
Trenton, NJ to Plymouth, MN.............................................128 0mi
Maple Lake, MN to Sidney, NE............................................849m i
Broken Bow, NE to Ottawa, IL............................................825m i
Peru, IL to Mahwah, NJ(first leg).........................................877mi

Total Paid Miles………………………………………………..3955 Miles

Actual Miles………………….4024 Miles

3955mi x .43 = $1700.65 (Now that helps take the sting out of last week)

[evertruckerr]

WEEK FORTY EIGHT
Monday, November 24th through Sunday, November 30th

This weeks starts out a little slow. Although I had gotten out of the load that would have left me sitting for most of the weekend to deliver on a Monday, the replacement load delivered on Tuesday and I was now in a position where I had to sit out Monday in a truck stop waiting to make a Tuesday morning delivery. I also had a trainee with me this week. At this point I was completely out of hours and could do no driving (but could spend all the time on line 4 that I wanted too) My trainee has more hours available and we were still about 200 miles from our destination, but by staying put I had hoped to put in enough time to get a reset.

Unfortunately, due to a couple of delays on picking up this load and a few more related to the training situation I found myself in a position where I would miss my reset by a couple of hours. That was a little aggravating, but not all was lost. I would be gaining back enough hours at Midnight to give me about 4 hours of drive time for Tuesday. It was my plan to stay in NJ through Monday and start driving at 2am Tuesday. While I drove, the trainee could stay in the sleeper for the first 4hrs, thus allowing him to put in a reset. By that time my available driving hours would expire and I could then put him in the driver’s seat while I remained on duty. This way he would have a fresh 70hr to work with for the rest of the week and my hours would be inconsequential because I would be in the passenger’s seat from that point on.

So it worked out just fine and we started our driving week first thing Tuesday and arrived at the customer bright and early for our live unload. The first half of our load came off rather quickly, but the unloading came to an abrupt stop when one of their company trucks pulled in and docked next to us. They obviously had priority status because our truck stop bouncing and his started, as did the next company truck that came in shortly there after. A little aggravating, but the delay wasn’t all that bad and we were still out of there within two hours.

The MT call was immediately followed with a load offer that originated nearby and had us going to NC (760mi). It was also a drop/hook on both ends with an anytime delivery. Just the way I like them. The pickup was quick, but the trip towards NC was not. Our suggested routing had us driving through the heart of the nation’s worse traffic, including a trip over the George Washington Bridge and all nasty points south, including the Jersey turnpike, Baltimore and DC.

Generally speaking, I will avoid this area like the plague and do what ever I must to find an alternate route, but the best route I could find was about 70 miles OOR. In reality it would probably be cheaper for the company to run the longer route because it would bypass all the tolls. I was ever mindful of the trainee though and felt it would give me a good chance to see how he worked in congestion and tight spots (areas he was having trouble with according to safety). So NYC it is. Not my first choice, but at least I wasn’t the one driving.

Rush hour was a concern to me, but we were in a position to hit the worst part of the area by 3pm. I had hoped traffic would be a little lighter than normal due to the fact that this was Thanksgiving week and was under the dilution that we would be able to slip through before the brunt of the traffic hit. We had enough hours to get us about ½ way through Jersey, at which point we could shut down for the night in one of the service plazas on the Turnpike. We would also be done early enough to find a parking spot.

Everything was moving along just fine until we hit the 6mi marker just north of the GW and everything came to a screeching halt, as can often happen in that area. I still wasn’t all that worried; we had 2hrs left to get to where we needed to be. We accentually had more time than that available to us because I had driven the first 4hrs of the day, but I was trying to keep the truck within a 14hr day. I had this in mind when I decided to go through NYC, knowing that there was a risk of running over the 14hrs. If I had been alone I wouldn’t have considered this route, or I would have held up short, even if it was only 3pm, but we had a nice cushion with regards to hours between us.

Anyway, the traffic had come to a stand still, but I assumed we would crawl through at a reasonable pace. Normally, that is what happens, but not today. We didn’t know it at the time but 1½hrs later and around 4 miles down the road we discovered the cause of our dilemma. I don’t know who was suffering more misery this day, the thousands of motorist caught in this disaster or the US Xpress driver that was sitting in his broke down truck in the middle of I-95 making all kinds of new friends.

By that time the damage was done and rush hour was upon us and it was a god awful trip. I had though that sitting in the passenger’s seat would be a bit more relaxing (marginally) than driving through this debacle, but it turns out it doesn’t help one bit. Absolutely exhausting from both points of view. My trainee was being far too tentative (understandable from his point of view) and the New York drivers were having their way with him, both trucks and 4wheelers. If nothing else, I was getting a good read on the trainees driving skills and it was a good learning experience. We finally broke through and after about 2hrs we had covered an entire 7 miles or so.

At this point we were just over the 14hr mark, but the trainee still had plenty of hours left. I would have been in quite a pickle if I was running on my own, but then I wouldn’t have tried to slip through here at this time of day with only two hours left on my log.

We hit the first service plaza we came to and it was absolutely packed. I really had not expected that at this hour. It was still relatively early and I had honestly thought that the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday would have thinned out the truck traffic a little bit. Not so! It took us at least 30mins to drive in an out of the first plaza and get back on the road. There was another service plaza just a few miles down the road and we hoped we would have better luck there. That’s where we hit our next delay. The NJ Turnpike toll plaza was just ahead and we came to yet another stop more than a mile away from it and lost another 30mins just to get through the gate. What an absolute cluster that awful place is. I can’t believe people live with that on a daily basis. No wonder those people are so rude, I would be one grumpy SOB too if I had to deal with that.

We finally broke through and pulled into the next service plaza and got one of the last two spots available and shut it down. I think we were both asleep within minutes. The last 20 miles of this trip burned about 3hrs of our time, a bit daunting when I know the same trip through here in the middle of the night takes 20mins. I knew better from the start and will not make the same choice in the future.

Wednesday started out a little after 4am and promised more traffic delays, at least a few hours down the road. Traffic was fine at this point, but we would time Baltimore rush hour just right and get to do it all over again, followed shortly by a fun filled trip around DC. I was really regretting my decision to run this route. A trip down I-81 would have been so much more enjoyable.

I once again held out hope that rush hour traffic would be lighter than normal; after all, it’s the day before Thanksgiving. Some of these people must be staying home. Not so much; Baltimore was a hoot and we crawled along for awhile, but it was nothing like the night before and we eventually plowed our way through. I was apprehensive about DC, but XM traffic reports were clear (at least in our direction of travel) and we never had to slow down on our way through. Once we hit the open roads south of DC all was good and we arrived at the customer midday to drop our trailer.

I didn’t really know what to expect when the MT call went in. Tomorrow was Turkey day and I knew that there was a very good chance that we would be sitting around for awhile. As a matter of fact I have never done anything but sit in a truck stop on Thanksgiving with this company and expected the same this time around.

The beep followed shortly there after and I was somewhat surprised to have a load offering staring me in the face. Not the greatest offer by any means, but it was something to do. It was a preloaded trailer sitting down in SC going to PA. OK, that gave me a little shiver, but it was better than sitting around. Basically, a short little 600mi run over the next couple of days. Not bad.

No sooner than the truck had started rolling I got another beep on the Qcom. A bit perplexing because it was another load offer. This was very odd because I had already accepted the previous one and received all the load information. Now I was looking at a load offer going to Reno, NV with a whooping 2600 miles on it. The next beep was a message asking if we could make this run on time.

I had the trainee pull over and I started making my calculations and determined that we could make it, but it would be incredibly tight. The big problem would be that we would have to sit for the rest of today and all of tomorrow because it wasn’t scheduled for PU until Friday. We would then have four days to get it there. This trip would also allow me to get a reset in and considering the fact that my log has been in the 70-80hr range for the last few days, it wouldn’t hurt to clear them off and get myself a fresh 70. The load was accepted and we headed on down towards Charlotte to find a place to park. Looks like another Thanksgiving spent in a truck stop. At least this time around it was of my own choosing.

We managed to make it to a small Pilot just north of Charlotte and pulled it. At first glance it looked like the place was full (not good because our hours were basically up), but then I notice one last spot off in a corner. I could understand why it was still open. A couple of trucks had driven by it, stopped to take a look at it and continued on. At first glance it looked too tight to squeeze into, but I had the trainee pull in front of it to claim it for our own and jumped into the drivers’ seat. I wanted that spot and was determined to wiggle in. It turned out to be more than big enough, there must have been at least and inch on each side. It was one off those pie shaped corner spots. If you could get past the nose of the two trucks to get into it, there was plenty of space once you backed in deep enough and we had our spot.

There was even a couple of decent places to eat down the road, so I went in to get permission to drop our trailer for a couple of hours and we headed over to a Ruby Tuesday’s for dinner.

Thursday was non eventful and a little depressing. Nothing like spending the day in a truck stop when the rest of the family is sitting down together for a turkey dinner. I really don’t enjoy being out on the road over the holidays, but such is life.

Friday finally rolled around and the time to PU our load was approaching. The big problem that faced me at this point was that it wasn’t scheduled for PU until 2pm and appeared to be a live load. If we showed up at that time and if it took more than two hours to get loaded we would be hard pressed to make our delivery on time. This load was a little crazy. I was looking at 2600 miles with maybe 3hrs of cushion and those 3hrs would have to include PTIs, fuel and breaks. If it was just me I wouldn’t have been overly concerned, but the trainee didn’t have quite the stamina that I have and had shown a need to stop much more often than I do. I’m not about to force someone to drive when they are only asking to stop every 3hrs or so, but this run was going to be tough to pull off under those conditions.

I wanted to show up a few of hours early in the hopes of increasing our cushion, the problem with that was if we were forced to wait for our appointment time then the 14hr clock would become a major issue. I elected to error a little on the side of caution and arrived about 2 hours early. I was excited to see a vast number of Crete trailers on their property, which could only mean one thing. Drop and Hook and my time constraint problem has been solved. We would be hooked and rolling within a matter of minutes.

Not so fast, how dare I make such assumptions. There were a whole mess of Crete trailer there alright, but every one of them where empty and I was informed that our trailer should be ready by 2pm. Damn. Not the end of the world though, that would still allow enough time for us to get where we need to be on time. But as the 2 o’clock hour turned into 3, my apprehension started to grow and by the time the knock came on the door it was now 4pm. The frustration was only intensified by a beep from the Qcom at that very moment asking for a lot check of Crete trailers at this customer. This happens occasionally when dispatch wants to confirm the trailer count and they couldn’t have asked me to do this at a more inconvenient time.

I grabbed my notebook and headed off to do the count (much larger place than I realized as I basically ran around it looking for trailers that were scattered all over the place) while the trainee tracked down our trailer and hooked up. I returned out of breath with my list of 30 some trailers just as the trainee was finishing his check of the air pressure in the trailer tires. Every one at 100psi; first time for everything isn’t there. I took a quick look at the inspection sticker and got my explanation to that one. It had just recently been through a shop for an inspection.

From that point on it was basically off to the races with no real time for lounging. As a matter of fact it didn’t take me too long to realize that I would not be able to deliver this load as a solo driver. If I had to run solo I basically would have been able to get within 2hrs of the place at the end of my forth day because I needed 4 solid 11hr days of driving to pull into their gate on time. The problem was that so much time was lost picking up this load that my 14 clock would expire after 9hrs of driving today, therefore leaving me 2hrs short at the end of the forth day.

Running as a training truck I am required to stay within a 14hr clock and run the truck as a solo truck and the trainee is suppose to do the vast majority of driving. I had every intention of doing that and with a slight adjustment would still be able to make the delivery. It was easy enough to fix in this case. All I had to do was drive for the first hour during the first couple of days and then have the trainee put in his 11hrs. This way I could keep the truck movement restricted within the 14hr timeframe and still get 12hrs of driving for a couple of days.

So went our next few days that followed. It was incredibly relieving to get away from the Northeast and we both thoroughly enjoyed the vast open expanses of the western part of the country. Our trip through NE was little rough though as far as the weather went. The roads were fine, but the wind was intense and we had to buck a head wind all the way across. I checked out fuel mileage between fills and we only managed to pull out 4.1mpg on that stretch.

Other than a little snow outside of Laramie the rest of the trip went well and our week ended at a truck stop in the middle of BF Wy.

Even though I lost a day in NJ waiting to deliver a load and another day and a half waiting to pickup another it turned into a respectable week. Definitely nothing to complain about, I’ll reserve that for some of the weeks to come.





WEEK FORTY EIGHT
Monday, November 24th through Sunday, November 30th
Miles include deadhead

Mahwah, NJ to Peabody, MA(last leg)……………………………211mi
Devens, MA to Browns Summit, NC……………………………..750mi
Rock Hill, SC to Lyman, WY(fist leg)……………………………2092mi

Total Paid Miles………………………………………………...3053 Miles

Actual Miles…………………..3132 Miles

3053mi x .43 = $1312.79 + $125 training pay = $1437.79

[Mike Hunt]

Originally Posted by evertruckerr

Looks like another Thanksgiving spent in a truck stop.

Man that sucks.

[ct77]

Originally Posted by rooster712

I don't dispute your numbers but cant get anywhere near them myself whats the trick to it

You need to really read all of his posts, what I have seen is someone who plans about as good as you can considering all the variables, he knows the system and the customers and plans accordingly.

Is this a guarantee for high miles NO!!! There are no guarantees in trucking, to much can go wrong.

Anytime I started with a company the first couple of months my miles where a little low but by the end of a year I had always increased them by learning the ins and outs of the company,and even if freight slowed down I could usually average higher than most of the other drivers in my company. Showed my dispatchers I was reliable,helped them and they always helped me back.

I love these posts because there is always some nugget of information which I can apply to my own planning, and it reminds me how good I have it now(line haul planned two weeks ahead).

But just in case in the future I end up somewhere else God knows I have added to my knowledge here.

So I guess what I am trying to say is really look at evertruckers posts in depth and see how he thinks about each load, when, where, how, time, fuel, weather and and and....

I know to many drivers that just jump in the truck and go without to many other thoughts than where am i gonna eat and when do I have to fuel.

[mike3fan]

Originally Posted by ct77

You need to really read all of his posts, what I have seen is someone who plans about as good as you can considering all the variables, he knows the system and the customers and plans accordingly.

Is this a guarantee for high miles NO!!! There are no guarantees in trucking, to much can go wrong.

Anytime I started with a company the first couple of months my miles where a little low but by the end of a year I had always increased them by learning the ins and outs of the company,and even if freight slowed down I could usually average higher than most of the other drivers in my company. Showed my dispatchers I was reliable,helped them and they always helped me back.

I love these posts because there is always some nugget of information which I can apply to my own planning, and it reminds me how good I have it now(line haul planned two weeks ahead).

But just in case in the future I end up somewhere else God knows I have added to my knowledge here.

So I guess what I am trying to say is really look at evertruckers posts in depth and see how he thinks about each load, when, where, how, time, fuel, weather and and and....

I know to many drivers that just jump in the truck and go without to many other thoughts than where am i gonna eat and when do I have to fuel.

Yeah I agree this is a great thread for new drivers to get a feel for what they should be thinking and plannig for in the day to day operations of being a truck driver. Not all days go without hitches and not every load can be delivered a day in advance,but if you stick to scheduled delivery/pickup times you will never get maximum miles at any company. A little pre-planning and ambition can go along way.

[headborg]

hey ET,

how about some more close ups of those supports for that shelf you made-- what were those plastic things.... I'm about to embark on a rigging project of my own along similiar lines..... for a foot shelf type shelf- currently I have a truck trunk(Walmart- rubbermaid) at the foot of my mat. Good for securing all your Diamonds, Gold Bars and other Valuables from Mechanics and others.-- My thougts are some kind of footlocker(like what I got) yet the top lid would also be a shelf ( maybe like one of those coffee table tops that you press on it and it raises up and extends out( that would be the usual position untl call upon to Lock down the treasure chest.

another ideal I have is a shelf that would hang down from the top bunk by running a support across the end of the top bunk then two sides( front & rear)-- then the self/ backboard could be secured with wing nuts

[Bumper]

Hey E.T. you could at least have the common decency to spray paint your truck red.........

[ct77]

though he would be done painting truck by now.

[Irishking]

I certainly miss his wonderful written driving entries. They are extremely informative and entertaining.

I hope he is okay!!!!

[headborg]

I thought I'd be a pal and bump him back to the top...

Calling Evertrucker... Where O Where is the energizer evertrucker bunny-- that just keeps going..and going... and so on.

Missing in action! AWOL! pinned between his bunk and under-bunk storage compartment? is something heavy setting on you/riding you? <-- no that can't be( I've seen pictures of his wife she isn't heavy, but that would excellent excuse for not messing around with the internet and not POSTING)