Its a conspiracy man.....http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r...4072808619.jpg

Pulling reefer isn't that bad....I did it for 3.5 yrs and once you get used to it......you never hear it, unless it dosen't start when it should.

they also have some plain white lease reefers used for the Minute-Maid account- that both crete and shaffer sometimes pull- you can tell them by the
super single tires ( plus they don't have bill boxes on nose or a vent door anywhere)
That's what struck me as odd- a Reefer with no vent/inspection door nose or tail.

Crete shut down the "meat fleet" a few months ago. At this point if you see a Crete truck pulling a Shaffer trailer 9 times out of ten it's going to be a General Mills dedicated driver. So far they are not asking Crete drivers to haul Shaffer freight any more than they have in the past. Most of the Shaffer trucks pulling Crete trailers are actually Crete drivers who were given Shaffer trucks when Crete ran out.

Been there, done that! Load of beef out of Wallula, WA - stopped for the night in Oregon. About 2 hours after I went to sleep, awoke to a non-functional reefer. Oh crud! The reefer battery was dead and alternator not working.

After a useless attempt of contacting fleet maintenance and the one man night shift. Pulled out the old jumper cables, jump started the unit and put it on continuous run. After a little more investigation, found a connector broken on the alternator. Plugged it back in, shot some silicone on it and some duct tape, and saved the fleet a high dollar service call.

Any other time, the reefer was a non-issue once you get use to it. In fact, I would have a hard time sleeping sometimes on time-off, waking in the middle of the night wondering why my unit was not running. Duh, home time silly! The wife would get sort of a kick out of that!

But, doesn't it make you wonder & stop and think---- why are there soo many extra Blue Trucks setting around empty- available to be filled.

I'll take a stab at it: because guys like you (and some friends of my current trainer) are getting pissed off at alternating between no freight and shitty 200 mile runs.

not only that- but Crete is now "cherry picking" the DRY loads that were "shaffer" accounts and taking them over to their side- like the P&G out of Brown's Summit, Beer out of Va, P&G out of West Branch, Ia, Paper out of Maine,

all this-- means when Shaffers get empty in these areas-- we're left setting waiting to find NEW TEMP CONTROL FREIGHT--- Which if there HAD been any available in the first place--we probably wouldn't have NEEDED those dry loads there before.

I didnt know the blue trucks weren't moving. Do Schaeffer trucks ever haul Crete trailers?

once the freight is on a RED VAN -- it's a Crete load reguardless. Then the only way a Shaffer Truck can haul it-- is a) someone Begged the Crete area for a load b) Crete can't find one of their drivers who want it/aval to take it
c) it's excess freight/capacity and they Farm it out to Shaffer(overflow)

I see blue trucks pulling red trailers all the time. I have only seen one red truck pulling a blue trailer though...maybe they dont get too many Western loads.

They need to paint all of the trucks one color and get it over with.