Wow, sorry to hear about your hubby! Did not sound like he had the best of fleet managers from your previous post. PM me sometime, would like to know the issue!

MDII is doing good, spoke with him earlier, was headin for his family's place in Oklahoma, and then head'n for Phoenix. This is his second week in his own truck. Sounds like he is enjoying it so far.

I am in DM this weekend, to try and get the TQM class down and over with.

Good luck to your hubby in his future endeavors!

Louis

 

I had the worst week this past week than I have had in a long time. I recently switched from Long Haul to Line Haul. I, maybe, expect to make less money, after all I am home almost every weekend. The potential is there to make money if every thing goes right during the week.

I sat at Rotan waiting on a load for 10 hours, ran out of hours and had to take my 10. Seems they have a list and strictly adhere to that order. Even though a driver is sitting there they load according to the list. Some of these loads aren't picked up until the next day. They they tarp and secure the load, all the drivers does is tighten the straps. Well, they did a piss poor job on my load and I ended up taking off all the straps and redoing everything. Yeah, they did tarp it for me which was a help.

I'm almost a day behind at this point.

I delivered to Eagle Pass, TX. A very poor paying load. I didn't think there was going to be many loads leaving the area, so when I was offered with absolutly no pressure a cheap load from Laredo it jumped on it. Arrived and had the load loaded on my trailer, secured it and was within seconds of pulling out when my FM called and said that load could not leave the yard until next Tuesday. This was Thursday. So I had to drop that load and wait until the next morning to be dispatched on another load.

Yeah, it was a dissapointing week for me. I grossed $700.00 + dollars, way down from what I was making on Long Haul. Ineffeciency and wasting my time really makes me mad. Still, $700.00 isn't that terrible. I had a talk with my FM over the Qualcomm, he assures me this isn't typical. Bad as I consider it, I certainly didn't entertain any thought of quiting. Much like when I was attending gunshow every weekend, it isn't what I make on any particular weekend, but what the average for the years will be. So far I am very happy with TMC and I am almost to the six month mark.

 

Well, hopefully it will get better for ya. Maybe you will get home more often, and still make moolah.

 

Hang in there Terry, my worst week so far has been better than 90% of my good weeks when running local. I think we all have a week, where nothing seems to work the way it should.

As for me, I got real lucky this weekend! Picked up a poor paying load in Phoenix Wednesday that would take me straight through DM for the weekend. Well, Thursday afternoon I received a message from my fleet manager that I may have been bumped from the TQM class, great, cruddy load and will still be stuck in DM until Monday, since I could not deliver until Monday.

Anyhow, Friday my FM sends me a message to call him! Once I made it up on the big roads in Kansas, I called him, the class was full, but he wanted me to go ahead and stop in DM, go to the safety class and be prepared for stand-by in case there was a no-show. Walked into class, introduced myself to Joe and explained the situation. He said I could sit in and should be alright, but if too many showed up I would have to leave.

Luckily there were still 2 empty seats, so I was able to complete the TQM course. Yeehaw, that is out of the way.

I did miss snap shot by one week - so I will have to wait until the next one to get my percentage up. If my average stays as is current, I will easily make 30%. Also, will be finally getting rid of this heavy no pulling trailer Monday, DM has ordered all trailers turned in and off the road.

Hang in there Terry, you will get the hang of line-haul and things will smooth out. IF your FM cannot get you in the right groove, try to request a FM out of Joplin - either Tracy or Shawn - they both seem to have the drivers interested in mind from what I have seen.

 

Nothing at all was my fault in the least. Just luck of the draw I guess. Last week I had the potential to have delivered six loads. I lost two days and delivered only three loads, one of which was a very poor paying load. On the positive side, I am home on the weekend. I deliver in San Antonio on Monday morning, so I get a full weekend. During the week I got to go by the house two times. Not long, but let the dogs out and picked up the mail. I have stayed in Texas all week.

I didn't realize it, but the load I delivered on Monday I had been to before with my trainer. My GPS didn't recognize the address, I had direction, so I wasn't worried about finding it. I make the turn onto the correct block and realized I had been there before. I knew where to park and where to check in. We had gone to Rotan from there so I suspected that is where I would be dispatched. I was.

I notices one of my trailer tires was split on the sidewall just before dark on Friday. It is rather severe. I took a chance and made it home. It needs to be replaced. I guess I will wait until Monday to call Road Repair, so I get my 34 hour reset.

 

Never heard of a Linehaul where you're" home ALMOST every weekend"

 

TMC tries to get you home every weekend and guarantee 48 weekends out of the year.

 

Send in the macro as soon as you arrive at the receiver. They will either send you to TA or Southern Tire Mart across the highway from the TA. STM is faster. I hate having to carry the carcass around but we can drop them at GCR tire in Abilene.

I hate Rotan. All of us Texas Dedicated drivers do....except the O/O's. Those loads usually pay $2+/mile and have a great fuel surcharge. They still do a crappy job of tarping. Jay use to bump loads up once the driver arrived and checked in with him but then we had some loads that were at the top of the list for that nights delivery to The Home Depot that didn't get loaded until it was too late to deliver. After TMC paid the fines for non delivery and lost loads they force Jay to go by the list. (sometimes :wink: ) Buy him a cold coke or give him a bottle of water and you'll get bumped. ssshhhhh.... :lol:
Keep in mind that it still requires the Union dock workers to actually do their jobs and load the trailers in a timely manner. (yea right)
If you ever goto Joplin and they offer you a stack of trailers going to Laredo, it's a good load home but the pay sucks worse then copper loads.

 

Michael Annett got to race yesterday. He ran a good race and finished 8th. I could tell that he's not a regular racer. He got mentioned by the announcers twice in the whole race. Great job to Michael and his racing team.

Finish start car
8 3 32 Michael Annett/Des Moines IA TMC Trucking Dodge

 

"Linehaul" is the confusing part here. Nowadays its used pretty much to describe a dedicated run of some sort. I think its what threw yoopr off. TMC has two divisions: linehaul and longhaul. Linehaul being more or less regional and home weekends and longhaul being otr, 48 states, etc.etc.