2008
WEEK SEVEN
Monday February 11th through Sunday February 17th
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I’d like to start out this weeks update with a quick look at my final thought from last weeks update. To save you the trouble of going back, here it is;
“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.”
Maybe it wasn’t as prophetic as it seems on the surface, after all, I was making the final stop of my load in the middle of Washington state and it’s no secret that freight can be a little hard to come by. What, with so many prominent trucking companies in the state that seem to have a strong hold on outbound freight. Companies like Interstate, Market Transport, Gordon and May. So I must say I wasn’t too surprised at what turned out to be a very ominous start to the week.
Here is what happened.
Monday was basically a non-event day as far as truck driving goes. I had the good fortune of being allowed to bump the dock the night before and wait to be unloaded in the morning. This was done very quickly once the morning crew arrived at which time I was allowed to park the truck behind the store for the remainder of the day. This turned out to be immensely accommodating since I had zero time left of my 70hrs. I would have been looking at a log violation otherwise, although I probably could have found a place to hide close by.
Once empty, I found myself with nothing to do and since I was only about 3 miles from the airport I headed over and got myself a rental car, hunted down a low cost hotel through Priceline and spent the rest of the day doing a bit of sight seeing and enjoying a real bed for a change.
Tuesday started with a quick 150 mile hop over Snoqualmie pass to deliver the last of my load to a Home Depot in Yakima, WA. I sure wish I could have made that trip during daylight hours. I’ve driven through that pass hundreds of times in the past, but never have I seen as much snow in those mountains as I did this day. Even though the sun wasn’t up yet, there was enough moonlight to get some idea of the shear magnitude of snowfall from this winter’s storms. Apparently the pass had just been reopened Sunday, prior to that it was closed because of avalanche hazards. After my delay getting across Wyoming, I was thankful that I didn’t get held up here also.
The depth of the snow along the highway was truly amazing. The lack of light was very disappointing; it would have made a great picture with my truck parked next to a wall of snow higher than the trailer. There were actually many places where the snow was significantly higher than the semi trucks and it wasn’t because the snow was pushed up into piles by the road crews. The snow up there is cleared with snow blowers instead of plows, so you end up with what is basically a snow wall along the road. Looks like that part of the country has its’ drought problem under control for a while. They should have snow melt feeding the lakes in the area all summer long. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to go that way again before the winter is over.
Back to work. The Home Depot delivery was a live unload and was finished within an hour or so and I sent in my MT call and hoped for the best. I had heard a story or two about our drivers being stuck up here without loads and knew that there was a chance it would take awhile to get a load out. I actually had a funny feeling that I wouldn’t be getting a load out until the next morning. As a matter of fact, I just put the truck in gear and headed over to the Gear Jammer truck stop and found a place to park instead of waiting at the customer for my next load offer.
By the time I made it to the truckstop the Qualcom had a message waiting for me. Sure enough, I’m told, “low on freight, check back in 3 hours”. Oh noooo….. it’s started.
I dutifully wait the prescribed 3 hours and send in a hopeful message asking if anything had popped up yet and wait. It takes about 20 minutes (definitely not a good sign) to get a response. I am informed that they are working on it and to give them another hour. At this point I know that the day is shot and I am now just hoping to get a reasonable load out of here sometime in the morning. After my hour is up I sent in another message and it is answered within a couple of minutes with a load offer. It’s a single load offer that is an early morning PU the next day in Portland and delivered to San Bernardino, CA (1375mi) on Friday evening. I’m thrilled because I can make it to PDX tonight and get loaded in the morning and be on my way. Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, I was worried for no reason at all.
As I was entering the information into the Qualcom to accept the load it beeped. “I wonder what that could be, a bit of extra info on the load I imagine.” I sent off the load acceptance and then read the next message. OK, now I’m confused and concerned. I don’t like the new message, “no loads worth while left today, check back first thing in the morning”. There goes my happy-go-lucky feeling.
A quick message or two between myself and dispatch confirms my fear. Apparently they sent the load offer to me by accident; it was suppose to go to another truck that was supposedly sitting since yesterday. Looks like I’m about to experience my first ever day of layover with Crete. It’s been 1 ½ years, so I’ll take it with a grain of salt and head on over to Outback for a steak dinner. Tomorrow will be a better day, I hope.
As 6am rolled around on Wednesday I sent a message off to morning dispatch inquiring about a load to get me moving. All this garnered me was yet another “low on freight, check back in 3hrs”. OK, this is not going to be a good day. A second request at the appointed time resulted in an identical disappointment and a third appeal was shot down with a “check back at 5pm”.
I’m not liking this one bit; I was expecting a delay in getting a load but this was starting to spin out of control. Finally, at 5pm I was sent a 2 load offer. The first one was a early morning PU the next day somewhere around Spokane and delivered to Idaho (600mi) the following morning. Load two was an afternoon appointment PU just north of Portland the next afternoon (Thursday) and had an appointment delivery Monday morning in Kansas City, MO (2006mi). Now, a 2000+ mile run is always nice but I’ve already been sitting here long enough and if I take that load I will basically be looking at 2 full days of layover. Not to mention, if I take load 2 I will have it there by Saturday night if I push it and will again be sitting around waiting to make my delivery. The last thing I want at this point is another 34reset after just 2000 miles. However, if I do take that load there is always the chance that I can TCall it in our KC yard and get something going out Sunday morning. There are too many ‘ifs’ attached to that load.
The first load, although shorter is the better bet for me since I can start driving now and get close to the shipper by tonight. That way I will have plenty of time to make it to the consignee and deliver first thing Friday morning in hopes of getting another load out and make some attempt as salvaging this week. One nagging thought is that I will be empty in Idaho on a Friday and be risking another layover during the weekend. I haven’t run up here enough to know what the freight availability is. Even if I do get a load on Friday there is a good chance it won’t deliver until Monday and if it’s a short run I would once again be looking at additional unwanted downtime.
I weigh my options and decide to take the first load and hope for the best when it came time to get another load. Shortly after sending in my load acceptance I started having “buyers’ remorse”. I’m really worried about getting stuck in Idaho for the weekend. Although not likely, I wouldn’t have been at all concerned if not for the seed of doubt that had been planted in me due to my last two days in wonderful Yakima. Oh well, it’s done and I await my load information so I can get going.
Moments after this the qualcom starts beeping and I assume that it is my load assignment, but I am once again thrown a curve ball by dispatch. What I am greeted with is another load offer. This time it was just the KC load that I was wishing I had accepted and the Idaho load was no longer an option. This is very odd and not something that I have seen before. I’m beginning to wonder about our North West dispatchers, they seem to be a little schizophrenic. It actually worked out to my advantage, but I’m not exactly overjoyed by their rapid mood changes up here.
With that there is no hurry to go anywhere; the load doesn’t PU until tomorrow at 15:00 and its only 3hrs away. Couple that with the fact that parking isn’t exactly plentiful in the Portland area I decided to wait until late morning the next day to start driving. That confirms it, just over 2days, a 50hr layover. As bad as it was, it was compounded by the fact that I had just spent the last 35 hours sitting in Seattle just prior to this delivery leaving me with a grand total of 150 miles for the last 3 ½ day. To be fair, I had just come off a 4000mi week and didn’t have any hours available for Monday anyway, but the downtime just exasperated the entire ordeal. I’m ready to pull my hair out; I’m just not used to sitting around this much.
Thursday is finally here and I am anxious to get started after my unwanted downtime. I have a 3+hr drive ahead of me and decide to take off an hour early so that I can stop at a Pilot on the way to take a shower. I’ll be taking Hwy 97 over the mountain pass and it’s just a short hop across the Columbia River to the Pilot at Biggs. This sounded like a great idea at the time but halfway across the pass I see a sign that informs me the bridge will be closed from January through June or something to that effect. Not happy, I really wanted that shower and now I’m going to end up at the shipper 2 hours early instead of 1. Generally speaking, this is early enough to get you sent away. As a counter measure I stopped at a pullout that overlooked the Columbia (always an awesome sight) and took a ½hr break (just what I need, more time off). By the time I finished driving along the winding Hwy 14 that hugs the banks of the Columbia River Gorge I arrived at the shipper a little more than an hour early and was ever so slightly reprimanded for showing up too early and then directed to the loading docks. Two hour later I was loaded and ready to go.
During the loading process I had run the number and determined that if I drove out the rest of my hours for the day I would be able to get within a 1400mi range of Kansas City. If I could accomplish this I would be able to make it to our terminal in two additional driving shifts which also means that I can have this load in our yard by late Saturday night. This is important to me because if I want a serious chance at Tcalling this load it needs to be there Saturday. That way I can contact dispatch with a message telling of my whoas in Washington and throw a gilt trip of having my load here on Saturday and it doesn’t deliver until Monday (only1½ days, but Sat to Mon makes is sound worse than it is), another 30+ hours of down time, I have no miles, can you help me, etc.
If I don’t run out the rest of my hours tonight, I won’t get close enough and will not make it to KC until Sunday around noon and it just isn’t as easy to Tcall a load that delivers early the next day. If I’m going to show up that late I could just as well shut down for the night a few hours down the road and get back onto my regular day schedule, but I’ve done enough sitting around lately. The problem with running my hours out for the day is that I will be running late nights, not my favorite shift, but if that’s what needs to be done, so be it. Nights it is; I make it just past Boise, ID and shut down around 2am in a prime position to make it to KC Saturday night.
Due to my late shut down time I am not able to get started until Noon on Friday (I hate these hours) and get going. I never did get around to my shower yesterday and stop at a Pilot just down the road. This had been my original destination for last night so that I could take a shower then, but I ran out of hours before making it. I generally make it a point not to stop for things like this during my 14hr clock, but I wasn’t about to go another mile without cleaning up, even though I planned on spending the night at a Pilot in Laramie, WY.
Once I was feeling like a human being again and driving down that road I started taking a look at the miles ahead to determine when I would be in KC (I should have, and normally do, thought about this earlier). I’m not thrilled with what I come up with. From where I am, I will have no problem getting to the yard by Saturday night. The scenario I had failed to consider prior to my shower brake was this; If I get to KC and am not able to finagle a Tcall I have just enough time to shutdown at a truckstop just north of town and maybe fit in a 34hr reset by the skin of my teeth. That means I have to drive out the rest of my hours for today and all of tomorrow without any stop of more than a minute or two (other than a fuel stop, and even that will have to be a quick one). I won’t even have the option of going to the yard to take my break. Not that the terminal it a grand place, it beats a rundown truckstop. If I had just waited until tonight to take my shower I would have had that valuable hour to play with. That doesn’t mean I can just head over to the terminal and forego my reset, but there is no way I’ll pass up a reset if I can fit one in.
The remainder of Friday and Saturday are tedious at best with nothing but driving nonstop and zero spare time available. Wyoming is strangely wind free, barely even a gust with the exception of a short strip west of Laramie and Nebraska was just as awe inspiring as always. My self imposed tight schedules seem to be non stop lately, much more so that usual anyway. I can ordinarily fit in a short reprieve, but once again, not on this trip. Sometimes my ambition for resets tends to get the best of me.
I was able to make it to a truckstop one hour north of KC after driving the last two hours in near freezing rain (31 to 32 degrees) and shut down. I was now in a position where I could spend 34 hours here and make my delivery 15 minutes late. I hate the thought of my first late load, but I’m not going to miss out on a reset over 15minuntes and it will be close enough to avoid an actual “late” delivery (I hope).
So here I sit at the truckstop with 1 hour of drive time left. “Time to see if I can dump this load.” If I don’t this will be my worst week ever with Crete and leave me with just under 2100mi. Eeww, I sure don’t like the sound of that. I send off a message to dispatch that goes something like this. “I’ve had a very bad week, sat for 24hrs between stops on last load, drove 3hrs and sat for 2 1/2days after delivery to get this load, am now just north of town and delivery is over 30hrs away. Is there any chance of a Tcall in the KC yard so I can PU a load in the morning to keep me moving, let me know if you can help me out, THX”
To be honest with you, I didn’t expect a positive response and had already resigned myself to the fact that this week wasn’t meant to be. Seven minutes later I got a message “when can you be in the yard”. Holy cow, they are actually thinking about it. I’m amazed and send in a message that I can be there within the hour or by 8am the next morning. Fifteen minutes after that I get a green light to bring the trailer to the yard along with a load offer that is a D/H PU first thing in the morning on the other side of town and a message “Can you deliver this on time”. Hot damn, and it’s a 1500 mile trip on top of it. There are a couple of big drawbacks however, it’s going to Montana and is an appointment delivery early Tuesday morning (very tight schedule). Looks like another trip across Wyoming (I’m starting to dislike that state). A quick run through and I see that I can make the appointment time, but just barely. I’m looking at maybe a 2 hour window for the unexpected. What could possibly happen between KC and Montana this time of year? I accept the load and head off to the terminal (the weather isn’t getting any better). Once there, I drop the trailer and head into the terminal to do a little laundry and make dinner (I’m not sure Mac n Cheese counts as a ‘dinner’, but it fills me up). The weather is not good; very cold and raining with ice starting to form. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.
Well, I’ll tell you what it brings. Another absolutely terrible day of driving on poorly maintained, slush, ice and snow packed Missouri roads. I was afraid to peak out of the windshield when I woke up Sunday morning. I had been jostled from my sleep a few times last night by a good stiff wind and the sound of frozen rain bouncing off the truck, so I wasn’t too surprised to see 2-3 inches of so called snow, sleet or whatever on the ground.
I still had an hour or so before my 10hr break was up and decided to go into the lounge for a little coffee. There was 3 other driver in the room chit chatin’ about the weather. The weather channel was on and it looked like the whole area was getting a good dose of Old Man Winter with snow on top of freezing rain from the night before along with occasional wind gusts in the neighbor hood of 30 MPH to keep things interesting. One of the drivers had just come down from the north and said once I made it past St Joseph it all changed to wet roads. The TV was showing that I might have to deal with snow in Omaha by the time I got there, but it wasn’t a sure thing. The other two drivers had already contacted dispatch to tell them the weather was too bad and they were going to sit it out for a day. Neither one was questioned about their judgment and where granted a new delivery appointment. Crete is very good about that from what I can gather, I just headed out the door to go get my load. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow or wind, (something like that). I was actually offered employment as a mail carrier by the USPS a few months after a placement test back in 2002 or so. Can you believe I had just gotten a dedicated route in the PHX area and decided to pass up the postal job? That proves I’m dumb enough to be a truck driver.
How easily I get sidetracked, anyway, what made it all the more interesting is that there were no empty trailers (except for the 5 that the shop had redtaged, although all they needed was a simple PM service) in the yard. Thanks to budget cuts the shop is no longer open on Sundays to do a service on one of them I had to bobtail across the middle of KC on roads better traveled while attached to a trailer (preferably loaded). I am suppose to drop an MT trailer at this customer prior to picking up a loaded trailer, but that wasn’t really an option today and I know from a previous PU at this customer that I can get in and out without dealing with a guard to catch me bobtailing in. I don’t like doing this but my load is on an incredibly tight schedule and this little storm is doing nothing to help out the situation.
After crawling over to the shipper and doing a quick PU, I was on my way and anticipating another thrill packed drive across Missouri’s ice covered demolition derby track, otherwise known as I-29. True to its’ nature there were cars in the ditch everywhere, just like last week. I can’t believe I drove across Nebraska just yesterday and it was almost 60°. The difference in the roads this week over last is that although the roads were awful, it wasn’t as bad for trucks as cars. The main reason being that the snow was very wet today and was actually forming very deep slush groves that were building up between the tire tracks (or whatever you call them). And when cars tried to cross the build ups they would loose control and take a little trip into the cable barriers. There were also very deep and rough ridges from the frozen slush and partially cleared ice chunks. All in all, a very rough ride for truck, but navigatable to a patient driver. Not that there wasn’t a truck or two having a bad day. The amount of cars having problems was far more numerous though.
One sight I found to be very amusing and perhaps indicative of why Missouri road crews have a tough time cleaning the roads. Can you tell me what’s wrong with this scene?
There were numerous stretches of roadway that could have been cleared of very deep slush by one simple pass of a blade. The roads would still be hazardous, but at least cars wouldn’t be hitting these walls of slush that were just sling shoting ( I don’t know if that’s really a word, but I’m going to go with it) them into the ditch. Oh well, just another day on the big road. I’ll just twiddle my thumbs and whistle a happy tune.
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That debacle lasted for about 70 miles or so and then suddenly, all was clear, not even wet roads for most of the day and life was good with the exception of an extremely stiff head wind and some very shinny roads in the west side of South Dakota, “Look, I can see my reflection in the road!". I had all of 13,000# in the trailer and it felt like I was pulling 45,000# and I had to deal with it all day long. I’ve can’t seem to grasp the phenomenon that dictates no matter what direction I’m going when a strong wind is blowing, it will never be a tail wind. Kind of like standing around a glowing campfire and being choked out by the damn thing no matter where you try to sit down. I wonder if it’s like that on Earth 2. Some of you might get that insider. It’s a linger longer kind of thing.
Well, the last day of the week has once again come around and found me sitting in a rest area on the west end of South Dakota. I’m in position to make my 8:00 appointment delivery on time next Tuesday morning; however it is going to be far tighter than I like (Missouri’s little snow fit didn’t do my any favors). As a matter of fact, once again I’m looking some solid blocks of non stop driving with good ol’ Wyoming just ahead.
As bad as this week started out I managed to squeeze out an extra run and turn it into a respectable effort. Not the greatest by any means, but I did run just short of 4000mi last week. So who am I to complain? Again, this is why I don’t let the bad days upset me anymore. No, I defiantly didn’t care for all of the sitting around earlier this week, but I don’t get upset. I just kick back and see what happens.
Drive safe everyone!
WEEK SEVEN RESULTS
Monday February, 11th through Sunday February, 17th
Miles include deadhead
Tukwila, WA to Yakima, WA..............................149mi
Camas, WA to Kansas City, KS.........................1998mi
Kansas City, KS to Wasta, SD...........................674mi
Total Paid Miles............................................. ....2821 miles
Actual Miles.......................2789 miles
I was paid more miles than actual miles this week because I took a short cut to my Camas, WA pickup.
2821mi x .42 = $1184.82
