2008
WEEK TWELVE
Monday, March 17th through Sunday, March 23rd
This week starts our extremely early. How early? Well 12:01am to be exact. Thanks to ridiculous government regulations I ran my 70hr clock out of hours around noon on Sunday. Even though I could driven during the day and would have been to my consignee by 5pm. But instead I was forced to stop and sit in a truck stop for the rest of the day. It’s early and there is no way of getting any sleep because I’m wide awake, so I spend the rest of the day trying to amuse myself. By 10pm I feel tired enough to lay down for a quick 2hr nap. As soon as the clock hits midnight I get back 11hrs and I’m off to make my delivery which has to be there no later than 6am. I get there a little after 5am.
The live unload goes by fairly quickly and I am now in what has become the dreaded land of no freight known as Houston Texas. Although I am optimistic about getting a load offer because I delivered in the area just last week and was offered 3 different loads. I didn’t even get the expected “No freight, check back in 3 hrs”. As it turns out good luck was still with me and I received a two load offer within minutes.
The first load was a short hop into LA(under 300mi) and I would have taken it because I had already run 350mi today and it was a drop/hook on both ends and would have had me sittin good for a morning load, but my 14hrs were going to be up (since I had to start at midnight) before the load was scheduled to be ready.
I ended up taking the second load offer to Kansas City (800mi). Good miles but it was a live load and unload with scheduled appointments and I had to wait almost 3hrs for my loading appointment just down the road. That meant that I wasn’t going to get many more miles for the day, but since the delivery was scheduled for early Wednesday morning I had the time to spare.
Tuesday was another annoying short day due to hour restrictions and I once again I had to shut down shortly after noon. This was again followed by a lot of sitting around and a short nap before starting my day just after midnight so that I can make my 7am delivery Wednesday morning. A 34reset would sure make my life easier, and more productive. Too much sitting around with this game of waiting until midnight to get my hours back.
The live unload takes forever, but then I’m in no hurry once again. I only have 7½ hrs available for the day and most of them have been driven off anyway.
My empty call is greeted with a two load offer (the multiple offers seem to becoming more common again). Offer one was going to KY (600mi) and the other was going to MI (757mi).The KY load had enough time associated with it that I could have put in a reset, but I was gaining some good hours over the next three days, so I took the MI load even though I had some concerns about the freight availability in that part of the country once I was empty.
This load turns out to be very interesting. Not because of what it is, but because of where the warehouse is located. My first clue was when I read the directions and came across the final line “turn into cave entrance 8300 and go to pier 209”. This made no sense to me at the time, but that is often the case with directions until you arrive at or near a destination. The directions became very clear as I came to final turn:
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I had no idea that this place existed. Apparently it’s called Subtropolis and it is located on the east end of Kansas City. It is a spent underground limestone quarry and had been converted into an underground warehouse and storage facility. From the expressions on some of the other drivers faces they were also first time visitors to this facility. Very interesting to say the least.
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I’m loaded by noon, but once again out of hours for the day so I ran over to our terminal which is about a mile away and shut down for the rest of the day. I would rather keep driving, but at least I can get some laundry done without having to pay the ridiculous prices the truckstops charge for their laundry facilities. I end the day with a good meal at the local casino.
Thursday is an uneventful day, for me at least. The driver of this tanker pulling doubles probably had a different opinion of the days event. I sure hope he faired better than his truck did.
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Friday is a 3am start so that I can make my 8am delivery on-time just outside of Detroit. It’s another live unload and take just under an hour to complete and I put in my MT call and hope that I don’t have to wait around for a load. My last two times up here I was forced to wait 6+hrs for a load.
That will not be the case today, I am sent a single load offer within 15mins that was a D/H PU 150 miles away in OH that delivered to VA (646mi total) anytime the following day and was a D/H delivery. Can’t ask for anything better than that. I’m surprised that they are going to deadhead me that far, but I’m not going to complain and head off to get my load.
When I arrived at the customer at 9am Saturday morning I am somewhat confused. I pulled up to a gate that opened automatically. I assumed someone watching a moniter had let me in, but when I pulled into their property I found all doors locked and no one in the shipping office. After about ½ an hour of wondering around the place I decided I was the only one there and I went ahead and dropped the trailer in what seemed to be the appropriate spot and made the appropriate notations on the BOL. I have occasionally done drops like this before, but never without some kind of heads up in the load assignment. I was a little leery about getting myself in hot water with dispatch, but the trailer was scheduled to deliver today and that’s when I got it there. I sent off a detailed message to the weekend dispatch (no, I didn’t expect an answer and they didn’t disappoint) to CMA.
The next trick was to find and MT. There were two next to my dropped trailer, but they looked like abandoned crack houses. I’ve never seen so much garbage in the back of an unloaded trailer in my life. That combined with the fact that they appeared to be two of the oldest trailers in our fleet with the old torn up wood paneling sides. A number of our customers won’t even load these kind of trailers so I set my sight on a few trailers that were still docked in the warehouse doors. After pounding on a few and pulling a couple away from the doors (they all had green lights) I found and acceptable empty and put in my MT call and waited to see what I would be offered. Why do I go into such detail about this particular Drop and Hook? Well, to set the stage for a future crisis that I will have to deal with before this week is over. Anyway, it’s a weekend and I’m hoping for a load that I can shut down with so I can finally get my reset and stop fighting these damn hours.
It takes a little longer than normal, but within 30mins or so I receive a three load offer. It’s getting more like the old days all the time. Looks like freight is picking up a little bit, I haven’t seen the “No freight, check back in X hours” for a couple of weeks now. I zero in on a load that is a D/H PU in Suffolk and has live unload Monday evening in Owensboro, KY (806mi) at the ridiculous hour of 5:30pm. This late delivery means I won’t be getting a load till Tuesday morning, but we have a couple of customers in that town and I know I could get a good load. This load also means that I can run out my last few hours for the day on Saturday and find a comfortable place to shut down for my reset. I could then drive all day Monday to make my PM delivery and be ready to roll and finally start getting some decent miles. I’ve had to turn down too many good runs over the last couple of weeks due to the lack of available hours.
My PU 70 miles away goes without incident and I pull out the map and try to decide where I’m going to stop for my reset. I decide on a truck stop about 3hrs away on I-81 in Virginia because I know they have a Days Inn next to them and I am ready to treat myself to a hotel room for the weekend. OK, I’ll admit a Days Inn isn’t exactly a treat, but it gets me out of the truck.
Everything goes swimmingly well and on the way I stop to scale out at a truck stop that is less than a mile away from where I dropped my trailer at the apparently deserted warehouse earlier this morning (so close, this will make sense shortly). Three hours later I arrive at my pre-determined destination and spy the Days Inn just up the hill. I pull out the computer and do a quick check on Priceline to see if I can catch a good deal and I do find an acceptable quote but decide to hold off on securing a room until after I’ve had a chance to stretch the legs a bit.
It is at this time that I decide I will grab my lock to secure the trailer door. The Enforcer locks we use are rather heavy duty and are more than a simple paddle lock that can be snipped off.
I routinely do this at the first place I stop after I PU a trailer. Why I wait until I stop instead of when I PU a trailer I can’t really say, it’s just a bad habit I’ve gotten into. Many times I PU a trailer and deliver it on the same day without stopping and don’t want to waste time with the lock in those circumstances and it’s a habit that has carried over to most of my loads. My thought is, “no one can steal anything if I’m driving down the road”. Well this bad habit is about to bite me in the a**! As usual, I popped open the side door and reached in to pull out the lock and a horrible sinking feeling hits the pit of my stomach when I realize it’s not there.
It only takes a few seconds of recollection to realize that I left my lock on the trailer that I dropped this morning. At all times, the very first thing I do when I get to a receiver is to pull the lock off the door. After all, these things cost us $120 and it’s not like someone at a warehouse can just pull out a set of bolt cutters. I can’t imagine this is the first time a driver has left a lock on a trailer, but out side of a torch or a good quality grinder, I don’t know how someone would go about getting one of these locks off. I could only image a locksmith being called and a hefty payroll deduction.
I can’t believe I did this, but with the confusion of no one being around when I made the drop, my search for an empty and my attempt to get a resolution from the absent weekend dispatch, well, I just screwed up big time.
The worst part of the whole thing was the number of times I had the opportunity to catch the mistake. If I would have attempted to lock my next trailer when I picked it up or if I would have thought about it when I scaled out. That really got me going because I was less than a mile away at that time.
Well, here I am 200 miles away and ½ an hour of drive time left on my clock, there is nothing I can do at this time. If I only had a hour I could have made it to Roanoke. They have an airport; therefore they have weekend rental cars. I know there is no chance of getting a rental out here in the middle of nowhere and I can’t drive the truck back until tomorrow. Not that that’s any kind of option. I’m not about to put 400 miles on the truck at Crete’s expense because of my bonehead move. Although I have the funny feeling that it would have been my expense anyway.
My only feasible option is to wake up when my 10 break is up, drive into Roanoke (this will result in the neighborhood of 45 out of route miles, could be worse) pray for a parking spot at the Pilot or TA Easter Sunday morning (anyone who has ever been there knows what a crap shoot that can be), call a cab and PU a rental car at the airport and take a little day trip back to Richmond. And that’s just what I did. So much for my reset. Son of ^%#@!
When all was said and done I found myself back in Roanoke by 4pm. Since my reset was shot I decided to take off and put some miles behind me. I drove until I was tired and shut down a few hours from my destination.
Another week down.
What the last few weeks has shown me is something that I really already knew. Not being able to get in my reset is costing me miles. Not that an average of 3200 paid miles a week is anything to complain about, but I can do more and want to do more. It has resulted in a definite increase in the number of shorter haul, therefore more loads which inturn causes me to burn more of my 70hr clock on line 4 doing P/Us and deliveries and it also increases the number of unpaid miles due to all the extra running around between loads (and chasing down misplaced locks).
I have had to consistently turn down loads with good miles because I don’t have the hours to complete them in a timely manner. I am also getting myself into situations where I have to shut down in the middle of the day after running for periods of 4-7 hours. Running like this has definitely given me a lot of unwanted downtime and makes me put more effort into load planning than I care to deal with. Not that I’m incapable of it, I just get very frustrated when I am so limited in what I can do on any given day.
WEEK TWELVE RESULTS
Monday, March 17th through Sunday, March 23rd
Miles include deadhead
Slidell, LA to Houston, TX (final leg)................................323mi
La Port, TX to N. Kansas City, MO...................................800mi
Kansas City, MO to Brownstown, MI................................757mi
Cuyahoga Heights, OH to Prince George, VA....................646mi
Suffolk, VA to Mt Sterling,KY (first leg)............................674mi
Total Paid Miles............................................. ................3200 miles
Actual Miles………………………3325
3200mi x .42 = $1344.00
