2008
WEEK TWENTY FOUR
Monday, June 9th through Sunday, June 15th
My Monday morning starts with an early delivery of my first drop. Due to the timing of this load I’m working with an 8hr sleeper berth extension situation. Basically I had just enough time to fit in an 8hr break before running over to the customer. The drop took much longer than it should have considering it was only 8 pallets. I had been offered the option of unloading the drop myself but not knowing what the breakdown of the product was (and the person behind the glass not being able to come up with any info) I opted for the lumper service. In hind sight it would have been quicker if I had done it and I would have made a few extra bucks on the side, but I’m not as quick to offer up my labor these days. I’m finding that I am very content with just driving and leaving the unloading to those that choose to do so for a living.
Once unloaded I headed off to Chicago land for my final stop. As is common with our multi drop loads, the second appointment was set far further in the future than necessary. I’m sure Crete does this to cover their butt and avoid late deliveries, but it tends to be less than productive from a drivers point of view. This load was no different. My second delivery was scheduled for 3am at a Dunkin’ Doughnut distribution warehouse. This was rather annoying because I was set to be there by noon. Not all that big of a deal because even if I were to be unloaded at that time I would find myself out of hours by 2:30pm anyway. I just didn’t like the idea of sitting around for the rest of the day and delivering in the middle of the night. The load info had stated that overnight parking was available at this customer, so I headed on over to see what I could workout.
I did manage to make it to my drop by noon, and sure enough, there was a spot to park and wait until 3am for my delivery if necessary. My hope, of course, was to work out an early delivery and I went on a search for the receiving office to see if I could accomplish just that. Once inside I let them know that I had a delivery that was scheduled for 3am, but I would be more than happy to deliver at this time if it were convenient for them. Wink wink. I also said it wouldn’t be a problem if they needed me to comeback later. The receiving clerks said she would see what she could do and made a quick call. A few minutes later I was backed to a dock and awaiting my unload. Good news indeed, even though I had to wait for almost an hour before unloading began, they were finished within 15mins and I was ready for my next load.
The problem that I know faced was that I was almost out of time for the day. I sent a message to dispatch. “Im MT n rdy 4ld,hav 1.75hr avil b4 brk,do u hav sumthg close tht is D/H 2 pu,if not I wil tak brk here n b rdy 4ld aftr 22:00,let me no.” There’s a little Qcom talk for ya. I didn’t really expect to be offered anything with so little time left on my clock, but being in the Chicago area where we have a very good freight base gave me hope.
It wasn’t 5mins later and I received a 3ld offer. Two were D/H PU anytime today going to OH(372mi) with an appointment delivery (no thanks) or AR(621mi) with an open del drop. (I could take a 10hr break here or do the PU’s now) and the other was a live load early the following morning going to MI(361mi) with and open delivery.
I went with the AR load. It had good miles and delivered anytime. It was on a preloaded trailer sitting in Minooka, IL (a place I have done PU’s at many times). It was close enough for me to PU my load now and still have enough time to make it out to the TA at exit112 where I know there will be plenty of parking. If I get hung up and run out of hours due to delays I can always park at the Pilot just up the street, it’s early enough to get a parking spot, but I avoid that place like the plague. It’s very small and has an extraordinary amount of truck traffic running through it. It’s always a cluster F and for the most part, not a good place to be. There just seems to be a high potential of losing a hood in that place.
My PU went swimmingly well and I was able to get in and out in 20mins, which is a new record for me from this shipper. I have been held up in that place for well over an hour in the past. I had just over 15mins to make it 13 miles down the road to the TA before my clock ran out. Once there, I parked for the rest of the day and went to the Chili’s next door for a bite to eat before calling it a night.
I chose to start out at 4am on Tuesday, I could have started much early but didn’t really see any point in that. I had somewhere in the area of 620 miles to go today and the last 100 of it was across some backroads in AR. I would have enough time to make my drop today, but I know I would have very little if any time left to do anything more than park for the night.
I had never been on the AR roads that my routing had given me (AR123,AR7), but I had been in the general area many years ago and had a pretty good idea of what lie ahead. The trip went fine until I made it down to that part of the world. These roads were everything that I had envisioned. Nothing more than endless hills and hairpin turns that made for a very challenging afternoon. It really got bad when I caught up with a Schneider driver at a dead stop in the middle of the road on what must have been a 8% grade (on the uphill side of course). He had obliviously missed a gear or two and was having one hell of a time. I found myself crawling along behind him for the better part of 30mins until he finally found a place to pull over and let the caravan of vehicles get by. I was able to chat with him for a while. It turned out that this was his very first solo run and I must say, he didn’t sound like he was having too much fun. I definitely felt sorry for him; this was a brutal way to learn step hill shifting.
As bad as that was I manage to make it harder on myself by taking a county road to knock 30 miles off the trip. It was marked as a truck route in the atlas (as most roads in AR are, but that doesn’t mean they are truck friendly). I knew it would be nasty, but I was enjoying the challenge and to be honest with you, the scenery was incredible. I would love to make the same trip on a motorcycle. My atlas wasn’t detailed enough as I approached my destination and I had my GPS leading the way and it manage to get me into a little trouble. I went from a small country road to a black top road that suddenly dumped me off onto a gravel road. Just peachy. Not the kind of road you want to be driving a semi on. I was getting close to my final stop, but the threat of a low clearance or a weight restricted bridge was a valid concern at this time.
Thankfully, all worked out well and I popped out onto a paved road without incident and made my delivery with 30mins of drivetime left for the day. The good ole MPH avg isn’t going to be anything to brag about today.
I followed my MT call with a message to dispatch that let them know that I didn’t have enough hours to do anything today, but was ready for a load offer that I could PU anytime after 3am if they had anything available. If not I would check back in the morning. Apparently freight is picking up these days because I was again offered a choice of 3 loads. They all picked up Wednesday morning and they all had crappy delivery appointment times. No drop/hook deliveries in this bunch. My choices were TN(375mi), TX(518mi) and FL(983mi). All the loads had too much down time, but the FL load had so much that I had the chance to put in a 34hr reset (sort of). The problem was that it delivered at 3pm on Fri. If I took this load and got there ASAP I would actually have it there 24hrs earlier with almost no time left of my 70 hrs. A perfect scenario if I could get unloaded a day early. If not, I would find myself sitting in Jacksonville, FL for and entire day and then deliver this load as scheduled (in the middle of the reset, therefore preventing me from doing so) at which point I would be out of hours and still be forced to sit for another day to gain back some hours. Basically, I would be down for over 2days.
I went with the FL load and the next two days consisted of a nice peaceful and non-eventful drive. That sure is a pleasant change of pace.
When I picked up my load I noticed that the BOL stated that deliveries were first come, first serve between the hours of 3pm and Midnight. This lead me to believe that I might be able to get away with an early unload and I made my way to the consignee with high hopes. I had 3hrs left on my clock and if I could get this product off my truck I would be able to hunt down a hotel room and get myself a nice relaxing reset. I had been to this customer in the past, back in January as a matter of fact and I recalled being turned away from the gate when I showed up early. Unloading was to begin at 3pm and not a minute earlier, so I waited until 3:30 to show up so that I wouldn’t have to sit out in the street again (they have no staging area and it doesn’t seem to bother them to have truck blocking one of the two lanes).
I would like to take this opportunity to go back to a point I had raised earlier in this thread concerning the apparent or a least possibility that Crete had altered it’s way of figuring mileage. Crete pays practical miles but somewhere along the earlier part of the year I began to question the numbers. We were still being routed via practical mileage routes, but the amount of unpaid miles seemed to be a bit out of whack. Meaning, I was ending up with what seemed to be excessive out of route miles when I followed the companies routing. If I took a short cut here and there I was finding that my paid miles were much closer to actually miles. Ok, sorry, I’m rambling. THE PROOF IS IN! We are still getting practical miles, but there has been a conscious effort by Crete to reduce our paid miles via some unknown setting. I have never seen the program that is used to come up with our paid miles, but there must be some kind of setting that alters the final numbers in some way. This trip is the first one I’ve done that is identical to another run I did before I became suspicious of our paid mileage. In January of this year I picked up at the exact same shipper and delivered to the exact same receiver and the paid loaded miles for that trip was 999 miles. This time around the paid loaded miles came up to 983 miles. Now that is only a difference of 16 miles and not really anything to get all riled up about, but it is in effect a reduction of 1.6% in paid miles. Still much better than HHG short miles, but total BS non the less.
When I arrived there were already two trucks inside the gate and I had to wait in the street anyway (guess I should have arrived at 3, oh well). Twenty minutes later the gate was opened and I was allowed to pull in. A few minutes later a forklift driver pulled up and asked for my paperwork, took a quick look at it and said I wasn’t due until tomorrow. When I pointed out (in vain) that the BOL said first come, first served and I though I could be unloaded at any time he wasted no time in telling me that I would have to come back the next day. Ouch, that hurts. I guess it can’t always work out peaches and cream. Just to rub it in, I was stuck where I was until the other two trucks were unloaded. No way out until they moved, so I spent another hour waiting. Before pulling out of the gate I made one last attempt at getting unloaded by explaining my situation and hoped for some sympathy. It looked like he was ready to say no, but then said something about another truck being late and gave me the go ahead to back to the dock. Hot damn!
I was elated with my good fortune. Now instead of delivering this tomorrow in the middle of my 34reset and then having to sit around until Sunday to get any hours back I will now be ready to go Saturday morning with a fresh 70hrs. While I was being unloaded I pulled out my laptop and went to work at finding a nearby hotel with truck parking. The prices in the area were a little higher than I like to pay so I decided to spend this night in the truck and get a room the following night.
With that I concluded anther 7 day run since my last reset with 3588 paid miles. The miles aren’t quite as easy to come by these days. I’m getting a fair amount of shorter runs and not as many drop and hooks as I would like, but at least I’m still running some solid miles.
My reset ended at 5am on Saturday morning with a serious pain in butt backing challenge. When I had made a reservation at this fine Motel 6 I asked if they had truck parking (the website said they did, but I always call to confirm) and was told that they had plenty of parking. “Just pull into the drive and park along the outer perimeter of the parking lot.” I once again stated that I was driving a Semi with a trailer and was again told it would not be a problem. Well, it’s obviously not a problem for them because they aren’t the ones that have to blind back into heavy traffic to get out of their damn lot. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I began my turn into their lot, but by then I was committed and had no option but to continue forward. I was able to parallel park into a cove of parking spots just long enough to fit my truck into with one spot in front and behind me (not good if someone decides to park in either spot). I solved this problem by backing the trailer up to the curb and dropped it there and pulled the tractor up to fill the entire area so that I wouldn’t be blocked in when I tried to leave. After this I walked around the place to determine weather or not I could drive around the building to get out in the morning. Not a chance, I would have to blind back into a very heavily traveled road.
During my reset I had contacted dispatch to get setup on a load out of town on Saturday and they sent me a one load offer that was a live load anytime after 7am and was going to a WalMart DC north of Dallas(1343mi) delivering anytime Monday or sooner of course. I still have my 65MPH truck and would have no problem being there by Sunday. I would be out of hours but as least I could get the ball rolling on my next load.
I would have loved to sleep in on Saturday since I was in no rush to get anywhere, but I had the loaming concern over getting out of this awful parking lot. I decided to leave at 5am so that the traffic would be minimal and there would still be enough darkness so that I could see the glow of headlights if I were to encounter any traffic. It was a bit tricky, but I managed to get out without hitting anything (even at this hour on a Saturday I held up 3 cars).
Due to my early departure from the hotel I managed to arrive at the shipper almost 2hrs early and there was no one around, so I had no choice but to wait. Once someone did show up I was the first one to the docks and the loading only took a few minutes. I wish all shippers worked this fast.
The next two days were painless and I arrived in Plainview, TX Sunday night with very little drive time left, did my drop/hook and put in my MT call. These nice long D/H loads are so nice.
My final duty for the day was deciding which of my three load offers to accept. They were nothing to get excited about. They were d/h pu’s with less than desirable delivery times once again. I decided on a load going to NC (1425mi) with an 8am delivery Thursday morning. How awful is that, 3½ days, I’ll be there by Tuesday night. This actually wouldn’t be a bad run for a driver that likes to put in an 8 hour day, but I’m not very happy with this. And this was the best choice out of the 3 offers. I went with this because I was hoping to finagle a Tcall in our Knoxville yard. The other two loads were going in a direction that offered no such option.
WEEK TWENTY FOUR RESULTS
Monday, June 9th through Sunday, June 15th
Miles include deadhead
Granite City, IL to Mokena, IL (final leg)..............................250mi
Minooka, IL to Clarksville, AR.............................................643 mi
Fort Smith, AR to Jacksonville, FL......................................1043mi
Jacksonville, FL to Plainview, TX........................................1343mi
Total Paid Miles............................................. 3279 Miles
Actual Miles.........................3363Miles
3279 miles x .42 = $1377.18
