WEEK THIRTY TWO
Monday, August 4th through Sunday, August 10th
OK, it’s Monday again and time to go back to work. I had just spent the weekend at Wichita’s finest Super 8. Definitely not the world’s greatest accommodations, but it felt good to get out of the truck for awhile.
Last weeks decision to take this 360 mile Wichita load meant that I was only going to end up with a little over 2800 miles for the week. This didn’t thrill me, but this load did offer me the opportunity to fit in a 34hr reset, even though I still had over 20hrs available on my 70 for this week. If I had taken the longer run of 658 miles to Mississippi I would have ended up with over 3100 miles for the week but due to the timing of the load offered to me I would not have been able to get in my reset. This would not have had an immediate impact on my available hours, but by the time Wednesday rolled around I would have been looking at hours that were severally restricted for a day or two and no chance of decent miles for the next week. It would also force me to sit around during the middle of the week when miles are far more plentiful and then leave my trying to scrape up a good run over the weekend. It is usually a good bet, if possible to work your schedule out so that you start running out of hours during the weekend to coincide with the delays that often show up in delivery schedules which makes it easy to fit in a reset to start the week of fresh. I choose to go with the reset and write this week off, at least the reset would give me the opportunity to turn some solid miles this week. Of course, there is no guarantee of this, but at least it’s a possibility.
Anyway, back to work. I have a load of Big Lots stuff with an 8am delivery. My hope is that I would be able to back up to the dock and get it off within an hour or so and be on my. That was my hope; reality of course was not so pleasant. The first hint of disappointment came when I got within a ½ mile of the address and I found myself stopped dead in my tracks. So was the train in front of me. I found myself getting a little more distressed as each minute passed. According to the load info, these loads had a high priority on them as far as on-time delivery. “They must not be late under any circumstances”, and they put a ridiculous amount of down time on them to make sure that couldn’t happen. Well, I had pulled out this morning at 7:30 for an 8am appointment. It was only 5 miles away, plenty of time, right? That’s what I thought, but a train scenario had never crossed my mind. If it was just passing through it would have been no problem, but this particular train was doing the back and forth thing as it was swapping out cars. It finally lumbered off and I was able to pull into the shopping center with about 3 minutes to spare (yup, shopping center, make that the second hint of a bad day). Outside of an occasional Home Depot or Wal-Mart type of place (which are well equipped to deal with truck load deliveries), I can’t recall ever making a delivery to an actual retail store while driving for Crete. My trepidation seemed to be well founded as I drove around the dilapidated, almost vacant shopping center without seeing a loading dock anywhere near the Dollar Store I was to deliver too.
Since there was no indication on the back of the building that let me know which dock I was to make my delivery too, I parked the truck in the back and proceeded to walk around the building to the front door. Of course it was locked and there appeared to be no one in sight and the store front sign stated that they opened at nine.
I had managed to arrive “On time” but had yet to talk to anyone and it was now well past the appointed hour of 8am. I could only assume that they where in the back of the store anxiously awaiting their delivery. I would have been happy to call, but the load info also stated that we were not to call a store directly under any circumstances and no phone number was supplied to make sure that would not happen. About that time a car pulled into the parking lot and out stepped your standard Dollar Store cashier. Finally, here is someone that can at least point me in the right direction; at least that’s what I was counting on. Turned out that I was being a little more than optimistic, the best she could do was knock on the front door and wait like me. Another 10 minuets later a store manager pulled into the lot and informed me that I needed to go to the door around back, he said it was marked. That’s odd; I was back there and didn’t see any sign. Oh well, I must have missed it the first time around. With that I walked around the building again, and what do you know. I did find a door marked “Big Lots”. It was scribbled on a standard double steel door with a permanent black marker. “How did I miss that the first time around?” Oh no, no loading dock! It’s been years since I’ve had to deal with this, but it looks like the good ol’ roller conveyor belt.
Not my load, just an old picture to get the idea across.
I pounded on the door and waited for an answer; 5 minutes later I pounded again and finally had someone open the door. A gruff old man who didn’t seem overly pleased about anything life had to offer grumbled something inaudible and pointed to a spot nearby. I assumed that was where he wanted me to back the end of my trailer and I did so. Another ½ hour passed (apparently they weren’t as concerned about the 8am delivery time as the rest of the world was) and someone else came out to get the paperwork from me. He did a quick check of the three seals on this silly load and instructed me to open it up. Nothing but horror awaited me. This trailer was packed from wall to wall and floor to ceiling with boxes of all sizes and not a pallet to be seen anywhere. Sure enough, this was a hand unload (not by be, thank god) and out came the conveyor. I was told to make myself comfortable and they would let me know when they were done.
I’ve never seen such a sorry bunch of 5 guys with zero ambition. I guess that’s why they work at a Big Lots. I didn’t think it was possible to move that slowly. There were two in the truck, two in the store and one standing next to the conveyor touching the boxes as they went by and occasionally pushing some of them towards the center of the conveyor to keep it from falling off, which seemed to be quite a challenge to him because numerous boxes still managed to jump to their death. It always seemed to be a box with fragile content in it; I heard the tall tail sigh of shattering glass more than once. It was an amazing display of incompetence, or more appropriately, indifference. He was no more that 2-3 feet away at any one time and couldn’t manage to prevent the devastation I was seeing. I was sitting on a bundle of compacted cardboard boxes 50ft away and could have prevented most of them from falling, but it wasn’t my place, I just watched in disgust.
Once I realized what I was faced with, I assumed I was looking at a 3 hour unload. In hindsight that would have been great because it ended up being much longer than that. What started out being a 8am delivery appointment left me with an empty trailer at the fine hour of 2pm. My whole plan of getting in a restart and kicking the week off with a fresh start Monday morning with the hopes of grand miles was getting off to a rocky start. An early unload would have made it possible to get a load out in the morning, but now that it is after noon, I’m a bit worried that I will end up with a early morning pickup the next day or if I do pick up a load this afternoon, chances are it will not have a favorable delivery time. All I can do is put in my MT call and see what happens.
I was pleased to get a single load offer that picked up here in Wichita any time today, (this usually means it’s a drop/hook) and delivers just south of Pittsburgh (1040mi) any time Wednesday (or Tuesday), but since I’ve just spent the better part of 7hrs getting my last load off, I will not be able to get there until Wednesday. At least it’s an anytime delivery, so I won’t have to sit around waiting for an appointment time. Sitting around in PA after the delivery may be a problem though, haven’t had the greatest luck in those parts lately. I’m a little concerned about that, but there is nothing I can do about it at the moment other than hope for the best.
My pickup was only a few miles away and it was a customer that I had been to a few times before. They are one of our drop/hook customers and I was looking forward to grabbing my trailer and trying to make a reasonable day out of it. That plan was shot out of the water when I pulled in and was told to back into door 6. Apparently they didn’t have any empty trailers to preload so I would have to live load this one. Perfect, I guess there is a reason why Mondays have a bad reputation. I backed to the dock and soon realized they were in no hurry to get me loaded and I proceeded to sit for another 2hrs before I was finally on my way out of town. For the most part this day was a bust, but I still had a little over 5hrs of drive time and manage to put in 350mi before shutting down for the night in the middle of MO. What a marvelous day this turned out to be.
Tuesday was a day for redemption, I just wanted to get going and rack up some miles. I had a bad start, but I still have plenty of time to turn this week around. Between my reset and my less than productive Monday I wasn’t in the mood to waist any more time and for the most part drove out my 11hrs without stopping with the exception of a fuel stop and a short leg stretch in between and was able to make it to within 60mi of my drop and put in for the night.
Wednesday started out as soon as my log book would allow and I arrived at my destination within an hour, dropped my trailer and went looking for an empty trailer. There were plenty to pick from and I made a bee line for the newest, cleanest trailer but soon found it had a blow and shredded tire on it. I really wish drivers would take responsibility for their own problems instead of dumping them off on other drivers. I put in an MT call using a different trailer. If I got a load offer with a live load I was going to take the trailer with the bad tire and get it fixed, however, it I got a drop/hook load I would take the other trailer. It would do no good to drop a trailer with a bad tire at another customer.
I was thrilled to get a two load offer within minutes, looks like PA isn’t going to get the best of me today. One going to IN (700mi) and the other going to Atlanta (850mi). Both had appointment deliveries and I was just getting ready to take the Atlanta load when I noticed that it didn’t deliver until Friday and the IN load delivered Thursday. Close call there. I went ahead and took the IN load and received my load info shortly there after. This was indeed a drop/hook pickup, so I had to leave the trailer with the bad trailer behind.
Within 30mins of my arrival I was headed out of the gate and on my way to my next load. It was a good 700mi run, but it wasn’t scheduled to pickup until 12:30 and I found myself at their gate by 11am. The load wasn’t ready and I was told to park along side the road and they would let me know when it was ready. So there I sat with a handful of other drivers waiting for my load. As the day progressed that line of other drivers slowly dwindled as they were called in by the shipping office until I was the only one left, including some of the trucks that showed up after me. I had tried to contact shipping via CB a couple of times, but like the other drivers that had tried that I was ignored. But I was now the only one sitting and my patience had worn out (it was now 2:30 and my load was currently 2hrs late). I called on the CB repeatedly until I was answered by a very short tempered individual who seemed to take great pleasure in telling me that it was ready two hours ago but I failed to answer the CB when called. That was complete and utter BS, my radio was turned up and I heard every call made to every driver in the lot. This jerk simply messed up. I was about to ask him why he didn’t bother repeating the ready call, but since he lied once I couldn’t see any point in making him do it again. At times like this it is just better take a deep breath and move on. After all, it was only a few hours of my time wasted due to some moron’s incompetence.
I pulled through the gate and got my trailer, went inside to get my paperwork and bit my tongue while dealing with the *hole behind the window. I decided no words were far better than speaking my mind. A quick check of the paper work and sure enough, the load was ready 30 minutes after I arrived 3hrs ago, the bozo behind the glass was just on a power trip. That’s truck driving. This little debacle had cost me a few hours, but in the grand scheme of things nothing was lost. This load had a scheduled delivery and I still had a few hours of dead time on it, more of a frustration thing.
The rest of the day went well enough and I held up short at our Columbus yard. I couldn’t have gone much further anyway and I though I would go ahead and stop at our yard to top off the fuel tanks and park for the night. I had a craving for crab legs and walked over to the Red Lobster for just that. It was another lack luster day of 430 miles, but tomorrow held the promise of a better day. Doesn’t it always?
I didn’t have to get started all that early on Thursday because I was looking at an appointment delivery in Evansville, IN at 15:00 and didn’t want to start my 14hr clock too soon. With that in mind I slept in a bit and took off at 9am and had an uneventful trip down to Evansville and managed to arrive about 45mins early. It was a live unload as suspected and I backed it up to the dock and the unloading started almost immediately. With that I went ahead and put in my MT call while I was being unloaded so that I could get the info on my next load. This rarely happens, but I had been sent a pre-planed load earlier in the day and already knew where I was headed. Sure wish they were all like that. As it turned out the early MT call didn’t do me any good because the Qualcomm was acting up today and I didn’t get my load info before I was empty. There was another truck waiting for the door so I decided to head on down towards Owensboro for my next load. At least I knew what direction to head. Sure enough, as soon as I had started driving down the road the dumb thing beeped. I had to pull over somewhere along the way anyhow to clean out the trailer. The last load had a bunch of lumber nailed down to the floor to secure the load and the guy who unloaded it didn’t put any effort into pulling most of them up, so I had a little fun ahead of me. I pulled over in a local truckstop and spent the next half hour pulling nails out of the floor. Oh, what fun on a hot, humid day.
I arrived at my pickup for what I assumed would be a quick drop/hook as most of our other Kimberly Clark loads are, but not today. Instead I was giving a set of directions to a secondary warehouse where I was to live load along with a CB channel to use in order to find out where they wanted me when I got there. That was fairly painless and I was backed to a dock soon enough. I went inside to make sure everything was set at which time was asked to slap some barcode stickers on each box as the forklift driver loaded them into my truck. He said it would speed things up a bit which was just fine with me. Forty minutes later I was headed down the road on my way to Mobile, AL to drop my load as soon as I could get there. I ran out the rest of my hours and shutdown in the somewhere in middle of TN after a reasonable 570mi day. Not great, but it beats what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days.
Friday had me looking at a good 400 miles to my delivery point and with the exception of a quick 10min stop for fuel I drove it straight through with the hopes of getting a load out of AL before the day was done. I usually have good luck getting loads out of that part of the country and I was still hoping to make a good week out of this. Things were starting to look better. I just hoped that there would be an empty trailer for me when I got there. I had dropped trailers here before and it can be a hit or miss kind of place. Today was a hit because I had a choice of about 15 trailers after dropping my load.
My MT call garnished me a single load offer that I was to pickup at 9pm 200 miles away and delivered near Kansas City (917mi) on Tuesday morning. Other than the miles, there was nothing good about this load. First of all, it was a live load that was scheduled to pick up at 9pm and my 14hrs would be up at 9:30. How can that possibly work out? Then I had to deal with a Tuesday delivery that will leave me sitting around all day Sunday and Monday. While I was lamenting over this annoying load I got a message over the QualComm to “pickup this load and Tcall it in Memphis, we will get you a load out when you get there”. Well that sure relieved some tension, now all I had to do was figure out how I was going to pickup the load with such a tight schedule. I figured I would arrive early and see what I could do about getting loaded before my appointment time. I went ahead and accepted the load with a wait and see what happens attitude.
The load assignment also had some encouraging news; the customer had overnight parking available, so even if I can’t get loaded early I don’t have to worry about driving anywhere after my 14hr clock expired. For what started out to be an absolutely lousy load it actually turn out to be quite favorable.
Off I went and arrived at the shipper a little after 7pm. I was a couple of hours early, but they assigned me a door anyway and had me loaded in about an hour. I had the option of parking here for the night, but opted to drive about 20 miles down the road to a nearby truckstop to put in for the night so that I could get a hot meal.
Saturday started with Memphis in my sites. I was thankful that I was going to be Tcalling this load there but I wasn’t so sure that I would get a load out once I did so. I also had to worry about the availability of an empty trailer. So much uncertainty, what’s a guy to do? I had a solid 400 miles ahead of me and most of the trip was on non-interstate routing so it took a little longer than desirable and I finally arrived at 3pm. Probably too late to get a load out today, but I guess it beats sitting around all weekend. Maybe I shouldn’t start counting my chickens; I don’t have a load yet. I dropped my trailer and was rewarded with one empty trailer in the whole lot, but one is all I needed. It will go a long way in getting me a load. I went ahead and put in my MT call and awaited a load offer.
The load offer was very slow in coming as I had suspected and I pulled out the broom to sweep out the trailer while I waited. I also did a general pre-trip on the trailer and was annoyed to find yet another flat tire. At least this one was intact and still seated on the rim. I pulled out my tool box and air hose and went to work finding the culprit. It turned out to be a single nail which I pulled out and I then plugged the hole and filled the tire with air. There, good as new!
Once I had everything back in its’ appropriate place I jumped back in the cab with a hopes of finding a load offer. No such luck, just what I was afraid of. I may have been able to dodge a bullet by dumping my last load here, but I still had to face the problem of getting a load out of town on a weekend. There was a Pilot just down the road so I headed that way and waited. I eventually received a load offer and was surprise to have a choice of two loads. Unfortunately they both picked up the following morning. Looks like today is a bit of a bust, just 400 miles, but tomorrow is looking good.
My first load offer was going to the Columbus (600mi) with a Monday afternoon delivery. Not great. The other load offered was going to the Dallas area (591mi) and it had a two stop delivery with more agreeable delivery times, but the Columbus customer was one that I am familiar with and I know that I will be able to drop the load there Sunday night when I arrive. I accepted the Columbus load and planned on picking up my preloaded trailer at the prescribed hour of 7am. That plan change later in the night. Just as I was getting ready to go to bed I got a message that my preloaded trailer was ready to go. By this time my 14hr clock was toast, but it was nice to know that I wouldn’t have to wait until 7am to get my load.
Knowing that my trailer was ready made it impossible for me to sleep past 2am. I had set the alarm for 4am, but I found myself wide awake and the thought of a loaded trailer waiting for me was too much to deal with, so I headed on over. The drop/hook process was quick and painless and I found myself in Columbus by 3pm. I headed on over to the customer a day early and was allowed to drop my trailer and be on my way. I now found myself at our Columbus yard with 1 hour left of my 70. I put a work order in to get the truck worked on again, (nothing serious, just a number a nagging problems that keep popping up) and headed into the terminal to do some laundry and take a nice, long hot shower.
WEEK THIRTY TWO
Monday, August 4th through Sunday, August 10th
Miles include deadhead
Wichita, KS to Smithton, PA...........................................1040m i
Meadville, PA to Evansville, IN.........................................698mi
Owensboro, KY to Theodore, AL.......................................631mi
Dothan, AL to Memphis, TN..............................................63 7mi
Memphis, TN to Columbus, OH.........................................600mi
Total Paid Miles............................................. ...........3606 Miles
Actual Miles..............................3670 Miles
3606 x .42 = $1514.52
As I had hoped, putting in a reset at the beginning of the week made it possible to get some decent miles this week. But like a few weeks ago, it once again took and entire 7 days to burn my 70 hrs instead of the more desirable 6 day week. What that inevitably means is that next week may not be so good. Things just aren’t firing on all cylinders (kind of like my Detroit on the hills).
