[cdreid]

Finally after 3 weeks (2 of BAD luck) im learning a lesson.

Offered a run to chicago (shortish) for 1.70 a mile or so. Hidden kicker picks up tonight at 6pm. Unloads tomorrow night at 6pm. Bahahaha . um no (woulda taken it to get to chicago but screw 1.5 days plus out all weekend for pocket change?????????????????????????)
Unloaded.. watched a truck drop his rear axels in a ditch. Bulldozer pulled him out. Shoulda mentioned to them that using the bulldozer to fill that ditch mighta helped in the future. Great guys building the walmart in spring hill. Seriously.

Was tryiing to pile in more miles this week to make a check next week but theres CRAP around nashville unless you want runs to freight hell. Found a load last minute on our board (was about to hit landstar etc) hauling trees from near nasheville to mass that deliver monday. 2252 to the truck 1000 miles + 100 home. Brainmath says ill be +4 to 500 monday morning at 9am and empty. If i can get a run back @2 a mile for 600=1000 miles this weeks check will be sweet and i can have the truck paid for this week by thursday latest. (tuesday to tuesday). This is with me leaving monday morning and spending the day on repairs. My friday settlement should be SMALL because of that. For various reasons i could only get a couple 400 mile runs in this week and last week got screwed by a reciever on a "hot run" taking 2 frigging days to unload me (GRRR).

Taking the trees to mass theres a bonus. the shipper will pay me 210 for the screen tarp if i bring it back and im through nashville a lot so no problem.

The lesson i learned here is plan a little longer term. Im always trying to get that long run to start off monday and was trying to cram stuff in this week that would have to be short or to MAJOR freight cities. Instead im writing this week off and starting next week good to go. I need to think longer term.. but honestly having two mondays (and half of tuesday) shot to hell the last two weeks made that kindof impossible. Ive also learned the agent system isnt all its cracked up to be. Half our agents are based on one factory or account. I didnt even bother calling middleton and when another agent mentioned "coils" i started laughing and said no. We have some good loads on the board and theyre always telling you stay in the freight lanes... then you check the board and 50% of it is way out of the freight lanes. They absolutely rant about not taking texas/florida but there are always 5 loads from wherever i am to texas and a florida or two all paying big.... Big companies need to develop communication skills.

My newbie fleet manager is awesome. Listens to me bitch. Emphatises. Takes my info and says have a great day. That is the PERFECT fleet manager folks.

Well im sitting on my butt here in tn waiting til morning to pick up my load home (to mass). Hope everyone has a great weekend and as always i would love any tips/criticism etc.

When/if i go independant i'll put out the cash for memberships to ALL the good load boards. Getloaded, ats etc etc.. all of them.

[Bigmon]

Is Mass your home? I thought you were in SC. I'm near the north shore of Mass.

[GMAN]

Duct tape can be a good temporary fix for tarps, but you may want to stop in at a tarp shop and buy a tarp repair kit. It will include vinyl and glue to repair your tarps. You will also need something to clean the tarp before applying the glue. I use rubbing alcohol, but I know of some who have used starter fluid. Rubbing alcohol is cheap at Dollar Store. You just need to make sure the surface is clean and free of any type of oil which would prevent the patch from sticking. There is also tarp tape that some have used for minor tears. Some tarp shops carry the tape. I prefer glue and vinyl to make repairs.

[freebirdrfd]

Originally Posted by Bigmon

Is Mass your home? I thought you were in SC. I'm near the north shore of Mass.

. I'm off of 195.

[cdreid]

Disaster... but first.

I dont know if youre talking to me but im from nc. Took the mass run so id start monday with a 1000 mile run. Thanks for the tarp advice gman, never seen a tarp shop before though. It's semi irrelevant now though..

I went to pick up the mass run, got loaded and it started raining. VERY bad when youre carrying mostly dirt but i was 2k under all the back axles so good. Left headed towards home and the truck started chugging badly. I figured injector but was just inside the gorge. 2 minujtes later the oil pressure drops from 50 to 25psi.. I pulled into a rest area at mm 10 to check things out and get out of everyones way. I cant see any oil leaks. Oil isnt overfull like before but it's still above the full mark. I figure i can nurse it to exit 37 (TA). Start to pull out, oil pressure drops, stop/oil lights come on. I blindside back into the rest area (2 troopers sat there and watched me for 20 minutes afterwards lol). Called maint who called a tow service who took 3 hours to show up from 30 miles away... NOTE: got pulled by fletcher truck and towing . despite the time the guy was great and man could he drive.

Next day i head back to freightliner to talk to them. Shop foreman kindof looks at me funny and snickers and says well you needed 5.5 gallons of oil and 2 injectors. So i tell him yes.. i told you it was an injector and to check the seals and find out where the #$#%#$ oil went (IN A NICE WAY). did SAME to a frigging parts changer. They pretty much ignored this. Monday i lead new driver to pick up trailer.. his is GARBAGE. Literal garbage... it will need 4 strap winchs before i can pick up anything and im afraid to find out what else. I talk to freightliner again he says theyre making up an estimate (wasnt that waht u were doing yesterday?). Now the fuel filter was 75% full (my bad honestly i never checked it .. brain fart). He got a call from CRST and... instead of checking for oil problems.. suddenly discovered it needs a side breather. I swear to god i miss the days when actual MECHANICS worked on trucks rather than parts changing idiots.

I didnt call today. I have a bad temper and sometimes its hard not to get physical so i decided to stay away. CRST maint is good about this they werent happy about these idiots ignoring what i told them. I in fact checked the oil at the rest area (and did an actual pti before moving) while on the phone with maintenance. Im really pissed off at these idiots. I plan on calling in the morning to see whats up with the truck. Honestly it should have been repaired by now. Luckily the repairs wont cost me out of pocket. The bad part is i lose that load and all the revenue including fuel used so far, i will lose this week and pay about 800 in truck bills for it and im starting to think these idiots might keep it another week which is another 800 out of my pocket. Add to that im goign to have to find something to one of our shops because i want our shop to check over the work and to do a buttload to this trailer. These idiots should be removing the oil pan and checking all the seals but they see a megacorp truck in their bay and just see easy $$$$. Someday ill figure out how people telling you "check the seals etc and find out where the oil went" translates to "needs a side blower"... @#$$@@#$

Positive note this truck will finally be up to par when this nightmare is over. And i also know one freightliner shop to avoid like the damn plague. Next time something happens near home im tellign maint they need to take it to the repair shop in fletcher where they have mechanics who know what the hell theyre doing.

I doubt the truck will be ready tomorrow and if it is ive decided the most im going to do is go get the truck and trailer and if theres a load out of charlotte, spartanburg, or asheville that doenst need more equipment than i have to pick it up to deliver monday. CRST maintenance and crst have been great but dear god the level of greed and incompetance out here is mindblowing. I think these morons thought i was some newbie driver i dont know but i swear to god i almost knocked a mechanic out. When youre at that point its time to leave. Ive had bad luck after bad luck since i started. Im hoping to hell it turns around soon. Seems like every friday or monday something goes bad that screws my whole week.

[cdreid]

Sunday night. Picked up the truck friday. It seems to be running well now. I think i had a funky injector before that wasnt totally gone. Truck seems sweet now. Knock on wood. No loads on board but left a call to reserve my semiregular asheville run. Wish me luck. Surely this bad luck cant keep going. CRST malone has been great top to bottom. Im hoping i can actually turn some miles next week at 2 a miile. I'll stay out if theres the opportunity if i manage to make any money friday or have breathing room to take a cash advance out of fuel to survive. One week of hard running should get me even then the next week im back on track. Oddly there was no settlement while the truck was down. Not even a negative one. Not sure whats up with that maybe they freeze it or put it on the back end or something i dont know. Wish me luck

[cdreid]

I now know malones biggest strength and weakness. Their biggest weakness is freight. Now of course that's pretty much everyone right now. But they are very location specific for a company that calls itself the biggest flatbed company and want's to be the megacorp of flatbeds. I'm in columbus, oh right now and had 2 loads southish fall through on me. Ive contacted 4 agents the last 2 days and the Good agents do keep an eye out for you. Jaime in middleton came through again with an ak steel coil load for tomorrow. I wanted to kiss him. Called my fleet manager (who's great) he sounded more stressed than me. Good dude. Load tomorrow i should be home tomorrow night.

Anyway about their freight problem. They STRESS hard not to run out of the box. (central us). Thing is their best loads run to cali,tx and florida of course. Also ND, sd .... places you dont wanna go. Their next best tier run to the northeast. To h888 with the northeast.

Ive been doing hops to ohio and back down to nasheville. WAY too short for me but you get in this loop where you spend so much load/unload time you have to grab something fast. I'll be in sc at 8am. Hopefully unloaded by 10 and i'm running pa, iowa, chicago or something. Screw this in the box stuff from now on i get a load in that pays all my bills first then worry about the rest from there. The first week they sortof pushed that on me anyway and it worked in a HUGE way.

With this sc load i'm at least catching back up from that week of downtime. The bad luck ive had the past 4 weeks has to end sometime i hope. Im hoping i can get into an iowa or texas loop, leave sundays and be home fridays and maybe drop by during the week. I was on the verge of calling it quits in a few weeks but im trying this plan and only running long. If that doesnt work i'll settle down and accept making low paydays and just run up and down the columbus/nashville/spartanburg loop and deal with very blah paychecks and just pay off the truck rather than my previous plan of buying an outside truck.

Wish me luck im hanging on by a thread after all this crappy crappy luck.

[GMAN]

You have really had some bad luck the last few weeks. I hope this last bout of challenges does the trick to keep you on the road. It is difficult to make money when the truck is bleeding money. In your case, the worst part appears to be the lost revenue due to the long down times rather than the cost of repairs. So, are you going to stick it out with the lease at CRST Malone or go to Lone Mountain?

[Bigmon]

The weather people are predicting some bad hurricanes this year. In that case, there should be relief loads. It also leaves the regular loads available since a lot of people want to cash in on the relief loads.

Why don't you like the northeast? I love it. Maine is really nice in the spring and summer.

[belpre122]

cd....I thought that I read this the other day in this thread but can't find it: Loads that are offered out at 80CPM? Holy shiite! That barely covers fuel! How do they get people to pull loads like that? Seriously. I don't understand this.

I hope your luck and momentum pick up this week. B