Trip Planning? Drivers actually do that? What do you plan?
 

Can't for the life of me understand what one plans. Other than a fuel stop what exactly are you planning? Routes? The interstate system doesn't change monthly.

I have only been driving for 2-years. The first couple trips I wrote down every road and exit number, boy was that over-engineering the process!! Not flaming your thread. But the comment of great trip planning gave me a laugh.

Here's a plan, avoid Kentucky. The roads suck and it's impossible to find a beer! Here's anothern plan, get out of NYC before 1500. Plans? We don't need no stinking plans!!

It's a trip to Dallas, not an expedition to find life on Mars.

Great thread Evertruckerr. I'm enjoying reading your weekly reports. Keep up the good work.

Week 20
 

2008
WEEK TWENTY
Monday, May 12th through Sunday, May 18th

Well it was a nice day spent in the town I grew up in, but I had no problem remembering why I left. A great place to grow up, but I wouldn’t want to live there. It’s one of those small Iowa towns that has all but dried up. The only businesses left open were two bars and a gas station. A little depressing to be honest.

Monday is here and I have an 8AM appointment at a grocery store warehouse. Never a good place to be. I arrived an hour early and pulled up to the gate and saw a sign that I was to go to channel 3 on my CB to contact receiving. It’s a good thing I finally had my CB fixed the other day, it turned out that I just had a bad mic. I tried to hail them but got nothing back. Not all that uncommon, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been ignored by a shipping clerk. I waited a couple of minutes and was about to make another attempt when I heard them calling me on the CB. My response went unanswered and it became apparent that my CB still wasn’t working. In these cases there is usually a speaker box nearby to communicate on, but a quick search of the immediate area turned up nothing. As I was getting into the truck the gate finally opened up and I pulled around to the receiving door and went inside. Sure enough, they saw me on the surveillance camera and let me in, but where not able to hear me on the CB.

With that little complication behind me I was assigned a door. I docked shortly there after and waited for unloading to begin. I took this opportunity to take the CB out of its mounting and see if I could resolve the problem. As I had suspected, I apparently I had connected everything except the antenna. The Coax was actually lying close enough to the CB to allow reception (this explains the poor, distant sounding reception I had been getting), but transmissions weren’t going to happen. I put everything back together and all was good again.

After a standard 3hr grocery warehouse wait to unload (actually I will consider that a quick unload) I was ready to go. I already had a load preplanned on my truck. My home time request to Phoenix was in for Wednesday, (this is Monday) and I had a message waiting on my Qcom when I got back in the truck this morning, “No loads going toward PHX, but this will keep you moving”. I had anticipated running into an obstacle or two with getting a load going west and was thankful to get a productive load that didn’t leave me sitting around.

I was to PU a load in Sioux City and run it down to Saint Louis (589mi). It had an open drop delivery the following day, but I was sitting in a good position to deliver it today. After a short hop down the road I found myself at the shippers. Not a welcoming sight though. This was one of those rundown, small warehouses with one dock. To top that off, I had to do a blind back from the main road around a telephone pole. After a few pull-ups and dealing with a couple of impatient four wheelers I was able to bump the dock and hope for a quick loading. Lucky me, this was the forklift drivers first day and the guy training him was more interested in chatting with me. Apparently he had aspiration of becoming a truck driver and thought this would be a good time to get some advice. I attempted to speed up the loading process by returning to the cab of my truck, but never managed to put more than two strides between us. This guy was determined to continue the conversation.

So what should have been a 15min loading, (it was only 12 pallets) ended up taking an hour or so, but at least I was finally putting some miles behind me. I was still in a position to make it to the receiver today, but my two delays have me on a schedule that will be a little tight. Not so much for the actual delivery, but more so with regards to having enough time to PU another load afterward (I assumed I would be getting a Bud load just down the road) and finding a place to park before running out of hours.

I spent the rest of the morning driving across IA and per my fueling solution, stopped at our Council Bluffs terminal to get some fuel (that’s a bit rare, I’m not routed through terminals very often). As it turned out, a refueling truck had just arrived and I was not allowed to get fuel while the transfer was going on. I was also told I would have to wait for an hour or so to get fuel. Well that’s just not going to work for my schedule. I stuck my less than accurate “fuel stick” into my tank (haven’t had the chance to get my fuel gauge fixed) and had 7-9” of fuel left. I had a little less than 200 miles to go and my best estimate was that I could make it to the KC yard with 15gals or so left (we can fill our tanks at any terminal even if it’s not on our fuel routing). Hopefully they won’t be out of fuel like they were a couple of weeks ago.

I went about 100 miles and stopped at a rest area to check the fuel one more time and was down to the 5” area. There was a Pilot on the way but I had a good tail wind today and felt I would have enough to get to the yard, as long as I could make it up the hill just outside of our yard without all the fuel running to the back of the tanks. Could be interesting. Result, I made it and filled the tanks. 179gals pumped into 200gal tanks with a 95% volume max. Looks like I had 5-6 gallons left in each tank.

Once I had fueled up and stopped by the shop for a few gallons of oil and some anti freeze (the trucks running good, but seems to enjoy her fluids a little more these days) I decided I would go ahead and make this drop tonight with the hopes of getting a load out tonight. I would have 1 1/2hrs left after my MT call to find parking or get a load out of Saint Louis if I was lucky enough to be offered a load.

I took about 15 minutes to put the kibosh on that plan. I had only made it a few miles down the road and started hearing rumors of an accident on I-70. It’s 4:30 and rush hour has a good head start and the backup is not sounding pleasant. There is a way around it, but it’s a good 30 miles out of the way and it there is no guarantee that traffic will be much better that way so I just stick with the mess in front of me. Bumper to bumper crawling and after 45 minutes I make it past what ends up being a couple of banged up cars on the left shoulder and a lot of rubbernecking. About par for the course I guess.

I still have just enough time to make it to the shipper, but I don’t know if they have overnight parking and can’t take a chance. I decided to hold up at a truck stop about an hour out of town. The traffic jam in KC really messed me up today. Not only was I not able to make my delivery today, but now I will be driving into St Louis at 7am. I can’t tell you have much I look forward to that.

I started as soon as I could Tuesday morning and the rush hour traffic was everything that I expected it to be plus the excitement of a steady downpour mixed in with a fair amount of lighting. My drop delivery was not what you would call pleasant. It involved a lot of walking from parking lots to shipping offices and driving around from one warehouse to another. Not really a problem on a normal day, but the weather was really nasty and I couldn’t help but notice that every MT trailer that was available to me was situated in such a way as to require wading boots. Unfortunately I don’t stock that particular item on my truck and had to resort to a stroll through the ankle deep water. I do have an extra pair of shoes under the bunk for just such a day, so it wasn’t exactly the end of the world. I guess it’s a fair trade off for not having to deal with snow for awhile.

OK, the load has been dropped and the MT call went in. I wait for a good 15 minutes and still no response on the Qcom, not even the traditional “no preplan available”. A check of the screen and I see that my MT call is still waiting to transmit. Looks like the rain and cloud cover is messing with the satellite signal. This really sucks, I’m stuck in limbo until the skies clear a little. After about an ½hr I finally get a couple of beeps and I check out my load offer with great anticipation. Will I be heading home today?

Load offering; one going to NJ(920 mi) and the other going to Montgomery, AL(611 mi). Yeah, they are both next door to PHX. So much for home time. Of course I went with the AL load. Anything to stay out of NJ, not to mention it’s 2500 miles away from PHX. I send off a quick message reminding dispatch that I was hoping to get a load to PHX but am told they have nothing going that way. Alright, AL it is.

Not only does this load not get me home, it has a crapy 7pm appointment live unload delivery at a Big Lots whse (no chance of an early delivery or drop on this one), the next day even though I will be there by tonight if I run straight through. There is no point in running that long today because I would just spend all day tomorrow sitting in a truckstop so I did my drop/hook PU and putzed around for the rest of the day and decided to hold up for the night in Nashville. The TA is very close to downtown and I would get there early enough to guarantee a parking spot. This way I could take in a nice meal and break the driving up into two days so that time would go by a bit smoother for me.

Wednesday has as even less excitement in store for me that yesterday did. I’m only looking at 5hrs of drive time to my delivery and I don’t want to start my 14hr clock too soon on the off chance that I might get a good run offer after my delivery. With this in mind I hang around Nashville until 1pm and then head out. It’s another slow paced day and my drive into AL has me craving some Cajun boiled peanuts. I’m determined to find some and start pulling over at every little dive truckstop I can find. After my 4th stop in less than two hours I manage to score at a Shell on the south end of Cullman, AL and contently finish my drive to Montgomery.

After my numerous stops for the day I managed to arrive about 30mins early for my appointment. It didn’t take long to come across my first little problem. I pulled up to the guard shack which was a glass both packed full of numerous items that made it clear that this particular facility was no longer in use. I looked around for some kind of signage that might give me directions of some kind. After seeing nothing I put the truck in gear and started to pull into the yard in hopes of finding a receiving office. No sooner than I started to move I could hear someone franticly hollering at me to stop. So I did, climbed out of the truck and was finally greeted by a less than pleasant individual demanding to know “where the hell do you think you’re going”. With that I gave a controlled yet curt eye to eye explanation that pointed out the lack of any signage and complete absence of directions, a guard, etc that prompted me to assume I was to check-in elsewhere. I must have made my displeasure with his attitude clear because his demeanor seemed to calm down from that point.

After checking in with the well educated guard (perhaps I was expecting too much to start with, this is AL after all) I headed around the building to the receiving office. I was very excited when I was told to drop this trailer in the yard, PU an MT and come back in for my paperwork (although I couldn’t help grumbling a little under my breath about sitting around all day and last night waiting for an appointment time). Another short lived moment of happiness however, because when I returned to the receivers office I was informed that this was in fact listed in the computer as a live unload (and on my Qcom, I thought I was going to get away with one) and I would have to go back out to the yard and get my trailer and bump a dock door. My initial suggestion that I formulated in my head found me biting my lip (just remember, you are in AL), my second suggestion was better suited for verbal communication. “How about I put this trailer in whatever door you need it in, then I will grab one of our MT trailers and be on my way?” “No!” she says (picture a very large AL woman in this scenario, if you will, don’t forget the cherub like personality), “It’s a live unload, we’ll let you know when its done.” A quick chat with the driver in the door next to me let me know not to expect any unloading record to be broken. He had been sitting for over and hour and they hadn’t even started on his load yet.

I wasn’t disappointed; the unloading was completed in 3hrs flat. Time to put in my MT call and hope for that golden load to get me home. I wasn’t exactly surprised by the single load offer that had an anytime D/H PU in Cullman, AL and a anytime D/H delivery to Seymour, IN (510mi). It didn’t get me home, but I know freight going that way is slow and I had anticipated a delay anyway. At least this is a turn and burn run that I can deliver a soon as my log would allow. As I was accepting the load offer the Qcom beeped again and this message was a preplan. “Excellent”, I think to myself, “Must be something to get me home”. Silly little me and my optimism. At least it was something interesting. I was to deliver my load to a Wal-Mart DC and them PU an old trailer that was sitting in their yard and take it to the Wabash factory in Lafayette, IN to turn it in. Then I was to PU a shinny new trailer. Sounds good to me, keeps me moving and I could run out the miles as fast as I wanted too, no sitting around. But I couldn’t help noticing my hours were starting to get very tight. I wasn’t able to get my reset in last weekend, and it was starting to catch up with me.

I had plenty of hours left because of my late start today and headed on up to Cullman. I made it by midnight and got my trailer. I still had a few hours left but decided to put in for the night so that I could work on getting back on a more conducive daytime schedule.

Thursday has me looking at 370mi hop up to Seymour, IN to drop this load and PU the old trailer. Sounds simple enough, but when I get there the trailer is no where to be found. I make two rounds of the place with no luck. There is only one MT trailer on the lot so I hook to it and assume someone has already taken the one I was suppose to pull out. A message to dispatch is answered with a “computer shows trailer is still there, look for it again and let us know”. I do so and still come up blank. One thing left to do, hunt down a yard jockey and find out what they know. Not much as it turned out, but apparently phone calls where being exchanged and it wasn’t long before a yard jockey came around the corner with the trailer in question. They had it locked up in a secured area to prevent anyone from taking it. It ended up taking 1½ hrs, but I was finally on my way.

North I went, the sooner I picked up my new trailer, the sooner I could get another load. The trade-in process took a little longer than I had hoped, the weather (heavy rain again) and driving back and fourth between lots was a pain (it would have been nice of them to inform me that I was to return the trailer registration to the bill box after they looked at it as opposed to keeping it with the rest of the paperwork), but I had been there once before so at least I knew where I was going this time.

Once everything was in order the MT call went in and I waited for my next load offer. Beep, I get two offers. Both were D/H PU in Indianapolis. One going to NJ (enough with NJ!), the other going to Atlanta. At this point it didn’t really matter if I got a load home. I was so short on hours that even if I was offered a load to or through PHX I would have to stop along the way and take a 34reset anyway. That would have me getting back on a Monday or Tuesday, leaving me the option of taking my time off while the wife was at work every day or extending my time off to get me through the weekend. I don’t think I would get any flack from my fleet manager for this because I had been out for so long, but I didn’t want to go that long without working either. The info came through for the Atlanta (599mi) run. A D/H PU in Indy with an anytime D/H del Saturday (or earlier).

I dropped off my brand new trailer and traded it in for a 10yr old loaded one and drove as far as my hours would allow me that night, which was a total of about 30 miles. I pulled into a Pilot south of Indy, no parking here (I should have know better than that, it’s after midnight). I head on over to the J and see a total of 3 space available and 6-7 trucks driving around. Now, when you are in a truck stop at this time of night and there are only 3 spots left, it is because no one wanted to try to wiggle into them. Not exactly prime spots if you know what I mean. Two trucks in front of me pass up a spot (they must have more time on there log than me, I have 15mins) so I set up and start my less than desirable squeeze and manage to get parked just about the time my leg starts bouncing like a rubber band. G.O.A.L. (get out and look) is a great bit of advise but starts to get old after awhile. Oh yea, add one more thing to the fix it list. Power steering pump going out. I can only turn the wheel at low speeds if I push in the clutch and rev the engine while the truck is rolling. Makes repeated tight turns a little exhausting.

My 10hrs are in and I don’t get started until late Friday morning. I have a little more than 500 miles to my delivery and hope to make it by early evening. I should be able to drop this load early and still have a couple of hours left to get started on another load if something is available. Nothing to exciting to report on this trip except for a little hiccup on the uphill side of Monteagle. It’s a mountain pass of sorts (as far as the east side of the country goes) in TN just northwest of Chattanooga that has developed a bit of a reputation in past years for killing truck drivers and anyone that gets in their way. It has somewhat of a long drawn out downgrade that tends to heat breaks up. Not quite the threat it used to be since Jake breaks showed up on the scene, but still worthy of a cautious decent. Anyway, on my way up I was alerted to the fact that I had a low coolant level by a flashing red light on the dash along with a piercing buzzer (great pretrip this morning). Oh goody, I have a few seconds before the emergency shutdown happens. At least there are nice wide shoulders, which is very convenient for all the vehicles that breakdown on this particular stretch of road.

It was a quick fix; I had a couple of gallons of coolant and water on the truck. For some reason she has started losing ½gal every two or three days with no visible leak. That can’t be a good sign. At least I’m only using 1gal of oil a week, OK, maybe 1½ gals. It’s just a matter of time before I get a nasty bit of unwanted shop time. The fixit list just keeps growing.

Outside of that the rest of the trip went OK, other than a horrible two lane that I took to avoid Atlanta. This load was actually going to a small town west of ATL and the short cut shaved off a few miles too. After a painfully slow crossing of Hwy 61 I arrived at my destination with promise to myself to avoid this road in the future and dropped my trailer and put in the MT call and await my destiny.

Two offers, one to MO and the other to TX. The MO load is actually a longer run, but the TX load has an open delivery on Monday and is pointed in the direction of home. The open delivery time also allows me enough time to put in a reset. With that I will have a clean 70hr on Monday morning and will be able to take any load and not have to worry about constantly bumping my clock on a daily basis, I would hate to be forced to turn down a load going home because I’m short on hours. I have just under 2hrs left today and head on over to PU my load of beer. Back over the very same Hwy 61 I had vowed to avoid, at least I’m empty this time around. I can get my preloaded trailer tonight and shut down for the night at a truckstop next to the brewery.

Saturday was an annoying day of two lane highways and running my hours out. I managed to make it to a lovely Super 8 in Texarkana and settled in for my reset.





WEEK TWENTY RESULTS
Monday, May 12th through Sunday, May 18th
Miles include deadhead


Small town, IA to Cherokee, IA(last leg)...................................45mi
N. Sioux City, IA to Bridgeton, MO..........................................589mi
Granite City, IL to Montgomery, AL.........................................611mi
Cullman, AL to Seymour, IN................................................ ...510mi
Seymour, IN to Lafayette, IN................................................ ..129mi
Indy, IN to Villa Rica, GA................................................ ........599mi
Cartersville, GA to Texarkana, AR(first leg)..............................682mi


Paid miles…………………………………………3165 Miles

Actual miles………………………3242

3165 Miles X .42 = $1329.30 plus $35 shag

Crapola. 90 minutes to swap trailers. What a cluster eff.

:shock:

Re: Week 20
 

This is a good problem to have . . it develops over time, doesn't present any real safety issue and it's all relative as to just how bad it's getting. This kind of repair comes in very handy when you need to turn down a load you're not particularly fond of or you're in a place you wouldn't mind taking a little extra time to explore.

I posted that elsewhere a few weeks ago but I thought some of the Drivers who are learning a thing or two from this thread and the omnipotent evertruckerr might benefit from it.

Week 21
 

2008
WEEK TWENTY ONE
Monday, May 19th through Sunday, May 25th


Monday morning has me looking at a delivery anytime after 06:00 just down the road a bit. I can’t leave as early as I would like because I have to finish my 34reset and I made it to the receiver by 08:30. It’s a beer distributor and I find that I am the only truck around when I get there. This is a bit of a relief because I have been held up for hours at a number of these places waiting for my turn to unload. I have to wonder around for a bit to find someone but am eventually told to bump whatever dock I want. I have a choice of 6 and grab the closest on. No one seems to be in any hurry here so I got back in the truck and turned on the auxiliary fan we have mounted above our dash for a fresh breeze across my face (don’t want to idle to much these days) and was amused to watch the fan blade drop off of the motor. Looks like another addition to the fix-it list.

It takes about 30mins for the unloading to begin and I feel the truck bouncing around for 15mins or so and stop. After another 30mins or so with no further unloading I get out to investigate the delay. I am extremely annoyed to find my signed BOL under a rock at the back of the truck. The lazy jerk that unloaded me couldn’t even muster up enough energy to pound on the side of the truck. I wonder about these warehouse guys sometimes, and they say truck drivers are social misfits.

I send in my MT call and hope for a home bound load (not likely form TX). That would get me home during the middle of the week and I could stretch it out through the weekend. I really want to get out of this truck for awhile. It is not to be however. I get a one load offer that is to PU in Paris, TX and has a appointment delivery of 06:00 Wednesday outside of Chicago, IL(834mi) with a suggestion from dispatch that there is a good chance of getting Phx bound freight from that part of the country. I take it with a grain of salt and accept the load.

My PU is an appointment time a few hours from now, but when I get the load info I see that it is a customer that preloads our trailers so I take off and get there 2 hours early. Sure enough, my load is ready, I do my drop and hook and take off. I had hoped I would be able to make an early delivery too, but this load is destine for a Costco and there isn’t a chance in hell of a early delivery to one of those warehouse, I’ll try anyway. The load info also states that they have overnight parking, so even if they say no I’ll be sitting there first thing in the morning.

The rest of the day is a non eventful drive ending in Springfield, MO and a marginally acceptable meal at the local Applebee’s. Better than a truckstop I guess.

Tuesday morning starts like any other, a quick walk around and a check of the fluid levels. The way my truck has been going through oil and coolant requires a little extra vigilance these days. I also took a close look at a trailer tire that I have been concerned about. It has some erratic tread wear and it is getting thin in a few spot. I noticed this when I picked up the trailer and was hoping to make it to our Ottawa, IL yard after my delivery to have it changed out. Of course I wasn’t quite that lucky.

I made it 32 miles down the road before it blew. That makes the second tire in two weeks. I was getting spoiled. It has been many months prior to that since I’ve had to deal with tire problems. A blown tire usually isn’t a big deal. All you have to do is pull into a tire shop (if there is one close by and there was) and have them put your spare on. My problem today is that I used mine last week and the last two company shops that I stopped at didn’t have any extras available. I imagine it has something to do with budget cut backs and decreasing inventories.

Anyway, I needed a new or at least a used tire and contacted breakdown with the information. The tire shop didn’t open for another 30mins so I decided to wonder around for a bit. I had an idea. This was a good sized truck stop and if I could find another Crete truck on property I would be able to grab their spare (with their permission of course) and avoid having to buy a new tire from the local shop at what is usually a significant cost. Last time I sat through one of our company meetings we were informed that the highest on road expense next to fuel was tires. We carry 3rd generation recaps as spares and we were told they cost $30 in bulk. That seems a bit low, but I think they are trying to make a point (they charge us $75 if we want to replace one without proper documentation, i.e. if you sell one off and try to get another one for free). They also told us the average on road tire bill was around $400. “Do your part to help keep these cost down”, we are told.

So that’s what I’m going to do; my part to keep cost down. I did manage to find a Crete truck and no one was in the cab so I assumed he was inside getting a bite to eat. There were a handful of drivers in the restaurant and I eventually hunted down the Crete driver and explained my situation to him. He was more than happy to help out.

Fun little story here, probably not, but I got a kick out of it. Remember that brand new trailer I picked up last week from the factory and dropped in Indy. We’ll that very same trailer was now hooked to this drivers truck. He was wondering how I knew he had just come out of Prime Distribution with his load.

Anyway, I headed back to my truck to send a message off to breakdown about being able to get my hands on a spare to save the company money thinking they would be open to my grand plan. Of course, common sense was not to prevail. The message I receive instructed me not to do that, instead they told me to buy a tire from the shop. ????????

I was dumbfounded; I just don’t have the words to explain the dismay. Stupidity in its purest form and it was only going to get worse. I sent off another message that I had talked to the other driver and he had no problem with my arrangements, but if they wanted my to buy a tire I would. They didn’t answer that one.

The next dilemma was, do I buy a new tire or a used one. I knew that the tire next to it was worn so a well worn used tire would be the best match up. I talked to the shop guy and was given the following prices used $130, recap $170 and new 1st generation very deep thread tire $310. Guess which tire breakdown told me to get. These bozos make me want to pull my hair out. I decided to call and let them know that the new tire wasn’t even a recap (Crete uses only recaps, even on the trucks), and that the tread was very high. If they insisted on not buying a used tire, at least buy a recap with a much lower tread. I also made it very clear that if I put on the new tire next to the older, well worn tire it would be a matter of days before the older tire would fail.

Well, it turns out I’m just a dumb driver with 10yrs experience that doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about. Breakdown didn’t want to hear any of it and told me to “just by a new tire”. Fine, there is no reasoning with stupidity. I just signed off on the $407 charge to the company and left.

Once I had my brand new tire next to my very old tire with a ridiculous difference it tread height I headed on down the road. After a few hours I pulled into a Loves to fuel up and notice an air leak coming from the back of the cab. A short search for the origin of the leak leads me to one of the cab airbags. It’s a good sized pinhole leak and drains the air tank by the time I finish fueling. That’s enough of a leak to get me red-tagged if I get pulled in for an inspection. Add it to the fix-it list. Hopefully I will be able to make it through a Crete shop after my U/L in the morning, if not I’ll have to stop at a TA or something along those lines.

Down the road I go and make it to Costco by 3:30pm for a 06:00 appointment delivery the next day. It can’t hurt to try an early delivery, but it did me no good. I was turned away at the gate and allowed to park in their very large auxiliary parking lot until the next morning and told to walkup to the window no more than 10mins before my appointment time tomorrow morning. I was 1 of 4 trucks parked here at the time. When I woke up the next morning there was about 50 trucks parked and a line 10+ from the guard shack out onto the road. I must have watched another 50 trucks pull in while I waited for my appointment time to roll around. This is one busy place.

As instructed, I walked up to the window just before my appointment time. When my turn came around I handed over my paperwork and awaited instructions. Time to start pulling my hair out again. When she returns she tells me to drop my trailer in the yard and head over to the truckstop to PU an empty trailer. When I ask her why I wasn’t given this option yesterday (14hrs ago) when I arrived, she just shrugged her shoulders and said the night crew didn’t know what they were doing. All I could do was smile. What’s done is done, at least I won’t have to sit around and wait for a live unload.

I did as instructed and dropped my trailer, although I found it interesting that this was the only other OTR trailer in sight other than a few hundred Swift trailers on this particular pad. Whatever, I bobtailed over to the guard shack and wait for clearance to leave and get my empty from across the road (why would they keep our MT trailers at a truckstop?).

Now the confusion begins.

I begin with “Good Morning”
“Where’s your trailer!” is the short tempered response I get from Mr. “I really wanted to be a cop”
“I was told to drop……”
“Where’s your trailer”
“I was saying, I was told to drop my trailer and PU an MT from across the road”
“You can’t drop here, go get your trailer”
“But, I was told to……”
“I’m not going to tell you again, go get your trailer!”

OK, this guy is really starting to ruffle my feathers.

“OK, I can play that game too. I’m not going to tell you again (with a smile of course), I was told to drop my trailer by the pleasant lady working with you. Here is the signed BOL that she signed. I will be happy to get my trailer, but you need to go inside and find out why I was told to drop it in the first place. Then I need you to tell what door to go too.”

He took the BOL and his confused self inside and I waited. After a few minutes, the nice lady returned and I was once again allowed to partake in a civil conversation. She apologized for the confusion. Apparently she had seen my BOL and assumed it was a Swift load, (I guess it looked very similar) because it was a Swift appointment time. Long story short, I would have to return to the staging area and wait until the other people showed up (I have no idea who these people were) at 7am. “Just park and we’ll call you on the CB in 20mins or so”.

I wait patiently for 40mins and walk back to the window and attempt to explain the odd set of circumstances that had lead up to this moment and point out the nice lady and the hostile man. I must have done a bad job of explaining because a look of utter confusion has washed over this poor lady’s face. I suggested that she have the other lady come out and she thought that would be a dandy idea.

The news I got was not good. Through some mix-up I was given a Swift appointment time. Swift appointments were apparently drops. But I wasn’t a Swift driver and couldn’t drop. I also couldn’t get a door assignment because I didn’t have an outside carrier appointment time. Are you starting to see my frustration?

Once again I am told to wait and come back in 30mins. I do so and after a fair amount of back and fourth with 3 different people am told that I am in luck (that’s open to interpretation, but I keep my thoughts to myself). I get a door assignment and head on over to bump the dock. After all was said and done and 4hrs later I was empty and waiting for my next load offer.

It’s a very short wait and I hear the Beep! Through all the aggravation of the morning I had completely forgotten about my attempts to get home. I just wanted to get out of this place, (I’m having no problem remembering why I despise Costco warehouses, every bit as bad as Wal-Mart when it comes to live loads). I’m elated to see I have just been offered a load that is going to Flagstaff, AZ. The PU time is less than optimal, 4pm over in IA, but I’m going home and I’ll take it. I can be there long before then, but I do need to get the truck in the shop for the air leak. If I turn the truck off for more than 5mins the tanks are drained. If the hole becomes anything more than that I’ll be left on the side of the road, but I could always crimp the line if it comes to that, so I’m not overly worried. I will be able to keep it moving in any case.

It just so happens that we have a terminal shop along the way in Ottawa. It’s a small shop and I don’t know what luck I will have getting it in but find myself tickled silly when I’m told to pull it into a bay. Because it was a serious problem and a quick fix the shop foreman would squeeze me in. He wasn’t kidding about the quick part. They were done with it in 10mins. The tire problem was out though, I had been watching it and the old tire was wearing down at an alarming rate (just as I knew it would). They didn’t have time to get to that until later in the day and I wasn’t about to miss out on my load home. I did everything I could to solve that problem yesterday and washed my hands of it. I did ask for another spare however, and they too were out.

I topped off my fuel tanks and headed over to IA to PU my load. I arrived 3hrs early but was giving a door assignment anyway. This was a good sign. If I could get out of here at a decent time I would have enough time to make it to the KC yard to take care of my tire problem during my 10hr break. It didn’t work out that good though. Loading started right away but came to a grinding halt after 45mins or so. Apparently they were waiting for some product to show up from another warehouse, therefore I was waiting. I ended up sitting there for 4+hrs. It had been a 4pm appointment anyway, so even though I had been there for what seemed like all day, it was 5pm (one hour after my appt) when I was finally able to leave. This turned out to be one long day and very few miles. I managed to put a few hours of driving in before shutting down for the night.

My first and primary goal for this fine Thursday morning was to stop at the KC yard and get my tire problem taken care of. But my plans were once again foiled. KC was also out of spar tires and couldn’t get me in to change out tires until later in the day. I took another look at the tire (not getting any better, but the shop guy didn’t seem overly concerned by its appearance) and down the road I went.

The rest of the day was just a balls to the wall driving to get me as close to home as possible. I was feeling like an old trail horse heading back to the barn. I wanted to make it to Tucumcari for the night but had to hold up in the little village of Nara Vista, NM. I’m close to home now. I had made it far enough to make it possible to drop my load in Flagstaff and still have enough drive time left to deadhead down to PHX. My final duty for the day was to take a walk around the truck for a quick post trip inspections with my questionable tire being foremost in my mind. What I found was a tire in worst shape than I had expected. The tread was completely worn down on half the tire and the other half had only the slightest grove. This tire would fail soon.

I sent off a message to breakdown and arranged to have the tire replaced at a shop down the road first thing in the morning and went to bed.

Friday morning gets me going on my last leg to the house. I stopped at a TA to get another new $400 tire with a 2½ hr delay and was on my way to Flagstaff to hopefully drop my trailer. If this was a live unload I would be screwed because my 14hr clock would run out before I could make it to Phx and I would have to spend the night in my truck just a couple of hours from home. I found myself with about 20mins to spare as I pulled into the customer and was thankful that it was indeed a drop load. A quick hook to an empty and I was on my way to Phx.

Mother Nature made one attempt to slow me down by throwing, of all things, a nasty snow storm at me. Here it is, just a few days short of June and I’m driving through a very heavy snow storm. The kind of snow that has extremely large flakes and made it a little hard to see but it wasn’t sticking at this time. From what I heard the next day, it actually got much worst later that night but I was gone by then.

Time to put truck driving out of my mind for awhile and spend some time with the wife and family.




WEEK TWENTY ONE RESULTS
Monday, May 19th through Sunday, May 25th
Miles include deadhead


Texarkana, AR to Commerce, TX (last leg).....................................104mi
Paris, TX to Morris, IL................................................ ...................834mi
Davenport, IA to Flagstaff, AZ................................................ .....1546mi



Total Paid Miles............................................. ..............................2484 Miles (short week Mon-Fri)

Actual Miles......................................2567 Miles + 149 DH home

2484mi X .42 = $1043.28

Nothing personal you understand, but after a week like that I'm surprised you're not screaming, padded cell mad!

Excellent post as usual - really enjoyed it.

gp12

I guess you have to take the bad with the good. Thanks for posting this weeks misfortunes. Makes the thread better.

Week 22
 

2008
WEEK TWENTY TWO
Monday, May 26th through Sunday, June 1st


My 5 days and 6 nights of hometime was absolutely wonderful (with the exception of the new hole in my mouth, finally got that pesky wisdom tooth yanked yesterday) and although I would have liked to spend a little more time out of the truck I needed to get back on the road and make some money. As is a common problem around this country at the moment, we don’t seem to be having much luck selling our house in NC and it looks like we are going to need some cash for another down payment. Such is life.

Well, it’s Thursday and home time has once again faded away into a memory, I’m back in the truck and ready to roll. Now that I am taking hometime in Phoenix I am looking forward to a nice long run straight back to the eastern side of the world. There is always the chance that I will be stuck with an LA turn and all the traffic hassles that go with it but I hope for the best. Actually, my biggest concern is that it is now Thursday and I could very easily get a load that picked up today with a Monday delivery, leaving me stuck in the back of the truck for a good portion of the weekend. That’s that last thing I need right after hometime.

I let dispatch know I was ready to go and received a single load offer in quick order. As I feared; a good mileage load with a horrible delivery time. I was to pickup a load of insulation in Eloy, AZ and deliver it to Kansas City, KS (1374mi) on Sunday morning (holy crap, that’s over 3 days). It was a short lived panic though because it was an open delivery window, meaning a drop and hook and I knew that I would be able to get it there by Friday night. I would be out of hours for the most part by the time I got there, but I could spend the night at our terminal and be ready to go Saturday morning. KC is a great freight base for us and I had high hopes of a good load out.

The other concern I had about this load was related to the PU time. Here I am, in PHX at 8am and this load has an appointment time of 3pm. I’m only 65mi away and if I start out now and try to get loaded early I will run out a large portion of my 14hr clock if I have to wait until my appointment time. However, if I wait until my appointment time I will be driving long into the night and will have to stop before using it all anyway so I wasted an hour or so getting everything situated in the truck and decided to head on down to Eloy.

I arrived at 10am to find another Crete driver just pulling out of the dock. He stopped to chat for a bit and I was encouraged when he told me that he had a 1pm appointment but was able to get loaded early. Looks good for me. He was also coming off of home time this morning and wasted no time in telling me that he got a great 2500+mi run going to NY. I don’t know if that constitutes good luck, but I’ll give it to him. I also found out he was in the process of moving to eastern NC. He thought a house trade would be a good idea, too bad his house was 50mi outside of PHX.

As hoped, I was allowed to PU my load early. It was a live load and took a couple of hours but I was rolling by noon and intent on making it to Tucumcari before my day was over so that I would be able to make it to KC by Friday night with a little time left on my clock to allow for another PU should a load be available. The days drive was relatively uneventful and I was thoroughly enjoying a very strong tail wind. It’s nice to get a little push for a change; sure makes for great fuel mileage.

I did make it to Tucumcari around midnight local time and had no time left on my log. I didn’t think I would have much luck finding a parking spot at the Loves or J and decided to stop at the old Shell TS. I knew that it was no longer open for business, but it is out of the way and not many drivers venture that way these days. I arrived to find one truck in the entire lot and found myself a nice quiet spot under the fuel island canopy so that the sun wouldn’t heat up the trucks interior in the morning and shut down for the night just as a nasty little storm started to blow through. The temperature went from 82 to 68 in a matter of minutes and the intense wind gusts made for a nice rocking motion that put me to sleep almost instantly.

Friday morning was a late started because I had to drive so late into the night. It’s definitely a bit of a pain when you wake up at 6am and have to sit around for 4 hours to complete a break. Especially when you are sitting in the middle of a defunct businesses parking lot with absolutely nothing to do. I guess I could always work on updating this posting.

Once I was able to get going I made my way across the wonderful Hwy 54. It’s a very annoying stretch of two lane highway across the pan handles of TX and OK and on through KS that has an endless line of cars driven by locals that are in no hurry to go anywhere. Even though the speed limit is 65mph most of the way, I am seldom able to maintain that speed and passing options are few when you are in a loaded truck. Another obstacle that is becoming far more common on these two lane roads is the O/O drivers out here who are driving 55-58mph in an effort to conserve fuel. These drivers may be troublesome when trying to get around them on the interstates, but they are an unbearable road block on these back roads. There is almost no way to get around them and for some reason they don’t feel any need to display any degree of professional courtesy and pull over occasionally (there are ample opportunities as one passes through a number of small towns along the way) to let the line of 20+ vehicles behind them pass.

I finally made it to KC with my load around 10pm and went to the address provided to me. What I found was a locked door and no one around. Now, this load was originally set to delivery Sunday morning after 7am. I was lead to believe that this was going to be a drop and hook, but it was looking like I would have to wait until the morning to get my paperwork signed. I made one more pass around the building and found a note taped up inside a window a few steps away from the receiving door that showed directions to another warehouse in the event of after hour business. I guess that’s where I need to go. The directions weren’t exactly clear and I drove past my destination a couple of times looking for a truck entrance. I turned out that I needed to park along the street and take a fairly long walk to a not so well marked entrance, but I finally tracked someone down and got them to sign my BOL.

The next ordeal was talking them out of an empty trailer. They were low on trailers and were reluctant to cough one up but eventually released one to me. I had a feeling I would be pulling a loaded trailer out anyway and told them I probably wouldn’t be taking it out anyway. Sure enough, after putting in an MT call I was giving a two load offer. One picked up the next morning and was going to TN and the other was a D/H PU from the very place I was sitting and going to the Dallas area (517mi) and was a D/H delivery by Monday. The TX run was a bit shorter but the D/H on both ends meant I could get it there early tomorrow evening (two days early) and have plenty of time to get started on my next load.

I actually had another 1½ hrs of drive time left in the day and considered driving out so that I would have more time available to me after my delivery, but there was parking available to me here and I knew I would be hard pressed to find parking on the back roads of Kansas (another day of two lane routing laid ahead) so I put in for the night.

Saturday was another late start due to running later into the night than I usually care to and outside of a quick stop for fuel I drove straight through to my delivery south of Dallas. My drop and hook went quickly and I put in my MT call and preyed that I didn’t get a crappy short run that delivered Monday morning. Always a strong possibility after a weekend delivery.

Unfortunately, that is just what I ended up with. I was even given a choice of two loads that picked up in the same place with a note that said sorry, but this is all they had available at the moment. This of course was total BS, I know because the shipping clerk here had just asked me if I was taking one of the 6 preloaded trailers that they had sitting in their lot. The fact was that dispatch had two horrible loads that no one would take and time was running short on getting them out. Lucky me.

One of the loads was going to Houston (344mi) with a 00:30 delivery time on Monday morning and the other going was headed to AR (380mi) with a 03:00 delivery. Both were crap loads with horrible PU times. Based solely on parking options I went with the Houston load. The AR load was headed to an area with no options I was aware of and the hour constraints I was looking at required me to park very close to my customer to avoid potential logging violations. This was a customer I had been to 4 other times and each time took 5+hrs to get loaded plus this customer was out in the middle of nowhere and there was no parking available in the area. The appointment time to PU was also setup in such a way that I had just enough time to get there tonight, but the appointment time was 6am the next day. With no on site parking, that wasn’t an option. If I drive part of the way and take my 10hr break at a truckstop I wouldn’t be able to get there until 8am (therefore late). Dispatch had told me it would be OK to PU the load late, but I knew if I did that I would be put on standby and they would leave me sitting until they could fit me in. This would make it impossible to make my delivery on time. Fun all around on this one.

After mulling it around for awhile I figured I could put in an 8hr sleeper berth and take advantage of the extended sleeper berth provision. Once I got to the shipper I would be able to finish my required break time while I was being loaded and would have enough time to make it to Houston if I was loaded in a reasonable amount of time. If I have to sit around for 5-6 hrs again I was going to be in bad shape. One of the headaches of running legal. I was going to get all the rest I needed, but fitting it into a legal log was going to be a headache. The one thing I had going for me was this load was going to a Costco store and I had permission to park on property, this would allow me to take my break there and not worry about showing up late if the loading process took too long. Regardless of what happens, I was looking at a very messed up sleeping schedule.

Upon arrival at the shipper on Sunday morning just in time for my 6am appointment I was please to find that I had a preloaded trailer. This feeling was quickly followed by frustrations because I could have put in a full 10hr break because I didn’t have to be there at 6am. Dispatch had told me I could arrive late, but never bothered to tell me it was a preloaded trailer. To top it off, I was out of hours due to my sleeper berth extension and now had to spend two hour sitting before I could legally drive again. This problem was solved by a dirt lot that we are apparently now allowed to park in. Last time I was here they chased me out, but someone in the company must have made a deal with them because there was a number of Crete trucks taking their break there. All this information would have been very helpful to know in advance.

I had put in very little sleep the night before and I had a little extra time so I took a 3hr nap and then drove the entire 220 remaining miles of my trip in on shot. How exhausting!

So here I sit in a Costco parking lot at 2pm with a midnight delivery. It’s only 90+° with a humidity level that is less than pleasant and a new idle policy that doesn’t exactly fit well into this scenario. I made one attempt at arranging an early unload (I knew this to be a futile attempt) and spent the better part of the afternoon wondering around various stores in the area. Best Buy can keep me busy for hours. I knew I would be unloading in the middle of the night and probable get an early morning PU so I tried to get a little sleep but that was all but impossible. I ended up catching a couple of movies online and checked in at 10pm when the crew arrived at the store. She told me park outside (I didn’t bother telling her I have already been here for 8hrs) and they would let me know when they were ready for me. The fact that they had 5 dock doors and each one had a trailer parked in front of it and no trucks to be seen was not an encouraging sight. After an hour or so of banging around in the docked trailers someone came out and told me I could put my trailer in a door if I would move a couple of trailers for them. What ever it takes is my motto and I pulled three trailers out for them and put mine in. This is turning into a very long sleepless couple of days.




WEEK TWENTY TWO RESULTS
Monday, May 26th through Sunday, June 1st
Miles include deadhead


Eloy, AZ to Kansas City, KS................................................ .....1374mi
Kansas City, KS to Waxahachie, TX............................................517m i
Hawkins, TX to Houston, TX................................................ .......344mi


Total Paid Miles............................................. ................2235 Miles (short week Thu - Sun)

Actual Miles....................................2226 Miles

2235mi X .42 = $938.70 (not bad for 3½ days of driving I guess)

EverTruckerr, good posts!

Attitude is everything! 8)

Should be required reading for all Crete corporate personnel.

They need to be reminded how life on the road (aside from hotels) really is. :o

I'm new to the board and have really enjoyed your posts.

I'm recently laid off from a T/L carrier in Tennessee and I have applied to Crete a few days ago. Recruiter in Neb. called me Fri. and said they have approved me for Nat'l fleet starting at 42 cpm. She is to call me Mon. with details about orientation, etc.

I've got @ 25 yrs. experience, have only had two jobs since 1990 and Crete was the first carrier I applied with when I lost my most recent job. I've done my share of OTR but I'm still learning. Really enjoyed reading your posts, learned lots about Crete. I plan to read your entire thread as I have time.

They said they would base me in Knoxville since I live @ 1 hr. from there. Can you give me any insight about what to expect in orientation, etc? I'm a little leery about getting a truck with high miles, opti-idle, if/when I would get an APU. Also not knowing their freight base, what to expect about their dispatch system and fuel solutions, I just want to find out as much as I can going in.

I hope you have the time to reply to me in the next few days. Be safe out there.

Knoxville is a great central location. You should find it very easy to get home unlike some of us that live one the edges of the country.

Crete is in the process of building a very nice new terminal in Knoxville. At the moment we have two very small yards on the west side of town not too far from the TA.

As far as getting a high mileage truck assigned to you, that is the best thing that could happen at this moment. We will soon be getting a bunch of new trucks and the oldest ones will be the first ones to be retired. Mine is an '05 with 645,000mi on it. I will be one of the first to get a new truck with an APU on it. If you get an '07 you will also be getting an APU in July or so depending on how fast Thermo King and Carrier can produce them, but if you get an '06 you will be stuck with the opti-idle for a while. I have no love for it, but it's not exactly the worst thing in the world either. It's just something you have to get used too.

What truck you get will be the luck of the draw. Whatever happens to be next in line when you are assigned one.

As far as our freight base goes I will refer you back to my posts. Its all there in detail, but if you don't want to be board to death just check out the weekly result and it will give you an idea of the areas I go.

The fuel routing we follow is given to use along with our load information. Basically you can plan on fueling once a day. For the most part you are allowed to fill up at most stops unless you happen to be in a part of the country where the fuel prices are way out of line with the rest of the country. In that case you may be asked to get 50-100 gals and then fill up later down the road. You are also allowed to fill up at any of our terminals without prior approval. If you really need to get fuel somewhere else all you have to do is call for a new fuel routing. I don't do this often, but have never had a problem switching things up. You can also stop at any approved fuel stop (you will get a list at orientation) where you can stop and get up to 50gal w/o previous approval. All of this is subject to change with the ever increasing fuel prices though.

Your initial orientation is really nothing more than a paperwork session. What generally happens is that a rental car will be set up for you unless you will be leaving your own car at a terminal. You will be setup with your own hotel room, no sharing here.

Your first day will start with a pee test and a physical. When you get back from that they will set a stack of paperwork in front of you and give you the standard tapes to watch. Logging, safety, sexual harassment, etc. You will also be sent out with someone for a short road test on day one or two. Usually just a driver sitting in the lounge with nothing better to do. Day two is more paper work and videos. You will also be assigned a truck and allowed to start setting it up to your liking. If your drug test and physical results are back on the second day you will be set loose and given your first load.

You will then be routed through one of the main terminals for your actual orientation sometime in the near future. Somewhere in the neighbor hood of 1-3 weeks. (This can be an interesting time because you will basically be winging it as far as company policy and procedures go. But at least you making money from the start). You will be looking at a two day official orientation that you are payed $140 for. At this one you will sign up for your insurance, 401K and things along that nature. Another set of videos and go over company policy and procedures. You will again be assigned a hotel room during this time. Just your basic orientation. Not what I would call an exciting time, but it could be worse I guess.

Once that's over you'll be sent back out on the road and burning it up at 62MPH.

Welcome aboard!

Evertruckerr, your posts have been an inspiration to me and I would like to use you as a referral on my application to Crete. If you would send me your info, I would like to make sure that it is included when I submit it. I don't have enough posts yet to PM you, so it would be up to you to PM me the info. Hopefully I might be able to show you my appreciation for your detailed posts.

Evertrucker, outstanding post as always. Also thanks for answering my questions on another post. Spoke with one of the company's reps and it was looking good for a minute except for one thing(The School). A.I.T. school in Phoenix has this externship program, which is geared toward two companies only and would not work with other companies to completes my externship certification. What I'm being advise to do is work for one of the two for 4 - 6 months and apply elsewhere, which is BS when you are paying for the school. I've been in the Navy for 21 years and do not want to start a new career bouncing from one company to another. Any words of wisdom would greatly be appreciated. I'll be retiring and getting my CDL in two weeks and ready to get started. Keep the post coming, that are very encouraging for a newbie!

I'll agree with you. That is absolute BS. For what that school charges you to attend it (one of the most expensive in the nation), it is total crap that they are pushing you toward any employer (this is done solely for the kickback they get from said companies) and I am sure they are two companies with questionable reputations. Would one of them be Werner by chance. Please let us know what the two are.

Until I know which companies you are being pushed into, I can't really give my opinion, but I'm willing to bet there are much better companies to consider.

You definitely hit the head on the nail! Werner is one of their big contributors and Swift is the other. Both of them I'm trying to avoid at all cost and now that Crete is not an option, I've been looking into other companies that could work with me on the externship.

Hey Evertruckerr, I just found out some interesting info on the apu's. The only trucks that will ever see an apu are the 2007 model trucks. All new trucks will have the battery pack system on them. So if you get one of the new Cascadia or Prostars you wont have an apu. And the battery pack trucks will not have a way to hook up any appliances etc. Got this from my terminal manager yesterday. He said that when they do turn in my truck to try to see if they have any 07' units available and to try to get one of those. Leave it to Crete to screw the drivers with a cheap ass solution to the idling question. I should have known better than to think that they would actually do something nice for us for a change.

There are no shortcuts to the management bonuses......

Just a year ago, you were bad mouthing every driver who had problems and negative comments about Crete.

Guess it just took longer for the reality to sink in for you.

:roll: :roll:

that's not exactly fair-- the first 2.5 years at Shaffer weren't that bad at all-- things change-- a person's perceptions can change...

Where I'm at right now-- I could easily see myself getting on my hands and knees and begging Crete to let me come back-- with a whole new attitude--

but just like all other companies Crete has it's good points and bad-- overall,
pretty easy going looking now!

Every company has good and bad points and everyone's perception of what's good and bad is different. The key is for the individual to find a company that has more good points than bad, according to the individual's own internal checklist. Find that, and you've found a job you can stay with.

WOW, took me four nights about an hour a night but i finally finished reading it all. Thought at first it might get boring but it didnt, you have great writing skills and should really type this up in book form for distribution at all driving schools. It would be interesting to see the looks on students faces when they realise that driving the truck is really the easy part.

Also made me remember how good we flatbedders have it :D

Hey Karnajj,

Thanks for the update on the battery packs. I had been hearing rumors at the Columbus terminal that they were putting packs on all trucks, but that was in conflict with the info release that I had read at one of the terminals. It makes more sense now.

I haven't had much time to get online lately. Between running some fairly good miles and staying out of the truck during down time to avoid idling (and leaving the laptop in the truck) I haven't had much time to keep up with the message board or my updates. I have a reset coming up and may have a chance to remedy that.

Here's an odd twist of fate. My truck has been getting up there as far as miles go and I assumed I would be getting one of the first new trucks off the line. Well, last week I got a message from my fleet manager and all I could read was his name and Knoxville. I assumed I was being directed to stop at the Knoxville terminal to have my truck turned down and was contemplating driving by and worry about a good excuse later. But when I pulled over to read the message I was very surprised to find out that my trucks time was up and it was to be traded in (looks like 650K miles is the magic number). The real pisser is that I was also told to PU truck #84***.

Well, you know what that means. Not only am I not getting a new truck, I'm being put into a used one and the damn thing is going to be blue with Shaffer plastered on it. I had a good 5hr drive to get all worked up about that one. My biggest worry was if I would be put into a smokers truck (it wasn't).

One saving grace, it's an '07 with 200K on it. Looks like I'll be getting my APU after all.

I guess thats why all the Crete drivers have stopped waving at me, they must be jealous. I feel like an unwanted stepchild.

Im going to go out on a limb here and say that the Crete drivers are not jealous and have stopped waving for another (blue truck stealing their loads) reason.......at least it says Crete on the side though......

I wish it said Crete, but I now have all the makings of a Shaffer driver.

I've only had this truck a week and I am ready to drive it into a wall. The other truck had it's problems, but I had them under control. This one has a whole new set of headaches and the promise of future shop time. Tell me, is it normal to turn on your bright lights. Wait 5 seconds and have the right one go out. Followed shortly by the center dashboard light flickering, and then the left dashboard lights flickering and then a complete random shutting down of various gauges and lights before a total blackout of the dash. Oh yeah, the radio changes stations at random too. Back to dim and all is well. I see a bright bon-fire in my future.


I don't know what's more annoying. The fact that I've already had to explain to a half a dozen guards why I'm a Shaffer driver picking up a Crete load or the fact that I'll be doing this for another 2-3 years.

Evertruckerr, have you thought about taking a giant Sharpie, scatching out "Shaffer", and writing "Crete" on the side of your truck? :lol:

Hang in there! 8)

Don't feel too bad-- when I first started at Shaffer-- I was driving a truck that said Sunflower pulling a sunflower trailer-- hauling/picking up a Crete Load.... try explaining all that.....

Week 23
 

2008
WEEK TWENTY THREE
Monday, June 2nd through Sunday, June 8th


Well, Monday begins as a continuation of Sunday. I had a 00:30 appointment at a Costco, but after moving a few trailers around for them (to expedite my own situation) I was allowed to dock a bit before that. Unloading started soon there after and didn’t take too long to complete. Getting the signed paperwork was another matter though. I had to wait at least another hour to get that. This was rather annoying because I wanted to put in my MT call and get situated with my next load so that I could hopefully get a little bit of sleep before starting my next day of driving. The problems didn’t stop with the signed BOL either. Apparently the Qcom was acting up and my MT call wasn’t going through. This didn’t make much sense because I had just transmitted my daily hour report with no problems but now my MT was hung up in the system. After a 15min wait I noticed that I had parked a little too close to some high voltage power lines, this can block the signal at times so I moved to the other side of the parking lot but obtained no better results. By this time it was pushing 3am and I had to assume there was some kind of maintenance issue going on. I just turned up the volume on the beeper and laid down to get some sleep. Of course the Qcom started chirping just as I was drifting off.

I was given a 3 load offer. Two of them were 10am PU’s on the south east side of Houston and would require me to drive through the heart of town once loaded and I didn’t want to sit around that long waiting for an appointment anyway (I’ve been to this shipper before and they will not let me check-in any more than 15mins early). The other offer was to PU on the NW side of Houston at 7:30am. Even though this wasn’t the longest load offered to me I took this load because I could fit in a short nap and then head out across town around 6am and beat the brunt of morning rush hour. It was a live load so that would give traffic a chance to break up a bit before I had to venture back out into it, plus I would be avoiding most of the traffic because I would be heading north out of town on my way to Wichita, KS (603mi).

As soon as I walked into the warehouse in my search of the shipping office I regretted my choice of loads. I was surrounded by nothing but tires stacked to the ceiling in all directions. That could only mean one thing. A pain stakingly slow live load that would most likely be followed by an equally slow live unload the following day. I HATE tire loads, I have yet to come across any kind of an automated system for loading tires. They have to be stacked one at a time by hand and it just isn’t a quick process. At least Crete does not expect me to unload them. I’ve had to hand unload tires with a previous employer and it was anything but enjoyable.

I was told to dock and they would let me know when they were finished. The long delay was actually just what I needed because it gave me a chance to catch a few hours of sleep. The time flew and I was jolted awake by someone pounding on the side of the cab. Now, I’m usually a light sleeper and come to my senses immediately upon waking up. But my messed up sleep schedule over the last day had me in a very confused and dazed state of mind. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where I was or why there was some guy making such a racket outside. I eventually came out of my coma and within a few minutes I had my paperwork and I was rolling.

I have never been particularly fond of the congestion on Houston’s freeways and since I was on the NW side of town I though I would try taking the four lane outer loop RD1960 to avoid I-10 through the middle of town. I had never taken it before and this seemed as good a time as any to give it a whirl. What a mistake that turned out to be. Endless red lights and bumper to bumper all the way to I-45. This little stretch of road was right at 17mi in length and I manage to cover it in one hour flat. Tell ya what; the frustration level was up there on this fine morning. I just hate losing time like that.

Once I made it out of that mess things went quite well for the rest of the day. With one small exception that is. I had stopped off at the Crete terminal in Wilmer to top off the tanks with fuel and pick up anther supply of oil and coolant. Three gallons of each should cover me for another week or so. I also needed to get a spare tire (this has turned into a search that rivals the Quest for the Holy Grail, which will probably be fulfilled before mine).I’ve been trying to get my hands on a spare for a couple of weeks now and my inability to do so has resulted in $800 in unnecessary tire costs in that time. I asked at the parts desk and was told to find Tony to get an approval. I made my round of the shop and Tony was nowhere to be found. I finally got someone in the shop to go look for him, but this turned out to be a little pointless. I watched him walk around the shop for a bit, then a quick trip into an office. After this he wondered outside and headed out to the parking lot and found his car. I guess he felt this was the perfect time for a cigarette break (or Tony is fond of hiding in other peoples cars). I then observed him disappear into the restroom (I’m hopping he didn’t find Tony in there) never to reappear. I did a little more asking around and finally gave up. Maybe the Kansas City yard will be restocked by the time I get there.

This was only a 600mi run and under normal situations I would have been able to make it to the consignee by the end of the day. But due to the delays of the day I had to hold up a couple of hours short and put in for the night. I was in the need of a good nights sleep anyway.

Tuesday morning started at a respectable 7am so that I could arrive one hour early for my 10am appointment. This tire unload was going to take awhile and I was hoping to get it started as soon as possible. The drive in went well until I pulled into Wichita. I had what appeared to be very concise directions and my GPS was pointing me along the same routing but I found myself getting deeper and deeper into what appeared to be a very, very residential area. This is the kind of streets where you start looking for cops and low hanging wires. I was driving under a solid tree canopy and scraping low branches and getting very nervous about my situation but I eventually made it to my destination. Sure is an odd place for a tire distribution warehouse.

It appeared everyone was outside taking a cigarette break when I arrived and no one seem particularly interested in acknowledging my presence but I eventually tracked down someone to give me the OK and backed into their one and only dock.

I had planned on a 3hr unload and that is just what I got plus a few minutes. I kept a close eye on the unloading process and put in an early MT call to get the ball rolling on my next load offer. There was another truck waiting to be unloaded and there was absolutely no additional parking anywhere nears this place and I needed to know where I was going when I pulled away from the dock.

My load offer was a wonderful single load going to Bloomsburg, PA (1300mi) that had a 1pm appt delivery two days from now. Finally, a decent mileage load that didn’t have a ridiculous amount of down time between PU and Del, as a matter of fact I was only looking at a 2-3hr window of spare time. I wasn’t all that thrilled about heading off to PA but it wasn’t something I needed to worry myself about anyway. A quick look at my available hours let me know I wasn’t going to be delivering this load. Even if I ran this load as tight as possible I would come up 2 hrs short.

I hate to give up a load like this but I sent off a message to dispatch to let them know I would not be able to deliver this load. I did however let them know that I could PU the load and Tcall it in our Columbus yard. This would give me great miles for the last week and use almost my entire 70hrs. It would also allow me to put the truck in the Columbus shop (not my first choice of shops) to have a number of pesky problems taken care of during my reset. That way I wouldn’t be facing any downtime due to truck repairs.

A short time later I received a reply to go ahead and PU the load and Tcall it in St Louis. OK, that’s a stupid idea, but what does a dumb truck driver know. It’s still a 400+mile trip and there is plenty of freight rolling out of the area. Hopefully I will be able to swing by one of our other yards for my needed repairs and a reset.

The PU is up the road in Topeka and I arrived for my appointment with minutes to spare. All the rush turned out to be unnecessary because they had no door available for me (yup, yet another live load) and had me wait in the yard until they were ready for me. The wait wasn’t all that long and I managed to make it out loaded in under two hours but it took just long enough to prevent me from making it to our St Louis yard within my 14hr window. This in effect made an ontime delivery impossible because I will now have to sit under this load during my 10hr break, thus preventing dispatch from re-powering it. If I Tcall it in St Louis the following morning it will still be 820mi from the final destination and the next driver will have to take a 10hr break along the way. In short, dispatch will have two hours to re-power the load and it will have to go to a motivated driver. Looks like I’ll be taking this load to Columbus after all. I drove as far as I could and put in for the night outside of St Louis. I didn’t bother contacting dispatch because I figured the night crew wouldn’t want to deal with the headache and there were no real options other than me taking it to Columbus anyway. I will deal with that issue in the morning.

I started as early as I could Wednesday morning because I wanted to give dispatch every chance possible to get this load where it needed to be on time. I informed day dispatch of my previous days delays and let them know that if I dropped this trailer as planed in the St Louis yard it would end up being a late delivery, but If I were to take it to Columbus it would only be a little more than 400mi from it’s delivery point and they would have a good 12hr window to get it re-powered. I also informed them of my need to get my truck into the shop. They sent me their approval and I was ready to go.

I got out of the truck to do my daily pre-trip which for the most part entails a quick check of the fluids and an inevitable addition of ½gal of coolant and a tire pressure check (I actually use a pressure gauge on a daily basis). The coolant was low as always along with another gallon of oil (that should get me through a day or two) and my tire check turned up a flat tire. Ummm, I know it was full yesterday. It was still on the rim and I couldn’t find the culprit that caused the flat, but in order to lose that much air in one day it had to be a good sized hole. I pulled out my air hose and started to pump it up. It didn’t take long to track down the source of the leak. Looks like I picked up a bolt somewhere along the way and it was a bad leak. Man, my third tire problem in two weeks. Ugh! And I didn’t have the time to deal with this today (and thanks to the Wilmer shop’s indifference I still don’t have a spare). I brought the tire up to pressure and took off. I was hoping that I could get to the Columbus yard and let them fix the flat.

I pulled into the first rest area I came across to check on my tire and found it to be flat once again. This time it was off the rim and I had no choice but to get it fixed at the nearest truck stop. There was a TA just down the road and I pulled in. I was in luck because there was no one in line and they had me pull in right away. When I went inside I had told the counter person that it was just a flat and I would pay for the repair myself (this tends to speed up the process by leaps and bounds, waiting for a PO# from breakdown can be time consuming, especially in the early morning). I just include the receipt with my transflow and am always repaid without any hassles. The counter person then proceeded to get on the computer and request a PO anyway. “Sorry” she says, “Just a habit”.

Just to ruffle my feathers a little more they inform me that they can not start a repair until the PO is confirmed. When I tell her to cancel the PO request I’m told that once the process has started they must wait for a response. Oh, how happy was I to hear that?

This resulted in a very aggravating 45min delay. As suspected, breakdown was backed up taking care of all the problems that had developed over night and it took awhile to get to me and by the time all was said and done it took 2hrs to get out of the TA, but I was once again rolling with a 500mi day ahead of me to get me to our Columbus yard. I managed to accomplish this without further delay and made it to the yard by 7pm with about 3hrs left on my 70hr clock; I dropped the trailer and let dispatch know it was ready for a Tcall. They had about 10hrs to find another driver to deliver this load to avoid a late delivery, shouldn’t be a problem for them.

I was out of hours for the most part and ready to start my 34reset. It was the perfect set up other than being the middle of the week again. I had run a good 500 miles already today and I would only be losing Thursday doing my reset and would be ready to go again by Friday at 5am. These midweek resets always worry me though. I will be starting out Friday morning with a fresh clock, but it’s not all that uncommon to get a load that delivers Monday mourning with another day of sitting during the weekend. I’ll just hope for the best.

All that remains for me to do is to sign the truck up for a little shop time. It needed a power steering pump, a coolant leak fix (if they could figure out where it was), an airleak fix, a new interior fan, an Opti-Idle fix, high beam wiring repair and a few other things. It was a long enough list to keep them busy for awhile. Oh Yeah, that speedometer turn down to 62mph was in the works too. As I had suspected, they were backed up and told me they wouldn’t be able to get to it until the morning. This is the main reason I try to get all mechanical work during my resets. It’s not nearly as upsetting to sit around when you don’t have a choice anyway.

This reset ends a 7day week that began last Thursday after my hometime. In that seven day period I was able to turn a respectable 3716 paid miles. It wasn’t the smoothest week I’ve ever had, but now that it’s over I guess it wasn’t all that bad.

I though about getting a hotel, but opted to spend my time in the terminal. There were a number of drivers hanging around and it gave me some time to catch up on all the rumors and trucker stories. There is also a number of descent restaurants a mile or so down the road (I have a hankerin’ for some crab legs) and a movie theater to boot. I’ve spent my downtime in less desirable areas.

Thursday was actually somewhat enjoyable and I was able to relax a bit and fit in some laundry while I was at it. I was at the shop door when they opened in an attempt to get work started on my truck as soon as possible. I didn’t care if it took all day to get the work done, but I was concerned about it running into the next day. The coolant leak had me worried. There were no visible leaks and that ½ gal a day was going somewhere. Most likely into the oil or into one of the pistons via cracked block or head. This had the potential to turn into an extended vacation for me.

The truck never actually made it into the shop. They just pulled it up to one of the bay doors and did all the work outside. I stopped by every hour or two to check on the progress and was please to see something being done throughout the day. I felt sorry for the mechanic, he had to do all that work out in the sun and it was not a cool day. Great working conditions, looks like the drivers aren’t the only ones expected to put up with the heat these days. By the end of the day I had my truck back and I would be ready to go first thing Friday morning. Everything was fixed except the coolant leak. He did a pressure check and found no leaks, “just keep an eye on it”, he says. What a good idea, I think to myself.

I headed back over to the shopping center to catch another movie.

As Friday night came to a close I made a round of the yard to see if any empties where available. I would probably need one in the morning to get a load out of town, unless they wanted me to pull one of the loaded trailers out of the yard. I did find an empty (not the easiest thing to do in this yard) and hooked up to it. I was now set to go in the morning but had to make one more decision. As a general rule, dispatch wants you to let them know when your reset is done and then they will find a load for you. This would mean that I would have to set my alarm for 5am, send in my availability status and then wait for a load offer and hope it would be something that would be ready for pickup soon thereafter. The problem with this option is that I could very well get a load that didn’t pickup until mid or late morning. Now, I can live with a late pickup, I just don’t want to get up at 5am and then sit around for a few hours. I would be far more content sleeping in under these circumstances.

My other option would be to let dispatch know that my truck was out of the shop and that I had found an empty trailer and would be ready to go anytime after 5am. This would allow them to send me a load offer (if anything was available at this time) and I could get all the pertinent information tonight. The downfall of this option is that it puts me in prime position to be asked to deliver a shag load first thing in the morning before I would be offered a load out of town. There is usually a Tcalled load or two sitting in the yard that needs to be delivered first thing in the morning and when they throw one of these at you they won’t even preplan you for the next load. They would just tell me to let them know when I’m empty. I don’t mind helping out with shag loads, but it would basically cost me 4-5hrs and a certain level of frustration.

I decided to take a chance and asked night dispatch for a morning load. If there were a large number of drivers in the area waiting for loads I would be told to check back in the morning, but as it turned out I was sent a 3 load offer. Two of them had open appointment time drop n hook pickups and deliveries and the third offer was the longest (1200mi) but it had a live load and delivery with unproductive appointment times for my situation. My choice would be between the first two loads. One going to central IL (340mi) and the other going to SC (600mi). The obvious choice appeared to be the SC load, more miles right. After thinking about it for awhile I actually went with the IL load. Why? Because the SC load would use up most of my hours for the day leaving me with little on no time to pickup my next load, if anything would even be available at that time of night. And more importantly, form this part of the country I would be in the precarious position of getting a load going to the northeast. Don’t forget, I will be picking up a load on a Saturday and in all likelihood would get a load that delivered on a Monday morning. I don’t need any downtime this weekend and I also don’t want to be sitting somewhere in Pennsylvania Monday morning looking for a load along with 50 or more other Crete drivers.

With that in mind I take the short hop load going to IL knowing that I can hook to this load first thing in the morning and drop it at the customer as soon as I can get it there. This would put me in a part of the country with a good freight base and I would also be sitting with plenty of time left in my day to get a good start on my next load. Even if I end up with a Monday delivery, I’m in a part of the country where I stand a good chance of getting a long mileage load and won’t have to worry about sitting around all day Sunday.

Now that I have all my load info and have planned out me day I am ready to go to bed and can get some good sleep. I will still be waking up at 5am, but there will be no waiting around.

Friday morning starts at 5am as planned and I am able to pickup my preloaded trailer and get out of town before the morning rush hour can cause me any headaches. I am able to make it to the customer before noon and drop my trailer. I had no problem finding another empty trailer and backed up to it, but didn’t hook it up because the shipping clerk had informed me that we had a number of preloaded trailers going out today. With this bit of information I assumed I would be pulling one of these out.

After my MT call went through I was given a single load offer. Oddly enough, it was a preloaded trailer pulling out of here and get this, going back to the very same place I had started my day. Just a day of trailer swapping. Again I was looking at a short 340mi run but it was another D/H on both ends. So even though I it looks like two crappy loads I end up with 680 miles for the day and it went as smooth as I could possibly hope for.

I had just enough hours to get this load back to the customer, but I would be completely out of driving hours when I dropped my trailer. This would leave me MT with nowhere to park, although our yard is only 12 miles form there and I could drive over there as on duty. In the oldern days I would have delivered the trailer and deadheaded to the yard so I could get a load offer rolling and get a good head start on the next day. But with the fuel price being where there at I was looking at 25 miles (25mi / 6mpg = 4gal @ $4.60per) or $20 wasted in out of route miles by the time all was said and done. So I just put in for the night at our terminal and spent my third night in a row there. Columbus is starting to feel like home. What a great little dedicated run that would be. Back and forth every day and home every night, but then, who wants to live in Columbus?

Saturday was another 5am start and a quick hope across town to drop my trailer and await my fate. What will my next destination be? Will I get a good run that keeps me moving or will I be sitting in a truckstop waiting for a Monday delivery? The suspense weighs heavy upon my truck driving sole. Weekends scare me!

I am absolutely thrilled with my load offer. I get to pick from 3 again. Oooooo! This is so exciting. What to do? My destinations are scattered all over the place going to such exotic destinations as Minnesota, Wisconsin and Kansas City, as well as a variety of pickup and delivery times. The biggest disappointment is that they all have set appointment deliveries and all of them have me sitting around a bit longer than I care for, but this is almost a guarantee for weekend loads. After mulling over the numbers I went with the KC load. It was right at 700mi and I would be able to get there tonight and spend the night at our terminal. This load delivered the following Sunday, but the kicker here was that it didn’t deliver until 7pm, but it’s a Lowes store and we do drop n hooks at a number of these. My hope was that I could either drop this at the store early or Tcall it in our yard and be on my marry way the next day.

Alas, Mother Nature had a far more interesting day in store for me.

The rest of the day started out innocently enough, a 180mi deadhead run into south central IL to do a quick D/H and I was ready to head on over to KC. My routing had me running up I-65 around Indy and then across I-70. I had planned on taking a two lane road that cut across Indiana into Terre Haute to save a few miles on this run. It seemed like a grand idea at the time. There was some more rain in the forecast, but why should that be a problem?

OK, I’ve seen rain in my days. I’ve actually seen some damn heavy rains, but what this day had in store for me was far beyond what I could have ever possibly expected. The first clue was a bright sunny sky behind me and a black as night sky ahead of me. This is the last thing you want to see in a late spring Indiana sky. All kinds of nasty things can come out of clouds like that. I spent my first twenty years living in Iowa and learned long ago what can happen. It’s not the kind of thing that scares me, but I defiantly have a fair amount of concern and trepidation about what lies ahead.

It didn’t take long to change my attitude about the scared part. I was already starting to hit some torrential downpours and from the radio reports it was much worse just north. Flooding had already become a problem and was expected to become a bigger problem as the day went on. Columbia seemed to be getting hit the hardest at the moment and guess where I was. At least I’m not this guy!

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The news also said that extremely heavy rains were expected to continue throughout the morning and possible flood waters were threatening a shutdown of I-65 so I decided to make an attempt at circumnavigate that problem by running up Hwy 9. That turned out to be a bad idea and I didn’t get to far. Apparently a small dam up there wasn’t fairing too well and that road was impassible.

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My next attempt at getting out of this mess was to take a shot at Hwy 46. This wasn’t looking any better and I was hitting pockets of absolute downpours and noticing allot of high water. I was beginning to wonder if I would make it out of this little situaation today. I was definitely wishing I was somewhere else. As a matter of fact, a nice dry arid AZ was sounding really good at the moment.

My most tentative moment came a shortly after I had passed through a ridiculous drenching and just as it looked like it might be breaking up for a moment I came around a curve I was greeted by a cloud that got my heart pounding. It didn’t look like a tornado per say, but the slow counter clockwise movement was there and I decided this would be a wonderful time to turn around and find a different path.

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By this time I had been thoroughly convinced that I wasn’t having fun anymore and I just wanted to get my butt out of this situation. There were closed roads all over the place, but I eventually made it back to I-65 and headed north. The rain was still relentless and by the time I made it to Indy the news was reporting that I-65 had just been shut down. From what I understand, it stayed that way for the rest of the day.

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Even though I made it this far I still had a tough road ahead. It was also being reported that I-70 had been shut down at MM30. I had already headed west on I-70 and by the time I heard this and it was being report by east bound trucks that the backup was pushing 10 miles due to flooding. With that I pulled into the first rest area I came across and got one of the last parking spots left. My hope was that the Interstate would open in a hour or two, but after getting online and checking out various websites to enlighten me on the days events it was obvious that it would be much longer. Apparently there was damage to I-70 and the waters were not expected to subside anytime soon. I later found out that the road was closed all day and I believe a good portion of the next day.

The east bound drivers were reporting a 4hr delay via the detour if I were to head on down I-70. All possible roads to the south were being reported as closed on the websites I could find and many of the northern routes were experiencing similar problems, but to a lesser degree. After sitting in the rest area for a couple of hours I had decided on a northerly route that would take me west across Hwy 36 with no more than 40mi out of route if it remained open or possible having to go as far north as I-74 with 80mi out of route for a worse case scenario. My only concern with this option was that I didn’t know if Hwy 39, a small county two lane that I need to take was open.

I headed that way with a wait and see attitude and was able to get the attention of a guy in a pickup with CB antenna. I asked him if this road was open to Hwy 36 and he said it was, but that it wasn’t exactly a trucker friendly road. It was shown on the map as a truck route so I continued on with the anticipation of an interesting drive. I wasn’t disappointed. This road had no business being a truck route. Anything longer than 40ft was a hazard on this strip of road. My left tire was riding the center line while my right tire was on the white line and there was absolutely no room for error in many places. Nothing more than a rain soaked shoulder that would give away instantly under the weight of a truck with very sharp drop offs for most of the trip. This thrill ride was compounded by numerous bouts with blind hairpin turns that left my trailer blocking most of the oncoming lanes as I pulled around to see if anyone was coming.

I did have the good fortune of being the first of 4 trucks taking this route. They had seen me go by the TA and I guess they thought I knew what I was doing and decided to follow me. This put me in the position of giving them a shout out when oncoming traffic was going to be a problem. There was actually an occasion where I had make one of those blind turns and shortly there after saw a few cars coming our way and would meet the other trucks at a bad time, they had already started into the turn and were committed. I was able to pull into the center of the road and flash my lights to stop the cars to allow the trucks to get around the corner safely. The drivers of the cars seemed to know what was going on and actually waved their thanks to me. A definite improvement to the reaction I had expected. There were a few more ridiculous turns in a town of Clayton to negotiate, a smattering of delayed cars and very narrow bridges with high side barriers that would have been a serious problem if I had my tandems back any further than they were.

This entire stretch of road was no more than 15 miles, but by the time I finished it I felt like a beat man. Talk about white knuckles. This is turning out to be one of the most exhausting days of driving I have ever experienced (not counting the numerous blizzards of this past winter that is).

I finally made it to HWY 36 and it was currently open. I was able to get a few drivers on the CB and they all reported the same thing. The road was open all the way to Decatur, IL but there were a few water crossings to contend with along with a 13’4” bridge. But the sign was wrong and I would be able to get under it. That there is a nice piece of information to have before hand.

The rest of the trip went slowly but safely and I was amazed at the amount of water in the fields. It looked like one lake after another. It didn’t even resemble fields. The water crossings were no big deal for my truck, the only concern I had was if there was a wash out in the road I wouldn’t be able to see it, but there was another truck in the distance that I followed and he made it through without any trouble and I followed with confidence.

The only casualty of the day was a right side CB antenna that was ripped off by a tree branch. It happened on that narrow stretch of road when I meet some oncoming traffic. It was either the branch or a Ford. I also lost a headlight after driving through one of the lakes along the way.

I have a few pics from that portion of the trip but my cameras batteries took a dump on me. I’ll get them up when I get a chance.

Needless to say, but I will anyway, I was not able to get anywhere near KC on this fine day and put in for the night as my 14hrs came to a close. This days events will prevent me from Tcalling this load at our terminal and I will now have to deliver it myself tomorrow night. But I’m far better off than the drivers that were shutdown on I-65 this morning or those that are sitting around waiting for 1-70 to open. I will just show up early in the morning and hope for a drop.

Sunday starts after a badly needed night of sleep and I arrive at my delivery point by 10am (it’s scheduled for 7pm). The first thing I notice is an empty Crete trailer sitting at their dock. This is wonderful! It’s one of our d/h stores and I’ll be out of here in no time. Not so fast! I was able to find the gentleman in charge of receiving and according to him, even though there was an empty trailer in their dock door I would not be allowed to swap out trailers. “Why might that be” I ask. Well, apparently, if there is a loaded trailer at the dock someone must be posted to stand watch in the receiving bay at all times, even if the bay door is locked form the inside. I am also informed that the crew will be in around 5pm. I knew it was too good to be true.

Well, there is a shopping center across the street and a movie theater. I’m able to occupy myself for the rest of the day and make it back to the truck by 5pm. True to their word they came out 15mins later and let me know I can pull out the empty trailer and drop mine in its place. Oh goody, it only took my 7hrs to do this drop/hook.

I put in my MT call and await an offer. What I get is a single load offer that has two drops, the initial stop going to the St Louis area and then on to Chicago (520mi) with the first delivery due early tomorrow morning and it was a preloaded trailer sitting in our terminal. I have enough time to pickup the trailer and head on over to St Louis and do so.

That was a real pain in the ass week.


WEEK TWENTY THREE RESULTS
Monday, June 2nd through Sunday, June 8th
Miles include deadhead


Houston, TX to Wichita, KS.............................................603 mi
Topeka, KS to Columbus, OH..........................................868mi
Obitz, OH to Mattoon, IL................................................ .341mi
Mattoon, IL to Obitz, OH................................................ .332mi
North Vernon, IN to Independence, MO............................709mi
Kansas City, MO to Granite City, IL(first leg)....................270mi

Total Paid Miles............................................. .................3123 Miles

Actual Miles.......................................3214Mi les
3123 miles x .42 = $1311.66

Super awesome posts evertruckerr. Just wanted to thank you very much for sharing your stories with us. The pictures are worth a thousand words alone.

Your posts are the best I have read. I heard Dave Nemo talking all about the central Indiana floods, but I didn't know they were that bad.

Hopefully your second week of June was better.

Thanks a lot.

Jeffro

fantastic info. thanks. lots of people talk smack but the numbers dont lie. I wish more drivers would post the actual numbers on this site. When i went over the road for extended periods I did the same as you, took my time off in different places and instead of sitting in a drivers lounge crying about it went out and saw stuff. I think I hit every major league and quite a few minor league baseball parks out there, scuba dived in Ft. Lauderdale, went deep sea fishing out of Mobile, took a cruise to Catalina Island, walked into Tijuana for a day(although I wouldnt recommend doing that now), etc...If you dont have a wife and kids its not a bad way to spend your time.

evertruckerr: that was a great "week in the life of a trucker" post and the pictures were awesome. I carry a laptop and a digital everywhere i go. The important thing for everyone on this site to get from your post is your attitude. Things happen on the road that you have no control over. Weather, loads, shippers etc... Just keep a positive outlook and instead of complaining about it, find a way around or through the problem. Man, did I see alot of movies when I was over the road. Despite your problems you had a decent mileage week. Lesson: If you keep at it instead of standing around complaining you'll be better off.
What I like most is your reasoning behind your decisions regarding the routes you take as well as the loads. Thanks for that, everyone can gain something from your posts.

Re: Week 23
 

Yeah I remember the first time I took it, looks good on the map, and it is called Jack Rabbit Road so I thought quick, who knew that you just hop from one light to the next. :lol:

Re: Week 23
 

Being from Houston and have gone though the hassles of 1960 in both a car and a truck, I have to admit I got a good laugh out of that.

It's a horrible road to travel at any time of the day. How people live out there and like it is a mystery to me.

[/img]http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/trucker-photos/file.php?n=1281&w=o


If it works, thought you guys would like this picture.
Evertrukerr, have you ever seen this old cabover in the Crete KC Terminal?

Amazing how equipment changes over the years.

Jeffro

Sorry about that. I was hoping the picture would show up nicely like the ones in evertruckerr's reply.

Anyone know what I did wrong?

Thanks.

Thought I did but it didn't work either.

I thought you left the command line wrong.

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h287/tkmcfd/file.jpg

Ok, there we go :wink: 8) 8)

Thanks a lot everyone.

Week 24
 

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.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...gravelroad.jpg

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

Attention Crete drivers.

Everyone knows that I am very pro Crete, that is only because I have found them to be an excellent carrier to drive for and have been as honest as possible about my trials and tribulations with this company. I have been accused of painting a rosy picture at times and my only response to that is that I will always point out the bad as well as the good concerning Crete. It just so happens that Crete tends to have far more good traits.

With that said, it’s time to call Crete out on its back handed sneaky way of cutting our pay.

I alluded to this in the previous update, but wanted to bring it to the fore front for those that didn’t read the whole thing (I wouldn’t blame anyone for skimming).

I had raised the question earlier about weather or not our mileage pay had been cut without having any solid proof either way. Crete pays practical miles, but somewhere along early spring I started to suspect the validity of our paid miles. They were still far better than HHG miles, but I was not convinced that a setting in the mileage program had not been changed.

I know have proof that our paid miles have been reduce somewhere in the range of 1-2%. It’s not going to break the bank, but the fact that they are sneaking it by us without the slightest acknowledgement is mildly annoying.

I’ve been able to come up with 2 examples of late where I picked up at the identical shipper and delivered to the identical receiver with different paid miles.

Fort Smith, AR to Jacksonville, FL
Jan 08 = 999 paid loaded miles
Jun 08 = 983 paid loaded miles

Alachua, FL to Ardmore, OK
Jan 08 = 1082 paid loaded miles
Jun 08 = 1073 paid loaded miles


It would probably be in my best interest to keep this to myself, but I will always give the bad with the good.