Ok, I just have to ask this... yes, you are working the "system" in excellent fashion-- but much of your success involves being able to "charm " a snake.

I've been 60-70% successful at this-- "I'll do you a favor-- but, please remember me" and payback accordingly.

My question to you is thus: How many of these "shag" loads or "favors" would you still be "willing" and agreeable to doing-- say, if their "reward" turned out to be "sour grapes" or no Payback at all?
It only takes one refusal and suddenly word gets around the office that-- you're no longer a TEAM player.

Because some drivers- might lack the "charm" and grace or "diplomacy" after a few such--- unrewarded "favors".

Maybe, you could write out a 'script' to show the best qualcom wording-- to
demonstrate how to "diplomactically" cover those two possible-- scenarios

i.e. the "how to politely" turn down such an shag offer-- after being "forgotten" previous times.

and "how to ask" for them to throw you a bone-- without "outright" asking.

Re: Week 30
 

[quote="evertruckerr"]WEEK THIRTY
The wait wasn’t as long as I feared and I received a single load offer and other than being a live load and unload it was a good one going to the Atlanta area (1743mi). All I had to do was headhead 150 miles to get the load and I would be on my way. There is even enough time on this load that I will be able to stop off at the Marietta yard to get my A service taken care along with a number of minor issues that are in need of some attention.

There is one other little hiccup to this load, I’m suppose to be there for an 12:30 appointment, but it’s already 11am and I have 150 miles to go (not going to happen). Must be a brokered load; I let dispatch know I was on my way but would be about an hour late for my pickup. That turned out to be very optimistic, but then I had no idea what laid ahead of me. I should have guessed when I read the name of the shipper “St. Cloud Mining Co� (I do recall wandering what they mined).

The first 120 miles or so went just great, interstate into the south central part of the state and then follow the instructions given to me. “Follow Hwy52 into Winston to 2nd street (I later found these so called “streets� to be a fairly liberal description as well as a so called town), T/L follow uphill to top @ Y intersection T/L an go 8 mi.� Simple enough.

Now, when I turned off the interstate onto Hwy 52 I was greeted by a very narrow paved road and wasn’t looking forward to 20+ miles of riding the lines to get to my turn. Fortunately there wasn’t too much traffic which was a good thing. This road was very narrow and my trailer took up a good portion of the road on a number of the turns. At one point I could see for some distance in both directions and had a chance to hop out and take a picture on a better stretch of the road.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...r/Hwy52-MN.jpg

This wasn’t the worst stretch of road I had ever been on, but there certainly wasn’t much room for error. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was currently on a modern day expressway by comparison to what lay ahead.

I finally arrived at the thriving metropolis know as Winston, NM (consisting of 2-3 buildings and a couple of so called streets that my directions had eluded too. I turned left at what appeared to be the best course of action and was happy to see a dilapidated sign that said “St Cloud� along with a little arrow. “Must be on the right track�.

Up a little hill I went looking for a “Y� in the road and this is what I get.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...oudMineRD1.jpg

“YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!� 8 MILES?

OK, I spent a number of year driving a dump truck around on roads just like this in the Phx dessert, but that was in a truck and trailer built for this kind of terrain. I was not looking forward to the next 8 miles and my ill feeling turned out to be well founded.


The road simply went from bad:

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...oudMineRd3.jpg

To worse:

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...oudMineRd2.jpg

Keep one thing in mind, this was a supposed two lane road and every time I went around a corner I was on the CB calling out a warning and blowing my air horn as I went around. The pictures above were actually some of the wider spots; I couldn’t take a chance of shooting a shot as I was going around some of the nasty turns in the event I was meet by another vehicle.


As the saying goes, just as I thought it was as bad as it could get, it took a turn for the worse. As I was marveling at the ridiculousness of this road and wondering what in the hell I was doing here I came across another hairpin turn and was horrified to see what appeared to be nothing more than a sandy wash in the middle of the dessert. I’ve been on this kind of terrain before, but I was riding an ATV at the time and having a blast. Throw yourself into a semi and all of a sudden it’s not so much fun anymore. All I could do was turn my steer wheels in the general direction I wanted to go and hope for the best. Response was sluggish at best and I was getting horrendous traction and downshifting as quickly as I could in an attempt to keep moving before I sank into the sand. I had been caught completely off guard and had not bothered locking in my differentials earlier on and now was too late. I was sure I was about to sink in and spin.

I basically found myself in a situation where there was nothing that resembled a road and I was having serious doubts about having missed a turn somewhere.

The sand trap lasted for about half a mile with varying degrees of depth and I once again found myself on solid footing in the form of a so-so gravel road that eventually grew to a respectable width and a few more miles down the road found me at the front door step of the elusive St Cloud Mining Co a mere 1 hour late for my appointment. Apparently they mine a substance called “Zeomite� or something along those lines. Basically it was some kind of hard clay that they blasted out of the ground and pounded into granules and powders. It is used as cat litter and oil absorbents in the granule form and as an ingredient in metal polishes and as swimming pool filter medium in its powder form among other uses.

Being late didn’t seem to be a problem with anyone; as a matter of fact I was the only one in a ten mile radius as best I could tell. I was loaded with 45,000# of the powder stuff in short order and after scaling out on site I was ready to have another go at that sand gully. I really wasn’t feeling very confident in my chances, but knowing I wasn’t the only truck to have been out here I figured I had a fair chance of getting out. I did ask the shipping clerk how often trucks got stuck “on that road back there�, he just laughed and said “Every few days we have to pull one of you guys out�. I decided not to ask him how often trucks come out here.

OK, here we go. I locked my rear end in and I was off to the races. On my way out I actually meet another truck who was on his way in and he called me on the CB. Something to the effect of “Holy Sh**, I thought I was lost, is the road to the mine?�

A few more turns and I found myself bearing down on the stretch of sand and hit it with my RPM wound up in the hopes of plowing through it before the sand sucked all of my momentum out of the truck. That always worked during my dump truck days (when I had a 575HP Cat under the hood) and I assumed it would have similar results today. Well, let me tell you what happens when you hit 6-12� deep sand with a gutted 400 something HP Detroit with an occasional “acceleration hiccup� in it. I immediately lost massive RPMs and the damn thing started missing what seemed like every other cylinder and my attempt to downshift one gear was hopeless and I dropped two right of the bat and as soon as I hit that gear I realized I was going to have to grab a low range gear and settled on 4th gear and floored it and was just barely able to keep the momentum going long enough to get me out of the mess. The pictures really don’t do it justice, mainly because I wasn’t able to take a shot of the worst of it, but these will give you some idea of what I was looking at.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...MineDitch2.jpg

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...MineDitch4.jpg

Anyone that has pulled 80,000# through sand knows what I was dealing with, any one that hasn’t, well, hope you never experience such a thing. I was surprised that I made it through with my gutless wonder of a truck. I have no idea what would have happened if I had meet another truck at the point of the journey.

OK, I know I’m whining, but I just wasn’t in the mood for this kind of trip today.

I finally made it out of my back road experience and my trip out on the narrow two lane asphalt road didn’t seem nearly as bad as it did on the way in.



WEEK THIRTY
Monday, July 21st through Sunday, July 27th
Miles include deadhead


Phoenix, AZ to Phoenix, AZ(Shag load).......................................1mi
Nogales, AZ to Santa Teresa, NM............................................554m i
Winston, NM to Lawrensville, GA............................................1743 mi
Oakwood, GA to Gansevoort, NY...........................................1049m i
Rotterdam, NY to Erie, PA (first let).........................................405mi

Total Paid Miles............................................. ......................3752 Miles

Actual Miles………………………3910 Miles (50mi due to driving around Phx for shag load plus some personal bobtail use)

3752 Miles x .42 = $1575.84
+Shag pay = $35

quote]


Aaaaaaaaah young Bedouin!! Imagine driving that road 25 years ago, when they were just starting that mine up! When there was no paved road once you left Winston! They built something in Winston since then, it sounds like!!!

LOL....You drove a truck with a under powered 400 Detroit! You shoulda been there when we was driving up there in trucks with Cornbinder 549 gas-hawgs and Cat 3208's, and 8-v 77 Detroits!

You spoiled guys crack me up!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Week 31
 

WEEK THIRTY ONE
Monday, July 28th through Sunday, August 3rd

Another Monday has arrived and I have to find some way to amuse myself. I ran out my 70hrs as of Sunday and am in the middle of a reset. Last week I chose between an Atlanta run and a Detroit run and went with the Detroit run based solely on where I would be shut down for this fine reset. The Atlanta run would have left me sitting in northern VA with little options for entertainment. The Detroit run would make it possible for me to make it where I am, the historic community of Erie, PA. How historic I really didn’t know, but that is why I chose this destination. I would have all day to wonder around town and find out.

I actually started my exploration yesterday afternoon. I had arrived a little after 3pm with the hopes of getting a hotel room for the next couple of nights. There were a number of national chain hotels in the immediate area and I really thought I could find a reasonably priced room, but after some searching on the internet the best I could do was about $54 a night, and that was the Motel 6. The stupid Super 8 was in the neighborhood of $70. I simply will not pay that kind of money for these less than palatial establishments. The weather was quit pleasant and I decided since I wouldn’t be spending all that much time in the room anyway, I would go ahead and base my stay out of the truck.

I did manage to find out where I could find a cluster of restaurant and decided to walk over to find a bite to eat and get some exercise along the way while I was at it. It was about a 3½ mile walk and I set out on my first adventure. OK, not really an adventure, I would save that for Monday, but I just wanted to get out of the truck for the remainder of the day. I only made it about half a mile from the truck when I stumbled across a new casino in the area. It was just south of the interstate on the other side of the truck stop. Initially I walked past it with the intention of going to my original destination, but about a mile down the road I made it to a stretch of road that I would have to walk along and found it to be nothing more than a small two lane road with no real shoulder to speak of. To close to traffic for my liking, I didn’t feel like being the victim of a hit and run and decided to return to the casino. It was a large one and held the promise of an evening of entertainment. I’m not a bid gambler by any means, but I’m not opposed to sitting down at a Blackjack table with a $100. I can usually make it last for a couple of hours and often walk away with a few more bucks than I started with.

Upon entering the casino I soon realized that they only had slots and video games. Not my thing, these games seldom result in positive cash flow and offer me no particular satisfaction. What I did find was a very nice setup for horse racing. Again, not my usual choice of vice, but it did peak my interest. This particular track had a setup that allowed for OTB betting available for races around the country 7 days a week and live races twice a week and as luck would have it, today was one of those live race days. I made my way down to the track and was able to watch the first race of the day from the rail. Up close and personal as it were. I watched the first couple of races and decided to try my luck on race three. My first bet on “I’m not Tellen, Ellen� was a bit disappointing, but I got a felling about race 5 and put a place bet on the 6 horse in the 5th and tickle me pink, 1st place by a nose (I knew I should have placed a win bet).

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

I pocketed a few bucks and made my way to the restaurant to watch the rest of the races and get a bite to eat.

That was pretty much it for that night, and I headed back to the truck and went to work on the computer to plan my Monday. I pulled up the bus schedule and found that I could catch a ride at the casino going to downtown Erie every hour on the hour and pulled up a list of things to do when I got there.

Erie wasn’t exactly a hotbed of activity, but I did manage to entertain myself for the day. There were a few sight seeing opportunities in the form of the Erie pier,

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...r/eriepier.jpg

a maritime museum and boat rides around the bay and there were a few fishing boats that offered half day fishing trips. I caught a ride on a fishing boat and did a little perch fishing for a very reasonable price of $35. Walleye fishing would have been a little more exciting, but the perch thing worked out just fine. If nothing else it was a very relaxing trip, sure beats driving around in a truck all day. At the end of the day I hopped on a bus and found myself back at the truck with enough time to get a good night’s sleep before going back to work.


Tuesday was a very early start to a new week. I still have about 250mi to go with a mid-morning appointment to make. It’s a small Sam’s club warehouse that I’ve been to before. I don’t want to show up too early because they have no parking available on premise and I sure don’t want to be late. They get a little troublesome when you do something like that. It could mean a reset appointment time the following day. I decided to pull out at 3am; this would give me a one hour window, which should be plenty of time considering there would be little traffic to contend with.


Off on my marry way I went, taking Hwy 2 along the south shore of Lake Erie as opposed to running on I-80 (a toll road). There would be little traffic and it would save me the trouble of paying cash for the toll and waiting for a reimbursement later on. I have avoided using Hwy 2 in the past because it has a 55mph speed limit, (1-80 is 65mph). But our trucks are now governed at 62 and I didn’t think I could get in to much trouble and I wouldn’t feel like I was loosing too much time by sticking close to 58mph.

A short two hours later, just as the sun was beginning to light up the morning sky, I decided to pull into the next rest area. I could see there was one a short distance up the road and just as I prepared to turn on my blinker and disengage the cruise (set at 58mph) I found myself being treated to a show of flashing red lights that mysteriously appeared in my mirrors. Now, considering the fact that I’m in Ohio I wasn’t too surprised when I looked down and saw that I was running right at 59mph. I was on a slight decline and the truck had picked up a little speed I guess. I was still a little more than miffed that I was looking at the possibility of getting a speeding ticket for such a minor infraction. I’m not thinking go thoughts about Ohio at this moment.

I dutifully pulled off on the shoulder at the entrance of the rest area and was quickly instructed over the officers PA to pull into the rest area before stopping. That had been my first impulse, but it appeared to be a very full rest area and I had decided to take the first spot available. Per his instructions I went ahead and pulled into the rest area only to find it full, as I had suspected and proceeded to continue though and park on the shoulder of the highway on the other side of the rest area. It was a much worse place to park, but the officer made no further reference to the situation. I’m sure he realized the mistake, but wasn’t about to bring any attention to it.

Next was the standard, curt demand for license, registration, insurance, etc. I had all in hand before he made it to my door and handed them over. As he was thumbing through those I made my first inquiry. “Was I doing something wrong officer?� (I can’t believe I would be pulled over for 59mph). The answer was a short, “I don’t know, I’m just going to do a random safety inspection on your truck.� It finally dawned on me, this wasn’t a state trooper, (no blue lights, just red) it was just a DOT inspection vehicle. Lucky me, that’s what I get for taking a road less traveled. I end up sticking out like a sore thumb. At least I’m not getting a speeding ticket, that whole idea wasn’t sitting very well with me.

The timing of this situation couldn’t have been worse. I had only planned a one hour cushion for this delivery and the inspection process took 30mins of that. My next delay occurred when the officer returned from his vehicle with a whole new, extra friendly, nothing but smiles attitude. He sure had me confused. Before the inspection he was just your normal, no nonsense, no personality DOT guy. Now all of a sudden he was Mr. Happy. It didn’t take too long to figure out why when he asked me, “So, have you lived in Wilmington long?� The next 20 minutes was filled with idle chit chat about how he used to live there and he was stationed on the Coast Guard ship on the river downtown. It was a pleasant conversation, but my one hour of cushion time was quickly expiring and I finally managed to get rolling again with virtually no spare time available to make my delivery. And to top it off, he still wrote me up for a burnt out tail light on my tractor. I had known that it wasn’t working and had planed on getting it replaced next time I went through one of our shops. I was under the impression that tractor tail lights didn’t have to be operational as long as you were pulling a trailer. The officer told me that was true, but still a violation. If I had been bobtailing he said I would have been “red tagged�. That I knew, but the violation was still a bit annoying. It was just a fix it, so no big deal. I did get away with my bright light problem. That being, once the brights are turned on the right one goes out in 2-5 seconds. So when he had me going through the standard check, blinkers, brakes, etc I just flashed them real quick and that seemed to suffice.

I wasn’t speeding through Ohio prior to my little impromptu visit with my fellow North Carolinian, even though nether of us currently live there, but I was going to have to speed now. I wasn’t exactly burning up the country side, but in my experience, 62mph seems to be the thresh hold in Ohio. For the most part they won’t bother you at that speed, especially when you are traveling in a line of trucks. But I was still out here all by myself and if I came across an officer in a feisty mood I might just find myself in another situation. I was going to do everything in my power to arrive on time for my appointment.

I actually managed to pull into their gate 5mins early with a sigh of relief and headed off to my door for my live unload which was a very quick process and 30 minutes later I was getting my next single load offer that was going to the Atlanta area (949mi) with an arrive anytime drop/hook delivery. This was a pleasant surprise because freight can be iffy in the area, but I was rolling with no delay today.

All was not peaches and cream however. First off this was a load that picked up in Kalamazoo at a shipper I have been to four times prior and it has never been a pleasant experience. Some of the loads coming out of there are drop and hook, but they seem to be reserved for the Crete drivers that run on their dedicated fleet (General Mills). I have always been forced to live load and these guys are always behind schedule and it can take hours to get a door. Even after getting a door assignment, it can take another 2-3 hours to get loaded. I usually spend so much time there I end up taking my 10hr break on property, at least they have overnight parking available. This isn’t always a big deal when I show up after running for most of the day, but I will show up with plenty of time left on my clock for the day. Just to top things off, I was scheduled for a 19:00 pickup and I’m currently looking at a watch that tells me it is 09:00. I can’t say that I’m overly pleased with this situation. As usual, I will just show up early and see what I can do about getting loaded ahead of schedule.

Problem number two popped up shortly there after. Just as I was getting ready to head over to Kalamazoo the Qualcomm called for my attention with a familiar beep. Oh no, what can that be. Nothing much, just a message asking me to drop my empty trailer at a Kellogg’s in Battle Creek, “it’s on your way� I’m told. Well, yes it is on my way, and I’m in no real hurry, so that’s not a big deal but it does leave me with the nagging question of “How am I supposed to pickup my load with no trailer?� That is answered with a “there should be an empty trailer for you in Kalamazoo.�

“Should be�, I don’t like the sound of that one bit. Anyway, I do my duty and report to Kellogg’s with my empty trailer and let them know that I am dropping it off for them. That was fine with them, they just wanted me to back up to the garbage bin and sweep out my trailer before they inspected it. Nothing new here, Kellogg is picky about their trailers. Here’s where I encountered my next snag of the day. I have one of the newer trailers in the fleet, so condition wasn’t a problem, but what was a problem is what appeared to be a gallon of spilt paint spread all over the floor of the trailer. It had been there for some time and was completely dried, but that wasn’t good enough for them and the trailer was refused. Can’t say that I was too broken hearted about it. I let dispatch know and they thanked me for trying and I was on my way to Kalamazoo, trailer in tow.

That only cost me 30mins off of my log and a little bit of aggravation and I arrived at my pickup at noon for a 19:00 appointment. I was encourage to see that there wasn’t a line of trucks waiting to be loaded, very odd for this place, and I headed in to check on an early load. The dock foreman said he would fit me in if my product was ready, it was, and 10 minutes later I was docked and in fine spirits. I didn’t even have to wait the standard 2-3 hrs to get loaded. Strange days indeed! I was just able to knock out another 200 miles before my time was up, thus putting me within a days drive of our Marietta yard, and I was rolling Wednesday morning at 3am.

Why so early, well, I like it that way plus an early start meant that I could make Marietta by early afternoon and take a shot at getting my truck in the shop. The little things that needed to be fixed were turning into big things. My “new� truck has had a noticeable wobble in the steering that has resulted in my right steer tire being chewed up to the point of needing replacement. That one lasted a whole 15,000 miles. I also needed to get my little DOT write up for my tail light rectified.

I got the standard, “can’t get you in now, but might be able to get to you tonight� schpeal, and I told them I’d check back at 5. My load delivered anytime the following day just up the road so I could wait until the next day to get the work done, but I didn’t tell the shop that. If they knew that it would have been the next day. Luck was with me once again and the night crew went to work on it and got it out of the shop just before closing time. I was thrilled, I had a brand new steer tire, after six weeks my brights finally worked again without shorting out in 5 seconds and my A service was out of the way.

The joy of getting everything fixed was short lived however. I had enough time to get a 3hr nap before heading out Thursday morning. I hooked to my trailer and headed out of the yard to make my drop. I manage to make it a couple of blocks and my high beams burnt out again. Once I made it to the interstate I found that I still had my wobble in the front end. Looks like a new tire was considered a good enough fix, spend a dollar to save a dime. Guess I’ll be looking for a new steer in a month or so. Grrrr.

The drop went well and I was looking for another load by 4am. I was given a choice of two loads and grabbed one going to the St Louis area (636mi) that was a drop/hook pick up on the other side of town. It looked like a live unload, but it had an open delivery time the following day so I would be able to keep moving. The pickup was a pain in the back side. My trailer wasn’t where it was suppose to be and the best answer I could get from shipping was to look in any of the three other yards that they had scattered around the area. Each one of them had a gate that required a gate code, and of course the ones they gave me didn’t work, so back to the shipping office. “Sorry� they say, “they were just changed at midnight, here are the new codes.� Back I go, and of course my trailer is in the final yard. A bit annoying, especially because the magical hour of 7am was quickly approaching and I was really hopping to get through Atlanta before the rush hour traffic went into full gear. Once out of there the rest of my day went quit well and I finished my day with a solid 650 miles.


I was able to sleep in Friday morning and get some sorely needed sleep. The load wasn’t to deliver until after 7am, I guessed that is when they opened, and I showed up a little later than that to give them time to get situated. I was unloaded in short order and given a one load offer out of town. An 8am appointment PU on the south side of town going to OK (622mi) anytime tomorrow. OK, that’s a great load, but it’s now 7:55 and I will be driving in St Louis rush hour traffic. I let dispatch know that I am on my way, but will be late for the pickup. “No problem, just get there when you can.� Hopefully the customer will be as nonchalant.

I don’t know if it’s the gas prices keeping the traffic off of the roads or maybe it’s just that a lot of people or taking there summer vacations (or not working), but the rush hour traffic was amazingly light and I made it to my PU by 8:30. This place was definitely one of the more interesting places I’ve had to drive to. Before getting there I found myself driving though some kind of a historical park on very narrow asphalt roads in what appeared to be very residential roads that eventually turned into gravel roads and before I knew it I found myself driving along the Mississippi river. Very scenic to say the least. I eventually found my destination and bumped the dock. Odd place for a warehouse, but I guess I’ve seen stranger places in my days.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...er/LaMayPU.jpg

I was loaded within the hour and once again on my way with Oklahoma in my sights. I would have liked to make it to my drop before my day was up, but I just didn’t have enough hours to do it so I decided to hold up in Oklahoma City for the night. My main reason for stopping here was I thought it would be a good time to fit in some R&R. For anyone passing through and looking for a little entertainment, pull into the Petro or the old Pilot off of I-35 ex127. One mile west of there you will find an area know as “Bricktown�. It’s an area hotspot with a number of restaurants, a minor league ball park and a river walk fashioned after San Antonio’s river walk. Weekends are always hopping (especially during the summer months) and good for people watching. It is also the home of Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar�. They serve up a damn good cowboy sized meal there. On this particular night a baseball game was under way and they were also hosting a Reggae festival with some good bands pumping out the calypso music. Good times.

Not the greatest picture, but it gets the idea across.

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

Saturday was back to work and I dropped my trailer with no hassles and my next load offer gave me two choices. One going to MS (657mi) and the other to Wichita (358mi). I actually went with the short load. They both delivered on Monday morning, but the shorter load would allow me enough time to fit in a reset. Now, a reset was the last thing I needed at this point, I still had a good 20hrs left on my 70, but I decided I would take the hit now and start fresh next week. The way the MS load was set up I would be able to make the delivery, but I would not be able to fit in the reset, therefore I would be facing restricted hours in the forthcoming days. You know how I hate that. Taking the shorter run would also result in a horrible miles for the week, but that will happen when you take two resets in the period of one week. I guess they can’t all be perfect weeks.

I did have one nagging problem after dropping my trailer. While I was looking for an empty I came across one that had a blown tire on it. This was not an unnoticeable tire. It wasn’t just flat, it was shredded. I really get tired of drivers leaving trailers like this behind for others to deal with. I wanted to pull this trailer to take care of the repairs, but unfortunately I was going to a drop/hook customer 50 miles away with no repair shops along the way.

I hated leaving that trailer there, even though I wasn’t the one that dropped it, I felt some responsibility for it. With no real choice, I grabbed another trailer and headed over to my pickup. I arrived on the heals of another Crete driver and we checked in with the guard and went into the shipping office to get our paperwork. The other driver had arrived before me so I let him leaf through the bills first. I then took the stack from him and started looking for mine with no luck. Oh crap, all the loads at this customer were preloaded and no one was here except the guard. If I couldn’t find the paper work I would be up a creek. I sent a message off to dispatch and was told to “check the bills again�. Oh good, I would have never thought of that. Thirty minutes into this little headache I decided to walk over to the other Crete driver who was just getting ready to leave and asked him if I could take a look at his BOL. “Why?� he asks. “I just want to check something.� Sure enough, not only did he have his bills, but also mine. “Sorry ‘bout that!� What can I say; at least I avoided that nightmare.

A short hop up the road and I find myself in Wichita for the weekend. There was a Super 8 next to the truck stop and I got myself a room.





WEEK THIRTY ONE
Monday, July28th through Sunday, August 3rd
Miles include deadhead


Erie, PA to Brownstown, MI (final leg)………………………..264mi
Kalamazoo, MI to Covington, GA……………………………..949mi
Forest Park, GA to St Peters, MO………………………………636mi
LeMay, GA to Ardmore, OK……….…………………………..622mi
Durant, OK to Wichita, Ks……………………………………...358 mi


Total Paid Miles……………………………..2829 Miles

Actual Miles………….2880 Miles

2829 x .42 = $1188.18

Thanks for the info on Bricktown, will have to check that out.

Your offroading adventure brought back memories, will have to send you some pics, flatbedding to jobsites was always interesting.

Hey evertruckerr,

Just wondering if you got your APU yet? I know they are slowly filtering them through the fleet.

i drive for crete myself yes u can make that kinda of money as he has posted but i see that they r getting to the point where dispatchers are getting confrontational with drivers,they dont want get drivers home,freight is getting slow or they dont have any and when ur in cali they wont just simply get u out they'll have u run a load down towards la then get u out and lets not talk about terminal mgr's and the so called director over terminal mgr's so no im not happy with crete to me they are becoming another jb hunt or etc

An old Crete buddy of mine had been sitting in the midwest since Sunday. He called and was told the no frieght call back in 3 hours routine. He called back and was told he was number 18 on the list. He called back on Monday and the holiday crew didnt even show him as available and his name was off of the list and no more frieght for the day because of the holiday....

He finally got ahold of his terminal manager on Tuesday and asked WTF was going on......

He got a load, a whopping 400 miles in two day load......

Yup, got it about two weeks ago and I'm as happy as a hog in slop. I'm already set up with my Mircowave, hotplate, coffee maker, etc.

What a wonderful little contraption it is, although it is much noisier than I ever though it would be, but being an old refer puller I adjusted quickly.


http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...ucker/APU2.jpg

I also had to give up a fair amount of under bunk storage. I just went to Wal-Mart and got a couple of large plastic bins to put my extra stuff into and I keep it on the top bunk.

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

I don't think it's any big secret. Freight is painfully slow, the economy is very shaky and I'm afraid we may see things get worse. Things may slow down for us, but don't forget there are a whole lot of people that don't even have a job. Look at the Union companies, they are laying off drivers right and left.

I'm just coming off of a less than stellar week. I had unloaded in PA on Wednesday morning and then was told that we were very short on freight through the holiday weekend. I was given the option of going to a WalMart DC and running night loads for the rest of the week at a guaranteed $175/day (more if the mileage warranted). It beat sitting around so I took it. By Sunday night I was out of hours for the most part an was released by WalMart at which time I went to a local rundown mall to park because there were no truckstops in the area and that's where I spent the next 40hrs. This was only my 3rd layover in two years, but I realize there may be more in the future. It is the economy that is dictating this, not Crete or any other company. I do realize any particular company has to take some of the responsibility, but I'm conscious of the current reduction in freight overall.

It gets incredibly frustrating when you are sitting in a truck waiting for a load offer, not wanting to leave in case one pops up and is later pulled away because you didn't respond quick enough while taking a shower or getting a bite to eat. To top that off, it's hot and because you are forced to sit in the truck waiting for that precious load offer, you have to idle the truck. Then you have to listen to them complain about idling percentage. Although I know have an APU and it isn't an issue.

In my opinion, this is one of Crete's greatest faults. Their communication is awful in these situations. They just let you sit and stew in your frustration and boredom. I know dispatch is understaffed (the real problem) and dealing with too many angry drivers, especially weekends and holidays. In general it tends to create unnecessary animosity between drivers and dispatch.

It doesn't help that you can't even get so much as a vague response to the simplest requests. Just last weekend I sent what I felt to be a very simple question. "I'm ready for a load, is there any chance of getting something today or in the morning?" All I needed to keep me happy would have been a "working on it" or "not likely", any thing to let me know that I existed. That message and two others over a 36hr period were ignored. I had been released from the WalMart gig and had no idea if I had been reinstated on the national board. So I didn't even know if I was in line for a load and I couldn't even get a yes or no on that one until 24 hours later, at which time I was told "no, you'll have to call in the morning". Any bets on how well that went. Ignored messages was something that I was told in orientation would never happen. Dispatch is supposedly required to answer "all" messages, but that simply isn't the case on these heavy volume days. From a dispatchers point of view, I can understand to a point (it is their job however). I can't imagine what it would be like doing that job. I hold the company responsible for budget cuts where they do far more harm than good.

That little rant was brought to you from the remnants of my smoldering ill feeling fostered from a rather frustrating weekend.

With that said, I've found that it is in my best interest to just take a deep breath and not take it personal. But then I'm still getting the miles and paycheck to make that possible.


Now, as a counter point, for all the complaining I really don't have anything to complain about. Even with last week in which I'm looking at something in the neighborhood of 2650mi (a bit misleading because even though I was getting low miles on the WalMart thing, I was guaranteed a minimum of $175/day equal to 416mi), I still turned 13,667 miles for the month of August. But I didn't have any hometime this month either. Headed that way know.

Oh yeah, after my unwanted rest I was finally sent a 900mi run down to Atlanta which I will be delivering at 5am. What happens from there, who knows?

ct77 wrote:

I've heard a few of those stories from flatbedders, one of the reasons I tend to stick to the easy life pulling a dry box around.

Headborg wrote:

And a fair amount of luck. Don't forget, snakes bite if you get them riled up.

I must admit I've been a bit more successful than that, but as a general rule I say "sure, glade to help" and then ask for a favorable load after the fact (I often find that the favor is returned before I ask) That way it doesn't look like I'm making any demands up front. And even if it doesn't work out I'm not going to get too upset by it. That actually happen to me out of Atlanta last year. I ran a shag in the middle of my 14hr clock and it took longer than it should have and by the time I finished with it I was put in a position where I had to have dispatch pull an excellent load off of me and I ended up sitting for the rest of the day and wait for a morning load, and that one wasn't very good. Just the way it works out some times.

I would never turn one down, the way I look at it, it's just part of the job and I'll do what they ask me to do. If I started getting burned on a regular basis I would start making calls and talking to the responsible parties directly, but as of yet, that hasn't been necessary. As you pointed out, it is a TEAM and I do what I can to make it run smoothly.

That little statement gets directly to the heart of the matter. Not once have I ever spoken harshly on the phone or sent any message via Qualcomm that could be even remotely considered "out of line" (regardless of my current frame of mind, never bite the hand that feeds you). You must always realize that the person on the other end will interpret a message using their state of mind. The most innocent comment can be misinterpreted. A bit passive on my part, sure. But I need to maintain a good working relationship with everyone involved, regardless of the job I am doing.

Every situation is different, so a scrip isn't possible, but the key is this:

If you were on the other end, i.e. dispatcher, fleet manager, etc, how would you react if you were the one dealing with untold numbers of drivers making endless demands and threats of quitting. Simple words in communications like, "if possible";" how about"; "I know your busy, but"; "sorry to bother you"; "happy to help", etc. Some would call this brown nosing or worse. I call it being professional and courteous.

They are people just like you and I, they will also react to negativity in the same way. The difference is that they are the ones pulling the strings. Work and life is nothing more than a game. It's just a matter of knowing how to play it to your benefit.


I truly despise the the politically correct world, it's one of the main reasons that I now drive a truck. It significantly reduces the amount of interaction between that world and mine, but if you want to succeed in it, you must learn how to operate within its boundaries.

I would never out right refuse to do anything within the limits of my logbook, but that doesn't stop me from trying to wiggle out of a bad load by pleading my case. If I've had a particularly bad run of trips I will bring that up and respectfully request an alternative, but I always begin with "If you really need me to do this, I will, but"

Also, if I had been burned a number of times and felt like it was about to happen again, I wouldn't hesitate to send a message to that very fact. Simply let them know that, "I'm happy to help out, but I've was really burned the last time I did one of these, can you help cover my back so it doesn't happen this time around, it would be greatly appreciated, thx" kind of thing.

Sounds like the perfect line to me, why not ask them to, "throw me a bone if you have an extra one laying around". or "I'm really having a horid week, I sure could use a little help getting a decent load".

It never hurts to ask, but it ALWAYS hurts to demand.


And now, the absolute, most important thing!

Never react in anger, nothing good will EVER come of it. Take a very deep breath, exhale very slowly and put everything into prospective. I learned this the hard way some time ago. The only one that suffered in the long run was me.

I have given up trying to work with dispatch. It never seems to work out the way you expect it to. I can have a whole string of shitty loads and when I point this out as the reason why I am refusing another shitty load they just tell me that it's part of the job.

Hey bud, where have you been. Haven't seen you posting for awhile.

I know it's incredibly frustrating, the economy is hurting everyone and we are on the front line. We feel it before most people, I just hope it's not a sign of the future. It can still get a lot tougher out here. Let's hope not.

I got stuck in Philly and there was nothing over 300 miles and I had just finished about 4 of those little loads so I refused the load. I got the "Well then your just gonna have to sit" routine and I told them that was fine I needed to run to Walmart anyways....so I sat from noon to about 8pm and suddenly I had the choice of runs to Dallas, Mobile or Atlanta.

I guess they didnt like a company truck sitting too long and they knew I could afford to sit for days if i really got pissed off.

Last Wed morn (the 27th) I was sitting empty up in Cleveland when I got offered two crap loads. 300 some odd miles to Scranton or 400 miles to NJ. I refused both of them. I got on the phone with my term manager and found out that lincoln had a big powwow with the terminals. Jist of it was the freight situation in the NE (including Ohio) was going to be so bad over the holiday that any driver in the region that was even remotely close to the house was being allowed to go home. I ended up with an Allside load that ended me up 10 miles from the house thurs morn. I stayed home till Tues. If I had been stuck in the NE for 5 days due to no freight, well, it wouldn't have been pretty. Now I get to go down to Lincoln in the morning and pick up my brand new Cascadia. Was going back and forth between wanting a new truck or getting an 07' Century with a APU. Guess it doesn't really matter.

Doesnt your Cascadia come with an APU?

btw, let us know how well it is equipped or if it is another stripped down Crete Special.

Nope, all the Cascadia's are equipped with the battery packs that everyone is so in love with. They don't have inverters either.

Only the current 2007 and a few low mileage 2006 trucks are being outfited with the APUs.

I was really bummed when I was put into a used truck when my other one came up for trade in, but I'm very happy with it now that the APU is onboard.

Hey Bud! you're 11 days behind on this review....

either you're off running the wheels off- another 4000 mile week

or you're sick? injured? laid over out in middlle of no where?

on vacation again? another resort?


oh well, I'll bump it to the first page....

hold on......here comes the...

bump


p.s. What ever happened to GMH? ( George )

Week 32
 

WEEK THIRTY TWO
Monday, August 4th through Sunday, August 10th

OK, it’s Monday again and time to go back to work. I had just spent the weekend at Wichita’s finest Super 8. Definitely not the world’s greatest accommodations, but it felt good to get out of the truck for awhile.

Last weeks decision to take this 360 mile Wichita load meant that I was only going to end up with a little over 2800 miles for the week. This didn’t thrill me, but this load did offer me the opportunity to fit in a 34hr reset, even though I still had over 20hrs available on my 70 for this week. If I had taken the longer run of 658 miles to Mississippi I would have ended up with over 3100 miles for the week but due to the timing of the load offered to me I would not have been able to get in my reset. This would not have had an immediate impact on my available hours, but by the time Wednesday rolled around I would have been looking at hours that were severally restricted for a day or two and no chance of decent miles for the next week. It would also force me to sit around during the middle of the week when miles are far more plentiful and then leave my trying to scrape up a good run over the weekend. It is usually a good bet, if possible to work your schedule out so that you start running out of hours during the weekend to coincide with the delays that often show up in delivery schedules which makes it easy to fit in a reset to start the week of fresh. I choose to go with the reset and write this week off, at least the reset would give me the opportunity to turn some solid miles this week. Of course, there is no guarantee of this, but at least it’s a possibility.

Anyway, back to work. I have a load of Big Lots stuff with an 8am delivery. My hope is that I would be able to back up to the dock and get it off within an hour or so and be on my. That was my hope; reality of course was not so pleasant. The first hint of disappointment came when I got within a ½ mile of the address and I found myself stopped dead in my tracks. So was the train in front of me. I found myself getting a little more distressed as each minute passed. According to the load info, these loads had a high priority on them as far as on-time delivery. “They must not be late under any circumstances�, and they put a ridiculous amount of down time on them to make sure that couldn’t happen. Well, I had pulled out this morning at 7:30 for an 8am appointment. It was only 5 miles away, plenty of time, right? That’s what I thought, but a train scenario had never crossed my mind. If it was just passing through it would have been no problem, but this particular train was doing the back and forth thing as it was swapping out cars. It finally lumbered off and I was able to pull into the shopping center with about 3 minutes to spare (yup, shopping center, make that the second hint of a bad day). Outside of an occasional Home Depot or Wal-Mart type of place (which are well equipped to deal with truck load deliveries), I can’t recall ever making a delivery to an actual retail store while driving for Crete. My trepidation seemed to be well founded as I drove around the dilapidated, almost vacant shopping center without seeing a loading dock anywhere near the Dollar Store I was to deliver too.

Since there was no indication on the back of the building that let me know which dock I was to make my delivery too, I parked the truck in the back and proceeded to walk around the building to the front door. Of course it was locked and there appeared to be no one in sight and the store front sign stated that they opened at nine.

I had managed to arrive “On time� but had yet to talk to anyone and it was now well past the appointed hour of 8am. I could only assume that they where in the back of the store anxiously awaiting their delivery. I would have been happy to call, but the load info also stated that we were not to call a store directly under any circumstances and no phone number was supplied to make sure that would not happen. About that time a car pulled into the parking lot and out stepped your standard Dollar Store cashier. Finally, here is someone that can at least point me in the right direction; at least that’s what I was counting on. Turned out that I was being a little more than optimistic, the best she could do was knock on the front door and wait like me. Another 10 minuets later a store manager pulled into the lot and informed me that I needed to go to the door around back, he said it was marked. That’s odd; I was back there and didn’t see any sign. Oh well, I must have missed it the first time around. With that I walked around the building again, and what do you know. I did find a door marked “Big Lots�. It was scribbled on a standard double steel door with a permanent black marker. “How did I miss that the first time around?� Oh no, no loading dock! It’s been years since I’ve had to deal with this, but it looks like the good ol’ roller conveyor belt.


Not my load, just an old picture to get the idea across.
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...erconveyor.jpg

I pounded on the door and waited for an answer; 5 minutes later I pounded again and finally had someone open the door. A gruff old man who didn’t seem overly pleased about anything life had to offer grumbled something inaudible and pointed to a spot nearby. I assumed that was where he wanted me to back the end of my trailer and I did so. Another ½ hour passed (apparently they weren’t as concerned about the 8am delivery time as the rest of the world was) and someone else came out to get the paperwork from me. He did a quick check of the three seals on this silly load and instructed me to open it up. Nothing but horror awaited me. This trailer was packed from wall to wall and floor to ceiling with boxes of all sizes and not a pallet to be seen anywhere. Sure enough, this was a hand unload (not by be, thank god) and out came the conveyor. I was told to make myself comfortable and they would let me know when they were done.

I’ve never seen such a sorry bunch of 5 guys with zero ambition. I guess that’s why they work at a Big Lots. I didn’t think it was possible to move that slowly. There were two in the truck, two in the store and one standing next to the conveyor touching the boxes as they went by and occasionally pushing some of them towards the center of the conveyor to keep it from falling off, which seemed to be quite a challenge to him because numerous boxes still managed to jump to their death. It always seemed to be a box with fragile content in it; I heard the tall tail sigh of shattering glass more than once. It was an amazing display of incompetence, or more appropriately, indifference. He was no more that 2-3 feet away at any one time and couldn’t manage to prevent the devastation I was seeing. I was sitting on a bundle of compacted cardboard boxes 50ft away and could have prevented most of them from falling, but it wasn’t my place, I just watched in disgust.

Once I realized what I was faced with, I assumed I was looking at a 3 hour unload. In hindsight that would have been great because it ended up being much longer than that. What started out being a 8am delivery appointment left me with an empty trailer at the fine hour of 2pm. My whole plan of getting in a restart and kicking the week off with a fresh start Monday morning with the hopes of grand miles was getting off to a rocky start. An early unload would have made it possible to get a load out in the morning, but now that it is after noon, I’m a bit worried that I will end up with a early morning pickup the next day or if I do pick up a load this afternoon, chances are it will not have a favorable delivery time. All I can do is put in my MT call and see what happens.

I was pleased to get a single load offer that picked up here in Wichita any time today, (this usually means it’s a drop/hook) and delivers just south of Pittsburgh (1040mi) any time Wednesday (or Tuesday), but since I’ve just spent the better part of 7hrs getting my last load off, I will not be able to get there until Wednesday. At least it’s an anytime delivery, so I won’t have to sit around waiting for an appointment time. Sitting around in PA after the delivery may be a problem though, haven’t had the greatest luck in those parts lately. I’m a little concerned about that, but there is nothing I can do about it at the moment other than hope for the best.

My pickup was only a few miles away and it was a customer that I had been to a few times before. They are one of our drop/hook customers and I was looking forward to grabbing my trailer and trying to make a reasonable day out of it. That plan was shot out of the water when I pulled in and was told to back into door 6. Apparently they didn’t have any empty trailers to preload so I would have to live load this one. Perfect, I guess there is a reason why Mondays have a bad reputation. I backed to the dock and soon realized they were in no hurry to get me loaded and I proceeded to sit for another 2hrs before I was finally on my way out of town. For the most part this day was a bust, but I still had a little over 5hrs of drive time and manage to put in 350mi before shutting down for the night in the middle of MO. What a marvelous day this turned out to be.

Tuesday was a day for redemption, I just wanted to get going and rack up some miles. I had a bad start, but I still have plenty of time to turn this week around. Between my reset and my less than productive Monday I wasn’t in the mood to waist any more time and for the most part drove out my 11hrs without stopping with the exception of a fuel stop and a short leg stretch in between and was able to make it to within 60mi of my drop and put in for the night.

Wednesday started out as soon as my log book would allow and I arrived at my destination within an hour, dropped my trailer and went looking for an empty trailer. There were plenty to pick from and I made a bee line for the newest, cleanest trailer but soon found it had a blow and shredded tire on it. I really wish drivers would take responsibility for their own problems instead of dumping them off on other drivers. I put in an MT call using a different trailer. If I got a load offer with a live load I was going to take the trailer with the bad tire and get it fixed, however, it I got a drop/hook load I would take the other trailer. It would do no good to drop a trailer with a bad tire at another customer.

I was thrilled to get a two load offer within minutes, looks like PA isn’t going to get the best of me today. One going to IN (700mi) and the other going to Atlanta (850mi). Both had appointment deliveries and I was just getting ready to take the Atlanta load when I noticed that it didn’t deliver until Friday and the IN load delivered Thursday. Close call there. I went ahead and took the IN load and received my load info shortly there after. This was indeed a drop/hook pickup, so I had to leave the trailer with the bad trailer behind.

Within 30mins of my arrival I was headed out of the gate and on my way to my next load. It was a good 700mi run, but it wasn’t scheduled to pickup until 12:30 and I found myself at their gate by 11am. The load wasn’t ready and I was told to park along side the road and they would let me know when it was ready. So there I sat with a handful of other drivers waiting for my load. As the day progressed that line of other drivers slowly dwindled as they were called in by the shipping office until I was the only one left, including some of the trucks that showed up after me. I had tried to contact shipping via CB a couple of times, but like the other drivers that had tried that I was ignored. But I was now the only one sitting and my patience had worn out (it was now 2:30 and my load was currently 2hrs late). I called on the CB repeatedly until I was answered by a very short tempered individual who seemed to take great pleasure in telling me that it was ready two hours ago but I failed to answer the CB when called. That was complete and utter BS, my radio was turned up and I heard every call made to every driver in the lot. This jerk simply messed up. I was about to ask him why he didn’t bother repeating the ready call, but since he lied once I couldn’t see any point in making him do it again. At times like this it is just better take a deep breath and move on. After all, it was only a few hours of my time wasted due to some moron’s incompetence.

I pulled through the gate and got my trailer, went inside to get my paperwork and bit my tongue while dealing with the *hole behind the window. I decided no words were far better than speaking my mind. A quick check of the paper work and sure enough, the load was ready 30 minutes after I arrived 3hrs ago, the bozo behind the glass was just on a power trip. That’s truck driving. This little debacle had cost me a few hours, but in the grand scheme of things nothing was lost. This load had a scheduled delivery and I still had a few hours of dead time on it, more of a frustration thing.

The rest of the day went well enough and I held up short at our Columbus yard. I couldn’t have gone much further anyway and I though I would go ahead and stop at our yard to top off the fuel tanks and park for the night. I had a craving for crab legs and walked over to the Red Lobster for just that. It was another lack luster day of 430 miles, but tomorrow held the promise of a better day. Doesn’t it always?

I didn’t have to get started all that early on Thursday because I was looking at an appointment delivery in Evansville, IN at 15:00 and didn’t want to start my 14hr clock too soon. With that in mind I slept in a bit and took off at 9am and had an uneventful trip down to Evansville and managed to arrive about 45mins early. It was a live unload as suspected and I backed it up to the dock and the unloading started almost immediately. With that I went ahead and put in my MT call while I was being unloaded so that I could get the info on my next load. This rarely happens, but I had been sent a pre-planed load earlier in the day and already knew where I was headed. Sure wish they were all like that. As it turned out the early MT call didn’t do me any good because the Qualcomm was acting up today and I didn’t get my load info before I was empty. There was another truck waiting for the door so I decided to head on down towards Owensboro for my next load. At least I knew what direction to head. Sure enough, as soon as I had started driving down the road the dumb thing beeped. I had to pull over somewhere along the way anyhow to clean out the trailer. The last load had a bunch of lumber nailed down to the floor to secure the load and the guy who unloaded it didn’t put any effort into pulling most of them up, so I had a little fun ahead of me. I pulled over in a local truckstop and spent the next half hour pulling nails out of the floor. Oh, what fun on a hot, humid day.

I arrived at my pickup for what I assumed would be a quick drop/hook as most of our other Kimberly Clark loads are, but not today. Instead I was giving a set of directions to a secondary warehouse where I was to live load along with a CB channel to use in order to find out where they wanted me when I got there. That was fairly painless and I was backed to a dock soon enough. I went inside to make sure everything was set at which time was asked to slap some barcode stickers on each box as the forklift driver loaded them into my truck. He said it would speed things up a bit which was just fine with me. Forty minutes later I was headed down the road on my way to Mobile, AL to drop my load as soon as I could get there. I ran out the rest of my hours and shutdown in the somewhere in middle of TN after a reasonable 570mi day. Not great, but it beats what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days.

Friday had me looking at a good 400 miles to my delivery point and with the exception of a quick 10min stop for fuel I drove it straight through with the hopes of getting a load out of AL before the day was done. I usually have good luck getting loads out of that part of the country and I was still hoping to make a good week out of this. Things were starting to look better. I just hoped that there would be an empty trailer for me when I got there. I had dropped trailers here before and it can be a hit or miss kind of place. Today was a hit because I had a choice of about 15 trailers after dropping my load.

My MT call garnished me a single load offer that I was to pickup at 9pm 200 miles away and delivered near Kansas City (917mi) on Tuesday morning. Other than the miles, there was nothing good about this load. First of all, it was a live load that was scheduled to pick up at 9pm and my 14hrs would be up at 9:30. How can that possibly work out? Then I had to deal with a Tuesday delivery that will leave me sitting around all day Sunday and Monday. While I was lamenting over this annoying load I got a message over the QualComm to “pickup this load and Tcall it in Memphis, we will get you a load out when you get there�. Well that sure relieved some tension, now all I had to do was figure out how I was going to pickup the load with such a tight schedule. I figured I would arrive early and see what I could do about getting loaded before my appointment time. I went ahead and accepted the load with a wait and see what happens attitude.

The load assignment also had some encouraging news; the customer had overnight parking available, so even if I can’t get loaded early I don’t have to worry about driving anywhere after my 14hr clock expired. For what started out to be an absolutely lousy load it actually turn out to be quite favorable.

Off I went and arrived at the shipper a little after 7pm. I was a couple of hours early, but they assigned me a door anyway and had me loaded in about an hour. I had the option of parking here for the night, but opted to drive about 20 miles down the road to a nearby truckstop to put in for the night so that I could get a hot meal.

Saturday started with Memphis in my sites. I was thankful that I was going to be Tcalling this load there but I wasn’t so sure that I would get a load out once I did so. I also had to worry about the availability of an empty trailer. So much uncertainty, what’s a guy to do? I had a solid 400 miles ahead of me and most of the trip was on non-interstate routing so it took a little longer than desirable and I finally arrived at 3pm. Probably too late to get a load out today, but I guess it beats sitting around all weekend. Maybe I shouldn’t start counting my chickens; I don’t have a load yet. I dropped my trailer and was rewarded with one empty trailer in the whole lot, but one is all I needed. It will go a long way in getting me a load. I went ahead and put in my MT call and awaited a load offer.

The load offer was very slow in coming as I had suspected and I pulled out the broom to sweep out the trailer while I waited. I also did a general pre-trip on the trailer and was annoyed to find yet another flat tire. At least this one was intact and still seated on the rim. I pulled out my tool box and air hose and went to work finding the culprit. It turned out to be a single nail which I pulled out and I then plugged the hole and filled the tire with air. There, good as new!

Once I had everything back in its’ appropriate place I jumped back in the cab with a hopes of finding a load offer. No such luck, just what I was afraid of. I may have been able to dodge a bullet by dumping my last load here, but I still had to face the problem of getting a load out of town on a weekend. There was a Pilot just down the road so I headed that way and waited. I eventually received a load offer and was surprise to have a choice of two loads. Unfortunately they both picked up the following morning. Looks like today is a bit of a bust, just 400 miles, but tomorrow is looking good.

My first load offer was going to the Columbus (600mi) with a Monday afternoon delivery. Not great. The other load offered was going to the Dallas area (591mi) and it had a two stop delivery with more agreeable delivery times, but the Columbus customer was one that I am familiar with and I know that I will be able to drop the load there Sunday night when I arrive. I accepted the Columbus load and planned on picking up my preloaded trailer at the prescribed hour of 7am. That plan change later in the night. Just as I was getting ready to go to bed I got a message that my preloaded trailer was ready to go. By this time my 14hr clock was toast, but it was nice to know that I wouldn’t have to wait until 7am to get my load.

Knowing that my trailer was ready made it impossible for me to sleep past 2am. I had set the alarm for 4am, but I found myself wide awake and the thought of a loaded trailer waiting for me was too much to deal with, so I headed on over. The drop/hook process was quick and painless and I found myself in Columbus by 3pm. I headed on over to the customer a day early and was allowed to drop my trailer and be on my way. I now found myself at our Columbus yard with 1 hour left of my 70. I put a work order in to get the truck worked on again, (nothing serious, just a number a nagging problems that keep popping up) and headed into the terminal to do some laundry and take a nice, long hot shower.



WEEK THIRTY TWO
Monday, August 4th through Sunday, August 10th
Miles include deadhead

Wichita, KS to Smithton, PA...........................................1040m i
Meadville, PA to Evansville, IN.........................................698mi
Owensboro, KY to Theodore, AL.......................................631mi
Dothan, AL to Memphis, TN..............................................63 7mi
Memphis, TN to Columbus, OH.........................................600mi

Total Paid Miles............................................. ...........3606 Miles

Actual Miles..............................3670 Miles

3606 x .42 = $1514.52

As I had hoped, putting in a reset at the beginning of the week made it possible to get some decent miles this week. But like a few weeks ago, it once again took and entire 7 days to burn my 70 hrs instead of the more desirable 6 day week. What that inevitably means is that next week may not be so good. Things just aren’t firing on all cylinders (kind of like my Detroit on the hills).

Thanks for thinking of me.

I wish I was only 11 days behind, more like a month. I'm trying.

The rest of your guess' were close, almost batting a 1000.

Yes, I am just coming off of another good week, although it was closer to 3800 miles and I was finding it hard to make time to get online.

I was at home for 7 days and the wife and I took a short 3 day vacation in Vegas. The remainder of my home time was spent pretending I don't drive a truck for a living.

I did manage to catch a bug of some kind and have been sleeping whenever I wasn't driving and the times I did think about getting online I couldn't get a signal.

Now I'm going to head on over to your thread and see how Heartland has been treading you. :D

GMH is a mystery.

You know, there are not many people out there with as much patience as you have. I'm so glad to hear there are still patient people out there. Delays are part of the job, even though they are never at the right time. Even when my wife starts complaining about something, I manage to tell her "thats truck drivin'".

Week 33
 

WEEK THIRTY THREE
Monday, August 11th through Sunday, August 17th


Well, I am coming off of another reset which means I have a fresh 70 hrs clock to run with. The only problem I have with this reset is that it is now Tuesday. It took me 7 days to burn my hours last week which forced me to take my reset on Monday. More often than not this results in lower miles in the following week because in all likelihood I’ll get a load at the end of the week that delivers on a Monday with an excessive amount of downtime on it which will either force me or at least encourage me to fit in a reset during the weekend in the hopes of increasing my miles in the following week. This isn’t always the case, but it seems to be more of a rule than not. Time will tell.

Prior to going to bed on Monday night I had sent a message into dispatch to let them know, “I’ll be ready to run by 2:30am, do you have a load offer or a load you need shagged in the morn, or should I check back in the morning?� I could have simply sent a ready call in at 2:30 (or waited until a more civil hour) to let them know I was ready to go at that time, but if I did that and there would be a good chance that no loads would be available until 6am or so anyway and I would find myself wide awake much earlier than need be.

The early ready call helps me in many ways. First, I will know when I have to wake up and therefore I can plan out my sleep time frame. Second, it puts me further up on the load board. If I wait until the morning it may take longer to get a load out. Third, it opens me up to the possibility of doing a shag load. Basically, there are seldom loads available to run at 2 in the morning and I would find myself sitting until 6 or 7 waiting to pickup a load anyway. If there was a shag load in the yard, I could spend the early morning hours doing one of those and pick up a few extra dollars and be empty and ready for my next load by 5am or so. It also puts the dispatchers in a good frame of mind when it comes time to offer me a load out. I don’t ask for a good load out at times like this, but I firmly believe that it puts me in their good graces. More often than not it seems to work out to my benefit.

Sure enough, within a few minutes I received a load offer and it was a shag. There was a trailer sitting in the yard that needed to be delivered 50mi west of town by 5am. That offer was followed by a message from dispatch, “This is a hot load that must be delivered on time (that means dispatch was thrilled to find someone to dump this load onto), if you can cover this load for me, I’ll get you a good load out when you are empty.� Just what the doctor ordered. I accepted the load and sent off a message to the effect of, “You got it, load will be delivered on time.� Ten minutes later I was sent a preplan for a load that was sitting on a preloaded trailer here in town and destine for Pauls Valley, OK (1035mi) with a wonderful drop/hook delivery that I would be able to drop a day early. Great way to start out the week.

One other thing I should note that I forgot to mention in last weeks update. Last Thursday I had sent a message off to my Fleet manager inquiring about getting my APU. Letters had been posted in the terminals to address the subject. What it basically said was that all 2007 trucks would be getting APUs along with a select number of 2006 trucks that had less than 250,000 miles on them. Prior to that I had know that all 2007 trucks would be getting them, but the mileage limit thing was news to me. This threw up a red flag to me because my 2007 truck currently had around 235,000 miles on it. Up to this point I had been content on waiting my turn for an APU because the better part of summer was over and I don’t do any idling during the fall and winter months anyway, but I sure was looking forward to the inverter function and wouldn’t mind the ability to utilize the A/C either. I have not had a problem staying under the company mandated 30% idle time, but there were nights when I would have enjoyed A/C over a fan.


Anyways, I was worried that even though I had a 2007 truck, that if my truck was to reach 250,000mi before receiving an APU I might not get one. I didn’t want to take that chance and decided to be proactive about getting one installed as soon as possible. With that I sent off a message to my Fleet Manager pointing out my concerns. The response was quick and he let me know that he would see what he could do. I assumed that would be the last I would hear of it for awhile, but within 30mins I got another message stating, “Sorry, APUs and pets don’t mix.� This one threw me for a loop, was he calling me an animal? Because I sure don’t have any pets on this truck. It then occurred to me that the previous driver of this truck had a small dog and the computer must show that there is still a pet on this truck. I sent off another message assuring him that I do not have a pet, never have and never will, but that the previous driver did have one. That was answered with a “That’s what I was thinking, I’ll take care of it�, and that was the last I had heard of it. Update from the future: after getting my APU, the statement regarding the pet thing still didn’t make any sense because when I was getting my APU installed there was a driver there with a dog that was also having an APU installed. Maybe the company didn’t know he had one or maybe my Fleet Manager was mistaken about the policy.

Back to my work week. My reset was up and I hooked to the shag load and headed on over to Springfield where I was to live unload at a grocery store warehouse. I considered myself lucky to be in and out in 2hrs (lightning speed for one of these places, and an easy $55) and headed back to Columbus to pickup my preloaded trailer. It was ready to go as promised and the rest of my day was a peaceful drive towards my final destination and I shut down south of St Louis with a solid 600 miles for the day.

Wednesday had me looking at about 500mi to my drop and I got an early start at 2:30am or so. I could have started later in the day, but an early start would get me to my drop before noon and greatly increase my chances of getting a load out on the same day. If I were to show up later in the afternoon I might have to contend with a pickup the following morning. Even if that were to happen, I would have 500mi for the day, but if I can fit in 650mi, all the better.

I did arrive before noon and put in my MT call and received yet another single load offer. How I miss the multi load offers of more prosperous days. This load was to pickup the next day, but it was in Muskogee 165 miles away and I would just be able to make it there tonight before running out of hours. The interesting thing about this load is that at first glance it wasn’t a particularly good run. I was to deliver it in Omaha on Friday morning resulting in a whopping 440mi for Thursday. I was surprised to get a load going to Omaha because for what ever reason I never get a load going in that direction because most of those runs go to drivers that run out of Lincoln. Then it occurred to me, APUs are installed at the Carrier dealership in Omaha. I hadn’t heard anything from my Fleet manager, but I was getting a little excited.

With that, I sent a message off to him asking if that was indeed the reason I was going to Omaha. The reply, “I’ve routed you thru Omaha to get your APU, you will be getting instructions shortly�. Hot damn!

Thursday was an effortless day in which I picked up my preloaded trailer and headed on over to Omaha. I was allowed to drop my trailer at the customer which was two blocks away from the Carrier dealer. I stopped by to drop off my truck but was told that I wasn’t scheduled for an install until the following day. Normally they would have taken me then, but they had an abnormally large number of Crete trucks in that day (12 I believe), so I headed over to the truckstop for the night. First thing Friday morning I went back to Carriers and dropped off the truck. At that time I was told that the shuttle would be there to take us to the hotel at 11am (would have been nice to get that little bit of info yesterday). No big deal I guess, I would be sitting around in the truck regardless of where I was at. At least I had plenty of time to relocate my belongings. I knew a lot of stuff would have to be moved, but I wasn’t exactly prepared for how much area needed to be clean out. Not only did I have to pull everything out of the center cubby under the bunk, but also everything from the passenger side cubby and all belongings from the passenger side closet area (ground to ceiling). Apparently they need that cleared out in order to run ventilation hoses. It sure made for a large pile of stuff on the top bunk, but I was all for it. The idea of having an APU was worth it.

This was going to be a 24hr process and we were told that we would be picked up from the hotel at 11am the following morning. Fine with me, I’ll be getting a hotel room and won’t have to pay for it. They set us up at the Roadway Inn on the other side of the interstate. Not the grandest place, but it was clean and it got me out of the truck for a day.

Saturday morning came around soon enough and I was anxious to get going. Weekends are always questionable when it comes to getting a decent load and I didn’t really want to wait until noon to put in my ready call. The Carrier dealer had eight Crete trucks to work on and I realized that they had to finish one before the other, so I hoped that there might be a chance that mine was ready to go and made a call to find out. No luck, mine was still under construction. Oh well, I’ll just sit it out and see what happens. The shuttle finally showed up and we made our way over to see what our new homes where like. We were all curious as to how much room we had left under our bunks (not much). Since my truck was one of the first ones in the previous days, I assumed it would be ready to go, but oddly enough, seven trucks were done and one was still in the shop, yup, mine. It was another hour before I got the keys, but I was once again ready to roll.

APU
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...ucker/APU1.jpg

Space usage underbunk
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...underbunkb.jpg

I had low expectations when I put in my ready call, but was delighted when I got a run going to Oakdale, CA (1609mi). Not only did it have great miles, it was on a preloaded trailer sitting in our Lincoln yard and it had an anytime Tuesday delivery. If it could be delivered anytime Tuesday I assumed it could be delivered Monday and set out to do just that. No downtime and I now had a truck with an APU. No more worrying about California’s idling laws.

I arrived in Lincoln to get my trailer and was not at all pleased to find that it was nowhere on the lot. My mindset was that this could mean one of two things. The driver that was to Tcall this load here had not arrived yet or someone else had picked up the load either through their own mistake or dispatch may have put in on someone else. Either way, I was screwed. I made another pass (three actually) and came up with the same results. No trailer. A message to dispatch confirmed that the trailer had not been dispatched to someone else, “It should be there, it was Tcalled two days ago�. Just as I was about to give up hope it occurred to me that I had failed to look in one place, the shop. Sure enough, there it was in a shop bay with a bunch of wiring and airlines pulled out of it. Apparently the previous driver had wrote it up for some problems, (probably the reason it was Tcalled) and the shop was just now getting to it. Even though I was looking at a couple of hours of down time, the mystery was solved and it provided me with ample time to readjust the contents of my truck to fit in around my new APU. I was also able to read through the manual and figure out how the thing worked and wondered around the yard for a while to check out the new trucks on the lot. There were a few hundred new trucks lined up ready for assignment and included the new Freightliners and Internationals. The interiors of both trucks seem to be greatly improved, especially the latter. I had assumed I would get one of these when I traded in my old truck, but the new trucks were not yet in when my truck came up for trade in. As a result I ended up in a used truck. I was annoyed at the time, but since all the new trucks are outfitted with battery packs for auxiliary power, I am now much happier with my APU.

New trucks sitting at the Lincoln yard:
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...Newtrucks3.jpg; http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...Newtrucks1.jpg

Once my trailer made its way out of the shop I hooked to it and took off. My schedule was pretty much open for the next few days. I could take my time and have it there anytime Tuesday or push it and be there somewhere around noon on Monday with enough time left to get started on my next load. As custom I was all for the “get there as soon as possible� approach, although I did make time to stop off at the nearest Wal-Mart to pickup some new supplies to go with my APU. First on the list was a Microwave (no more cold meals for me) at the barn burning price of $35. I also grabbed a toaster and a small hotplate and a number of supporting implements to make my life on the road a little more pleasurable. The ability to cook a meal in the truck greatly increases my options when I’m shopping for food.

Sunday was a day of mindless driving that ended 670mi later somewhere in NV and culminated with a nice hot meal in the truck. There was a restaurant available, but my self prepared meal saved me a good chuck of change, as will many in the future.






WEEK THIRTY THREE
Monday, August 11th through Sunday, August 17th
Miles include deadhead

Columbus, OH to Springfield, OH...............................45mi
Obetz, OH to Pauls Valley, OH................................1035mi
Muskogee, OK to Omaha, NE...................................605mi
Lincoln, NE to Battle Mountain, NV(first leg).............1231mi


Total Paid Miles............................................. ......2916 Miles (lost day to APU install)

Actual Miles………….2973 Miles

2916 x .42 = $1224.72

Not my greatest week by any stretch of the imagination, but considering I had to take my reset on Monday and I lost a day in Omaha while my APU was being installed I am more that content with the results, not bad after sitting idle for two days. Next week may suffer though because I will be running out of hour in the middle of the week which may end up biting me in the butt.

Week 34
 

WEEK THIRTY FOUR
Monday, August 18th through Sunday, August 24th

It’s a new week, but the same grind. My Monday is just an extension of my current trip. I have a load scheduled to deliver anytime Tuesday, but I’m in a position to have it there sometime around 3pm today. I have a very heavy load of plate tin going to a can making factory and even though it has an anytime delivery, I have to assume it’s going to be a live unload. I just don’t get the feeling that I will be dropping this trailer. Not a big deal, I will arrive with enough time to deal with a live unload and still have time to get started on a new load or find a good parking spot if need be.

My drive over Donner pass is actually quit enjoyable which is in stark contrast to my previous trip over it last winter. I could get used to this no snow thing. My only complain would be the occasional 20mph hills that I had to deal with. These low horsepower trucks work fine on the flatlands, but the mountains tend to make a tedious day of it.

I eventually made it to the downhill side and once again found myself at 20mph with my 80,000# load, (don’t want the breaks to heat up). It’s kind of fun to get into real mountains again, especially during the summer months. Crete usually waits until the dead of winter to send me in that direction. Those Appellations on the other side of the country just don’t offer up much of a challenge. My progress was further hampered by two construction zones (the truck chains on this road really chew it up) that ended up costing me about an hour of delay and I finally found myself at the receiver a little later than I would have liked, But I still had plenty of time to work on getting another load if one was available.

As I had suspected, this was a live unload and after going to the wrong warehouse (the one I had directions too) I made my way to the other one and backed into their only dock and waited for the forklift driver. I wish I had taken a picture of this load, but I didn’t think of it in time and didn’t want to go back out to the truck to get the camera. This was one of the smallest maxed out loads I had ever hauled. I was grossed out at #80,000, but I had a total of 8 pallets in the trailer. Four up front and four over the tandems. Each pallet had a stack of tin plates that were no more than 18� high and maybe 3 ft square at best. Heavy stuff!

The unload went very quickly, as most 8 pallet loads do and I put in my MT call. This was answered with a single load offer that picked up in Sacramento, 75 miles up the road, drop/hook, and delivered to UT (784mi) in the early morning hours of Wednesday. For the most part a very good run with one small exception; it had a pickup time of 10:30 to Midnight. My problem is that I was currently looking at my watch and its 4pm and my 14hrs will be up at 8pm. Oh, what to do. I could have refused the load at this time simply by telling them it picked up after my 14hrs was up, but I will usually try to come up with a plan of action before doing that, especially when it is a favorable load. It’s a Campbell’s soup load, so I realize it is probably a drop and hook load (every load I have pulled for Crete from other Campbell’s has been). I was also going under the assumption that it is a preloaded trailer and if I show up early I will probably be able to pick it up and still have enough hours to get out of town and find a place to park on one of the pull out on Donner Pass. They are all over the place and commonly used by drivers for overnight parking. If the load isn’t ready I can always drop my empty trailer and bobtail out (if they don’t have parking available) and find a corner to hide in somewhere in the sounding area. If it’s a live load and if they won’t load me early I will have a problem. I accept the load and head that way.

Upon arriving at the shipper I was instructed where to drop my empty, (yeah, it is drop/hook) and pointed toward the shippers office. I learned that my trailer was not ready and probably would not be until its scheduled time, but I could park on their lot and they would pound on the door when it was loaded. An inquiry as to me being able to take a 10hr break and was greeted with an affirmative and I ask that I not be disturbed and I would return to the office at 3am to get my paperwork after my break. They had no problem with that and everything was set, it all worked out just dandy.

Once my 10hrs were up I signed off on the BOL and hooked to the trailer. My Tuesday started out with me be a little behind the 8ball. Due to my late start out of the Campbell’s plant I was tight on time, but with minimal stops I would still be able to make it with about 30mins to spare. Other than another slow crawl over the mountains the day went by uneventfully and I was able to pull into Salt Lake City for the night.

I got started as soon as legally possible on Thursday and made it to my customer with 20mins to spare. A little tighter than I like things to be, but on time none the less. It was a Wal-Mart and we all know what happen when you try delivering late to one of these places. It’s definitely to ones advantage to be there on time. I was surprise to be given drop instructions because this load had a specific delivery time of 05:15 attached to it which usually denotes a live unload, but I wasn’t about to stir the waters and did as told and put in my empty call.

A load offer followed shortly and I was all giggly from it. A drop/hook load nearby going to South Carolina (2100mi) with an open delivery anytime Sunday. That means I will get killer miles for the week, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3800mi and I would be able to get my reset in along the way. My hours were starting to get tight and this was the perfect load. I could run out every single hour, reset, and then drop my load early Sunday with a substantial number of hours left in my day to rack up the miles. Hot Damn! Life is good.

I headed out to get my trailer and spent the rest of the day whistling a happy tune as I counted my blessings and enjoyed the scenic drive through Utah and Wyoming. This drive is so much more enjoyable in the summertime.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...tahscenery.jpg; http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...nersunrise.jpg

I managed to make it to Sydney, NE for the night and parked at a Wal-Mart and went in to restock my supplies.

The next day brought a whole new attitude into my world; all the joy that I had been immersed in during the previous day was soon to become a distant memory. When I woke up on this fine morning I noticed that I had a message waiting for me on the QualComm. Apparently the customer had called Crete and requested that my load be delivered ASAP. They were out of stock and it was a “we need it yesterday� kind of thing. Well a hot load and a reset doesn’t work out too well and the message was asking me “how far can you get this load today, we need to re-power it for an earlier delivery�. My plan had been to make it to Kansas City to do my reset and then finish off my delivery. Now it was looking like I would be Tcalling my load there and then be stuck looking for a new load out Saturaday morning. I went from looking at a week with 3800 miles to a week where I would be asking for a load out of KC on a Saturday morning and a very strong possibility of getting a much shorter load out that didn’t deliver until the Monday. This has always been the biggest problem with doing resets in the middle of the week. It doesn’t make for a very productive week when it works out like that. I didn’t have any choice in the matter. There was no way I would be able to get this load to its’ destination when they wanted it there, so I drove out the remaining 550mi to KC and
Tcalled the load and started my reset. I have never had a load pulled out from under me here at Crete and the first time it happened hurt. That’s truck driving.

I spent my Friday at the KC yard and caught up on my laundry and later in the evening I went looking for an empty trailer so that I could get a load out Saturday morning. There were a few in the yard and I hooked to what appeared to be the cleanest one available and sent a message off to dispatch. “I’ll be ready to go at 02:30, do you have a load to offer or need a shag done in the morning (little chance of a shag on a Saturday morning)�. The reply was slow in coming (bad sign) and just what I had expected. “No loads available at this time, check back in the morning.� This had all the signs of a bad day ahead and the feeling was only compounded by the fact that if my load hadn’t been pulled from me I would have had a worry free 670mi day. Instead I was looking at a doubtful Saturday.


There was no point in worrying about it, just roll with the punches and see what happens. Who knows, maybe it will work out anyway. So I pulled out of the yard and headed over to the casino just down the road. I tried my luck for a couple of hours and walked away no richer, but I didn’t loose anything either, so I will chalk that up as a good thing and stopped off at one of the local restaurants in the casino and had them pull out a nice big live crab and throw it in a pot of boiling water. From the Crab’s point of view, I guess I was having a better day than him.

I woke up nice and early, 4am in the hopes of getting one of the first loads out, but there were a number of drivers waiting for a load and I must have been a long ways down on the list because I was once again told no morning loads were available and about an hour later I received a load offer that picked up in town, AT 3PM! Son of a @&^%! All my fears had just be justified. And to top it off with a final insult, it was going to TN (794mi). Anyone care to guess when it delivered. Yup, Monday! Oh yeah, slap me in the face before your done, it didn’t deliver until 3pm. That will make for a couple of whopping 350mi days. Whoa is me. I did send in a request for an earlier run considering I had already been down for 34hrs, but that is all they had and I accepted the load.

I was definitely in no hurry and didn’t even bother showing up to get loaded early. When I did arrive to get loaded I found out that I could have been loaded earlier, but it would have served no purpose because I had a set appointment delivery with strict instructions not to deliver early and that this load could not be Tcalled for any reason (that didn’t stop me from trying). Since I had loaded so late in the day I was content with putting in a short 200 mile day and putting in for the night. I just tried to put the 670 miles I would have had with my other load out of my mind (with little success).

Sunday was another lack luster day with no urgency to it so I hung around until late morning and then headed out with our Knoxville terminal as a final destination. That would leave me with a short 60mi hop to my 3pm appointment the next day. Wow, the miles are really adding up, not! This trailer needed a service, as most of them do these days and I know that our Knoxville yard is one of the best at getting you in. I had plenty of time and checked with the shop when I got there. Unlike most of our shops, the guys at Knoxville are first rate and told me to pull up to the bay and they would get me in next. Once inside they had the trailer serviced, four new tires and a fresh set of breaks in 30 minutes flat. Love these guys! I also noticed that the next service due date for the trailer was set for 3 months out instead of the standard 2 months. Looks like another cost cutting measure has been instituted. I then wiggled my trailer into the final available slot (very small yard) and bobtailed to the area shopping center to catch a movie. I was also able to catch up on a little shopping and decided to spend the night in a dark corner of a nearby Wal-Mart so that I could get nice quite nights sleep.

Another week down.


WEEK THIRTY FOUR
Monday, August 18th through Sunday, August 24th
Miles include deadhead

Battle Mountain, NV to Oakdale, CA(last leg)..............................419mi
Sacramento, CA to Corinne, UT................................................ 784mi
Ogden, UT to Kansas City, MO................................................ .1094mi
Kansas City, KS to Knoxville, TN (first leg).................................742mi


Total Paid Miles............................................. ...2994 Miles

Actual Miles...............................3094 Miles

2994 x .42 = $1257.48

Again, like last week, not a bad for miles. It’s just that it was set to be a perfect week, but it came crashing down in the final days. Oh well, that’s truck driving. That’s starting to be my favorite saying. It seems to cover all the bases.

I've been out from the house for 6 days now and I have used up exactly 35 of my 70 hrs. Never been in this situation before. The problem has been having to wait 20-24 hrs between loads. Empty today get loaded tomorrow. Had a pretty nasty conversation with my terminal manager last week. He basically told me to deal with it on my own or turn in my truck. He didn't care which. That pretty much ended the conversation because I couldn't come up with anything to say to that. :sad: I'm 10,000 miles below where I was this time last year but he says so is everybody else. I almost wish this economy would tank and take the decision whether to quit or not out of my hands. If I was spending my weekends at home instead of sitting at a TS things would be different.

double tap.

Sheesh, my first triple tap. Actually I'm trying to pad my post count. 8)

Week 35
 

WEEK THIRTY FIVE (part one)
Monday, August 25th through Sunday, August 31st


Another Monday has rolled around with the hopes of a better week. Not that last week was all that bad, but it didn’t exactly end the way I had hoped. I was currently under a less than desirable load that didn’t deliver until 3pm. I had already wasted a couple of days on it and was anxious to get rid of it. I had strict instructions not to deliver this load before its’ appointment time and I had also been informed that this load could not be Tcalled. I was none to please with either directive, but there are times when nothing can be done to improve the situation. This was one of those. When I was in the yard yesterday I did a quick check of the trailers that had been Tcalled and was a bit surprised to find another load there that contained the same product going to the same place with a delivery time that was a four of hours ahead of mine. Apparently they were willing to Tcall these loads and I saw a little glimmer of hope. With that I had sent in a message requesting a Tcall so that I could keep moving, but I was told that no other loads were available. Next I asked if I could at least pull out the other load with the same payload going to the same customer since it had an earlier delivery time. That suggestion was also shot down with a “that load has already been assigned to another driver”, so I was stuck with what I had. Given no other option I resigned myself to delivering this load and putting it behind me. Even though I had instructions not to deliver this before its assigned date and time I figured I could get away with showing up 2 hours early without ruffling any feathers and went over to the yard to get my trailer.

Once there I spotted my trailer (number 2180**), right were I had left it, and hooked up and prepared to head on down the road. I was going to pull the lock off of it before heading out so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it when I got to the customer, but the end of the trailer was backed up into a bunch of tree limbs that made it impossible to get to without pulling the trailer up and I decided to put it off until I got to where I was going. I also did a hap hazard pretrip, you know, kick the tires and make sure nothing is hanging from it. This would prove to be my undoing a little latter in the day.

Anyway, down the road I go with my very light trailer. This was a load of plastic catsup bottles going to a Conagra plant and weighed a whole 5000#. At least that’s what the BOL said; I wouldn’t be surprised if it was less than that. Sure made the hills easy to get up, it’s not very often that I can pass almost every truck on the road going up hills. Does anyone see where this is going yet?

With my late delivery appointment I hadn’t exactly been in a hurry getting out of town and by the time I made it to Conagra I was about an hour and fifteen minutes early instead of my planned two hours which was no big deal. I didn’t really want to push my luck that much anyway. I pulled into the gate and headed over to the guard shack to check in and got my instructions which amounted to “pull over on the side and we’ll let you know when we are ready for you", Back to the truck I go. As I approached my truck from the back side I pulled out my keys with the intention of taking my lock off on my way back to the cab. I was still a fair distance away as I started to set my sights on the lock. But even from this distance the confusion began to set in. There is no lock, “What, where, who took my lock off”, were some of the first thoughts. Next I started to get mad, someone from the shop must have pulled my lock off thinking I had tried to save an empty trailer (has been know to happen in Crete yards). My mind was racing and then I looked at the trailer number. Oh my God! It’s the wrong trailer. I had dropped trailer #218064 last night. Now here I am, 60 miles away looking at trailer #218053. “This can’t be happening!” Oh, sure it can.

I have been driving for over 10 years and have never pulled a bonehead move like this. Well I guess there was that time I left my Enforcer lock on and had to rent a car and drive 175 miles back to get it, but I’ll go ahead and rank that one at #2 now. I was so annoyed at myself. As soon as I had realize what I had done I did a flip and let the guards know what had happened and tried not to look like a total tool (with little luck) and let them know that my load would be a little late. If I had arrived 2hrs early I would have been a little better off, but as it stood, I told them I was headed back to get the correct trailer and would be back about 1½ hrs past my original appointment.


Now it was time to fess up to dispatch. I wasn’t looking forward to this little chat. I put the call in and let them know what had transpired over the recent past. I let them know that my loaded trailer was still sitting in the Knoxville yard and if they had someone nearby who could pick it up the load could still be delivered on time. If not I would be able to do it with a minimal delay. I was surprised how understanding they were and was told to get it there as soon as I could and that was the last I heard of it. I was some what expecting to be back charged for the additional miles, but they told not to worry about it.

Back to Knoxville I went. I was still confused as to how this trailer ended up in the spot where I had dropped my trailer, but upon arriving at the yard I found that my trailer had been move to the other side of the yard sometime during the night and by some amazing coincidence, an empty trailer with almost identical numbers had been dropped in its place. I clearly remember looking at the trailer number as I pulled into the yard earlier that morning and saw the 2180 before my mind wonder off to other things. Also, if my load hadn’t had such a light load I would have noticed it immediately, but as it where all the ducks feel in a row and the result was a very embarrassing conclusion. All in all, just plain stupid on my part, at least I wasn’t hundreds of miles away when I made the discovery.

Back to Conagra I went, this time with a loaded trailer. I arrived 1 1/2hrs late as promised and waited for a door. There was one truck being unloaded in front of me, but he was almost empty and the fork lift driver was working at a good clip. As I sat there I got a message from dispatch, “have they started unloading you yet, when will you be ready for your next load?” This means that there is a load nearby that needed to get going. Very encouraging given the events of the day. It was starting to get late and I was worried that I would be stuck here until morning before getting a load out. I let them know that I would be ready to go within the hour, but that apparently wasn’t soon enough and I never heard anything else from them.

I was unloaded within the hour (after the fork lift driver made it a point to ask me if I was the driver that brought the empty trailer) and sent in my MT call hoping I would get a load out of here. We have a number of preloaded trailer going out of this plant and it would be nice to get a quick drop and hook so I could get out of this mess and put the last few days behind me. Whatever hot load dispatch had going must have been given to another driver because I was sent a load offer that picked up 120mi from here anytime today or tomorrow morning(no urgency in that) and it was headed to the freight waist land of PA (768mi) with a 9am appointment delivery Wednesday morning. Not a bad run considering this day was already shot due to my incompetence. I could run over and pick it up tonight and put in a good run tomorrow and have it at the customer Wednesday morning and be ready to go with most of my 11hrs of drive time available.

Back through Knoxville I went for my forth time today and on to Calhoun to get my load. As a final insult for the day the skies opened up and I did my drop/hook in a nice little downpour in a horribly lit yard. My trailer wasn’t where it was suppose to be and it took me a good 30mins to track it down (but I got the right trailer, damn it anyway). It was in an overflow lot that the shipping office failed to tell me about. Not a pleasant experience, but I finally manage to get everything in order and drove a short distance up the road and shut down. I actually had a number of hours left on my log, but I was a whipped pup for the day. Enough is enough; I couldn’t stand the thought of driving through Knoxville for the fifth time in one day. Good night!

Tuesday was a fresh new day and I started it with a new attitude. As the Jamaicans like to put it, “Evrytings Irie” I had a solid 600+ mile day ahead of me and set out to put it behind me. I decided to hold up short at our New Kingstown terminal and dropped my trailer in the yard and headed over to the local Outback for a nice steak dinner. Little did I know that would be my last decent meal for some time to come.

Week 35 part2
 

It seems there is a new restriction on the size of posts, so I will have to break this up a bit and will try to keep future posts shorter.

And hopefully not have to reset my pasword for the 3rd time this week.


Week 35 (part 2)

Wednesday started out innocently enough. I had a short hop to get my load to its final destination and was there within an hour. I had arrived a little better than an hour early, ever hopeful of getting my day under way. The forklift driver was quick to point out that I was early and he was expecting an 8am truck, but if that truck was late he would unload me when he finished with the truck in the dock. That was fine with me. The other truck never did show up and I was allowed to take his appointment time and I found myself unloaded shortly there after. The MT call went in and I waited, and waited and waited. I’m really starting to dislike PA. I had been sitting at the dock door and realized I needed to get out of the way. There were no truck stops in the area and I pulled out into the street and parked next to a “no parking” sign and hoped for a load offer soon. About 30 minutes had passed when I noticed another Crete truck parked in what looked like an employee parking lot off in the distance on the other side of building and decided to join him. What he told me sent shivers down my spine.

According to him, he had delivered his load at 9pm the previous night and he was still waiting for a load offer. Ouch, this isn’t going to be a good day. He then informed me that he was waiting on a load to get him home. That eased my worries a little. If he was waiting for a load going in a specific direction, maybe the situation wasn’t quit as bad as I had first though. Wishful thinking on my part. Time was passing slowly as it usually does when one doesn’t know his fate and it was approaching noon. I felt a little twinge of hunger and it occurred to me that the other driver might be getting a little hungry too, after all, he had been here since last night. He was also a very large man who I assumed was used to eating on somewhat of a regular schedule. Well, here I sat with my newly acquired microwave and a fully stocked pantry. I hollered out the window to get his attention and asked if he was hungry, stupid question, more of a formality really.

Not that it was a gourmet meal, but I cooked up a few hotdogs for him and threw on some cheese, chili and chopped onions. A large handful of chips and some pickles on the side and lunch was served. He appeared to be very grateful in any event.

It was another hour before I heard from dispatch and it wasn’t what I was hoping for. Apparently Crete was looking at a severe shortage of freight over the holiday weekend. Something in the neighborhood of 200+ loads short over the next four days. As an alternative to sitting around waiting for something, I was offered the fine opportunity of spending the rest of the week running dedicated loads for the Wal-Mart out of the Pottsville DC. I’ve been stuck with this kind of thing when we had the Sterling account and I didn’t care for one bit. The actual work wasn’t a big deal, but the hours and miles were horrible. There was one difference this time around however. Crete was now guaranteeing $175/day, regardless of the miles run and if I ran more miles in any 24hr period to garnish better pay, I would get the extra money. It sounded better than sitting idle so I said sure.

I received the load info and directions and was told to arrive at the Wal-Mart as close to 6pm as possible and be ready for dispatch when I arrived. Oh, that’s just great. I’m going to be wide awake all day and then be expected to run all night long. I was also forced to sit where I was at so that I could fit in a 10 break before heading out so that I would have as much of my 14hrs available as possible. One last note, “pick up a long shank paddle lock before you get to Wal-Mart, you will not be allowed out of their yard without one.”

Definitely not the kind of thing I had in mind to finish out the week, but at least I would be relatively busy. I got what sleep I could during the day, nothing more than a short nap, and pulled out when my ten hours were up. My first dilemma was in choosing a route to get me there. The interstate would be the easiest, but it was about 60 miles out of route. The more direct route was through the back roads of PA. In the interest of keeping my out of route miles in line I went with the back roads and regretted every mile of it. This was a great route if you were on a sight seeing tour, but not all that pleasurable from the seat of a big truck. Things really got interesting when I came across the small town of Cressona, I believe it was. As I approached the fine little community I was greeted by a very large warning sign that informed me of a low clearance bridge 2 miles ahead at the trailer shaving height of 11’ 6”. Panic set in shortly thereafter, very shortly, and I started looking for an out. The whole thing made no sense to me, the map showed this as a truck route, but this wouldn’t be the first time I was mislead by go ol’ Rand McNally. There was absolutely no place to turn around so onward I went. The next sign gave me some hope however, because after the low clearance warning was a “follow detour” sign. That’s a relief!

Sure enough, just before getting to the bridge there was a truck detour. I’ve been on narrow roads before, but this was by far the narrowest track of asphalt that I’ve ever had to navigate as far as a “main” thorough fare goes. There were a number of places where I had to pull over so that oncoming cars could squeeze by and this was also were I meet a truck for the first time in 30 minuets. Wow was that a squeaker. I saw him coming and pulled over as far as I could when he was still a couple of blocks away and even with that effort there was little more than a couple of inches between our mirror. It was about that time I heard the QualComm beep. Dispatch wanted to know if I was lost. Arg! It ended up being a 65mi trip and I made it there in 2hrs flat.

Upon arriving at the Wal-Mart I made a bee line for the short line (Wal-Mart trucks only) because that’s the lane I always used when doing the dedicated thing at the other DC and was immediately approached by the guards and told I was not allowed to use this lane, it was for dedicated trucks only. My attempt to explain that I was in fact here to be just that didn’t seem to have much of an effect on his temper and he repeated his demands. At that time a real Wal-Mart truck pulled behind me. Now we had a problem, I couldn’t back up and the silly guard was still refusing to let me in. After a short stand off he relented and punched my truck and trailer number into his wand of power (taking all of 10 seconds) and I was on my way. I just love Wal-Mart.

Once in the gate, I dropped my trailer and headed into the traffic office to start my little stint as a Wal-Mart dude. Dispatch had made it sound imperative that I be there by 6pm and ready to roll, but upon checking in I was told to have a seat, “orientation would start in 2hrs”. Of course it will, why would I have expected anything different? There were 4 other Crete drivers there and some one of them had been there since 4pm and were waiting for the same orientation class. So much for the hurry up and get there.

Week 35 part3
 

And finally Week 35 (part 3)

The orientation was as exciting as you might imagine and an hour latter we were ready for our first dispatch. With that we were sent to our trucks and told to turn our CBs to channel 7 and wait for our truck to be called. OK, it’s 1:30am and I’m finally hooked to my first load of the night. The only thing keeping me from loosing my mind at this point is that I’m basically on the clock. $175 a day, guaranteed. (Much better than what the CR England guys were getting. There were close to 20 of them as best I could tell and they were all there for one week stints and were only being guaranteed $850) So I figure they can have me sitting around all they want. It’s all the same to me. My first load had me going to a Yellow Freight yard to pickup a loaded trailer and bring it back to the DC. This load was sitting less than 2 miles from where I had delivered my load this morning and sure enough, they had me routed over the exact same Hwy 61 that I had traversed to get here. Guess what route I took this time around, lets just say I wasn’t overly concerned about the out of route miles.

The rest of the week went by doing the same old thing. Work all night and sleep all day. I will give Wal-Mart a hand for their dispatching system. All I had to do was let them know when my 14hrs were up and how many driving hours I had available and they put me on loads that fit my schedule. Once I got going they kept me rolling and used every bit of my 14hrs. That’s a very efficient little system they have going. The deliveries were all but painless; all I had to do was bump the docks and watch the store employees unload the truck. The only effort I had to put into it was the task of pulling little stickers off of each pallet and sticking them onto the load sheet to prove it was taken off the truck were required.

The routing left a little to be desired, however. Each load sheet had directions to any given store with all directions originating from the DC. That worked fine for the first store, but getting to second and third stops got me into trouble more than once. You see, just because the map shows a Pennsylvania road as a truck route, it doesn’t necessarily mean your truck. I kept running into weight and length restricted roads (not listed in the back of my atlas) and of course there are no signs to warn you in advance, they like to save them for a little later on, like when you are already on the road with no options for turning around. I had one particularly bad night when I found myself on a 10ton limit road for a good 30 miles. I didn’t doubt for a moment that I would have a local yokel behind me looking for some revenue enhancement for a nearby municipality, but luck was with me. The fact that it was 3 in the morning might have had a hand in the luck.

And so my nights went for the next four days until I burned what remained of my 70hrs. Once I was down to about 7hrs they refused to dispatch me and released me from service. I can say that I wasn’t all that upset; I was more than ready to rid myself of that fun. One thing I did find very enjoyable was the sight seeing I got to do (as limited as it was by darkness). I would like to revisit these back roads at a more leisure pace some day in the future. There is a lot of character in all of those little towns.

Well, my release left me with no place to go on a Sunday night. Tomorrow was Labor Day and I wasn’t under any disillusions of actually being able to get a load going anywhere in the near future. None the less, I sent in a message to dispatch to inform them of my new found freedom and went to bed, which was a pointless endeavor considering my body had become somewhat accustom to sleeping during the day. Something told me I would have plenty of time to readjust my sleep pattern before I would have to worry about driving anywhere.







WEEK THIRTY FIVE
Monday, August 25th through Sunday, August 31st
Miles include deadhead

Knoxville, TN to Newport, TN (final leg)......................................52mi
Calhoun, TN to Lancaster, PA................................................ ..768mi
Lancaster, PA to Pottsville, PA................................................ ...70mi
Mindless wandering delivering Wal-Mart Dedicated...................1651mi (or so)

Total Paid Miles…………………………….. 2541 Miles (I was actually paid for more miles than I ran thanks to the guaranteed daily pay at Wal-Mart.)

Mileage pay would come out to $1092.63, but my actual pay for the week was $1161.30.

Actual Miles…………. 2738 Miles (130 mi due to my trailer blunder plus additional miles bobtailing to and from Wal-Mart during off time)

890 x .42 = $373.80 for miles

4 days @ $175.00 plus extra mileage pay during days that I exceeded the minimum mileage = $787.50 for Wal-Mart

$373.80 + $787.50.00 = $1161.30 (My lowest mile full week ever with Crete and I still managed to gross over $1100.)

2008 3rd quarter mileage chart
 

Ok, I'm getting ahead of my updates with this post, but I wanted to post it while it was still relevant.

Here is a summary of my first nine months of 2008 with Crete.

This is a spreadsheet of miles run to date. Each trip is posted on the date that the load was delivered. This can result in a slight distortion of the monthly totals when the majority of the load was driven during the last day or two of a month and delivered on the first day of the next month (specifically June, where all but 200 miles of my last load of 1113 miles were completed in June, but were included in July's totals). There were also a couple of instances where I delivered two loads in one day. On these trips I listed the miles for the second trip on the next day to avoid distorting the length of haul numbers.

Also in regards to hub miles I just added the miles run in my new truck to the mileage on my old truck as opposed to figuring out a formula on the Spreadsheet. I wasn’t motivated enough to do that today.


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


And here is a quick breakdown of the above numbers:
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...ebreakdown.jpg


It looks like my Drop/Hook % calculation is off for the 3rd quarter. I'll correct it before posting year end numbers.

Week 36
 

WEEK THIRTY SIX
Monday, September 1st through Sunday, September 7th


Well, it’s Monday and it’s Labor Day! And I’m sitting in the parking lot of a run down mall because there are no truckstops in the area. I had the good fortune of escaping from the Wal-Mart gig last night by running out of useful hours as far as they were concerned. I actually had 7hrs left, (and still do today). I had put in an MT call last night and asked that I be put back on the national board with the hopes of getting a load out sometime today, but I didn’t actually expect that to happen. I did however expect confirmation, or at least some kind of acknowledgement from dispatch that I was on the list to get a load. What I did get was complete silence.

I didn’t let it bother me too much; this seems to be the status quo lately during holidays and on weekends. I’m not going to put all of the blame on the people in the dispatch office though. I know that they are painfully understaffed and have more problems to deal with than they can handle, but a simple “working on it” would have gone a long ways towards alleviating some of my angst.

I did send in another message on this fine morning asking if a load would be available today or in the morning, but that too was ignored. I made it a point not to send in numerous repeat messages because I knew they were busy and it would do no good.

Realizing this day was a bust, I resigned myself to spending the day in a parking lot and did what I could to amuse myself. The mall, (whose parking lot I was currently residing in) was of the run down variety with a lot of no name stores in it, but it did have a theater with 4 screens in it. What the hay, I didn’t have anything else to do so I headed on over to check out one of the current releases. The choices were dismal to say the least and I opted for “Death Race”. I figured it would have a mindless plot and excessive amount of special effects and I was right. Basically a waste of money, but it helped me burn a couple of hours. The theater was a clear indication of the economy in this area. This was a first weekend release of this movie, on a major holiday weekend in the middle of the day and I was the only person in the theater. Not one other person to be seen.

Now that the movie was over I set out for a little walk to get some exercise and found a trail in the back of the lot that headed out into the woods. Curious as to where it went, I proceeded onward and found myself overlooking a pleasant little watershed pound after walking about a mile or so. It was a very secluded and quiet area and I thought it would be a fine spot to set up a little camp fire and pretend I wasn’t driving (sitting in a parking lot) a truck. I went back to the truck to get my folding chair and something to snack on and headed back to the pond and enjoyed an evening by a crackling fire.

One thing I did do before leaving the truck was make one final attempt at getting some kind of response from dispatch. Something to the effect of, “I’ve been here since last night, previous messages have been ignored, I know you’re busy, but could you please acknowledge this message. I have been released from Wal-Mart and don’t even know if I have been put back on the national board so that I’m in line for a load. THX”

This time around I finally received a response, “Sorry for the delay, it looks like you have not been placed back on national, please call ****** in the morning.” Just as I thought, left out to dry. As annoying as this was, it really wasn’t that big of a deal. I didn’t have many hours left anyways and this little layover (my third in two years, so I can’t really complain too much) made it possible to put in a reset. Last week was more or less a bust as far as mileage went, but with the $175/day pay at Wal-Mart plus some extra mileage pay for a good day there I still grossed $1161 on 2541 miles.

Tuesday eventually came around and I didn’t exactly have high hopes for what lay ahead. I wasn’t the only driver sitting around waiting on a load. There were no less than 10 CR England trucks in the lot and a handful of others. All, like me, had been sitting around for some time now. I had fully expected to spend another day in this parking lot. I couldn’t even start thinking about a load until sometime after 8am, that’s when the individual that I needed to talk to would be coming in. The problem with that, I’m sure I’m not the only driver in the fleet that needs to talk to him.

When the appointed hour finally came around I started with the phone calls, (voice mail of course) and sent off messages in three different directions and awaited some kind of response. Surprisingly enough it only took about 30 minutes to get my first QualComm message. This message acknowledged the fact that I had been sitting for an extended period of time and they would find a load for me, “just sit tight”. Not the perfect response, but at least I knew the ball was rolling. The difference between today and yesterday is that I am now a prisoner to the truck. Yesterday I knew there would not be a load offer, so I was free to wonder about and find some way of amusing myself. I now find myself forced to sit in the truck and await a load offer.

I also took this opportunity to call my Fleet Manager. I’ve been out too long this time around and this last week took the wind out of my sails. I’m ready to go home for some R&R. When asked, “When do you want to go home” I simply replied, “ASAP!”

And wait I did until shortly after noon. The QC finally chirped to life with a very respectable load offer. It was a preloaded trailer just outside of Philly going south of Atlanta (909mi) with a 5am delivery on Thursday. Well, I just went from “nothing to do” to “holy crap”, this is going to be a tight run. I was a bit miffed when I saw that the load had been ready since 8:30 this morning and I didn’t get the load offer until after noon. I guess dispatch was just that backed up and it took them awhile to get around to me.

Now I am left with a choice. I can sit in this lot for another 7hrs or so and then pickup the trailer, therefore forcing me to drive all night and sleeping during the days again. This option would make it possible to make my delivery with only one 10hr break along the way, but I would be on a night schedule. My other option would be to take off now and be on a very tight schedule because I would have to take two 10hrs breaks along the way to time the 5am delivery correctly. Well, I’ve been sitting around all I care for and pulled out to get the trailer. As I was driving towards Philly I started running the numbers and tried to determine my best course of action. I also realized this trip was going to be more than tight; it was going to be a squeaker. It sure would have been nice to get this load offer a few hours earlier.

I went through the paces and pointed the truck towards Atlanta. I had no time to spare so there were no extra stops along the way. I had a fuel stop sent to me, but I had enough fuel in the truck to finish the trip and I was able to by-pass that one, yup, I’m that short on time, can’t even waste 15mins. My biggest problem was the fact that there are no parking options in the Atlanta area. I was headed to McDonough and the choices are almost non existent. I actually had enough hours to get there and deliver the load early, but if I was turned away and told to return at my appointment time the following day I would have been screwed. If the customer had overnight parking I would be fine, but a call to the customer only got an automated system and there was no mention of it in the load info and I didn’t want to take any chances. Because of that I actually had to hold up 100 miles away at a TA north of Atlanta. Normally I would stop at our yard, but it was about 20 miles out of route, and that simple delay would have made me late for my delivery. Just one of those days I guess. This made for a rather short 400mi day, but I just didn’t have any other choice.

My Thursday started exactly 10hrs and 7½mins after I had shut down the previous night and I managed to pull into the customer’s lot 16mins before my appointment time. OK, that’s a little tight on a 900mi run. Into the receiving office I go only to find that this was a drop load. I also took this opportunity to ask if I would have been allowed to drop this trailer last night if I had pulled in at that time. “Sure” he says. Grrrr! Our drop deliveries are almost always denoted by a delivery window, i.e. 07:00 – 23:59 or something along those lines. When the delivery time says 05:00 it generally means a live unload. I got burned on this one; I could have dropped this last night, grabbed and empty and still would have had a few hours to get my next load. I’ll know better next time around.

Time to put in my MT call and see what they have in store for me. The load offer was slow in coming, which surprised me a bit. This time of day usually results in a very quick response, but not today. About 20 minutes later I finally get the chirp and am a little disappointed. It’s going to NC (350mi) and it’s a live unload with a fair amount of unnecessary down time to it. I also note that it is a bit odd that I’m getting a load to NC, I never get loads going that way. Then it hits me, I put in for home time just two days ago and I realized that I failed to mention that I wanted to take it in Phoenix, not Wilmington, NC. That’s quite impressive, request home time and two days later I got it. Too bad it’s in the wrong direction. I guess I could always spend the week at the NC house, but I’m guessing the wife would be a little miffed about that one. We’ll be going back for a while to check up on things in October anyways.

With that realization I sent off a message to dispatch to inform them of the mix-up. I also let them know that I would run the load if they needed me too, but I would prefer something going in the direction of Phoenix so that I could take my home time there. Shortly thereafter I was pulled from the original load and sent a message that he was working on something for me. Oh goody!

Another 30mins passed and I was sent another load offer. This one picked up at 1pm here in town and was going to the Dallas area (813mi) 2 days from now at 6am. That was followed by a message “deliver this load and I’ll get you on a load to PHX from there”. Wow, that was easy, looks like I’m home bound.

There was a bit of excessive down time involved with these runs, but that’s not all that uncommon with loads that point you back towards the house. I was more than pleased with the rapid response to my home time request. A nice change of pace considering the lower freight levels these days.

My pickup was scheduled for 1pm. I figured it was on a preloaded trailer, but there was no urgency in picking it up right away. I had a scheduled delivery time in Dallas and it wouldn’t do me any good to show up early anyway. I waited until the prescribe hours arrived and went to get my load. Sure enough, it was ready to go and I headed on down the road and managed to make it to the middle of Alabama before my 14hrs expired with a whopping 350 miles for the day.

I actually got to sleep in Friday, all the way to 4:30 which was a nice change from my 2am starts of late. The rest of the day was just a pleasant stroll across I-20 with home getting closer with the passing of each mile.

I pulled into the customer’s gate first thing Saturday morning for my 6am appointment drop. Yup, another one of those receivers that is a drop, but they wont let you show up early. In this case I had to agree with them on their policy. This lot was packed to the gills and there wasn’t a spot to be had. I actually had to drop my trailer in the middle of their lot in front of a number of other trailers. What a mess. Now all I had to do was head on down to Waxahachie to get my load of insulation going to Phoenix.

The info in the QualCom stated that this load would be ready anytime after 6pm, but I had little doubt that it was already loaded and waiting for me. The 6pm thing was more of an “earliest pickup time to result in a productive load” kind of thing. Picking it up any earlier would result in extended downtime for the driver. But considering the fact that I was on my way to the house, ye ha!

As suspected, the trailer was waiting for me when I arrived and 16 minutes later I was westward bound. This load had a live unload scheduled for Tuesday morning, but I had every intention of pulling into our PHX terminal by Noon Sunday and after some solid driving that is just what I did. I love it when things work out like this.

What really made this a nice run was the fact that it was scheduled to deliver Tuesday morning. Thanks to the fact that I was able to pickup this load early and even though I was home before noon on Sunday, I was still under dispatch until the load delivered. That means that the remainder of Sunday and Monday did not count towards my home time. Tuesday is also not counted as a home day because I made the delivery on this day. So, outside of taking 2 hours out of my day on Tuesday morning to deliver my load less than ½ mile from the yard, I was able to spend an entire week out of the truck without ruffling any feathers. I really don’t think it would have been a problem even if I had Tcalled the load when I pulled into town, but this way I didn’t have to burden another driver with a shag load and I didn’t have to ask any special favors from my FM. I had been out for 7 weeks anyways and turned some great miles for the most part (I’m trying to put that Labor Day week out of my mind), I had the time coming and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Las Vegas, here I come.



WEEK THIRTY SIX
Monday, September 1st through Sunday, September 7th
Miles include deadhead

King of Prussia, PA to McDonough, GA...........................................909mi
Atlanta, GA to Garland, TX................................................ ............813mi
Waxahachie, TX to Phoenix, AZ................................................ ...1124mi



Total Paid Miles……………………………..2846 Miles

Not the greatest of weeks, but that will happen when one gets laid over on Labor Day and my two runs to get me home were not the most productive, but that is to be expected when you have a specific destination in mind. This is just about as bad as my weeks get and I was able to gross just under $1200.

Actual Miles.................................2869 Miles

2846 x .42 = $1195.32

Week 37
 

WEEK THIRTY SEVEN
Monday, September 8th through Sunday, September 14th
Miles include deadhead

This will be short and sweet.

Home all week!

Week 38
 

WEEK THIRTY EIGHT
Monday, September 15th through Sunday, September 21st


Well, my week of home time has come to an end and it’s time to be a truck driver again. My previous week on the road had been a little disappointing due to a slowdown in freight around the Labor Day holiday and I was ever hopeful of better days to come. I arrived at my truck at 7am and put in my ready call and crossed my fingers. Fortunately there were a couple of empty trailers in the yard, that’s one big hurdle. Next concern, after home time I never know if I will be dispatched on a hot load that has to go now and have me rushing around or if I will be dispatched on a load that doesn’t pickup until the afternoon, thereby leaving me sitting in the back of a truck instead of at the house. It would be nice if I could call in and find out what they have to offer and plan out my departure from home, but that never seems to work for me, especially on a Monday morning.

I didn’t have to wait very long to get my answer. A single load offer picking up anytime after noon in Nogales, AZ going to Ft. Smith, AR (1370mi). Not to bad at all, good miles, but it doesn’t deliver until 5pm Wednesday. That’s a little disappointing (OK, very disappointing) because I would be able to make it to my finial destination much earlier in the day. A delivery late in the day also greatly decreases my chances of getting a load out once empty, at least for the rest of the day. I guess I can always take a shot at delivering early.

I was also a bit annoyed once the load info came through. I had failed to notice that this was a two stop delivery. That explains the late delivery time. The first stop was scheduled for a few hours earlier. One good thing was that the two stops were in the same area, and the same customer, looks like two difference warehouses. That will improve my chance of getting unloaded a little earlier than originally planned.

I made it to the shipper by 11am and was assigned a door, but just because I arrived early didn’t mean they would start to load me early. The load assignment said anytime after noon, and that’s when they started loading me with no apparent urgency, I might add. Progress was slow, but I eventually headed on down the road with my 7000# load of electrical harness. I wasn’t pressed to get anywhere soon, so I decided to make a short day of it and held up in Alamogordo for the night.

Tuesday was another day with no real urgency to it and I putted my way on down the road. I had planned on spending the night in OK city so I could spend some time in good ol’ Bricktown. I still had a little time left on my log for the day, but due to my delayed delivery time I would be looking at about 15hrs of downtime before heading out in the morning and I didn’t really relish the idea of sitting in a service plaza on the OK turnpike for that long. If I’m going to be sitting still for that much time I would rather be somewhere that offers some form of entertainment. This way I could at least catch a movie or a good meal. Although after my week at home, I really didn’t need anymore heavy meals for awhile.

Wednesday was a late start. I had tried to call the consignee to inquire about an earlier delivery, but the number only got me an answering machine and I didn’t want to take the chance of showing up early and being forced to wait. That would take a big chunk out of my 14hrs clock. I decided to take off at 11am and hope that I would be able to get a load out tonight. We have a couple of drop/hook customers in the area and I might still be able to make a good day of this, although it would mean driving well into the night. Something that I haven’t had to do very much of lately.

I arrived an hour early and went about finding someone in charge of receiving. I also noticed at this time that there were two empty Crete trailers sitting in their yard. I was afraid of something like this. When I finally hunted down the person I need to talk to he told me to go ahead and drop the trailer in their yard and grab an empty. Oh, how I would have liked to do just that. But I had two PO’s on this load and I told him that I was to deliver the other half of the trailers contents up the street to their assembly plant, (I was currently at one of their satellite warehouses). He shrugged his shoulders and said “alright, put it in any door and we’ll get to you when we can”. That’s not something I ever want to hear. The wait wasn’t as long as I had suspected and I was soon on my way to the next stop. I would be arriving more than 2hrs early, but I assumed it wouldn’t be a problem.

What was a problem was finding the stupid place. Directions were less than accurate and after driving around for about 30mins I finally found it. It must have been almost a whole mile away from the first stop, to bad I had to drive over 10 miles to come to that conclusion. At least I was finally here and there were a large number of empty trailers sitting around which lead me to believe that I would be dropping this trailer. I went through the normal procedures with the guard and made my way to the shipping office.

The first question I get is, “why are you here with this product, it goes to the other warehouse?” I then go into the explanation that I had already been there and delivered half the load, now I was here with the rest of it, “see, here is the BOL with your address for the final drop.” “That doesn’t make any sense”, he says and picks up the phone. Ten minutes later and it is confirmed, the rest of the load has to go back to my original delivery point. Oh, I’m starting to get a headache!

Back to the first stop I go, this time it takes almost 2mins to get there and it looks like another search is in order. There is only one guy that deals with receiving and he seems to have perfected the hide and seek thing. After 20mins of wondering the dark corners of the place I finally found him having a cigarette break with a co-worker. I started to explain my situation to him and he cut me off with a “Yeah, I figured the whole load was suppose to deliver here, I probably should have said something the first time you were here.”

Oh my God! Where do these people come from?

He just tells me to head on back to the dock and they would unload me after they finished with the other truck. That truck took them a good 30mins and I once again backed up to the dock to finish the unload only to find myself once again waiting for someone to pull off the remaining 7 skids from my trailer. I was anxious to get going, and even though the unloading had yet to start I went ahead and put in my MT call and used one of the empty trailers on the lot as my new trailer. At least this way I could get the process going on my next load. If they insisted on putzing around too long in the warehouse I could simply leave my loaded trailer in the door and grab the empty trailer and be on my way, which is exactly what would have happened in the first place if I had known the whole load was going here. It’s just one of those days.

My next load offer came in rather quickly and as I had hoped, it was a preloaded trailer sitting here in town. It was to pickup anytime today and deliver anytime before noon tomorrow in Amarillo (438mi). Not the longest run in the world, but I would be able to run it out as fast as I wanted, plus it was getting late and the noon delivery window was already getting tight.

The unloading process started just as I was getting my new load info and by the time I was finished writing it all down the trailer was empty. Since I had used one of the empty trailers on their lot in my MT call I went ahead and dropped my current trailer and grabbed the other one to keep things straight in the computer system without bothering dispatch. It had been a rather frustrating afternoon, what could have be a 15min drop/hook had turned into 2½hrs, but it was now behind me and I headed on over to my next PU.

My fun for the day had not yet come to an end, however. This was suppose to be a quick drop and hook, but when I went in to get the paperwork I was informed that the BOL # that I had was for a load that wasn’t ready to go. They did let me know that they had a preloaded trailer going to Amarillo with a different BOL #. Well, I didn’t really care what the BOL#’s were as long as it was going to the same place, but I didn’t figure dispatch would have the same point of view so back to the truck I went to send a message explaining my situation.

Crete’s system works very well when every thing is clicking, but once you throw a wrench into the works, well, not so much. The day crew was still in control, however, and I held out hope that this could be resolve relatively quickly. It better, that noon delivery window is getting real tight, I really need to get my butt on the road within an hour or so. It took about 30mins, but I finally got a response. My initial dispatch was cancelled and a new load plan was sent out to me and I was told to go ahead and pull the load that was ready to go. Sounded simple enough, right! I went inside to get the appropriate paper work and headed out to their back lot to get my preloaded trailer. Of course, it was nowhere to be seen. There were 4 other Crete trailers back there, but none of them matched my paperwork. I started to drive back to the front of the building when I noticed a yard jockey coming from the back side. I didn’t think it could do any harm to check and drove in that direction. Sure enough, there sat my trailer in a dock door. I then looked in vain for a dock worker, no luck. The green light was flashing which usually signifies that it is OK to pull the trailer out, but some places get down right pissy about who can pull a trailer out of a door and I sure didn’t want to rustle any feathers over such a thing. It’s actually a rather sever safety issue in many plants.

So back to the shipper’s office I go realizing that my delivery window is getting insanely tight. I know it wouldn’t be a problem if I told dispatch the load would be a little late, but I would rather get it to where it needed to be without involving anyone else. Especially since it appears that I am just hauling back a load of specialized pallets that they use to transport material on. I have little doubt that this will simply be a drop/hook delivery once I get to where I’m going with no particular urgency to the actual delivery time. But it’s in the Crete system to be there by noon and I would like to be able to do that.

After returning to the shipping office for the 4th time today, I confirmed that my trailer was ready to go and made sure I was allowed to pull it out. He says, “Sure, go ahead, I saw you walking around the trailer and making sure everything was safe. I figured you would have pulled it by now.” I love the way everyone around here seems to communicate after the fact.

I finally found myself driving down the road. This was a relatively heavy load and felt that I needed to stop to scale it out and I would also have to get some fuel at the Pilot on my way through OK city (always a frustrating fuel stop). A quick check of my GPS and a mental calculation, “I might be able to pull into the customer’s lot by 11:45 for my noon deadline.

I was trying to decide if I really needed to stop to scale out. This load was at 42,000# and I felt that I had the tandems in a good spot and really needed to save time. I was also not very likely to come across any open scales. Oklahoma wasn’t likely to be open this time of night and Texas doesn’t have any permanent scales along the way that I have to worry about.

After lamenting between my need to save time and desire to avoid the possibility of an overweight ticket I decided to pull into a truck stop in Roland, OK. I had a choice of two, the Shell or the Pilot. My truckstop book showed that they both had a scale and I opted for the Shell station knowing that scaling in a small Pilot is a pain in the backside. It’s always such a hassle to deal with the traffic in a Pilot, especially the smaller ones when you are in a hurry. My choice of the Shell turned out to be a poor one. As I was pulling onto the rather dilapidated scale I notice a very thin yellow rope across the exit side. Apparently it was out of order and it didn’t occur to them to put the rope up on the entrance to the scale. So I backed up, parked and ran inside for a quick McDonalds fix. I wasn’t going to have time to stop for anything better and I was getting a bit hungry.

I had decided to take my chances by not scaling out with this load. I felt fairly confident that I was legal on all axels and even more confident that I wouldn’t be crossing any open scales. I did, for a very short moment, consider crossing the 4 lanes of traffic to scale out at the Pilot, but a plumb of black smoke billowing up from what appeared to be the fuel islands made that decision for me. I’ve seen that kind of smoke before. It could only mean one thing. TRUCK FIRE! On a fuel island to top it off. The smoke was thick, but it was obvious that it was just getting started. I was thanking my lucky stars that I pulled into the Shell instead of the Pilot. I could only imagine the cluster F that was going on over there. I had barley been able to see any smoke as I pulled out onto the road, by the time I made it onto the Interstate the flames were clearly visible and the smoke was intense.

My only regret was that I wasn’t able to snap a few pictures of the event. I was able to Google up a video of it that another driver posted on Youtube and pulled a couple of screen captures from it. I’ve included a link to the video if you want to check it out. The guy even caught a tire blowing out.
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...e2rolandok.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spyom7tGGTE


<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/spyom7tGGTE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/spyom7tGGTE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>


I was amazed, even with all this going on and my warning that I was offering up on the CB, trucks were still pulling into the parking lot, completely oblivious to the inferno on the other side of the Pilot. I guess they assumed a funnel of black smoke going hundreds of feet into the air was a daily occurrence and nothing to be concerned about.

Thankfully, I had avoided getting caught up in that mess and I was once again on my way down the road. My stop at the Pilot in Oklahoma City was a hassle just as I figured it would be. Too many trucks and not enough pumps and it ended up taking me 25mins to get in and out. I was now on an extremely tight schedule without a minute to spare. I drove out the rest of my hours and put in for the night with 15mins left on my 14hrs. I had pushed my luck a little tonight. I was lucky to find a place to park at this time of night. It was after midnight and I kind of had to make a parking spot.

I started my Thursday 10hrs later. I had 72 miles to go and 75 minutes to do it. About 15mins after I started driving the Qualcom beeped with a message. I didn’t have time to stop and read it, but I already knew what it said. Someone in the main office was shooting out a message asking if I was going to be on time. I managed to pull into the customers drive just before the noon deadline and contacted receiving on the CB. I wasn’t surprise when they told me to sit tight. I had no doubt that this wasn’t exactly a priority load before I arrived and sure enough, they were in no hurry to get it through the gate, but as long as I was able to show an on time delivery I was content.

I had also received a pleasant surprise that was out of the norm. Yesterday I had been sent a preplan to pickup a preloaded trailer from this customer once I had dropped this load. It’s nice not having to worry about getting a load offer after being empty for a change. I let the customer know that I was dropping a load of pallets and picking up a load, but they wanted the pickup number for my next load. Well, I don’t get that until I put in an empty call. I’m sure glad I was here on time! It took another 20 minutes before I was able to get the pertinent information and I was once again told to wait. This customer had a small lot and only allows 3 trucks in at a time and if those three trucks take their time, well I wait. I finally made my way through the gate about an hour after arriving and did a quick drop and hook and was on my way to Portland, ME (2035mi). In the words of Eric Cartman, “Sweeeeeeet”.

This was the perfect load that would finish out an awesome week for me. As I was driving down the road I started planning out my days. If I put in 3 solid days of driving and didn’t waist any time along the way I would be able to put in for a 34hr reset somewhere in the Connecticut or Massachusetts. The only problem is that it was an incredibly optimistic goal. So close as a matter of fact that I had to pull out the calculator and go through it a number a few times. Taking PTIs into consideration, along with the Pennsylvania and New York mountains that I would be pulling this 45,000# load over I was looking at three 11hr days with absolutely no stopping outside of fuel, and they would have to be quick ones. I might be able to fit in a 2-3 min stop each day at the most. If I failed to stay within these time constrains or hit a traffic backup along the way I would still be able to make my delivery on time without concern, but without the reset I would find myself unloaded in Maine with about 2hrs left on my 70. This would leave me stranded for another day before I could pickup another load, so off to the races it was. Runs like this really make me miss the lightning speed 65mph trucks of yesterday. That extra 3mph would have given me the extra hour that I sorely needed at this point. Anyone that says 3mph doesn’t make a difference is wrong.

My next three days were on the verge of being ridiculous. Outside of my 10hr and 8min breaks for the night I drove 1900 after picking up my load with two 10min stops for fuel and a grand total of two additional stops of 2mins each. I usually drink a large amount of water and soda during any giving day, but I found that severely limiting my liquid intake made the extended periods between stops much more tolerable and I prepared meals during my breaks so that I wouldn’t have to stop to eat. I could just reach into the cooler and feed myself on the fly. So went my Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

A little scenery from the trip.
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...rnttrailer.jpg

I managed to pull into the Pilot in Sturbridge, Ma by the early evening of Saturday with just enough time to put in my reset. Mission accomplished! I don’t mind pushing, but that was a little more pressure than I care to deal with.

Now that I was settled in for the weekend I finally found myself with all the time in the world. After being pinned up in the truck for the last three days I took the opportunity to get a little exercise and walked into town. It was about 4 miles away and made for a pleasant evening. The walk back that night was a little intense though, wow it gets dark on these backwoods roads without moonlight. It’s the time of year up here when the weather is just about perfect and once I got away from the truckstop I found it to be a rather tranquil area. A little nature walk if you will.

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

Where’s Froggy?
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...cker/Frogy.jpg



WEEK THIRTY EIGHT
Monday, September 15th through Sunday, September 21st
Miles include deadhead

Nogales, AZ to Fort Smith, AR........................................1370mi
Fort Smith, AR to Amarillo, TX..........................................438mi
Amarillo, TX to Sturbridge, MA........................................1893mi

Total Paid Miles............................................. .................3701 Miles

I still had the hours and ability to put in another 180 miles on Sunday and spend the night at the customer, but if I had done so I would not have been able to put in a 34hr reset and would have been force to sit for an extra day after my delivery before gaining back hours at midnight. With the reset in place I would be in a great position to run some great miles again next week!

Actual Miles............................................. .....................3760 Miles

3701 x .43 = $1591.43 plus $30 Drop pay

Week 39
 

WEEK THIRTY NINE
Monday, September 22nd through Sunday, September 28th


My reset has come to a close and I’m well rested. Last week was great and I have a fresh 70hr clock and I’m looking forward to another productive one.

Last week I had put in some very long days so that I would be able to put in a reset. I managed to make it to Sturbridge, MA which was about 160 miles from my final destination. I would be able to make my 7am appointment, but only by the skin of my teeth. I took off as soon as my log book would allow and managed to pull into the customer’s parking lot in Portland, ME with a short 15mins to spare. Wow, that’s cutting it close. What I found when I arrived didn’t surprise me in the least, however. I had pushed very hard to get here on time and just as I had suspected all along, this wasn’t exactly a JIT (just in time) load. It took me a good 20mins to find someone in the warehouse and when I did he was on the phone. I then stood there for over 30mins waiting for him to finish his conversation.

Unlike most people in this part of the country, he was an incredibly rude and nasty person. Most of my experiences with the folks from Maine have been quite pleasant, this wasn’t one of them. I didn’t take it personal and just dismissed his behavior. I was getting some great miles and was in a pretty good mood, I wasn’t going to let this miserable human being bother me. He had ordered me to back into one of the open bay doors (there were none available, although he was very adamant that there was) and after an oddly confrontational exchange (strange man) I was able to convince him of the reality of our situation and he told me to wait in the truck until someone pulled out. This also was a point of contention since all the doors had trailers in them, but none where attached to a truck. I felt that further debate with the fine gentleman wasn’t going to get me anywhere so off to the truck I went. One hour later one of their yard jockeys finally showed up and pulled out a trailer. I did a challenging blind side back to squeeze into the spot and waited. Another 30mins and the unloading began. Thank god I wasn’t late, eh!

Fortunately the guy that did the unloading was a very pleasant man (although he never stopped badmouthing my new found friend, the Forman) and had me unloaded in short order. My MT call goes in and I await my next destination.

I’m pleased to get a two load offer and go with the slightly shorter one because it has an attractive delivery time. The load I went with was going to Shelby, IA (1509mi). It picks up in Sanford, ME anytime today (looks like a possible drop/hook) and delivers to IA anytime on Thursday, or before. It’s the perfect trip with great miles and no wasted time. It also gets me within 40 miles of my grandmother’s house and I might just be able to swing by and put in a short visit.

I arrived at the shipper to find that this was a live load and not a drop/hook as I had hoped. I was also very disappointed to learn that they had an equipment malfunction earlier in the day and their production line was behind schedule. As a result I was told to make myself comfortable and check back in 3-4hrs. I don’t know what it is about Mondays, but it’s living up to its reputation today. I was dead in the water with nowhere to go so I pulled out the skillet and made myself a fine meal of hamburger helper. Only the best for this driver.

Once the 3hrs were up I headed back inside to check on their progress and was told to back into a door that was occupied by a Swift truck once he pulled out, “should be done with him in 45mins or so”, I’m told. Well, at least there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel. True to their word, 45mins later he pulled out and I backed in for my turn.

While sitting there I had a nice conversation with a Millis driver sitting next to me (they had just started loading him) who had been there longer than me. We of course started comparing notes and he was none to happy with Millis. He had been with the company for 5 years and his miles have been really bad for the last six months. I seem to be having a lot of these conversations lately.

The day continued to crawl by and I was finally loaded and headed down the road a mere 5hrs after arriving. At least I would pickup $30 for detention pay. Not much, but it’s better than nothing I guess. The day was almost shot and I simply ran out the rest of my 14hrs, managing to make it back to the same Pilot I had taken my 34hr reset at in Sturbridge, MA. It will by my third night in a row and this place is starting to feel like home. That makes a whopping 350 miles for a 14hr day, but I was able to put in enough miles to be able to make my destination with two full days of driving. I would be able to make it there by Wednesday evening but would have no drive time left once empty. I wouldn’t be able to pickup another load that day, but I would be one of the first on the list for a Thursday morning load.

Tuesday and Wednesday went by without incident and I was able to put in some solid miles and arrived at my final destination early in the afternoon of Wednesday. I dropped my trailer and only had 15mins left of my driving hours, so I just headed across the street to a small truckstop and put in for the night. My hopes of visiting my grandmother were also shot. I didn’t have enough hours left to go the extra 40 miles and there were no rental cars available in the area, maybe next time.

My next load offer came early in the morning and was headed to the feared freight waist lands of Pennsylvania (1109mi). Good miles, but it was scheduled to pickup between the hours of 1pm and Midnight with an open delivery for Saturday. If I run the load as scheduled I would be looking at less than desirable miles, but the pickup was a General Mills and I assumed it was a drop/hook (most open pickup windows at GM plants are) and the delivery was going to another GM plant. I’m confident that my trailer will be ready to go when I get there and I anticipate no problems with an early delivery and set out to do just that.

After a 100mi deadhead I arrived at the shipper about 4hrs early. The preloaded trailer I had anticipated was nowhere to be seen and I quickly realized that this would be a live load. My hopes of getting an early start were now a distant memory and my 14hr clock was ticking. I then proceeded to wait my turn and was able to back to a door a little early, but only by 30mins. Once loaded I headed on down the road to put as many miles behind me as possible before running out my 14hr clock. Along the way I stopped off at our Ottawa, IL shop to pick up some oil and antifreeze and top off the tanks with fuel. I realized I wasn’t in any real hurry and had plenty of time to make my delivery so I also opted to take two lane roads across Indiana and most of Ohio. It would cost me a little time, but that would also allow me to bypass the turnpike. It’s not my favorite route, but it saves the company a little bit of money on tolls. Plus my pocket was getting a little light on cash and I didn’t feel like stopping along the way to take a cash advance to pay the Ohio tolls (our EZ pass now works in IN). Since I had stopped to fuel up at a company terminal instead of the planed truckstop, I would have to pay a few bucks for the cash advance (a free service when getting fuel). My night ended in a dirt parking lot of a defunct truckstop just across the boarder in Ohio after a respectable 600 miles.

Friday morning started out at the reasonable hour of 7:30. I was only about 500 miles from my destination and would be able to have it there by late afternoon. I had until tomorrow to get it there, but with the way PA freight has been lately I wanted no part of delivering a load on a Saturday with the hopes of getting out of there on a weekend. Other than a hang up with traffic going through Chicago (left lane was still closed due to water on the road from last weeks rain storm) and some slow progress over the PA hills I had no real problems to deal with. I had planned on stopping at our New Kingstown terminal for fuel on my way by, but it was about 20 miles out of route and the 5 o’clock rush hour was getting to close for comfort. I was almost on empty because I had passed up my fuel stop (a horribly overcrowded Pilot) upstate earlier in the day. I figured I had enough fuel to get to the customer and back to the terminal if I had a load going in that direction. If not there was a Pilot close to my delivery that they could fuel me at when I got my next load.

I pulled into the General Mills a day early and was greeted by two lines of trucks stacked 5 deep trying to get in. Thirty minutes later it was finally my turn. I was given the location of the empty trailer that I was to pull out of a door and told to drop my loaded trailer where ever I could find a spot. They were packed to the gills and it took a couple of trips around the place before I was able to spot a hole off in the corner that appeared to be big enough to squeeze into. And squeeze I did. It took a number of pull ups but I finally got it in and then realized there wasn’t enough room to get in between the trailers to lower the landing gear. Not a big problem, I just had to pull it out far enough to drop the gear and then put it back into its spot.

The place was a mad house with at least 9 or 10 drivers wondering around looking for any little crevice they could find to drop a trailer. I spent an amazing amount of time just waiting for other drivers who were blocking the drive trying to make their own spots. The line getting out was just as prolonged and what can usually be a 20min drop and hook was stretched out to 1¾ hrs. Talk about a little tension buildup by the time I got out of that place. The only saving grace is that during that delay I was actually give a load offer and it was in a preloaded trailer and ready to go. Very good news indeed, I had fully well expected the infamous “no freight available” message.

Instead of that, I got a load going to Elk Rapids, MI (846mi). This was Friday and it didn’t deliver until 7am Monday morning. Like so many of our weekend loads, but when I’m getting squeaky tight on hours it makes for the perfect load. Well almost perfect. Due to my extended stay at General Mills I was looking at another extremely tight schedule. Like last week, the delivery time wasn’t a concern. I could have it there no problem. But if I could sneak in a 34hr reset I would be ready to burn up the miles again next week. If I can’t make the reset work I would be looking at having virtually no hours available after making my Monday morning delivery and be forced to sit around all day waiting to regain some hours. That wasn’t a particularly pleasing thought, so I set out to make the reset happen.

As I drove to my pickup I began to realize just how tight my schedule was. VERY! I had also made a huge mistake in choosing a route to the pickup point. The shortest route was across Hwy 422 which would result in a 42 miles trip. My other option was to run up to the Interstate, but this would have made it a 60+ mile trip. Ever conscious of my out-of-route miles I went with Hwy 422. I was late enough that I didn’t think traffic would be a big problem and I would probably arrive at about the same time regardless of the chosen route. What a miscalculation that turned out to be. I finally pulled into the customer’s lot 1½ hrs later. Anyone interested in saving time might want to stay off of that very scenic route. Not that I wouldn’t want to try it again some day with a car while doing some sight seeing.

The one good thing I had going for me on this trip was that I had been to this customer before. I knew exactly were they wanted the empty dropped and I knew where the loaded trailers were and was already aware that the BOL was on the floor of the trailer. I was in and out in 9 minutes and on my way to the terminal. I had just enough time to make it there by the skin of my teeth before my 14 was up. But even that goal ended up being just out of reach. I did make it to within 8 miles and had to stop in a Kmart that I knew would let me park in the back. It was one of those situations where it was 6 minutes past 9:30. That meant that if I stopped at that moment I could log it as 9:30. If I continued to our terminal just down the road I would have been forced to log until 9:45. This would have been within my 14hrs but would have added 15mins to my log. This run was going to be so tight that I couldn’t even give up that much time. The following Saturday morning I started right at 7:30 and headed over to the terminal. That way I was close enough to include the drive time in my PTI and Fuel while on line four. This 100% compliant thing can be a real pain in the butt at times.

Now all I had to do was drive to somewhere in upper Michigan and find a place to park to do my reset. There were a few obstacles to contend with first, however. My routing has me running across PA on Hwy 322. This route is actually a little longer than taking the turnpike, but I guess it saves enough money to justify it, on paper at least. My problem is that I am certain, without a doubt, that if I go that way I will never make my delivery on time with a reset intact. I had mulled over it for some time the night before and even pulled up the PA DOT website to lookup the cost of the turnpike. It was more than I thought, somewhere in the area of $40+, but I really had no choice from my point of view and I went with the turnpike. If they back charged for taking that route I would go ahead and eat the cost of the toll. In the long run it would put more money in my pocket. I was hoping that my effort to avoid tolls last week would help my case if it came down to it. I would worry about that when the time came. For now, today is what concerns me. Fueling wasn’t a concern because I had just topped the tanks here in our PA yard and I had enough to make the trip and get back out if need be. The other pressing matter is that I would have to drive for the remainder of the day without a single stop, maybe 2 minutes if I was lucky.

10`1/2 hrs later I found myself in the fine community of Grayling, MI. OK, not the actual community, more like a barren truck stop next to a Super 8. I considered holding up in the motel for a couple of nights, but the stupid place was asking $65 a night. In the middle of nowhere on top of it and the parking lot was almost empty all weekend. There’s some smart business man for ya. Now that my truck has an APU it’s not quite as frustrating to spend time in the truck and I’ve been trying to cut back on unnecessary cash expenditures lately anyway so I settled in for the weekend.

For the second week in a row I had to push hard to squeeze in my reset, but once again I was able to make it work. I had a 7am delivery Monday morning and as it worked out I only had about 60 miles to go and would have 75mins to do it once my reset was complete.

This reset was a bit boring but as usual I was able to amuse myself. The annual changing of colors in the leaves was in full effect up here. This was in a heavily wooded area, as most of northern Michigan is and I wondered off on a little nature hike and set up an impromptu campsite complete with a campfire. I really shouldn’t say complete, after all, I only had a collapsible chair and a campfire, but I was content.



WEEK THIRTY NINE
Monday, September 22nd through Sunday, September 28th
Miles include deadhead

Sturbridge, MA to Portland, ME (final leg).................................156mi
Sanford, ME to Shelby, IA................................................ .....1509mi
Carlisle, IA to Palmyra, PA................................................ ....1104mi
Blandon, PA to Grayling, MI (first leg)......................................790mi

Total Paid Miles........................................3559 Miles

Actual Miles............................................. 3591 Miles

3701 x .43 = $1530.37 plus $30 detention pay

have you had the pleasure of pulling one of the new "advertising" trailers?

http://www.angelfire.com/va3/vavega/smallcrete.jpg :D

Month Behind! Where's the Evertrucker... Everyready Energizer Bunny?

Happy Spook Day ....

I'm on strike until you start your new thread, "Another day in the Life of Headborg"

Not really, I've actually just been a little to lazy to keep up, but I'm working on it. If the miles keep hitting the skids like they have been for the last couple of weeks I should be caught up in a few days. Uck!

Week 40
 

WEEK FOURTY
Monday, September 29th through Sunday, October 5th


Well, another reset is in the books and as I hit the 34th hour I find myself in the drivers’ seat waiting for the clock to give me the green light. I had arrived in Greyling with just enough time to squeeze in my reset and be on my way. I have a little under 60 miles to go and 75mins to do it after logging my PTI. If it was a straight run on an interstate I would be fine, but the remainder of the trip is on two lane roads through the north country of Michigan with the fine community of Elk Rapids as my final destination. It’s a quiet little town situated on a bay off of Lake Michigan in the far northwest part of the state. I have a load of empty cans going to a food plant of some type. I had assumed I was headed to a fishery (based on the odor in the area), but it turned out to be a fruit cannery. I had the good fortune of sitting next to a large pit where all the refuge fruit was dumped and it appeared that it had been fermenting for some time. A rather rancid smell to say the least that I had to contend with for a number of hours.

My first adventure of the week came around rather quickly. I had started my day at 04:30 and it was still quite dark at that hour. I had been driving for about 20mins when I noticed a big truck and a four wheeler were pulled off onto the shoulder on the eastbound lanes. I was a bit displeased with the truck because he had his brights on and due to the slight angle of his cab, they where shining directly into my eyes as I approached and it made it very difficult to see the faded lines on the somewhat narrow road. I squinted as best I could and made my way by. Shortly after that I saw the shadowy silhouetted outline of two people walking along the side of the road (apparently the drivers from the two vehicles I had just passed).

As I was making an attempt to process all that was going on and trying to readjust my eyes (still half blind from the high beams of the truck) on this very dark, moonless morning I found myself looking at a very large and recently dead dear smack dab in the middle of my lane. There was no real time to react other than to center myself on the obstacle and hope that the truck was high enough to clear it without knocking off a chunk of my Freightliner’s plastic bumper. Fortunately it didn’t have a large rack on it to do any damage and I made it by unscathed. OK, I’m awake now. Better to run over a dead deer than hit one that is standing on all four. Much less damage that way. I’m sure which ever one of the two guys walk back this way that hit this deer would agree.

With that little bit of excitement behind me I found myself within ¼ mile of the customer much sooner than I had expected; at least according to my directions. I was supposed to turn right on Hwy31 and look for the entrance ¼ mile on the right. A mile later and absolutely no sign of a business of any type I pulled out the phone and called the customer for directions. According to them I was still 15miles away. With my new directions in hand, I continued on down the road and pulled into their gate at 05:50 for my 06:00 appointment.

It’s obviously a Monday, because it is starting to resemble last week’s debacle. Once again I have pushed the limits of my log to make an on time appointment only to once again find that no one but me was overly concerned about when this load arrived. For the second week in a row I found myself wondering around a seemingly abandoned warehouse for 20mins before coming across someone. When I inform the gentleman that I am here with a delivery scheduled for 6:00am, I’m told that receiving guys weren’t up and running yet and tells me to back to the dock and make myself comfortable in my truck. Sure, why not, I don’t have anything else to do.

I had actually expected this very thing and didn’t let it get under my skin. I was fairly confident that this was going to be an extended stay anyway because when I initially received my load information on this haul it went into great detail with regards to detention procedures. Such things as making sure I arrive on time, properly document arrival, unload start and finish times and specifically, “You must get a signature on the detention form to receive payment” That line in itself let me know that I was in for a long morning.

Sure enough, the wait was extensive. I was under the impression that they would unload me and send me on my way. The fact of the matter was that they were using my truck as a can warehouse and would pull one pallet off at a time. They would then take that pallet to the canning line and load it into the machinery. When that pallet of cans had been filled with product they would return for another pallet. And so it went for the next 5 hours. That’s just what I wanted to do after a 34hr reset.

As if 5hrs wasn’t enough, I actually had a preplanned back haul on this load. Once I was empty, I was to pickup a load of specialized pallets that this company uses and return to the very place I had come from. Oh crap, that’s PA! Considering the fact that in the recent past I had only had two, maybe three loads into PA in the last 6 months; now I can’t seem to stay out of the bloody state.

So, after my 5hr unload I was instructed to head on over to the other side of the plant to be loaded with empty pallets. I do so and spend another hour waiting for that process to be completed which was fine because it took about that long to hunt down someone that would sign my detention form. By noon I was finally loaded up and ready to head on back to my favorite state, Pennsylvania. Thanks to another Monday filled with delays I once again failed to reach the 400 mile mark within my 14hrs, but was able to get another $30 bucks in detention pay. Whoo Hoo!

Tuesday was looking like a pretty good day. I had around 500 miles to run to make my delivery and should I be faced with the seemingly standard in PA, “no freight available at this time” message, I would still have a reasonable day of driving behind me. But in an effort to up my chances of a load once empty I started out at 3am so that I would arrive at a early enough hour to improve my chances of getting a load before this day came to a close.

Even though I had been routed over the Ohio turnpike I avoided it for as long as I could and stuck to Hwy 20 in order to make amends for my unauthorized trip across the PA turnpike last week. It was still very early in the morning and traffic was not a problem, so I didn’t really lose too much time in the process and was able to arrive at the consignee by 2:30 with the grand hopes of getting another load yet today.

Not only did I get a load out, they offered my two different ones and I didn’t even have to wait. One load was going to TN and the other was into SC. Mileage wise, they were very similar, but the SC had a much more attractive delivery time. My one big concern was that being empty in SC would greatly increase the likely hood of getting another load into PA, but I went against my better judgment and took the SC in the interest of saving time on the delivery end of things.

This next load was also a nice drop and hook pickup and I was able to get in and out in a little over 15mins and made my way to our terminal in New Kingstown. That way I could top off the fuel tanks and drop my trailer in the yard, thus making it easy to bobtail around town in the search of a place to eat and also made it possible to find a quite hiding place in the back of a shopping center so I would not have to listing to idling trucks all night long. That made for a nice 600 mile day.

Wednesday was another 3am start so that I could get to the customer as soon as possible. It had an open delivery window, but as usual, an early delivery always bodes well when one is looking for another load before the day is complete. I knocked out the remaining 500 miles and made it to my delivery point shortly after noon. I didn’t arrive quite soon enough however because there was another truck just backing into their only dock as I arrived, so I had to sit while he was being unloaded before I could take my turn. The wait wasn’t so bad, but the fact that it was another Crete truck was the kicker in this scenario. Because he was there first, he was unloaded first, therefore he got the first choice of the loads being offered out that afternoon.

The other driver was given a choice of two loads, both out of Maxton, NC (Campbell’s soup), but one was going to a good place, can’t remember where, and the other was going to a suburb of Philly. Guess which one I ended up getting.

I had a funny feeling that my decision to take the SC load would land me back in PA and that’s just what happened. If only I had made it there before the other Crete driver. I should have because this driver was definitely working at a slower pace. He had actually pulled out to pickup his load as I was backing to the dock. I left that customer about 30 minuets later and ended up missing my turn on the way to Maxton which led me on a scenic tour of the SC countryside (had a hell of a time finding a place to turn around) and cost me a good 20mins of wasted time. When I finally pulled into Campbell’s the other driver was sitting there hooked to his new trailer when I arrived and still there when I left with my trailer. Sure do wish I had his load, oh well, off to Philly I go. My hours were all but up for the day so I shut down in a dirt lot next to Hardee’s after another good day of 600mi.

Thursday was definitely a no hurry day. I only had about 550 miles to go and this load didn’t deliver until the early morning hours on Friday. If the customer had on site parking I could have just buzzed on over, but the likely hood of that was slim and I was headed to a Kmart DC, so an early delivery was also not an option. Even though there was no pressing need to get to where I was going today I did have to take parking into consideration. Options are limited in the area and if I tried pulling into the area at night I would be hard pressed to find a spot, so with that knowledge in hand I pulled out at 3am and found myself in the Newark service plaza by Noon. I had planned on pulling in and making a final decision on where I would park for the night, but realized I was probably in as good a spot as any and shut her down. This way I would have a short 80 miles to finish off in the morning and would be doing it when there was no traffic on the road.

I managed to make it through Philly just as the morning traffic was getting revved up and was able to avoid the traditional nightmare that unfolds there every day. I arrived at the Kmart one hour early and received my instructions. A nice little set up actually. All I had to do was drop my trailer in an open lot and their yard jockey took it from there. I had anticipated a reasonable unload of 90mins or so, but since I had dropped my trailer and watched it disappear around the corner I was not in a position to know what was going on. At least when you are hooked to a trailer you can feel it bounce around and know when the unloading begins and ends. Instead I was sitting in a parking lot with no clue as to how things were progressing and as the 3hr mark rolled around I was getting very antsy. I was antagonized further by the fact that two other trucks that had arrived at about the same time as me where already finished and gone.

I try to be patient in these circumstances, but it got to the point where I couldn’t hold out any longer. I had to know what was going on and headed out on a quest to find some answers. It was a bit of a challenge, but I finally track down someone that knew what was happening and was simply informed that my load had an extensive breakdown and they were still working on it. Not the answer I wanted to hear, but it did help alleviate my fear that an empty Crete trailer was sitting, lost and forgotten, somewhere in the bowels of this place.

It must have been one nasty product breakdown, because I spent a grand total of 5hrs in the place before I finally had an empty trailer attached to my truck. As annoying as that little delay was, I was calmed by the chirping of the Qcomm with a load offer. I was sure that I would be stuck here for the rest of the day because of the length of time I had sat here. Instead, I had a load offer immediately after sending in my MT call and it was getting me out of this awful corner of the world, but only after driving into Elizabeth, NJ first. There is always a price to pay, isn’t there.

I was to pickup a load of beer from the Bud Whse and run it up to Michigan. Although this load got me out of the Northeast, it was far from perfect. First I would have to drive into Jersey, but I had been to this place a few times and knew the ropes. Go to one drop yard to check in, then take the empty trailer to a different drop yard and return to the original drop yard to get the loaded trailer, and don’t go to the office that the Qualcomm tells us to go to. It helps to know these little things at times. So, other than the traffic, which at that time of day wasn’t all that horrible, it was a fairly painless drop and hook and I was on my way down the road.

Now for problem two. It was now Friday, 1pm. This load was to deliver anytime after 10pm Sunday night, but was only 650mi away. Long story short, I could be there Saturday morning. This would actually afford me enough time to put in a reset had I been so inclined to do so, but I would still have around 15hrs available upon my arrival and didn’t really care to do so at that time. I would be much more content if I could run some more hours off.

The delivery time on this load was a bit odd. Any time after 10pm on a Sunday. It was obviously headed to a small local distributorship and these places tend to operate on a M-F, part of Saturday kind of schedule. I assumed that the late Sunday delivery time probably coincided with when the shift started for loading their outbound trucks for Monday morning deliveries. There was also a phone number listed with the load info that showed business hours. What caught my eye was that they were open until noon on Saturday. After running the numbers through my head a couple of times I realized that I could make it there by roughly 10am. Here we go again, off to the races with no stops along the way other than for fuel and my required 10hr break. This is getting to be a habit.

I drove out the rest of my hours for the rest of the day without stopping to help improve my chances of arriving in Michigan in a timely manner and shut down for the night on the west side of PA.

Saturday started with me being in a very good position to make it to the Bud distributor before noon. I actually had more than enough time to make that dead line, but I also realized that if they shut the doors at noon, and I arrived at that time or slightly earlier, I would have, in all likelihood been told “tough luck, see ya Sunday night” I figured I was already taking a chance in showing up on Saturday, but these smaller places are generally very flexible when it comes to receiving deliveries, so I was feeling very confident that I could get unloaded if I showed up at a reasonable hour.

Not wanting to arrive too close to closing time, other than a quick fueling, I started at 3:30am and did the no stop thing, managing to show up in their lot at 10:45am. A little tight for comfort, but I might just be able to pull this off. I was absolutely elated to see another Crete truck backed up to one of their doors. Looks like I’m not the only one that had this idea.

When I walked into the office I got two responses. From the nice girl working in the office, “Good morning, how are you doing today” and from the warehouse guy, “Oh, Jesus Christ, another one!” The pleasant office girl told me, “Don’t worry about him, he has tickets to the game and seems to think he can leave early”. Apparently, this guy was looking forward to meeting up with some local buds to watch the Michigan game down in Ann Arbor against Illinois. I can joyfully inform you that they lost that game 20-45. Go Iowa Hawkeyes! Although Michigan State beat the Hawkeyes on that same day.

Well, I can tell you one thing. When these guys set their mind to it, they can have your trailer unloaded in the blink of an eye. I was given a door assignment and before I made it to my truck the warehouse guy had the door open and was standing there waiting for me to back in. Once I did so, I walked to the warehouse entrance, which was about 10 dock doors away. By the time I made it to my dock from the inside of the building the guy already had six pallets off and he didn’t give a damn where he put them. I’ve never seen a guy drive a forklift so fast or recklessly. He was on a mission and nothing was going to stop him. He was shoving pallets of beer in every little cranny he could find that involve the shortest possible distance of travel and my truck was empty in 7 minutes flat. Holy Cow! I knew these guys were keeping this ability a secret.

What a perfect day, I’m now empty and its not even noon yet. Sure beats sitting around until 10pm tomorrow night. I put in my MT call and waited to see what was available for freight in the area.

While I was waiting I had the chance to talk to the other Crete driver that had unloaded just before me. He was a little distressed because he had been driving all night to make this delivery and had actually run over his 11hrs due to a wrong turn close by trying to find this place. He had only been with the company for two months and was upset that he was going to get a log violation. According to him, had been driving in circles for about 30 mins past his 11hrs. He also said that he was never more than a few miles away, he actually drove past it a couple of times without realizing it. I simple suggested he log the adventure as “on duty” and he would be fine. If he took my advice, he would fine. I hope he did so.

When I returned to the truck I found a load offer waiting for me. Want to guess where it was heading, yup, PA.

And just to rub salt in the wound, it was a load that was scheduled to pickup at 1am in Battle Creek. That’s less than 100 miles away and its only Saturday noon. The trip it self is actually perfect for my time frame. I am once again getting tight on hours and this will work out perfect, but only if I can pickup the load now. If I can do that, I will be able to arrive in PA with about 2hrs left on my 70 and be the perfect position to do a reset just across the street from the delivery point. Due to the timing of things, however, if I have to wait until the scheduled pickup time I would still be able to make my delivery, but without the reset, thus forcing me to sit dormant for a total of two days waiting to gain hours back.

There seems to be a theme to my resets lately, if I do this, and it works out like that, and I get lucky here, I might just be able too, and so on.

Well, if that’s what I have to do it’s fine with me. Even though this load has a 1am pickup time, I know for a fact that it is a 100% drop and hook customer. I just hope that it is loaded and ready to go. I arrived at the gate and let the guard know that I was about 12 hrs early, but if the trailer was ready to go I would be ready to take it. After a little paper shuffling I was given the green light and a trailer number. Lucky me, still going my way.

I drove out the rest of my hours for the day and got a very early start on Sunday morning which made it possible to pull into my favorite PA destination, Breinigsville, in the mid morning, thus making it possible to put in my reset and be ready to burn up the miles once I dropped my trailer just across the road. Very annoying customer by the way, even though it’s a drop/hook delivery, they won’t let you into the gate any more than 2hrs early (may actually be 1hr these days). Not that it makes any difference to me on this particular day; I’m out of hours anyway.



WEEK FOURTY
Monday, September 29th through Sunday, October 5th
Miles include deadhead

Grayling, MI to Elk Rapids, MI (final leg)......................................56mi
Elk Rapids, MI to Blandon, PA................................................ ...789mi
Columbia, PA to Lancaster, SC................................................ .604mi
Maxton, NC to Fairless Hills, PA................................................ .636mi
Elizabeth, NJ to Howell, MI................................................ ........708mi
Battle Creek, MI to Breinigsville, PA..........................................713mi

Total Paid Miles............................................. .......3506 Miles

Actual Miles.............................3600 Miles

3506 x .43 = $1507.58

I still say that Tonn should have all of the Crete trucks/trailers painted the same color. That way those Shaffer boys wouldnt have to listen to all of the crap on their CB when they are pulling a red trailer down the road and taking a load away from a red truck driver....... ;)

ET you are about a month and half behind on your posts. Thanks!