Too late and I no longer work for Crete.

 

Then the comment was for anyone that uses a Quallcomm.

 

WEEK FOUR
Monday 01/21 through Sunday 01/27


This week starts out with a tediously boring Monday once again. I have found myself doing a reset at another truckstop with nothing to do. I look around and see that they allow dropped trailers, but I really don't feel good about leaving mine here. I'm not exactly in the best part of Montgomery. I was going to get a hotel, but couldn't find anything with truck parking under $55 and had no desire to spend that much so I decided to suck it up and make the best of things in my truck. At least I had a chance to sort through some receipts to speed up my tax work when I get home later in the week.

Tuesday starts off bright and early, well not so much, it's still dark, but you get the idea. I have just under 500 miles via Interstates to go and I have a delivery appointment of 3pm. In my down time I figured I could run the back roads and cut it down to 440 miles. These would be slower routes but I can probably save 30mins in travel time overall (as it turned out, the back roads were a bit slower than anticipated and I was only able to save 15mins). Never know when that time savings can make a difference later in the week, plus I'll get to run some roads I've never been on before. There aren't as many of those left as there once was.

The trip went uneventfully and I found myself a little ahead of schedule and decided to treat myself at Stake N Shake and take a shower at the local Pilot. I was wishing I had started a little later so I would have more time on the 14 Clock after my delivery but I wanted to make sure I wouldn't be late for my delivery and since I was taking unfamiliar back roads it would be best to be cautious with my time.

The qualcom tells me that the receiver begins taking deliveries at 3:00pm on a first come first serve bases so I arrived at 2:30 and try to check in. Well when the said 3:00pm they meant it. I'm told to leave the property and return later. I return a little after 3 and go to the gate that was pointed out to me earlier. Well, it's still locked up so I call the number given to me earlier and am told to wait until he was done with his meeting. I tell him I'm blocking traffic which is answered with a grunt!. 20 minutes later the gate opens and the guy on the speaker gives me a door assignment. I dock and wait another hour before unloading begins. This is rather annoying because my load is just 18 bulk rolls of insulation and I should have been unloaded in 20 minutes. But since this is my first live unload in almost 2 week I wont complain (too much). Loading begins and 15 minutes later I'm empty and put in my MT call.

Within 15 minutes I was given a single load offer that has a drop/hook PU and DEL going to Ardmore, OK (1173 mi) with a delivery anytime Thursday. Awesome load but I had a home time request in for the weekend. I have been out for over 3 weeks and all I would have to do is send a message that I want to get back to the house and I would have been pulled off the load. Here's were I have problems getting home and it's not Crete's fault. It is usually a product of my own greed. The way I look at it, there is a $500 bill sitting on the ground and all I have to do is run up to Oklahoma and pick it up.

Add this to the fact that I was able to get in my reset the day before, I will be in Oklahoma early Thursday and have plenty of hours available to get me home by late Saturday or early Sunday if the right load came along. That part of the country has a strong freight base for us and I know I have a good chance of getting a load close to the house.

I accept the load and get ready to head over to pickup my load 90 miles away. The load is scheduled to PU the following day, but I figure it is already loaded and if I get there tonight I can do my drop/hook and still have time to put another 100 miles behind me before I run out of hours.

This hope is almost immediately squashed. Just as I'm ready to pull out I get a message. "Can you shag a trailer with tire problems to a local shop and DROP it there before you PU your load, pays $35"? That's a new twist; I'm usually hit up for favors before the good loads. Well, I'm definitely not thrilled about this, but I figure it's the least I can do for the past couple of weeks. I let dispatch know "happy to help out, where is the trailer and where do you want me to take it."? Ten minutes later I get started.

As I'm driving it occurs to me that by the time I hook to this trailer with the bad tire and get it to the shop it will be after 5pm and I don't know if this is a 24hr shop. I call them and they inform me that they will not be open but I can show up anytime after 7:30 the next morning. I told them that I was suppose to drop a trailer there for tire repairs and asked if I could leave it on their property after hours. He�s seems to be oddly amused by this silly notion and lets me know that they have no room for dropped trailers and I would have to remain with the trailer during repairs. �See ya in the morning�

This puts a serious wrinkle in my timeline. I had planed on being in OK early Thursday so I could get an early start on a load going back to the house. This little mess has just set me back at least 6hrs. It does occur to me that if the tire in question is just a flat and not off the rim I could plug the hole and fill it myself and be on my merry way. Yeah, I can be a little too optimistic at times. I arrive to find the tire in question has seen its last days.

I resign myself to the fact that things don�t always go as planed, drop my empty trailer at the customer, PU the one with a bad foot and park onsite for the night. Oh yeah, the loaded trailer I was to PU was on property and ready to go.


Three hours later I wake up from a dead sleep and am very annoyed with myself because 1. Why did I let this wake me up? 2. The stupid trailer only needs a new tire, I have a spare on the truck, all I have to do is pull the trailer to a truckstop and there is one less than 30 miles away. If I would have been thinking I could have had the tire replaced before shutting down for the night for a total cost of $30 to the company instead of letting some local shop fleece the company for $400 for the cost of a new tire. All is not lost; I am able to get going early the next day.

Wednesday starts at 3:30am; I�m able to get the tire switched out at the Petro. Nice short lines that time of day. I�m out in 30 minutes; head back to get my loaded trailer and I�m on my way to OK by 6:00am. This works out much better than what the company had set up. I saved Crete allot of money (no one will ever realize this, but it makes me feel good) and I�m rolling by 6:00 instead of 10:00 and am almost back on my preplanned schedule. I put in my 11hrs of drive time and shut down for the night in Louisiana.

Thursday starts out early and I drive the final 463 miles and drop my trailer before 1pm. I put in my MT call and let dispatch know that I have till 16:30 before my 14hrs is up and I wait in anticipation for that golden load to get me home. 10 minutes later I get a one load offer that was to PU 100 miles away at 18:00 (Uggg! There�s that automated �Load Offer� button again) and delivered to St. Louis (600 mi) Friday morning. Not a bad load but I don�t have the hours to PU the load and although it doesn�t get me home, it�s in the right direction. I send in a message, �can�t commit to load, PU is after my 14hrs window. PS I�m trying to get home�.

Within 15 minutes I was giving a load offer that was a drop/hook PU north of Wichita, KS(300 mi DH) and had a live 7:00am delivery in Henderson, NC(1300 mi) the following Monday. This offer is followed by a message �accept this load only if you have the hours and can pickup and deliver on time�. What that basically means is NO TCALL! I�m not all that excited by that because I can have the load to our Greensboro yard by Saturday morning. I decide to take the load and take my chances of talking the weekend dispatch into T-Calling this load at a later time.

The scheduled PU for this load is a drop/hook the following day at 16:00-23:59, which leads me to believe it is a preloaded trailer and ready to go. I can�t get there today, but I figure if I drive out the rest of my hours for the day I can get within a 100 miles. This is important because that will leave between 1300-1400 miles to my final destination and that can be driven in (2) 11hrs shifts. Thus making it possible to make Raleigh, NC by noon Saturday �IF� the trailer is ready to go when I get to the shipper at 5:00am. Why do I want to make sure I can get to Raleigh, well, even if I make it there I will be out of hours. But at least I will be close enough to the house so the wife can drive up for dinner and we can get a nice room for the night. I take off and am able to drive 230 miles before running out of hours.

Friday rolls around and I get going at by 3:45am. I am taking a big chance here. Once I start driving so does my 14hr clock. If I show up at 5:00am and my load isn't ready for hours I will loose significant drive time for the day and will not be close enough to the house to be able to spend the weekend with the wife. Also, it will make it impossible to fit in another 34hr reset before my delivery. I could start later in the day, but for every hour I delay I will be looking at a later arrival in NC.

Throwing caution to the wind I arrive at the shipper at 5:00am and check in. Anyone want to guess. Nope, trailer is not ready and the crew doesn't show up to load until 6:00am. I am told to put my MT in a door and unhook. He also told me that he would make sure my trailer would be the first one loaded and should be ready by 7:30am. This makes for a tight schedule over the next couple of days but is doable.

True to his word, the trailer was ready when promised and I was off.

Friday and Saturday was spent driving and I was able to make it to the Greensboro yard in hopes of T-Calling my load early Saturday. I didn't really expect to get away with this and was not surprised when I was told I had to deliver the load. This wasn't the end of the world, even if I had succeeded, I didn't have the hours to drive home and the wife would have driven up to meet me in Raleigh either way. I left the yard and found a truckstop outside of Raleigh.

While I waited for the wife to pick me up I got a room at the Hilton Duke, $140 room for $45 through Priceline (love that website) and did a little research on the net and found the best restaurant in the area and made reservations. It wasn't home but it was a wonderful weekend and I was able to fit in that coveted 34hr reset.

WEEK FOUR RESULTS:
Monday Jan 21 through Sunday Jan 27
Miles include deadhead

Montgomery, AL to Jacksonville, FL....................501 Miles
Alachua, FL to Ardmore, OK..............................1173 Miles
McPherson, KS to Mebane, NC...........................1567 Miles


Total Paid Miles............................................. ...3241 Miles(5 days of driving, Monday and Sunday were reset days)
Actual Miles.........................3284

3241 miles x .42 = $1361.22 + $35 shag pay

 

Great going Everready. I also just turned in some Transflos for a great week this morning. Have fun at home. I am about to ask for hometime for a couple of days myself.

 

Damn that sounded like one hell of a week. You have more patience that I sir. When its time to go home.....

That shag and bag trailer would have had my stomach hurting :lol:

 

I kind of wish I would have went to Crete. We had a miscommunication on the Orientation date. That was July 2007. I was roaming around the wilds of Maine on my motorcycle. When I got back to civilization there was a message from Crete asking why I didn't show for Orientation. As God is my witness, I swear it was supposed to be the last week of July, not the 2nd week of July! Crete said I could re-apply.

Instead, I did a few months with Schneider, bagged that, and now yank tanks for Superior.

I miss the length of haul with dry van.

Superior also seems obsessed with getting you back to the home terminal. During the winter I would just as soon stay on the road. I have no winter hobbies, or interests. Home to me during the winter is a game of cat and mouse with my wife - the mouse is me getting caught turning up the thermostat. Any guy with a wife of 40 should know this game :lol:

Hopefully, Superior is so adamant on getting me home when golf season starts.

Anyways, I like your Crete commentary.

 

I was all set up to go to Crete when I was moving from WI to TX. I had to quit my job of 7 years in WI so I went looking and found them. They were advertising for southern regional and that's what I applied for. They were begging me to come to orientation and take my physical etc. Finally I got my house sale stuff done and called to set up my orientation date and we got it all done and I asked, "you are hiring me for the southern regional fleet right" and she didn't answer me and went off on something else. I ended up asking her 3 times before she said no, we're not hiring for southern regional this is for national. I hade the website up and checked right away and it sure said they were hiring for southern regional. That really made me mad, I don't like bing lied to so I told her no thanks. WHo knows, mabey I'll call them again. I am looking again but I will be on gaurd

 

I talked to my terminal manager the other day because I was toying with the idea of going on the midwest regional fleet just to see what it was like and he said that Crete has basically stopped hiring for all the regional fleets except SE region.

 

Well hell, here I was all set to apply for the Western Regional too....

They did this just so they wouldnt have to hire me back.... 8)

 

Might be wrong on the western region. It's the only one I don't qualify for so I didn't even ask.