I wanted to add to the above . .

I don't believe it's a corporate thing. It may come down to individual loads, or the individual booking the load. Someone mentioned C. H. Robinson, above and, coincidentally, the last time it happened was on a CHR load. The shortage came on the 168 actual (routed) mile deadhead which was booked at 113. That's no HHG discrepency!

At the risk of hijacking your thread, let me point out one other thing that happened on that load that all drivers need to be on the lookout for: My arrived at shipper call didn't go through . . "not within range" followed by a 4 hour detention and my arrived at final call didn't go through, same reason, followed by an 8 hour wait to get unloaded! My suspicion is the detention was predictable and the "error messages" were intentional as in "we do not pay detention on these loads." I'm being paid for that load on this weeks check and lo and behold . . there's no detention on it!

Time to polish my shield and brace myself for a fight with my (off until Monday) DM

 

2008
WEEK FOURTEEN
Monday, March 31st through Sunday, April 6th


Well, this is going to be a short update.

I spent the week at home packing up our positions and putting the house on the market.

I had originally planed on being back in the truck by Friday morning but it became apparent early in the week that I wasn’t going to be able to get everything done in that time frame so I called my fleet manager and requested some additional time off. He said sure and asked me how much time I needed and approved it without question.

I had a 600 mile drive back to Columbus in the rental car and left the house in the late Saturday morning, arriving Saturday night.

After letting dispatch know I was back in the truck but had no empty trailers availible I was given a load that was ready to go in the yard but had enough time on it that I could put in a good 8hrs of sleep. I hit the sack and started my run Sunday morning.

My first load was a drop/hook delivery to Manassas, VA (424mi). Not the longest run but the load info stated that they had overnight parking and it delivered first thing Monday morning. This worked just fine for me because I was still worn out from my previous week of packing and didn’t really want to run all that hard anyway.

I arrived early Sunday evening to find plenty of parking and noticed that there were already two MT trailers sitting in their yard. As least I know I will be able to get going first thing Monday morning.

A quick search on my GPS let me know that there were a number of restaurants about 1 ½ miles away so I got a little exercise in and had a good meal before going to sleep.



WEEK FOURTEEN RESULTS
Monday, March 31st through Sunday, April 6th
Miles include deadhead

Columbus, OH to Manassas, VA........................424mi

Total Paid Miles............................................. ..424 miles

Actual Miles.......................410 miles

424mi X .42 = $178.08

In regards to my earlier questioning the “practical miles” routing in relation to this run. I was given a “suggested routing” that was entirely via interstates and by using my Streets and Trips show mileage of 445mi, an excess of 21mi. Not bad and quite acceptable from my point of view. I, however, opted to take a few short cuts and come in from the backside, thus avoiding the Washington DC loop. This alternate route included a few two lanes over some extremely hilly roads that I had traveled in the past. This was a very light load and the hills wouldn’t slow me down much, if it had been a 40,000# load I wouldn’t have done it. By making a couple of 7min stops and logging them as 15min stops I was able to gain some time back.

When all was said and done I made it to the consignee without really saving any time on my log but only turned 410 miles and I was able to avoid DC.

 

Swift, wow, they are an entirely different animal.

They are the king of "Short Miles". I know this from experience. I was actually able to talk the wife into driving team with me back in 2000. Swift was the only company that would let me train her and they paid for her CDL school on top of it, so we went that route knowing the downfalls well in advance. We would put our year in to get her experienced and then move on. As it turned out that year was enough for her and she went back to her 9-5 life (can't blame her for that).

Anyway, if I pulled out my old records I could give you exact numbers (they are in box somewhere). Over a 13 month period we turn somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000+ miles (Swift had the miles if you wanted them) and we were paid for about 275,000 of them. That's over 25,000 unpaid miles in a little over 1 year. OUCH! I was constantly on the phone with the fleet manager fighting for mileage pay, and every other thing as far as that goes.

It's the old adage, you have to start somewhere. But unless you have a sweet little local gig or dedicated run that gives you the lifestyle you are looking for, get away from this company and any other that treats its drivers like this as soon as you can.



As far as your Laptop advise and a good mapping program, I couldn't agree with you more.

 

How do you think you move back to Phoenix is going to affectyour ability to get home when you want? I know Wilmington is not exactly on a major freight lane but I've talked to quite a few Crete drivers who are domiciled in and around Phoenix who are not too happy about Crete's ability to get them home.

 

Ok, the RESET and the HOME are clear to me-- but where it reads OFF < what does that denote on your chart?

How about YARD days?

 

I don't expect to get home exactly when I want, but at least we have a yard in PHX and freight that actually goes that way. Trying to get to Wilmington is a nightmare. In the last 1 1/2 years I have had two loads deliver within 70 miles of the house, other than that I had to dead head 200-300 miles. This was one of the major reasons I stayed out for extended periods of time. I was told when I hired on that due to the excessive DH miles not to expect to go home as often as some of the other drivers. I knew this going in and never held Crete responsible for my choices. More than once I had to shut down between my final delivery and the house because I ran out of hours. One time I even went to the Greensboro yard to TCall my load and go home and there was no empty so I had to go ahead and deliver the load in PA because without an MT I wouldn't be able to get a load after my off time. It was almost another two weeks before I got home.

I have taken hometime in PHX a few times along the way and alway found it easier to get there at those times. It will just be easier all around, parking was alway a problem for me in NC too plus I'll be able to leave a car in the PHX yard. In NC I always had to rely on someone to tote me back and forth and it wasn't uncommon for me to have to sit around for hours until the wife or one of my friends were able to help out.

Basically, it may still be a problem, just less of one. Any improvement will be welcomed.

By the way, you might be able to catch up with my miles by the end of the month, I got a late start this month.

Good Luck and drive safe Karnajj.

 

Hey headborg, how's the search for a new gig going?

The "OFF" days refers to my hometime that I took in PHX to visit family (I had to fly in from SLC and leave the truck at that terminal because Crete wasn't able to get me back to PHX in time).

We both have parents, brothers, sisters and so on in PHX and I flew the wife out while I was there so we could spend the time together.

I didn't want to call it "HOME" and then have someone call me on it and accuse me of lying or anything along those lines.

I'm not sure what you mean by "YARD" days. If you mean days spent at the terminals waiting for the truck in the shop, no, I've had no down time due to that. I have had a very good truck and any service or general repairs (620K miles and going strong) that were done were always taken care of during planed resets or when I left the truck at a terminal during home/off time.

 

2008
WEEK FIFTEEN
Monday, April 7th through Sunday, April 13th



This week started out with a quick drop/hook delivery. I had spent the night in their yard and was ready for my next load first thing. I was only offered one load, but it was a good run that picked up in Richmond going to Minneapolis (1323mi). Once again, my suggested routing had me taking the outer loop around DC and I was looking at rush hour traffic. I opted to backtrack a little and run Hwy 15 south down to I-95. This was about 40 miles out of the way but I’m sure it saved me some time if not the frustration of dealing with that DC traffic.

I was thankful to be getting a load that wasn’t going to the north east and also happy to get a load that will get me back through Columbus. I had left my truck there during my time off and put the truck in the shop for an A service and to address a couple of minor issues, but when I left Sunday I had forgotten to pickup my spare key from the shop.

My pickup was a live load and only took about and hour and I was off and running. I spent the rest of the day driving and shut down for the night in our Columbus terminal. I had another hour of drive time left, but wasn’t in the mood to run out the rest of the day. This would mean that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the customer by the end of the next days driving, but it wasn’t scheduled to deliver until Wednesday morning and it appeared to be a live unload anyway. No chance of an early delivery on this one.

Tuesday was a bit of a pain as far as roads went. Because I had to go through Columbus to get my key I was forced to take local highways all the way through OH, IN and IL to avoid excess out of route miles. I wasn’t exactly making great time, but I was able to get through Chicago between rush hours and other than a fairly heavy snow storm outside of the Dells in Wisconsin, I didn’t have anything else to complain about.

I can’t help remembering when I got this load one of the first things that crossed my mind was “at least I won’t have to worry about snow storms anymore”. I should have known better. The one positive, even though it was a heavy snow, it was warm enough that the snow wasn’t sticking to the road. That must have change during the night though, because when I started driving the next morning there was a lot of snow and ice chunks on the road that had fallen off of trucks.

Wednesday found me about 100 miles from my delivery and an early start of 3:30 had me there by 5 for a 6am appointment. I was a little disappointed to find no one there yet and I had to wait until 6 to get a door assignment. This was a live unload and was a rare lumper unload. At least I didn’t have to unload it, the breakdown was ridiculous. I had a load of Maruchan noodles with 20+ flavors that had to be separated.

The unload took a couple of hours, not bad considering the breakdown and before I left I was presented with 3 refused cases that were slightly damaged. I placed a call to OS&D, but was informed that they were not in the office yet. We are suppose to stay where we are at until an OK is received, but there was no real resolve other than signing for the damage anyway, so I left and figured I could deal with it in the future. I called later in the day while being loaded at my next pickup and OS&D took the info and told me to either toss them out or keep them, it was up to me. So now I have enough Roasted Chicken instant noodle cups to last me for some time.

After my MT call, which I put in 30mins before being unloaded, bad me (an effort in dealing with the Qcom delay in getting load info that tends to slow me down at times). I received a nice three load offer. While I was trying to decide which one would best suit me I got another message informing me to disregard the previous load offers along with another single load offer. Apparently this load was missed on the previous day and they needed it picked up as ASAP.

Not a problem, it was a nice 570mi trip that was a drop/hook delivery anytime the next day to Rockford, IL. Turn and burn works for me. I accepted the load and received my load info within a few minutes (no delay today).

Once I was unloaded I headed north to Duluth, MN to get my load. I was thankful to be heading out of town instead of in. That rush hour traffic around Minneapolis is a nightmare; traffic into town was crawling and must have been backed up 10 miles.

I arrived at the shipper and was informed that I was a day late. I apologized and let them know that I had actually been pulled off another load to come get this one (in some attempt at garnishing some sympathy) and was told they would fit me in. I only had to wait for an hour or so and was loaded in 45mins.

I only had another 400 miles to make my delivery, but I had lost too much time at my previous delivery and this PU to make it within my 14hrs, so I headed down the road and got as far as I could, managing to get within 50 miles. No big deal, I would have liked to drop this trailer tonight, but I’m close enough that I can put in my MT call by 6am and get an early start on my next load.

Thursday started with a quick run down to Rockford to drop my trailer. Bad news, no MT trailers available. I’m informed that they need to keep 37 empty trailers on hand, Ugh! After a short little conversation with the shipping clerk, I’m able to talk her out of one and put in my MT call. This is answered in short order by a single load offer going to Omaha (424mi). It’s a short run but I’ve already put in 50mi today and it makes for a respectable 475mi day. The aggravating part of this load is that it is a preloaded trailer at the very same customer I just spent a fair amount of effort into talking them out of an MT trailer.

So back to the shipping office I go with my tail between my legs and an apology for my company’s short sightedness. She takes it well with a smile and hands me the paperwork for my next load.

I make it to our Council Bluffs yard by 1:30pm and climb in the back of the truck for some sleep. I’m having a hell of a time catching up on sleep. The stress from my sudden move seems to be getting the best of me.

Friday is another early day; I’m scheduled for a 4am delivery at a local Lowes store and get there a little early. The receiver is under the impression that this is a drop load, but since there is no empty trailer there and I have an actual delivery appointment time instead of a delivery window I’m not convinced this is the case.

A message to night dispatch (oh no, this could be a problem) is actually answered within 15 minutes. It is defiantly a live unload and I head back inside to inform them of this fact. He’s not very pleased, but unloading started soon thereafter and a short 3hrs later (grrr )I was empty. At least it was still early in the day and left me with the hope of a good load.

My next load offer consisted of two choices. One to Chicago and one to Columbus. I went with the Columbus load (792mi). It was D/H PU 3 miles away and was an appointment delivery Sunday morning at 7am. I am familiar with this customer, and although it is an appointment delivery time, it is a D/H customer. If I get lucky I will be able to deliver it Saturday morning when I get into town, if not I should be able to Tcall the load and put in a 34hr reset. I’ll be down to 6-7hrs on my 70hrs by then anyway. I got as far as I could with the load on Friday and shut down about 200mi from Columbus.

I started Saturday early again, around 3:30 so that I could get to the customer as close to 7am as possible. The load was to be delivered 7am on Sunday, but if I showed up Saturday I might be able to get away with telling them I thought it delivered today. Sure enough, I presented my paperwork to the receiver and after shuffling papers for awhile he informed me that I was a day early. I put on my best poker face and told my well rehearsed story. I also apologized for my misunderstanding and offered to return the next day if it was an inconvenience. He said since I was here he would let me drop the trailer, but he didn’t have an empty available. “Not a problem”, I said. I dropped the trailer and headed off to our terminal with the expectation of doing a 34hr reset.

Once back to the yard, I sent in an MT call and immediately received a 3 load offer, all of which needed to go now and I had no hours to do any of them. Looks like freight is picking up in Ohio. I really needed a 34 reset, but if I started it now I would be ready to go around 6pm Sunday night. Not ideal because I would be in a situation where I’ve been sitting around all day and would be looking at either having to drive all night or getting a load Monday morning, which would actually have me looking at two full days off.

With that in mind I then sent a message off to dispatch informing them that I could not accept any of the load offers because of hours of service restrictions. However, I have 6.5hrs available for the next two days and if you have a load that has some down time on it that delivers Monday morning I could take it and do a 34 reset somewhere along the way.

While I waited for an answer I hooked to an empty trailer and swept it out, if they had that many loads that need to go today I was sure they would come up with a load for me that would work with my hours.

Sure enough, by the time I got back in the cab I had another 3 loads to choose from. All of which delivered at various times Monday morning. Load one was going to Greensboro (that figures, that is the exact load I needed last week to get me home). This was a good load as far as it related to my available hours and the delivery time was agreeable, but it would leave me empty in a part of the country where I stood a good chance of getting a short load to the northeast Monday morning, icky poo. Load two going to Massachusetts (I don’t think so), and the third load was going to Atlanta which has a very strong freight base for us and many of those loads go in a westerly direction, or at the very least to the Midwest. Atlanta it is.

Once again the Qcom is backed up and the load info is slow in arriving. The load was to PU in Cincinnati 100 miles away, so I headed that way and when I heard the Qcom chirping about an hour later I stopped at a Loves to get the pertinent information for my load. It was a very quick D/H PU and I was in and out in 15mins and headed on down the road to get as far as I could before running out of hours. I made it to Knoxville with 15mins left on my 70hrs and shut down for 34hr reset. I think I’ll have a nice steak for dinner tonight at the local Texas Roadhouse.




WEEK FIFTEEN RESULTS
Monday, April 7th through Sunday, April 13th
Miles include deadhead



Richmond, VA to Maple Grove, MN.........................1323mi
Cromwell, MN to Rockford, IL..................................570mi
Rockford, IL to Omaha, NE......................................424mi
Omaha, NE to Columbus, OH...................................792mi
Mariemont, OH to Knoxville, TN(fist leg)...................377mi

Total Paid Miles............................................. ........3486 Miles
Actual Miles...........................3564 Miles

3486mi x .42 = $1464.12

First off I’d like to point out that the final paid mileage for this week was 3486 miles. My actual week after home time really started last Sunday. But since I started tracking my weeks Monday through Sunday I will continue to do so. This in effect split my last week by putting my first day of running in last weeks total. OK, I’m rambling. What I wanted to point out is that after finally getting a fresh 70hr clock I was able to run 3910 paid miles (3486 + 420) miles in the last 7 days.

In regards to the “practical miles” question I raised earlier, it does seem that it was just a strange week or two and things are back to normalcy. However, this inconsistency with suggested routing did come up again on my trip from Minneapolis to Cromwell, MN to Rockford, IL. My suggested routing took me on only interstates in order to run me through a TA for fuel outside of Minneapolis whereas I took a shorter route across Wisconsin. I was able to do this because I had enough fuel in my tanks to bypass the fueling route and in doing so I made the trip in 580 miles as opposed to the 620 miles that would have resulted in the computer generated route. The paid miles for this trip were 570 miles. There are still some inconsistencies, but nothing too outrageous. I will bring it up to my fleet manager and get his take on it.

 

Hello ya'll
A NooBie here, but it almost feels like home.
I am only on page 6 or 7 and have been entertaining the notion of going to Crete. I love this blog and learing a lot. I have had a chance to speak with a couple of other drivers about Crete and I am impressed so far.
( I hope I am not hijacking this thread) :? I am reall interested in the fact that some of the best loads are with D/H w/ open apps.
Please tell me , Are drivers not allowed to fudge the logs with Crete?
Anyway back to page 6 0r 7 to finish.
Evertrucker, keep up the GREAT blog

 

Is this a troll? Why would you want to fudge logs? What exactly do you mean by 'fudge logs'? Ok, I admit that sometimes I take a little advantage of whether I'm rounding up or down to the nearest quarter hour, but other than that, forget it. I know as a new driver there, I'm going to get more than the average number of log audits for the first year.