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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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


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


Paid miles…………………………………………3165 Miles

Actual miles………………………3242

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

 

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

:shock:

 

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

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

 

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now the confusion begins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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


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



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

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

2484mi X .42 = $1043.28

 

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

Excellent post as usual - really enjoyed it.

gp12

 

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

 

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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


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


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

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

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

 

EverTruckerr, good posts!

Attitude is everything! 8)

Should be required reading for all Crete corporate personnel.

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