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

 

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

Also made me remember how good we flatbedders have it

 

Hey Karnajj,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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


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

 

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

Hang in there! 8)

 

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

 

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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



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

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



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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was a real pain in the ass week.


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


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

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

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

 

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

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

Hopefully your second week of June was better.

Thanks a lot.

Jeffro

 

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