Route driving

Hi all and anyone. Just started a new gig as a route driver and didn't see a thread with this type of driving so I thought I'd throw one up. All discussions WELCOME!

I'll start by describing my gig and we can just see what evolves. I work for a medium sized company. 1800 trucks. E-logs and (now) 100% legal on HOS. To the extent possible. No such thing as a perfect world, but they really do want you to do it legal and everybody works hard to make that possible as best they can and that means us too. Oddly enough, it's a weight off my shoulders and doesn't crunch into my wallet. Sometimes it means getting home Saturday morning instead of Friday afternoon but that's fine with me. I've been OTR my whole career so getting home every weekend is still just a WOW for me.

OK, so this sub-fleet is totally unique to our company. First, it's small. Only 25 trucks and 40 trailers. They are all new (200K miles) and stay new. They get rotated to the OTR fleet at 300K and replaced with a brand new one. They are painted in an entirely different color scheme and the trailers are all new (and get rotated to stay new) and have decal wraps. They look like a giant orange tool box on wheels and the trucks are painted orange with the customer's signature markings. Our company only has the DOT required lettering and USDOT numbers in small sized numbers at the bottom of the doors. If you didn't know better and didn't notice the small lettering, you'd never in a million years think we are owned by who we are. You'd think we are owned by the hardware chain. Sharp and VERY well maintained fleet. Everything is gone over every week at the shop and if it even squeaks it gets jumped on right then and there. It is a real joy to have such great equipment. I can't tell you when the last time I was able spin up the landing gear with my extended fingers in the OTR fleet. Fighting landing gear was usually the case because we do have a lot of rookies, we do take students and we are all human and in a big fleet landing gear takes some abuse from a lot of hurried drop and hooks. It doesn't seem like that hard bump does anything and when you are a little off and the fifth wheel open mouth moves the loaded trailer sideways a little to grab the kingpin it does stress the gear and eventually bends it a little so it binds when cranking it. Not this stuff. You are hand picked for this and have to have an exemplary record so you are expected to be able to keep the super nice equipment super nice and take your time and do things just right. That's the big thing about this fleet. It's small and they cherry pick the best of everything, and they are super picky. I mean to the point that when they say don't walk on the grass they mean stay off the freakin' grass, wipe your feet coming in, and wipe the table and push your chair back under it when you get up to leave the diver break room and every I has to be dotted and T crossed on the paperwork or they will say something about it. It sounds like an anal retentive OCD thing but it's really not. It's the basic things your Momma and Kindergarten Teacher taught you when you were five and I'll tell ya, it's the cleanest trucking terminal I have ever seen in my life and a real pleasure to come in to. You could ###### near eat off the shop or bathroom floor. That's real nice and I totally get why they are how they are about keeping it that way because they service thee OTR fleet also so they get a wide variety of drivers and human traffic. If they don't stay on top of it, it will get trashed quick like.

The flip side of the coin is that you are part of the Elite Fleet and work VERY hard (it's almost all driver unload - to hardware stores. Think about all the stuff you see at your local hardware store and imagine unloading all those bags because the store doesn't have a dock or a forklift but ordered a palate each of 50 pound bags of top soil, fertilizer, mulch, sacks of cement (those are 60 pounds each), decorative rocks, salt for the sidewalk and driveway in winter, 1 and 5 gallon buckets of paint etc. It is hard work. I flatbedded most of my career and this is a lot tougher than that! Once in a while you get a good out run to a port town like Miami with a single stop at a freight forwarder that just cross docks the whole load onto an ocean cargo container using a forklift at their dock to go overseas but mostly it's retail stores. Your hometown hardware stores. Not the Lowes or Home Depots. It's Do It Best franchise stores, some used to be Western Auto but those of you from small towns know they weren't really auto parts stores as much as they were hardware and general goods stores. Ace is their main competitor if that helps understand. They know how hard you work and treat you VERY well because they know how picky everyone is and you make the grade because you are still here. You don't have to be perfect, there's no such thing, but the bar for acceptable performance is very, VERY high and if you don't meet it consistently they will very politely move you back to the OTR fleet. They are even picky about your appearance and language. You don't have to look like you walked off the cover of GQ and speak like an actor but you have to maintain a professional look and demeanor because you are interacting with retail vs warehouse.

Thus, you really are one of the best, you have to have a totally clean MVR, Accident Record, Criminal History, On Time Delivery Record and VERY low (I think it's less than 10) CSA score to even be considered, so you get the best equipment (these trucks go faster than the rest of the fleet which is nice - were a big company and the OTR fleet is governed like everyone else at 63 and 65 but we go 70 and 72 which is plenty fast enough and feels good when I ease past an OTR truck. They just smile and wave and I tip my hat to them. It's nice.) and you get treated VERY well, and stop pay is double that in the OTR fleet because it's 98% driver unload, and every load is a 1 stop minimum because the shipper and consignee are the same - the DC we start from - and it's round trip miles so you always have a good mileage run AND they pay it off - get this: Google Map Route miles. No s#!+. The DM runs the route on Google Maps (and prints it for you), checks it for truck restrictions and low clearances and then adjusts if necessary and THAT'S the miles you get paid for. The DM (there's only 1) enters the mileage manually in the computer for the load assignment. The whole route - actual miles. Never EVER in my career! H&!! that's a raise in and unto itself.

No fuel message comes with it. Your instructions for fuel are simple and apply to all runs. Top off at the Love's down the street before you leave. When you need fuel go to the closest Loves or PFJ along the route and please try and make it a Loves if at all possible even if it is a little out of route, not much but use your judgment and if at all practical fuel at Loves and if not Loves a PFJ. As a result I stay diamond level each month, never pay for a shower and can give someone one if they and don't have a credit and never pay for my drinks and I just got a brand new Cobra 29 LX BT for FREE and with the $20 rebate it's like they paid me $20 to take that new radio off their hands for them. Freakin' AWESOME! 125 gallons a day, 5 days a week at a 4:1 point ratio adds up to $25 a week, $100/ month, $1,200/ year of FREE MONEY. Lovin' me some Loves. The "Good Ole Days" weren't never THAT good for driver rewards. A free Mac Daddy Rand McNally GPS is next in my sights.

So, basically what we do is come in late Sunday or early Monday - depending on your first stop. You hook up to a loaded trailer and drive the day outward and spend the night in the first store's parking lot. We have real nice Freightshaker Cascadias so it is a full sized OTR sleeper tractor, not a daycab or dogbox sleeper. You get up about 5 AM so you can get all freshened up and be ready when the employees arrive at about 6:00 and usually join them going in like you are one of them and have a cup of coffee with them while they open up the store. If you want to buy something they usually give you the employee discount price, even though you are technically not an employee. You are "their" delivery driver though and they tend to treat you like one of them. That's a world of difference than what I'm used to being treated like. It's pretty cool. You actually get to know and interact with your customers which is something I really, really like. It totally offsets the same route, same road thing; plus knowing every inch of the road comes in real handy.

Then when they are ready you roll up the door of the trailer, climb in and hand off all their stuff to them but some do have forklifts (but no dock) so those you take the palate jack out of the trailer and slide it on the forks and they set it aside and take the first two palates off then put the jack back in and you push the other palates to the tail for them to grab with the forklift from the ground. The others you tailgate the palate then cut the shrink wrap and hand the stuff on the palate off to someone on the ground. One of my stores has a dock but no forklift so you put the stuff on a hand truck and wheel that into the store. You DOUBLE CHECK everything you took off against that store's manifest and order. Believe me this is a VERY important step. My first week I had a nine stop run around Tampa/ St. Pete that I had to back track the ENTIRE run (instead of heading back home from the last stop) because I had left a piece of this store's order at that store, etc. Didn't get paid for any of that backtracking. It was my bad. I ate the time and TOLLS - it's that part of FL where they toll ya $2 and $3 and $5 here and there and here again and there again and I don't have a Sunpass. EZ Pass yes, Sunpass - no. Half a day driving for free and $15 in unreimbursed tolls taught me real quick to CHECK THE PIECE COUNT AT EVERY STOP! Even if it's 286 pieces and the customer is confident it's all theirs. LOL. The DM said to turn in the tolls but I figured it was totally my bad so the right thing to do was chalk that up to a lesson well learned and save them for a tax write off. It was only $15 but the aggravation drilled a valuable lesson into my brain. This gig is all about sleeping at the first stop and being there when they get to work, hustling to hump the cargo off as fast as you can and verifying the piece count. The next run on that route went smooth as silk. I'll eat the $15 bucks for the lesson.

Anyway, you do the whole day running around pushing off hardware goods then head toward home with the empty til you run out of hours, take your ten in the sleeper and finish the trip back the next morning. Then you drop, hook and do it again til Friday when you come home empty and go home. A lot of the times you get to take a ten at the house, and always home for the weekend, so it's pretty cool that way. Sometimes it's a whole bunch of stops in a big metropolis, sometimes it's one at a freight forwarder and sometimes it's two or three stops at small country stores fairly far apart.

I gotta admit. It's an awesome gig for anyone that doesn't mind working hard, real hard, fingerprinting freight and paying very particular attention to all the details. I never in all my 16 years knew this kind of trucking was out there and I feel totally honored to have been selected and its the best way I can think of to have the best of what I love about trucking and minimize that which I don't. The biggest downside is I'm 51 years old, 5'9" and 160 pounds soaking wet so humping 2000 pound palates and offloading palate loads of 50 and 60 pound sacks of whatever is pretty tough but oddly enough it feels good at the end of the day. Oh yeah, I feel it and right now I feel like the morning after the first day of spring training camp. I feel like someone beat me with a stick. LOL. But it's a good feeling and I can feel the different muscle groups toning up. I eat mass quantities of carbs, proteins and vegies and I feel myself getting stronger in the right areas, and the soreness is kinda a mark of having done a good job. I worked hard physically, knocked out a challenging run with 8 stops all on time and even a bit early, rocked and rolled through heavy city traffic without even coming close to scraping a car, wiggled into some amazingly tight unload spots and rocked it back to the house with kickin' tunes blowin' for off time early Friday afternoon and don't have to call in til Monday AM and made a tad over a grand doin' it.

So far I'm lovin' this gig but been OTR so long that I can't help but wonder when the other shoe is gonna drop. Know what I mean?

Hope not. Have a good one all and all comments, helps and hints for this type of driving are welcome and appreciated. It really is a totally different type of truckin', that's one thing for sure.

 

No. It's Super Service, LLC. outta Grand Rapids, MI. Lexington, SC is this terminal.

 

LOL. I know, right?

I was gushing a bit because I worked very hard to get the job and it seems to be panning out even better than I heard. Thanks for taking the time to read it all.

Peace!

 

Thanks Seven. You be safe too. No OTJ injuries! That's how I got this gig. Guy before me was injured OTJ so it's kinda right there in front of me that statistically it's not the crash that injures us most. It's something stupid that we've all (anyone that has ever worked for a bigger carrier) have seen a hundred times in the canned daily safety message on the Qualcomm like three points of contact. Saw a guy go down hard at the fuel island at the Ormond Beach, FL Loves this past Wed. He was doin the one hand grab and swing getting out the truck thing and busted his arse HARD. Took a few minutes getting up and was limping then. He wasn't old or huge. Looked to be about like me - in my prime years. Got enough years and miles in the rear view to be really good at what I do but still have plenty looking through the windshield to look forward to too.

Made me think; How many times have I done that and how many times have I been told not to do that and how did I get this gig again? Dude before me was seriously injured OTJ. They weren't rookies that didn't know better either. I know our guy wasn't and Dude at the fuel island was sporting a million miler star on his truck so unless he was in somebody else's truck which I doubt - he knew better too. Be careful everybody. It's the sneaky little dumb $#!+ that takes out drivers the most. We've all done it, whatever IT is, a hundred times and nothing happened but it only takes that one time and BAM a lifetime of back pain or knee surgery or whatever.

I think it's awesome that we all tell each other to be safe and we mean it. But what generally comes to mind when someone says that to us? A crash. Yeah, absolutely we need to remember to be safe driving but statistically what injures drivers most often isn't the crash, it's us doin some dumb little thing we have been told a hundred times not to do. We just got complacent. So my new thing is to pick something each week to specifically remind myself and my peers online about and this week it's three points of contact. So . . .

Be safe and remember two feet and a hand or two hands and a foot at all times and put your $#!+ down on the floor or seat before you climb or you're gonna bust your arse one day. That includes myself.

 

I don't know. I'm real new at this part of the deal. I have heard from other folks online that Interstate does a lot the out west stuff. I am only familiar with this particular DC and honestly, the only other companies I've seen in here were megas pullin' trailers we don't pull (flatbed and cargo containers). They bring something in to be put in the DC's inventory to fill store orders with like a container load of overseas manufactured products or a straight flatbed load of sacks of cement, live unload and they sometimes get a load of something outbound. 50/50 on whether they get a reload. Maybe an order for overseas stores going onto a cargo container or a really big single order for the flatbeds. They never get retail delivery loads in a DIB trailer that I'm aware of. Usually we do all those. I don't pretend to have much of a grasp at all on how the logistics end works. H&!!, I'm still struggling to get the palate jack to do what I want without mushing me into the trailer wall or going off the tail. Those things seem to have a mind of their own. LOL. Glad you enjoyed the novel. After that one I'm thinking maybe I should change my name to Tolstoy or Mitchner LOL. "In the beginning there was a primordial ooze . . ." LOL.