CRETE - A Year in Review

Hope everyone had a happier Easter than me. I spent Friday, Saturday and most of Easter Son-day on the roof of my house. No, I wasn't waiting for the Easter bunny to come down the chimney...or hiding from my wife. We've been getting a lot more rain lately, and the boss showed me a water stain on our bedroom ceiling. So, what I thought was going to be an easy fix turned out to be a major re-roof the front half of my house..

Got going this morning back to my 2nd job (trucking...not Jack-of-all-trades handy man) and I got a good run to start April off right. Deadhead 210 miles to pick up a load to N. Vernon, IN for tomorrow. Almost 900 mi. The bad part, I get to the shipper...15-20 trucks ahead of me....argggggggggg. I had hoped to get north of Atlanta tonight...no way now.

 

I was empty yesterday and given a trip delivering close to Lincoln so I can get my truck fixed. I was happy last night. Now the catch is it's one of those god awful graphic packaging places. It's been over 24 hours and now they say the product won't be ready until late tonight. 2 days totally wasted and dispatch freaked when I asked them to give me another load.

i noticed recently dispatch is doing more and more baby talk. I wonder if some kind of new talking points (ie script) has come down from above. My AM asked me if I could haul hazmat, even though it was a requirement of my employment and I've already hauled multiple hazmat loads in the last few months. Then my AM said I need to notify my terminal manager if my truck is about to (in the future) go into the shop. In the past, I just informed them as it was going in. It makes no sense because she told me to tell them 2 days ago, and yet here I sit still waiting on a load.

My AM got angry when I told her how irritating the baby talk micro-managing is. So now I am 'reminding' her every day of the dates of my future home time in case she forgets (so she gets a taste of her own medicine). She already sent some passive aggressive threats to me in response, lol.

 

SSB....I'm also headed to North Vernon. Gonna most likely break there tomorrow night.

 

you weren't by chance in Swainsboro, GA picking up were you? There were several other Crete's getting loaded when I pulled in.

It ended up working out o.k. I only had to wait for an Estes daycab to get loaded, then I was next. Only took them a couple hours from check in to doors locked and rolling. I've been delayed longer when I was the only one picking up.

And Ralph...Graphics Packaging is an honorary 4-letter word in my book. I normally don't criticize our customers...but I'm just calling it like I see it...one of the 7 commandments of Crete be honest, also say what you mean and mean what you say.

 

Nope....I'm in PA running across the turnpike.....

 

Lowes in North Vernon, IN, where it was a pleasure to meet SSB in person!


Pack and Snack......sounds rather like a convenience store in da hood!

 

It's always cool to put a face with a name. Especially when it is the very next truck in line behind me. It only took 14 months to meet ya...heck, I didn't meet ET for years, and it was just by sheer happenstance when he was picking up a student. Hope AR is good to ya' once you're empty.

 

i have spent many nights there at Lowes in North Vernon when I was doing Midwest regional at Crete. Heck, I go there still with Poly. I'm quite fond of the place.

 

I love doing business with customers where we drop/hook load to load. But, this wasn't the case this time again. I brought a load in, empty trailer out. Then headed to the Indy yard to p/u a load to Terre Haute for Wednesday morning. A whopping 145 miles. But considering most of the loads coming out of N. Vernon were 2 day runs that weren't that long, maybe I will be better off this way.

 

BTW Clabber Girl (my customer that sounded familiar) makes baking soda(and maybe other baking products). I am hauling sodium bicarb. At first I just thought the people of western IN had bad gas or indigestion...but my wife told me about Clabber Girl's products.