CRETE - A Year in Review

One more day. As of Saturday, I will be on vacation for a week. My 1st time off since March of last year. That is unless they try to force me to bring my truck somewhere. I got a message from AMS today saying that the new EGR they put of in March is under recall, and it has a potential to do damage to the turbo...and that I need to get it to a Navastar dealer near my home during home time for repairs...which aint gona happen, unless they want to pay for my gas and a couple extra paid days off since it's 60 miles one way to one.

 

Honestly, it could only happen to me. I get to Walmart in MacClenny, FL...Drop and hook to a trailer. There were 8-10 empties available. So, I send my empty call in...and get a trailer unavailable message...not an invalid trailer location, but a trailer unavailable. I send in a confirmation of trailer number and wait a bit. After 20 minutes I decide not to transflow the Kelloggs paperwork in from home since it won't fit my scanner and I head to the Pilot over in Baldwin...and it was backed up out past the T/A driveways. While in line I get a message from Op's asking the tag number of the trailer...so, since I was sitting still, I checked...it turns out that the driver who delivered the freight on that trailer, not only put in the wrong trailer on load call, but the wrong trailer on the empty one as well. It was soon fixed and I was headed home for my vacation. Leave it to me to find the only trailer in the whole place that was screwed up...Like I've always said, trouble waits for me to come along before jumping on.

 

LOL, you're not alone. I go to pick up my next load in Bend Oregon. Drop my empty and wait for them to finish loading. When it's ready, I get the bills and see 45,000 lbs. I didn't see any truck stop scales in the guide book within 60 miles so I go back in to ask the shipping guy. He hands me a paper that has directions to one of those self pay scales. I go on over and am about to go in the driveway per the directions and see a garbage truck on the scale pointing towards me. Ok, that must be the correct direction, so I continue down the street and come in another way (very tight). I get to the scale and notice "DO NOT enter scale this way". So I had been right at first and shouldn't have copied that garbage truck.

i go back around the block and finally maneuver the correct way. The scale only takes the exact amount $5. I open my wallet and seeing I have a $5, feel invigorated as I have beat the system of bad luck. I read the directions very carefully and then put in the money and make my selection "axle weights". The directions say I have 30 seconds to get back in the truck and get on the scale. I run over and move the steers on. The lights and readout don't respond, but I go through the steps anyways. I go to the machine to pickup the ticket, but nothing. After fooling around with the keypad, I find out you have to make all the selections FIRST, and then enter the money. So the first $5 timed out.

I only have a $10 and a $20 left in my wallet so I put the $10 in thinking the machine won't mind being overpaid. I run back and get on the scale and now see the lights working. I go through the process and then walk back to get my readout. The little white receipt now lists about 10 axle weights and says 0.00 by each one. By now I am having extremely violent thoughts. There is nowhere to park right by the scale so I go back out onto the street and park (marginally legal in that area). I need to break the $20, but this is not a retail area. I start walking aimlessly down the street and come across a transmission shop. The guy was very nice and gives me some $5's.

I go back to the scale to try again. I forgot, but somewhere in there I had 5 $1's and I tried with that too, but the machine didn't even do anything. Now when I am about to put the $5 in, I notice it says $4 is already in there. I don't know how the f$@# it did that and skipped 1, but I don't have any singles left. so I put in a $5 and hoped it would start fresh. I go back over the scale, walk back to the printer box .... and nothing there (the previous $4 had screwed it up). I go all the way around again, put in my final $5 and finally get a decent printout. The weights are significantly below what would be expected for 45k load. So either the scale or the bills are off. So I totally wasted $30, 1.5 hours, and blew some blood vessels in the process.

 

They had a truckstop there. I think they might call it Jakes. They had a scale. Is that t/s still there?

 

And don't feel too bad . I was at bend mill works in 1996 and banged my fender of a new Crete truck against a parked semi trailer. Night . Snow. Blindside. Sick. These are my excuses. I called safety. Talked to JC. I think she was even trying to make an excuse for me. She asked about the weather and if my truck slipped on the snow. And I said no. I told her I just hit while backing. She said , "well, you have a good safety record. I don't wanna mess it up. I am not gonna give you any safety points, but you're not gonna get your performance bonus ($800) , so you may as well take some extra time off this quarter. " So I did take some time off. My terminal manager told me it would be awhile before he would give me another new truck, and laughed.

 

I thought I was reading 'The Onion' after I saw this headline and read the article: "Truckload Driver Turnover Slips in Fourth Quarter". I thought, wow, companies must really be stepping up their game and improving conditions for drivers if turnover is dropping. Then I read the article and it points out the 'drop' is from 104% to 90%. Not sure how you can have more than 100% turnover, but even 90% seems outrageous.

 

I've never really understood that either.

 

104% turnover is simple... trucking company has 50 drivers, over the one year time span, they have 52 drivers quit, and hire 52 drivers to replace those 52 that quit. Not every driver of the original 50 quit, but during the year, 52 drivers quit that company. That makes the turnover rate 104%.

Or like stevens transport that has 2500 drivers, and has 50 students a week start... 50x50 equals 2500...or 100% turnover per year...at one time there were 80 students per week, or 4000 per year for a 160% turnover.

 

Right at 3000 miles last week. 1100 over the weekend and into late Monday morning.

 

Thanks, that makes sense now. I wonder what other industries are like that? It wouldn't seem like even farm laborers have that high of turnover, and that's supposed to be the job nobody wants, lol.