Beep Beep Roadrunner

Well, here it is the first week of January of the new year. I guess every trucker in the country decided to come back to work this week lol. I might have gotten a load if I didn't lose a day getting the hole in the trailer roof fixed.

Have to be home next Wednesday (today is Tuesday) so was trying to book a quick load up from Livermore to Seattle and back to slam dunk the hometime thing. Somebody else got the Seattle load and the other options are like Livermore to San Antonio TX 1st stop Phoenix, or another to Kansas City. Good miles on those but I don't feel comfortable getting back in time without deadheading back.

Let's see what the RR agents have otherwise I'm seriously thinking of just going home for the next 10 days.

 

I recall reading on the homepage they acquired or added some new terminals (they didn't specify where) maybe Florida I guess.

Also on the homepage they have a Lease/Purchase link with two options- one being WTFtrucks and the other LakesideTrucks both dot com. I believe if you go through the settlement deduction route there might be little to no down payment required, no credit checks etc, but a recruiter could confirm all the details on that.

I think in the springtime I am looking for a second truck and driver to run it may do the lease purchase thing or maybe try to finance a truck on my own deal- will have to see which looks better.

True enough.... good and bad, no luck getting a short load out so going home for the next 10 days or so. Will have to hit it hard after that. Sometimes a blessing in disguise though, lots of snow and ice I won't have to deal with.

 

I wrote somewhere else on the forum about a clean roadside inspection at the point of entry Echo UT the other day. Just wanted to bring it up here again along with more of an explanation of how the 'clean inspection bonus' works. OK so get 5 in a quarter at $200 each (clean inspections) and 4 quarters running (20 clean inspections in the year) so that is $4000 bucks. Get an additonal $3000 at the end of the year for having 5 in each quarter. $7000 bucks goes a long ways toward funding your total yearly maintenance.

 

So when I pulled into the POE, the red light directed me to go around and park/bring in papers. Before I could even pop the brakes the officer was standing in my parking spot asking me for all my BoL, DL, Permits, Logs everything right there. I guess that is their way of catching paper log violations lol not giving the driver those few moments to bring things up while getting their papers together before coming in. I run my logs legal so that was no problem. Everything checked out the logs were the main thing they wanted to look at starting with 8 days ago. 8, 7, 6 days prior I had been sick so just logged lines 1 and 2 alternating back and forth as I got out to walk the dog and came back to lie down and cough my lungs out. Here she was meticulously counting hours on line 1 and 2 just itching to catch me like 8.5 hours on line 1 without a 30 minute break or something lol the other guy was standing over her shoulder saying 'those days are all line 1 and 2' but it wasn't registering with her at all. Then the guy asked me why I didn't put those three days on one log. I replied that I thought in order to do that the driver must log all 24 hours on one line like line 1 24 hour for the three days for it to be a legit multi-day log. He kinda shrugged like I might be right, I might be wrong but he wouldn't have held it against me.

Finally she got up to some working/driving days and found no 30 minute violations which is what she appeared to be primarily focused on. The driver right before me had just been popped on a 30 minutes violation and left in tears. I explained to the officer that some companies pay $100 bucks or more for clean inspections, that might be why the lady driver was crying over the lost $100 bucks.

 

I don't think they have a RR terminal in OK. They may have a trucking company we deliver to that is a sort of terminal. What I mean is often we deliver to other truck companies that are considered an 'affiliate' terminal or something like that I forget the exact name. Here is a list I found on their website:

https://www.rrts.com/Less-Than-Truckload/Pages/Service Centers.aspx