Finally got my own truck

I'm regretting taking this load out here to Cheyenne. Not only was I going up in elevation, which I knew, but I was driving head first into 30mph winds. I got 4.7 mpg today. Ouch. The good thing is that my dispatch guy found a load picking up 200 miles east going to KC for $600, so yeah it's a little less than $1/mi if I count the empty miles, but he came through again.

I've been out here for almost 4 weeks now since being home. I've put 12,000 miles in the 3.5 weeks and I'm starting to get burned out. I can't go home until the 1st of April, though. I have to stay out and try to make what I can. Am I in financial danger? No, but I might be if I take off too much time.

I knew going into this that this is going to be what defines the rest of my life, this is the test of my life, and I have to give it my all. It's almost like driving the truck is secondary to what my main responsibility is.

If you're a company driver thinking about going O/O, let me ask you this. Do you realize what it takes to get you your next load? All you have to do now is accept the dispatch and drive. Are you prepared to handle the stress of dealing with all the rest of it? You don't even know. You have no idea what you're getting into. At any moment, you could be ruined. lol I hate to say it like that but in the back of my mind, that thought is always there. I could be ruined at any moment, despite my truck being absolutely great so far, despite having a cushion in the bank, despite me having enough brains to do okay so far, despite everything that has gone well enough, it could still all fall apart.

Anyways, I'm tired. I think I caffeined myself out the past couple of weeks. I can't deliver this load until late morning. I'm going to get some extra sleep tonight. I made it to Cheyenne, but they shut the highway down going west, and there are trucks parked literally everywhere.

 

Yeah. I don't know what I was thinking taking this. Something kinda told me to? Maybe? Maybe if I didn't take it, I would have taken something that got me sucked up into one of them tornadoes last night. I believe things happen for reasons. You might think this is crazy, but I believe in both pre-determination (i.e. the future is already written) and at the same time I believe in free will. We have free will, but someone outside of the time continuum, like in the 5th dimension or higher where they can see all sides of time at once, can see the decision we've made that we haven't made yet.

Anyways.

I had planned my week on what I was going to do. Hop skip and jump my way up north followed by a good paying weekend load to north half of FL. But no, I had to take this stupid diversion. Captain Dave was right, I should run a certain lane or two and stick with it. But I've always been one to be curious and explore other avenues, push the issue, "see what happens". Oh well.
But he was right, I should have gotten at LEAST $2.50 to come here. And thinking back, I might have gotten it... BUT, I think that if I'M the one that calls on a load, I don't have a right to ask for that much more than they posted it for. They posted it for $2300 and I offered $2600. If I offered like say $3,000, I believe that may have been offensive. However if they called me, then there's no harm in quoting what I want to quote. I like being in places where brokers are calling my phone. They were calling left and right in the gulf area. I hate calling on loads, I really prefer them to call me instead.

And yeah rollin coal, I do remember the times where I've sat waiting on a load and sometimes I don't get one at all. I remember sitting somewhere between Indy and Columbus and it's 530pm and my dispatcher is like "Brandon, there's just nothing out there...I don't know what to tell ya..."
And I have no idea how they even get the loads in the first place.
When I was with PAM, I was under the impression that everything we did was a customer of ours. I didn't know what a broker was. I just thought they were our customer. Thinking back, I don't know how much that I did was ours or brokered. Lots of drop n hooks, but sometimes live loads too. One time dispatch said I had to "call the broker" and I didn't know what a broker was. It was CHRobinson.

Anyway I'm going to bed. Well actually now that I have unlimited data, I'm going to watch a couple more episodes of House on my Netflix app. I'm on the last season. Then I'll sleep.