CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK SIXTEEN

Monday, April 20th through Sunday, April 26th

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This week starts out with me sitting in Columbus, OH. I had stopped off at our terminal there in order to get my truck in the shop for a B service. They finished with it on Saturday night and I had the option of driving to the consignee Sunday. I still had a little over 350 miles left on the trip. But if I had done that it would have negated my 34hr reset which would have limited my available hours over the next week. So that meant I would be spending the rest of the weekend in Columbus. There are worst places to be stuck, at least I had a movie theater and some restaurants down the road to help me occupy my time. This load wasn’t to be delivered until 5pm Monday night anyway. I had plenty of time to drive over after my reset.

Monday arrived and I was off to the dreaded Pennsylvania territories, the place from which no truck driver ever returns. We are simply left there in the search of the all elusive load out. I could always hope this day would be different and I would be offered a load out once empty, but with a 5pm delivery that wasn’t a very likely scenario. I arrived a few hours early in the hopes of sneaking in ahead of my appointment but that was a fruitless endeavor. I was simply told to wait in the back lot and they would let me know when it was my turn.

I ended up bumping the dock at my appointment time and two hours later I put in my MT call and received the expected “no freight” message along with a note to find a place to park until the morning. There wasn’t much left of the day anyway, so I headed on over to our terminal. It was only about 15 miles away, and although it isn’t one of our finest terminals, it would afford me the opportunity to get out of the truck for awhile.

I knew I wouldn’t be getting a load out today, that was a given. What worried my was just how long I would be sitting here waiting for a load. That wait ended up being most of the next morning and it wasn’t anything to get excited about.

I had asked for a load going to Phoenix for my home time. I got close last week, as far as Denver, but then I jumped on this PA load because I wanted the miles. Even though I figured this no freight thing would come back and bite me in the back side as a result. Anyway, my request for a west bound load resulted in a single load offer to pickup a trailer that another driver had dropped off in the yard and deliver it to Baltimore (94mi). Yeah, that’s right next to Phoenix. I guess they want to get me as far away as possible and the only thing stopping them from sending me further east was the pesky little body of water they call the Atlantic Ocean.

I dutifully accepted the load without putting up a stink and followed that up with a message to dispatch. “Hey, I’ll run this load, but I’m trying to get back home. Will you try to get me something out of the Baltimore area going back in that direction today so I don’t get hung out to dry after delivering this load”?

That resulted in a message that stated they had no loads going to PHX, but they would make sure I got a load out today going in that general direction.

So off I went to make my delivery to Baltimore. The address was at the end of some long winding dead end street with a lot of warehouses and I was surprised to find plenty of street parking in the area. This is a spot I will definitely keep in the back of my mind next time I’m in the area looking for parking. It’s not too far away from the TA here in town and I won’t have to shell out $12 for parking like I have to at the truck stop. At least something good has come from this shag run.

I arrived at the customer to find two other trucks waiting to be unloaded and one dock door in operation. Looks like the perfect conclusion to a pain in the butt run. The wait wasn’t all that bad and each truck was unloaded at a quick pace and I was empty within two hours. All in all, not that bad of a run since I was paid for the 94 miles at my regular 43cpm plus a $35 shag pay. That worked out to a little over 80cpm on the run and close to $20 an hour. Not bad at all.

Dispatch had promised me a load out when I was done with this run and they stayed true to their word. My MT call was answered by a load offer picking up in York, Pa and would have me delivering to the middle of TN(801mi). One little hiccup did present itself; that was a pickup time of 8pm and the address was only an hour away. I had been to this shipper before and knew that it would be a drop and hook and hoped it would be ready when I arrived so that I could keep moving and not waist too much of my 14hrs.

I checked in upon my 3pm arrival and was informed that they had just finished loading my trailer and handed over the paperwork along with instructions to pull the trailer from the door. Everything seems to be clicking along pretty good today considering the part of the country that I am in and the best part, I was getting out of PA and headed home, sort of. It looks like my decision to run cross country out of Denver is going to pay off.

This was a load that weighed 36,000# and was well below what the truck was capable of hauling. But it is also the right at the point where I will scale a load at the local truck stop. At this weight it is generally a waist of time but it is always better to be safe than risk an overweight ticket. Although there was no risk of getting a ticket for being over on my gross weight (if the bill of lading is accurate) there is always the possibility that one of the axel weights might be out of wack if the weight of the load is not properly dispersed. Meaning, if all of the heavy product is in one half of the trailer and all of the light product is on the other half, there can be a problem. This is much more of a problem for drivers pulling a reefer due to the added weight of the reefer unit sitting on the front of the trailer, but it can be a headache for us dry van guys too.

This trailer was also loaded all the way to the tail end which can make the balancing act when setting the tandems a little trickier. I was slightly concerned, but not too much so and made a general guess as to where to set the tandems. I’ve been doing this for many years and have a fairly good feel for it and was confident that I was going to be just fine. Especially considering the fact that I only had 36,000# on the trailer. Had it been closer to the 40,000# mark I would have been far more skeptical.

Time to hit the road and stop off at a truck stop to make sure, sounded like a good plan, but there was a slight problem with that. My routing had me running two lane roads down into Virginia where I would hook up with I-81. Almost immediately after getting on I-81 I would be crossing a state scale and there wasn’t a single place to scale out my load before getting there. Well, that isn’t entirely true. I did have the option of hanging a left about 20 miles before that point which would have forced me to run another 50 miles on two lane roads. It wouldn’t have resulted in any additional miles to the trip, but I was getting tired of these hilly back roads that were taking a toll on my logbook. I was making horrible time on this run. Doing so would have accomplished two things. One, I finally would have had the opportunity to scale this load after running almost 140 miles and two, I would have bypassed the first state scale in VA.

But, as stated earlier, I was more than confident that I was legal on all axels and opted for the quicker route to get me on the Interstate as soon as possible so I could get away from the endless hills and stop lights.

The moment of truth approached soon enough, and based on my extensive explanation of events leading up to this point you have probably guessed what the outcome was by now. Yeah, it wasn’t so good.

Virginia has those wonderful scales where you maintain 40mph, get the green arrow and continue on your way without losing too much time or momentum, unless you are overweight, or at least very close to it. In that case you get the red arrow and proceed to the scales. Imagine my surprise, and sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw the red arrow. Oh no!

I pulled onto the scale hoping for the best, but expecting the worst and was not disappointed. After sitting on the scale awaiting a green light for a bit longer that I’m used to the DOT speaker came to life. According to the mysterious voice emitting from it I was 1700# over weight on my drives. When I pulled on to the scale I was envisioning being off by a few hundred pounds, but never would I have guessed that this load would be that unbalanced. Wow!

My next thought was of the overweight ticket that I’ve seen posted on the wall at our Lincoln terminal (along with a “Scale every load” notation). It was a very similar situation where the load was around 39,000# and that driver, like myself, had made a decision to “run with it”. His poor decision resulted in a 5000# (or so) overweight axel and a $700+ fine, even though his gross vehicle weight was well below legal limits.

I can’t begin to tell you how upset I was for putting myself in this position. In all my years out here, I have never been pulled in for an overweigh violation and didn’t really know what to expect, but the damage had been done and I was prepared to head on inside and learn my fate.

There was also one small thing on my mind at this time, which was the general knowledge that each state has their own way of dealing with overweight issues. Some have a no tolerance policy and some are far more lenient and will allow you to readjust your load. I knew this to be a fact, but had no idea what the state of Virginia’s stance was on the matter. I would be finding out soon enough.

Apparently Virginia is one of the good states, because I was simply told that my drives were 1700# overweight and to pull around back to adjust my load followed by some garble that I didn’t understand. Even at this point I was unsure of the final result. Would I get a ticket or not?

I did as instructed and pulled around back to reset the tandems. I was going to have to slid the tandems up quit a bit to move that much weight and based on what they had told me over the speakers I just slid the things all the way to the front. This was one poorly loaded trailer. They must have lead up front and pillows on the tail to be this far off. I hadn’t clearly heard all that was said on the speaker, so I went inside to make sure I was OK to go. The DOT officer inside was uncommonly pleasant and informed me that I had 30mins to adjust the load and when I was ready all I had to do was pull back on the scale and would be on my way with no ticket if all my weights were legal.

That sounded positively wonderful to me and back to the truck I went. With tandems to the front, I pulled back on the scale and got the coveted green light and headed on down the road. Fifteen minutes later I pulled into the Hess and made a beeline to the Cat scale. I knew it was going to be close, but this was ridiculous. With less than an 1/8 of a tank of fuel and the tandems all the way to the front of the slide I was an even 34,000# on the drives with 23,000# on the tandems. I don’t know how you do that with a trailer that is loaded all the way to the tail end, but they did it and I learned a lesson that I already knew.

Other than that little scare the rest of the trip went well enough and I arrived at the customer’s door the following day by 4pm. The load wasn’t to be delivered until the next morning (another appointment delivery) but the load info stated that they had overnight parking and I thought I would take a shot at getting unloaded a day early. If not, I would just spend the night at the receivers and be the first on in the door the following day. That night was spent in their parking lot because they had no interest in unloading me anytime before my appointment, which will happen from time to time.

My early morning unload went by without a hitch and I put in my MT call along with yet another request to get my butt back to the house. I’ve been out here long enough and wanted to get home. Instead of a Phoenix load, I was sent a run going to AR. I wasn’t too worried though, because the vast majority of my loads to or through Phoenix originate in AR. I simply assumed they put me on this run in order to get me to an area that would have freight going my way. I was all but certain I would be picking up a load of A/C units out of Little Rock after delivering this load. It was a load of water and was a 600mi run going to a Wal-Mart DC and it would be a drop so I would be able to deliver it early. I could have it there tonight and know for sure before the day came to a close.

The day played out as planned and I was empty by 10pm, just as my 14hr clock came to and end. I even found a nice little lakeside parking spot. OK, maybe “Lake” is a bit of a stretch, but it was waterfront.



My next load offer was pure gold. Pick up a load of A/C units going to Southern California for a Monday delivery. It would be a wonderful turn and burn run that would have me in Phoenix by the weekend, at which point I would Tcall the load in our yard. Perfect!

Or so I thought. I picked up the load the following morning as soon as I could and let them know that I was headed to Phoenix and asked dispatch to set up the Tcall. That’s when my little plan was derailed. Apparently they were overbooked with freight out of Phoenix over the weekend (that’s one I haven’t heard in a long time) and informed me that I would have to deliver this load. I was also told they had plenty of freight out of Cali to get me back to PHX when empty. Truth be told, I wasn’t all that upset. I needed the miles anyway. The only thing that I didn’t like about the way this was playing out was that my planed home time of 4 days would be smack dab in the middle of the week. That doesn’t work out very well for me since the wife works during the week and I really need to be home over a weekend to spend some time with her. Basically, that would mean that I would be adding a few more days to my time off. I like the time off, but considering how hard it is to get miles these days, I didn’t really want to take that much time off.

Initially I was going to go about 50 miles out of route and take a reset in Phoenix on my way to Cali, deliver my load on Monday and then head back to Phoenix to close out my home time, but along the way I thought it would be nice to spend some time in Vegas. I called the wife and made arrangements with here to meet me in Kingman. I would park the truck there and we could drive up to Vegas for a little get away and I would still have enough time to make my deliver. That way we could both get a break from day to day life and have some fun in the process.

The trip towards Kingman was uneventful for the most part, but I did run into a bit of a wind storm going across I-40 in AZ. As a matter of fact, it was some of the strongest winds I’ve come across outside of that lovely stretch of I-90 in WY. I was being hit my 50mph cross winds and the resulting dust storm was a handful to deal with and there was a stretch of about 30 miles where it was a little more than challenging to see the road. I snapped a couple of pictures along the way, and although they don’t seem to show the true effects of the blinding sand, it gives you some kind of idea of what I was dealing with.



Not to long after that I found myself pulling into Kingman and meeting the wife for our little Vegas excursion, after which I headed on over to LA to put myself in position for my Monday morning delivery.






WEEK SIXTEEN
Monday, April 20th through Sunday, April 26th
Miles include deadhead

Columbus, OH to Camp Hill, PA (final leg)……………………………….......377mi
New Kingstown, PA to Baltimore, MD
(94mi # 43cpm + $35 shag pay = .80cpm)………………………………......94mi
York, PA to LaVergne, TN…………………………………………………...........801mi
Red Boiling Springs, TN to Clarksville, AR……………………………….......606mi
Ft. Smith, AR to Rancho Dominguez, CA………………………………......1577mi


Total Paid Miles……………………………………3455 Miles
Actual Miles………………….3496 Miles


3455 Miles x .43 = $1485.65 = $35 shag pay = $1520.65

 

At least you have a good excuses for excessive idling.

and if you really want a Prostar, Crete would be happy to sell you one

 

I only need about 27,000 miles over the next 3 1/2 months to get my pay raise. I don't foresee that being a problem, but I too estimate that I will be more than 20,000 miles short of last years numbers which translates to well over an $8000 pay cut from last year. Ouch!

The one saving grace I have to fall back on. I didn't cash in my two weeks of my vacation pay last year and will be picking up two more weeks before the year is out and will have the option of pulling in about $5000 from that if needed.