CRETE - A Year in Review

Funny you say that...i havent been to the beer plant there in awhile...last time i was a few miles away i thought for sure id get a beer load and ended up sending me to hazelton for a load...hmmmm

 

Redbeard just tell yourself, "It could be worse!", then it woun't seem so bad.

After unloading in Hattiesburg,MS at 0815 this am I got a two load offer. 1) Lacombe,LA to OH; 2) Lacombe to PA. I took the OH load, even though it doesn't deliver till 1830 on Tuesday. I will be in Columbus around 1600 tomorrow and try for a tcall. If I get the tcall I can include the trip on this weeks settlement and have a little over 3000 miles for the week.

 

Well I have been thinking about going to Crete To start with then going back to being a O\O again. From what i have been seing on here I like Crete. Now i'm just weighting for the job i'm at now to lay us off but that will not be for a year or 2(my be sooner) so the state will pay for my cdl.

 

Anyone looking at buying anything from this company at this time should have their head examined... but that's my 'typical snackbar' opinion. So not seeing any major advantages to leasing on may be your inner voice screaming at ya'.

I was there the Monday before the 4th. There was a driver there with the same 'b-service response'. It turns out, that shop is way behind on decommissioning trade trucks, so unless it's urgent, they put everything else off. In fact that evening, a trailer came in the the driver had to do a panic stop because of a pesky 4wheeler and had pallets of cardboard boxes shift. The receiver refused to unload it the way it was, but was ok with it coming back to the yard to be reworked. So the shop was stacking and repacking and wrapping(not rapping - remember you can't spell CRAP without RAP)

As far as me being on rock bottom again...I never left. I'm like that albino catfish that lives at the bottom of the ocean. You know the one, that baffles scientists by surviving despite the enormous pressure. That's me, just getting the occasional piece of leftover scrap of food that floats by. (sorta' like the blind squirrel that finds the occasional nut - or is it the blind nut that finds the squirrel)

Speaking of the week of the Fourth...I think it was one of the most frustrating weeks in a while. Got into the Columbus area early Monday morning, no freight - as usual. Only thing offered, load off the yard, to BFE - WV. No directions, no address to search on Streets/Trips, and the only phone number was the crew coming from Cleveland to unload and install, so they had no clue how to get there. Dispatch's solution, 'gest drive around a bit - iet's a small town, how hard kood it b to find'(yes I made them sound like that on purpose) I finally found the place, then 4 hours later I was done(still haven't been paid for the detention) then - no freight. I kinda' figured that, I was too close to both OH and PA to have any shot at getting a load at 1400 in the afternoon. So I trucked 45min to the closest Peelot. Only thing offered the next day, a load out of the dog food plant in Columbus, OH to Scottsville, KY. Which is normally a drop/hook delivery any time, but not this time. It delivered the next morning, thankfully this is one of the only Dollar General's that allows you to park overnight. In the morning, I was the 2nd Crete empty, last Crete to get a load. In fact, the guy that emptied more than an hour after me, got a load to OK from the water plant in TN, drop/hook delivery, anytime. I got a load out of the same plant, to the bayou's of SW LA, 45min sw of New Orleans. Live/appointment unload. Now I've been trying to get home, you'd think that sending me to OK(which was a longer, better run) would have been given to the one empty earlier, into a more likely area for freight for getting me back towards FL...Guess not. I msg'd my FM about it, because I can't get through on the phones, especially on a Monday after a holiday. I doubt I see anything done. Either he 'pre-emptied' before he was even at the dock(he had to wait for me to move to back in) or dispatch leapfrogged me. Either way, it didn't help the attitude that is beginning to return. The only way I could accept this kind of thing, if he was headed home as well, and that put him closer to home...then I'd understand, other than that, I want someone's butt.

From Monday - 6/29 thru Friday 7/3 they managed to allow me the privilege of moving freight for a whopping 844 miles. Had it not been for a productive weekend before this, I would have been p/o'd instead of just ticked off. (the difference between p/o'd and ticked is p/o'd usually results in termination - or law enforcement involvement- or both)

Then the next week, ended up in the 1700's because they found me a load home out of LA to Jax, FL. I waited until 2 am to p/u a d/h load that should have been ready at 1945 the night before. But it wasn't ready, in fact hadn't even been assigned a trailer or a door. After 12 hours of waiting, and beeping op's...I found out from the check-in people that the load was on hold, indefinitely.(another Crete was waiting for a similar load, but found out his was canceled) I msg'd dispatch, who said that their email earlier from the shipper said it would be delayed... I couldn't get them to call them and find out how long this delay would be and that I wasn't staying days waiting on this load. Finally they said that I could haul something else, then try to get home...Why didn't they offer that 10 hours ago!!!! Anyway,I headed to south of Chicago, then to W. Chicago to Orlando. Which will net me a 1250 mi week this week, and the timing puts me home through Wednesday, leave out Thursday, so not likely to add to those meager miles. But maybe I'll get a head start on sitting for next weeks miles. But for now, I'm home and trying to soothe my nerves...I really don't know how much longer this can keep up before I start crossing over to my 'pre-intervention' days.

I also heard from another driver, who said he attended a safety meeting. In that meeting it was stated that the company will begin testing drivers for sleep apnea. He didn't know if it was going to be done across the board like a D.O.T. physical or just at the discretion of a physician on an 'as needed' basis. If it's across the board, I'll be seeing ya' because I don't sleep well under supervision in strange locations. - and no, I don't need to hear about how sleep apnea is so bad for your health (before advising me, read my signature line to get my opinion on the whole deal) In fact, I sleep better when they run the crap out of me instead of all this sitting. I have never fallen asleep at the wheel, never had an accident that can be tied to fatigue or sleepiness. If they want to help drivers sleep, get rid of the opti-idle. When I drove a truck that had that, I had a much harder time sleeping. If they want to test accurately, test the driver 1st in a controlled situation, and do a 2nd test in the truck with opti-idle and compare the numbers.

 

Does anyone know what pay rate Crete is offering for one year otr experience?

Thanks,
James

 

HA HA!!! Snackbar, I love this!!!!!!

 

Their website say 37 cents.

 

I'm taking a reset here at the Pilot in Gary,IN. Last night I'm sleeping like a dead baby, when it felt like someone jumped on my truck and broke off my cb antenner. I get up,look and it's still there, lay back down, get back up and look again. The truck beside me smacked my mirror when he was leaving! They ripped the front cover off it and kind of tore the plastic on the bottom of the mirror. I called accidents, (I've heard horror stories about them) and was treated real good, I think. I hope I don't have to go out with a trainer to learn how to sleep. I got the mirror cover screwed back on this morning and had to readjust my SWR's.
They must have good security here, nobody's knocking on doors or selling DVD's on the radio. Now if they could get rid of the seagulls. I hate birds!

 

Please continue to list exact mileage for the week.

Thank you very much for your very informative posts.

 

I understand the website says .37. I was asking what they are offering in practice.