CRETE - A Year in Review

Well, keeping up with the detailed weekly updates has been all but impossible for me of late. I’ve tried but just can’t seem to devote the time to it that is required. It’s unfortunate because I have number of fun times on the road to retell but I will have to resort to a quick overview in order to catch up with current event.

There’s that little tale about my short cut through OK that I took in order to shave 45 miles off my trip only to come across a “Bride out 9 miles ahead” while driving across Hwy 7 up by Sulpher, OK (I believe) that resulted in a 40mi detour that ate up over an hour of my time. That was a lot of very narrow, not meant for truck, roads that could have easily been avoided if the stupid detour sign would have been placed in a more appropriate spot, like 50miles back.


Of course, there were the tedious layovers that were endured, usually centering around some Pennsylvania location and a rare trip down into Florida. I don’t know what SuperSnack was complaining about. I had absolutely no trouble getting a load down there. I didn’t even have to ask for one and to top it off I was immediately given a 1300 mile run out as soon as I was empty. Too bad it was a run to NY with a ridiculous amount of downtime on it. A Tcall was the obvious answer to that dilemma, but dispatch wasn’t quit as open minded to that idea as I was and resulted in yet one more extended stay in PA along the way and a 2600+ mile week. The week was frustrating, but the scenery in the North East this time of year is absolutely gorgeous.



Basically I played the part of a professional tourist and made the best of my time while on the road taking in the sites along the way. There was yet one more trip through St Louis, missing the AZ Diamondback’s game by a day. Too bad because it was another one of those runs that had time to spare on it. I could have shut down for the rest of the afternoon on my way through and enjoyed a day at the ball park. Maybe next time?



I had a nice little break from the heat with a run up into Michigan. Definitely a great place to be during the summer. This was during one of my good weeks where I was getting plenty of miles and enjoyed my reset downtime with lengthy hikes into the surrounding woodlands and peaceful campfires at night. Parking is not something to worry about up here. Not much in terms of truck traffic in Northern Michigan these days. They sure put a lot of wheels on the trucks up here.



Then there was that little ruckus I came across in Springfield, MO, home of Prime Transport. As I approached the off ramp I saw some poor truck driver on his knees behind his rig in handcuffs and a few officers standing around him. There also appeared to be a couple digging around in his cab searching for whatever. I have no idea what the circumstances where, but the scene was playing out mere yards from the main entrance to Prime’s home terminal. I imagine it had something to do with a Lease/Op’s dream of owning his own company turning into a nightmare and some threat of bodily harm towards a Prime dispatcher or higher up that was derailed by the local law enforcement. (So much for that driving carrier). I had to do a triple loop detour to get going in the direction I was headed and snapped this shot as an afterthought.



That little detour held me up only momentarily, unlike the aggravating rolling road block that lasted for 10 miles during one of my runs through the Deep South. I can’t remember if it was Alabama or Mississippi, not that it really matters I guess, but this was my view for well over ½ an hour. Oncoming traffic sure made for an interesting show.



I also had the opportunity to once again meet one of DOT’s finest. I was making my way across one of Alabama’s back roads, HWY 80 and had just finished driving through Demopolis after dealing with and endless stream of cars going 25 in a 35 (as is common down here). I was just starting to accelerate as I could see the 55mph sign just ahead and boom, blue light special.

At this point I am totally mystified. Not only was I not speeding, but I had been running considerably below the speed limit for the majority of the last few miles. There certainly wasn’t a yellow/red light issue to be concerned about because I hit every single light red and waited patiently at each and every one. The only thing I could think of was that I was indeed accelerating at the time the lights come on, but it was hardly what anyone could classify as speeding. All these questions where answered when the officer approached the truck. After asking for the standard paperwork he informed me that I was being pulled over for a random safety inspection (what a relief). I was also extremely pleased to be treated like a human being by this officer. He was obviously an experienced officer and was training a young new recruit and was one of the nicest officers iv’e ever come across, it was very refreshing.

The process took about 30mins and I was given a clean bill of health (and $25 from Crete for a clean inspection) and asked if I had seen any other officers that day. I hadn’t and told his as much, at which time he informed me that they were doing a target enforcement on this particular highway and to expect a number of units on the road. If at any time along the way I were to get pulled over again, all I would have to do is show my inspection report and I would be sent on my way. Over the next 2-3 hours I counted 18 DOT vehicles conducting similar inspections. Looks like Alabama’s coffers need an infusion of cash via the trucking industry.

Getting home wasn’t all that easy this time around. My hometime just happened to come due on the 4th of July weekend. I don’t particularly care about being home on the 4th, but many others do. Because of this I knew there was little or no chance of getting back to Phoenix in a timely manner. Looks like another five weeks out at best. As suspected I didn’t get a load home when requested (that will happen on holiday weekends because guys with vacation requests get priority, as they should) and planned on getting there ASAP.

It was early in the following week that I got the call from home that one of the homes we had an offer in one had finally made it through the system and the closing date had been set for the middle of July. Well, that will make it 6weeks out in order to make sure I was in Phoenix at that time. I would also be adding an extra week to my regular home time in order to fix up the “new” house. The vacation request went in and I settled in for a couple more weeks on the road.

Trouble ensued when someone in my home terminal dropped the ball on my hometime/vacation request that resulted in a bit of back and fourth with a certain Missouri dispatcher that will remain nameless who didn’t really seem to believe the mix-up wasn’t my fault. Despite my every effort to temper the mood of the conversation I was simply being treated like a truck driver. Anyone that has driven a truck knows that feeling. He was intent on sending me up to Illinois to attend this months company Safety Class (due to my “failure to yield” debacle in Indiana, which I was not convicted of).

After a couple of phone calls to this individual trying to convince him that all details had been cleared with my FM, I found that they netted little more that resentment from me due to this contemptuous dispatcher and a general, “I could care less” attitude unlike any I had dealt with during my employment with this company. I finally broke down and did something I have never done with regards to an operational issue in my three years at Crete. I contacted my fleet manager. I’ve always been one who deals with my own problems, but this time around I felt I needed a little help.

I made no disparaging remarks, nor did I attempt to get a certain dispatcher in trouble. I didn’t even bother using the phone. I simply sent a message via Qcom asking for a little assistance and asked that they contact said dispatcher because I didn’t feel he believed what I was telling him and in general, felt he was having a bad day and I wasn’t having any luck with him.

This message was sent as a response to an earlier vacation time verification I had received earlier in the day as opposed to sending a direct message to the FM. I assumed sending a “reply” would accomplish the same thing. Well it does, but the path that said message takes is altered. Instead of going directly to the FM, the reply goes through the dispatchers screen and they are able to read it. (They may also be able to read messages sent directly, but beings I never do that, I don’t know). Anyways, that message sent to my FM is shortly answered by the surly dispatcher who, at this time, appears to be doing what he can to cover his butt. Stating that he is working on getting me a load and assured me he is having “a great day”. Oops! That’s not going to be much help in my cause is it.

At this point I was sure I would be sitting for at least a day before getting a load if for no other reason than to satisfy a surly dispatcher. It took a few hours, but a load actually arrived and it was going to California. It was followed by a message to pickup the load and Tcall it in Phx. What do you know; once again Crete gets me home when I have to get there. I don’t always get home when I want to be there, but when I have to be there they always seem to get me home.

Shortly there after I was rolling on down the road to pickup my load that would land me in Phx on the very day I had requested. Oh how I love AZ.




Now, it would have been the perfect run had it ended with a simple dropped trailer upon arriving, but it didn’t exactly happen that way. I’ll have to go back a couple of days to tell this little tale.

This load originated in a little town in the middle of Missouri. I had to pick up a preloaded trailer of wire cables on spools. Simple enough! I arrived to find my trailer waiting for me and hooked up and made my way out of the gate. The load was relatively light for cable and I didn’t worry about scaling out in the area. I had checked my truck stop books and there didn’t seem to be anything close by anyway. I could have asked the shipping clerk, but I wasn’t at all worried about the load being over weight. I’ve pulled freight long enough to know when a trailer feels too heavy. This one wasn’t even close and on down the road I went.

The first truck stop I came across with a scale was about 50 miles away and I stopped just to make sure everything was good. Anyone want to guess what happened. HA! Most of you are wrong. The truck scaled just fine as I had suspected. I had placed the trailer tandems where I feel the load would be well balanced and was pleased to find about 31,000# on the drives and a fair amount below 34,000# on the tandems. No problems here, not perfectly balanced, but good enough to get me down the road. There will be some of you that have seen through this by now. Why else would I be going in to such detail, right?

It was a full two days later as I was driving through NM and anticipating my home time and my new home. There was a lot of work ahead of me and the details were occupying much of my mental time. That’s when another thought wiggled its’ way into my mind and slapped me up side the head. I imagine it occurred to me as I was contemplating my Tcall. You know, the trailer that I was pulling that some other driver would be picking up and delivering into California sometime Tuesday morning. Hey, isn’t California that state with a “40’ kingpin to center of rear trailer tandem” law.

Son of a #$%#^! How could I have been such an idiot (Seems to be happening more often than it once did, getting older stinks)? I had scaled out in MO and everything was fine as far as axel weights go, as long as I’m not going to Cali. I wasn’t going there, but this load sure was and I had completely dropped the ball on this one. My tandem weight was just fine for the moment, but a mental image of where the tandems where let me know there was absolutely no way this trailer would be legal with the tandems set at the 40’ limit.

I’ve been with this company for just short of 3 years, and up to this point have never had an overweight issue. I’ve had some #### close ones, but never something that I had to take back to a shipper for a rework. Back in my refer days with another company it was a weekly occurrence, but here at Crete, never. What a great time for my first problem. I’m only about 1500 miles away from the shipper and have myself a nasty little problem. At this point the damage is done and all I can do is be on my way. I’ll have to deal with it when I get to Phoenix, how, I’m not exactly sure just yet, but I have a few ideas.

I arrived in Phoenix on a Sunday afternoon. It was a not so pleasant 116° and climing and I needed to get this load shifted. My initial plan had been to call the company that I was hauling this load for. It’s a national company and just so happened that they had a phone listing in the Phoenix area. It was my hope that they had a warehouse in the area and would be able to move some spools around for me. This load had 7 very large spools sitting on the floor of the trailer and 4 smaller spools on top of the back spools at the end of the trailer. I don’t know who was dumber. The guy that loaded it this way or the moronic driver who wasn’t able to put 2 and 2 together at the time of pickup to realize that wasn’t a great idea.

I was patting myself on the back for thinking of calling the local warehouse while en-route Saturday afternoon to solve my problem, but soon found out that wasn’t going to do me any good. Yes, they had a local number, but it was only a sales office. No docks or anything that could be of any assistance to me.

I now had to find another way to move these 5000# spools and the smaller 1500# ones. I had a couple more ideas but since it was a Sunday afternoon I was having zero luck getting anyone to pick up a phone. I did make one attempt to solve the problem then and there. I had a few straps in the truck and after a little foraging in the yard I was able to come up with a few chains and a come-along winch. I spent 90 minutes or so attempting to pull the smaller spools on top towards the front of the trailer, but I just couldn’t get a configuration going that could provide me with enough leverage to get the kind of movement I would need. Besides that, not being used to the AZ heat, especially during a record breaking day pushing 118° and who knows what inside the trailer, heat stroke was becoming a real concern (I don’t think I’m suppose to get the chills in that kind of heat). I would have to wait until Monday morning to work this out and headed to the house.

Monday was my first day of home time, but it would start at 6am back at the yard. I suppose another driver might have just Tcalled the load and let someone else worry about it. After all, it was only about 18” past the 40’ mark. But that simply wasn’t an option for me. If all else failed I would deliver the load myself. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve pulled a long wheelbase into Cali and made it work, although not with Crete, this was my problem and I would be the one to fix it.

My first plan was to stop off at an equipment rental place on my way back to the yard. There was one a mere 2blks from the yard and they had a number of boom forklifts just sitting around with no one using them. You know, the ones that have a long arm reaching over the top of the tractor and extend way out in the air(or way into the back of a trailer). I explained my situation to them and asked what they would charge me for the use of their equipment for 20mins or so. As I had suspected, they said if I pulled the trailer into their yard I could use the equipment free of charge (professional courtesy kind of thing).


I returned shortly there after and set to work. I was able to reach into the trailer and pull out the 4 offending smaller spools and had intended on stacking them two high and replacing them closer to the front of the trailer by extending the arm of the forklift. Everything was going great until I started to put the spools back in. I had measured the combined height of the spools and they would fit onto the top of the existing larger spools, but I was thwarted by the height of the forklift boom (the yellow part by the forks in the pic). It was higher than the roof of the trailer and I was not able to achieve what I had planed in my head. I eventually manage to shift the load a little bit and hoped it would be sufficient.

A trip to the local truck stop to scale let me know that I had indeed shifted a good 1500 pounds, but I was still about 10inchs short of the 40’ mark. At least at this point I was sure I could get this load into Cali by monitoring the CB and hit the scales when the by pass light was on and even possibly get away with a run across the scales if the scale master wasn’t watching too close. But “I” didn’t want to be the one delivering this load. I Still had closing papers to sign on the house Wednesday afternoon and wasn’t overly confident about making it back to town in a timely manner after a Tuesday afternoon delivery in LA.

I was down to my final option, the expensive one. I would have to find a warehouse in the area that would re-work my load for me. If it had been your standard palletized load I wouldn’t have had a thing to worry about, but this was a load of 5000+# spools that measured 8ft across and were sitting on the floor. It would be a challenge and I wasn’t feeling very good about finding someone that would want to mess with it, let alone do it for a fair price. I searched the yellow pages and was able to find a warehouse that was less than two miles away that claimed to be a “full service” and could “handle all your needs”. We’ll see about that.

I gave them a call to let them know what I had in mind and they told me to come on over and they would give it a shot. One hour later everything was moved around and I had the small spools sitting up in the middle of the truck. I had let the owner of the place know that I would be footing the bill on this one (my mess, my dollar) and asked him for a company driver price and he agreed to take $75 for the job. That seemed like an extremely fair price to me and I headed back to the truck stop to find out how we did. The tandems were on the 40’ mark and the answer to the $75 question, “would I have to deliver this load” was……………33,960#.

Another lesson learned and another week in the books.




WEEK TWENTY SEVEN
Monday, July 6th through Sunday, July 12th
Miles include deadhead

Columbus, OH to La Grange, GA(final leg)………………………………642mi
Hampton, GA to London, KY…………………………………………….......419mi
Chestnut Hill, TN to Springfield, MO……………………………………....830mi
Sedalia, MO to Phoenix, AZ…………………………………………….......1426mi

Total Paid Miles………………………………..........3317 Miles
Actual Miles……………………......3401 Miles

3317 Miles x .43 = $1426.31

 

WEEK TWENTY EIGHT
Monday, July13th through Sunday, July 19th
Miles include deadhead

Home Time

No Miles

Vacation Pay ……………………. $1203.00


WEEK TWENTY NINE
Monday, July20th through Sunday, July 26th
Miles include deadhead

Home Time

No Miles

Vacation Pay ……………………....1203.00



WEEK TWENTY THIRTY
Monday, July27th through Sunday, Aug 2nd
Miles include deadhead

Home Time

No Miles

 

No fuss at all. Due to not getting home around the 4 week mark because it was the 4th of July weekend (drivers with vacation time get preference) and soon there after finding out that I needed to be home in the middle of July to sign closing papers I ended up staying out for 6weeks. Even though the company policy is 1 day off for 6 out with no more than 4 days off at a time the fleet manager can extend that home time if the driver has productive numbers or extenuating circumstances. I had originally put in for 10 days home time (4days off plus one week paid vacation) and later added another week of vacation time to my stay. As that came to an end and I found that I need a couple more days, I just had to call and ask and they were granted without question.

It's not exactly the way I wanted to use my vacation time. I had something more along the lines of a Jamaican Beach in mind, but 16hr days in nonstop 110+ degree weather working on a house was almost as much fun. At least I was able to drink a Corona while sitting in my new pool after a long day.


Dodgeram440rt wrote:

I don't blame you for skipping a hundred or so pages, but you will find all you ask for in those pages. I will continue to do what I can to pass on this info on a weekly bases but have been falling behind here and there. Now that my time is no longer being consumed with the house hunting I should be able to devote a little more time to the thread. Thanks for checking it out.


Big Al wrote:

I don't know what to tell ya. They only nag, whine and babysit the drivers that need it. Personally, I never hear a peep out of anyone unless I ask them a question.

It's called change. Everything changes to fit a given set of circumstances. NOTHING stays the same, EVER. It is up to each individual person, in trucking and every other profession in the world to adapt. If you don't you will be left behind in a cesspool of whining and complaining while feeling sorry for yourself.

It's called "Detention Pay". Crete pays it (although I rarely have to put in for it). Not a lot, $10hr after the first two, but it's better than many and they actually pay it (the vast majority of the time).


Tucker wrote:

Thanks, I think?

It's shaping up very nicely. The carpet layers are there at this very moment and the movers will have our stuff moved into our newly remodeled home by Thursday. Too bad I wont see it for another 3-4 weeks. The wife will be sending me pics to tide me over until then.

 

Thanks JD, I'll add it to the stack.