Bulkmatic, as it happens...

First 4 days back are in the books. Actually, only 3 and a half, I lost a load today somehow. Either way, I made it thru and it felt good to be back at work but I'm also glad it's over and I get 4 days off now. I am sore and stiff and beat and can't believe the amount of overall strength I lost sitting for 5 months during all this. I'd have a beer right now but I'm not sure I could lift it.

New work flow app was adopted while I was off, don't really care for it. Some trailers now have new blue unloading hoses instead of the black ones that were always used since I started. These blue ones are about 1 step removed from solid pipe. Don't bend past about 15-20 degrees before they start to kink and even The Hulk couldn't squeeze these things, not fun at all to try and work with.

 

Not familiar with that area at all, sorry.

 

Driver facing cameras are there, and sadly, they aren't going to go away.

As far as the pay structure goes, while I am not at all familiar with the location you asked about, I assume the driver pay structure is the same thru-out the company no matter location. The reviews you mentioned are correct, it's kind of a convoluted thing, but after a few weeks you start yo get the hang of it and after some time you just start to know what loads pay what from repetition.

Basically we get paid by the load, but every load pays differently depending on miles and if you load the trailer yourself or it's preloaded. Ummmm... ####, I better clarify that. If you take the same load to the same place from the same starting point it will always pay that same amount, unless you have detention one time and not the other. And also unless it's a Saturday, Sunday or holiday. Monday thru Friday loads pay the regular rate (whatever it may be) Saturday loads pay a small premium for being a weekend and Sunday/Holiday loads pay a touch more then Saturday loads.

So if you run the same load everyday Monday thru Friday you get the same amount each of those days (barring detention/breakdown pay if it should be involved) If you run that same load on a Saturday it will pay you a few bucks more, and if you run it on a Sunday it will pay you a few bucks more than if you ran it on a Saturday.

It breaks down kinda like this...

Each load pays you:
1) X amount per loaded mile zip to zip. Since 99% of the time you come back empty (at least I do) which technically doesn't pay you anything you can take the mile pay (which is loaded only) and cut it in half and that is what you get per all miles ran (zip to zip) for that load.
2) X amount to pre-trip your loaded trailer. This is referred to as Pick-Up Base Pay on your weekly settlement statements, or it could possibly be listed as Subsidy/Split Pick Up if you are grabbing a load that someone else pulled from its original pick up location and for whatever reason ended up dropping it at another terminal.
3) X amount to unload the trailer. Whatever this amount is covers up to 2 hours of your time starting from when you send in your arrived at consignee macro. This is the least amount you will get, if you are there for less than the 2 hours that amount covers you still get that amount. If you are there longer then you get detention for anything on top of the 2 hours at X amount per hour, whatever that amount may be. detention runs is 15 minute increments, so 1-15 minutes pays you a quarter of whatever the the hourly detention rate is. 16-30 minutes over your 2 hours pays you half the hourly detention rate and so on and so forth.

Now that I've totally confused everyone all I can say is it one of those things that think will never make sense and there's got to be a better way (and there may be, I dunno) but get the hang of it fairly quickly.

 

I don't remember who it was, but someone once told me "Gettin' old ain't for ####### kid". They were right.

Made it back to work for 2 whole weeks.

Last Wednesday afternoon when we got 11 inches of snow here I turfed it while doing the driveway. End result is I ended up having only one functioning arm, couldn't lift my left arm hardly at all. Arm has improved a little over the last week but not enough to be able to do my job.

After X-rays and MRI and also losing 2 days to get roto-rootered to get the kidney stone issue taken care of for hopefully many years, finally saw surgeon this morning. Turns out I have a complete tear of one of the four tendons in my rotator cuff, along with some other minor stuff in there, most of which is just from age.

Go under the knife the 22nd to get it taken care of, projected recovery/rehab time from surgery to back in the truck.... 4 months

I'm seriously wondering if my ex-wife found a voodoo doll of me someplace and a drawer full of pins. This sucks.

 

Thank you sir, I appreciate it.