CRETE - A Year in Review

Here are my 2010, 1st quarter numbers.



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And some comparisons from the past:

First Quarter:

2008 - 38,602 Miles
2009 - 31,198 Miles
2010 - 36,268 Miles

 

WEEK FOURTEEN
Monday, April 5th through Sunday, April 11th

Well, I had the good fortune of spending 6days at the house this time around. I had repowered a load out of Columbus that was to deliver in Arizona on the 1st of April (my requested home date). I liked that part of it, but it didn't come without a price. I had to spend a day sitting around in Columbus waiting for the load to arrive at our terminal from Massachusetts. Another driver was headed this way for hometime and I was going to be repowering it for my homebound trip.

I would also be arriving in Phoenix a couple of days early and if I had been able to squeeze in a reset a few days ago (just missed out again) I would have actually pulled into town on Monday. Now, I'm not at all opposed to spending a week at home from a personal preference point of view, but from a financial perspective it's not really a good idea. I had the option of turning the load down because it was so nonproductive, but once I get "home" in the sights I'm all for it.

So even though the week prior to hometime was less than productive it served a purpose and I spent my 6 days at the house with a short interruption on Thursday morning to deliver the load which officially started my hometime on Friday. This actually gave me the option of staying at the house until Tuesday morning, but there are bills to pay and I hit the road first thing Monday morning. I also hopped that a Monday start would make it possible to put in a solid week and knockout a reset at the end of the week to boot.

My past few starts out of the house have originated on Tuesdays resulting in a string of missed resets due to timing of loads over the following weekend. This was becoming a pattern that I was hoping to break this time around.

I pulled into the yard at 6am and sent in my ready call. I was thrilled to find a number of newer trailers on the yard as opposed to the dregs of the fleet that I have been coming across on Tuesday mornings. These newer trailers are desirable for two reasons, the first being obvious. Newer trailers mean fewer mechanical problems and the second advantage is that I can load copper loads out of the Globe/Superior area. These loads tend to have good miles on them, but the shippers in the area often require trailers that are less than 10yrs old. Having a new trailer greatly increase load options available to me.

Anyway, I have my shinny new trailer and load up the truck with personal effects as I wait for my load offer to come through. I anticipate a short wait and am a little surprised when I have finished putting everything in its proper place and have yet to receive my load offer. The last few times around I have found myself on such a short schedule that I have to throw everything onto the bunk and get going. Not today.

After a good thirty minuets or so I shot off another message asking for a load offer and again waited, only to hear nothing whatsoever from dispatch. I hate when this happens! All I need is a simple "working on it" or something similar to acknowledge my existence on this planet.

My patients began to grow a little short. When I'm out on the road there is little I can do when this happens, but when I'm in my home town and I have a car sitting mere feet away, I have options.

I was beginning to wonder if there was a freight shortage thing going on this morning and began to regret my decision not to call in the night before to line a load up. This would be the preferred way of doing things so that I know what time to show up at the yard and can plan things out. After all, what's the point of showing up in the yard at 6am if I wasn't going to be dispatched on a load until 3pm.

For this reason I had called in at the conclusion of my last two stints of hometime and made just such arrangements. But each of these preplans resulted in my showing up at my truck only to find that dispatch had messed up in one way or another and my load was gone. So I couldn't see the point in dealing with dispatch the night before only to put up with the aggravation the following morning of trying to figure out what had happened. This time around I thought I would try something a little different.

So now I was sitting in the yard with a truck, empty trailer and zero communication from dispatch. Time for another message! "Are there any loads going out today, If not I'm going to head back to the house, thx". That did it, "Working on it". It wasn't much of a wait after that and I found myself looking at a load out of a mine in Superior, AZ going to Iowa(1706mi). I just love the loads out of AZ after my hometime.

I was a bit surprised by the destination because I usually get something going to Texas or Ohio. I was also somewhat perplexed by a message that followed the load info. I was to take a specific trailer out of the yard, P11519 and leave my shinny new trailer behind. For those who have been around Crete for awhile, they will recognize that as a very old trailer (one to be avoided at all costs).

The delay I had experience this morning was now starting to make some sense. They wanted me to pull out a very old trailer and the final destination was one that I wasn't accustom to, but relatively close to the Wabash plant in Lafitte. My guess was that they wanted to put me to pull a specific trailer to a destination as close as possible to Lafayette so that it could be pulled out of service and traded in for a new one. I don't know if that was the reason for all the oddities, but assumed I would find out sooner or later.


The miles were great, but the delivery date was abysmal. This was Monday and it was scheduled for a Friday delivery and I would be there long before that. The delivery window gave me the impression that I would be able to drop it anytime before that date and there was no specific info in the load assignment that said I couldn't do so. I could always tcall the load in Kansas City if it was going to be a problem.

I accepted the load and was soon on my way only to make it a few miles down the road before coming to a dead stop on my way out of town. It was rush hour but I was going in the opposite direction and should not be seeing this. I only had to listing to a local radio station for a few minutes to find out that a dump truck had rolled over a few miles ahead and spread his load out across four of the six lanes. I should have know better than to head out into rush hour without checking the traffic reports. I know the back roads well and could have circumnavigated the accident with little delay. Instead, I spent an hour just trying to make it to the next exit and by the time I pulled into the shipper 60 miles away, over two hours had passed. Great way to start the week.

The next pain came when I pulled in to get loaded and no one was in much of a hurry to do anything and it took another 2hrs to load 17 big bags of crushed limestone stuff. That was followed by a tumultuous battle with my tandems on my ancient trailer. I was ready to push the thing over a cliff by the time I got them slid to where I needed them. It was almost noon and I had managed to put an entire 60 miles behind me for the day.

But I was finally rolling and looking forward to a couple days of peaceful driving. I had one more obstacle ahead of me, but it was nothing that I wasn't familiar with. I had once again been routed the truck friendly way, but opted to run the Salt River Canyon. This particular route knocks off a solid 150 miles off the trip, but the first 140 miles will take a good 4hrs with these underpowered trucks and the numerous pullovers I have to do so that traffic can get by . The hill are steep and 25mph is about the best I can do going up them and with a 80,000# truck I'm content with keeping it at 40mph on the down side.

It ends up being a bit tedious, but the views are amazing and it shortens the trip considerably.

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OK, that's Monday and I'm not in the mood to finish the rest of the week right now. Time to make dinner and watch Lost! So I'll get to the rest of it later, but post my miles for the week now.

Awesome week with a reset on Sunday to top it off and have managed to find myself in Supersnack territory down here in Florida. Get to deal with a grocery warehouse first thing in the morning.Can't wait!

WEEK FOURTEEN
Monday, April 5th through Sunday, April 11th
Miles include deadhead
Superior, AZ to Cedar Rapids, IA........................................................1706mi
Iowa City, IA to Browns Summit, NC....................................................966mi
Lincolnton, NC to North Vernon, IN......................................................647mi
North Vernon, IN to Cape Girardeau, MO..............................................331mi

Total Paid Miles..............................................3650 Miles
Actual Miles..........................3518 Miles (took a few shortcuts)

3650mi x .44 = $1606.00