Time to start Houffing -- new gig at Houff Transfer

They getting work out of me. I actually changed a fuse for the first time in my 10-year trucking career. Long-time readers of the old Abilene thread will no doubt be thrilled and amazed.

And here shortly I will be locking a tire to the spare rack, again for the first time ever.

Even before Abilene got bought, they used a breakdown service. After they got bought, we switched to using Knight's breakdown service. So for the past 10 years, whenever I have had a problem of any kind with the truck or trailer, I made a phone call and it magically became Someone Else's Problem.

Abilene trailers were equipped with tire inflation systems. If a trailer had a flat, very often all that was needed to whip it back into shape was to roll it for a mile or three. That would heat it up enough for the tire to catch on the rim and get itself inflated by the TIS. Not so with the new gig. They're old school. I hooked a trailer earlier that had a flat tire. I was close enough to the TA in Elkton, MD to drive it over there. Had to set up my own repairs. I have been instructed to have the shop replace the flat with the spare. The shop says they'll do that, but it'll be up to me to get the old tire secured in the spare rack. Liability issues, they say. If the tire isn't properly secured, they don't want it to be their fault.

 

To be clear, the guy I was talking to at Houff (Safety director, and also the owner's son) made it clear that if I wasn't comfortable lifting the tire into the rack and securing it myself, he'd find a different repair shop that would do it. At no point was I ordered to put the flat tire in the rack.

Turned out to be a moot point, however. The repair tech patched the flat tire and never touched the spare.

 

Home for 4 days off.

At Abilene, I would go out for 18 days and take 3 days off. That was how I ran for 10 years. Abilene's policy was that you got 1 day off for every 6 days in the truck, and you had to go out a minimum of 12 days. So I could've taken every other weekend off if I wanted. But my ex and I had already parted ways at the time, and my kids lived with her. And I wanted to have more time per visit with my kids than have more frequent visits. Picking them up on a Saturday only to turn around and have them back 24 hours later didn't sit well with me. Especially since it was 2.5 hours one way to pick them up or take them home.

Welp, the kids are grown now, but that 18 days out and 3 days home schedule is ingrained in me. And that was my initial plan when I started here and learned that they were willing to keep me out longer than their other drivers.

Their other drivers are out 5 days and off 2. Most work Mon-Fri and take the weekends off, but some work Tue-Sat or Sun-Thu instead. In all cases, however, their drivers will work 15 days out of every 21, and will take the other 6 off. And once I did the math, I thought "Man, they will really be getting a lot of extra work out of me if I stick to my old 18 on/3 off schedule." So my new schedule will be 17 days out, 4 days off.

They will still be getting an extra two days of work out of me over the same timeframe compared to their other drivers. If I wanted to run 15 on/6 off like every other driver they have, they got no reason to treat me any different than their other drivers. They could just run me 5/2 every week, and it would be much easier for them because they wouldn't have to work around recap. But I'm literally the only driver they have who stays out for weeks at a time. And since I'm being kind of a PITA, I figure I'll throw in a couple extra days to sweeten the pot and make it worth their while. Besides, it's actually one less day of work and one more day off than I'm used to. So from my perspective I'm coming out ahead.

Plus, I am a big, tough, macho truck driver, and a little hard work never killed nobody.

 

I'm off for 4 days, like I said.