The Old Man's career dries up, Snackbar transfers to Crete from Shaffer

I understand the math. The simple point is that the companies are making profits by cutting the driver’s productivity. Luckily this is something that I don’t have to deal with being paid hourly and allowed to fuel where and when I want to.

 

Any more, most of the time, wherever you go to fuel, you're waiting in line. Whether it's Apu taking his 30 on his phone at the pump, or someone inside eating lunch for 45 minutes......

 

It depends who your driving for. When I was driving for R F Chamberland out of Maine. They basically told me I can freely fuel up at any of the major truck stops. Sometimes smaller places if needed if they take comdata

 

Snackbar has 36k miles for the quarter so following the fuel solution must not be slowing him down too much

 

I do understand the huge discounts that are given to companies to have their trucks fuel at certain truckstops. But wether they put 60 gal. or a tank fill the discounts are the same and they wouldn't have to chase a few cents down the road. A company can specify a certain truck stop chain as their preferred stops based on discounts and the drivers can use them without multiple stops wasting valuable time for the drivers.

 

The discounts aren’t the same. The discounts between locations vary for many different reasons. I’ll give an example from last year.

The Flying J in Rapid City SD was closed down for a remodel. In order to keep the Pilot on the west side of town from getting slammed they used discounts to try and divert some of that traffic to the Pilot in Murdo. Why? Because the fuel comes out of Sioux Falls. For whatever reason Pilot won’t get the fuel from Newcastle or Rapid City. I’ve heard various reasons why people don’t like the fuel from Newcastle. Anyway, it’s a little over 700 miles round trip from Sioux Falls to Rapid City. Diverting some of that traffic to Murdo made it so their Sioux Falls trucks were available to help add capacity. Pilot also had their Tartan trucks helping to cover loads to Murdo out of North Platte, and the company I drive for had trucks covering loads to Rapid City out of North Platte.

That’s just one example. Supplier allocations at different terminals as well as outages at terminals can affect discounts if they’re trying to steer traffic to one place versus another. The discounts aren’t always the same across the board just because it’s the same chain.

 

I bet they add up the savings at the end of the year and give the driver a nice big bonus for following there fuel solutions all year

 

Well they have been talking about all the raises they’re getting. Lol

 

Well, we do get profit sharing, so if the company spends less on fuel, we do benefit.
Yeah, sure, I prefer to fuel before shutting down for the night or when I take my 30, and the fuel solutions can be inconvenient, but I figure, they're paying for it, and its not easy to tell what will be busy or not.

 

Ifta tax has a lot to do with that…many don’t understand that at all..