CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK TWENTY EIGHT
Monday, July 12th through Sunday, July 18th


It's been another busy week. The only thing getting in my way are my available hours.

It took four days to get to the East Coast after my home time and I've been on east coast time ever since with the exception of a quick trip to Houston before heading right back to NC.

This has nothing to do with truck driving, but it's my life at the moment. I'm getting a little bit of Supersnack luck. While the wife was back in NC checking on the rental home she learned that we will need a well put in at the house which is odd because we have city water and irrigation that comes directly to the house, but like every other city budget, they are looking for income and one of their ideas was to increase the cost of irrigation water.

Our water bill has gone from $40/mth to $250/mth. Blood suckers. So now we have to drop a well just to water the lawn. I was all for letting the lawn die, but the HOA probably wouldn't think much of that idea. So there goes a few grand.

Two days later we learned that the renters are pulling out early, just great. But good news follows that because we found new renters in 2 days.

Next the wife returns to Phoenix and three days later the A/C unit goes out and its 115 degrees. No problem because we got a one year home warranty with the purchase of our home. Well, we did right up to the time it expired at midnight the night before. It's like a bad sitcom script. Unbelievable! There goes another 7 G's. So we though. But the wife works for a commercial retail shopping center builder. So she contacted the company that installs and maintains all the A/C units in their properties to get a quote. The price was better than anything we could have gotten on our own (helps to know someone).

As far as the truck driving goes, no worries. I picked up another student on Thursday. This time around it's a newbie fresh out of Truck Driving School. I was spoiled by the last one because he was a well seasoned driver who just needed a 10 day refresher coarse. A first time driver is an entirely different story. The first week is always a little rough but he's starting to get the hang of it.

Last week ended down near Washington DC and I was hoping to get a load out of the northeast. I had a good 11hr day availible and was ready to go, but my MT call was answered with a two stop pickup in MD going to Jersey City. Ugh!

Just to really rub it in the first pickup had a 11am appointment and the second pickup was 2 miles away and had a 4pm pickup. So after spending 15mins at my first pickup where I loaded 4 pallets it went to the next in the hopes of an early load. I was actually given a door, but not a single pallet went onto my truck until 4pm.

That left me just enough time to drop my load in Jersey City and find a place to park for the night. A few hours later I was empty and had just found a place to park thinking I would be spending the night there only to get a load offer going to NC with 4 stops on it. I had just enough hours to run the load and accepted it, but when the load info came through there were two stop for the following day that I couldn't possible make, nor could anyone else.

I've been getting a number of loads lately that are late dispatches. Meaning I am picking them up beyond their critical dispatch time and they can't be delivered ontime. This was another one of them. I let dispatch know I would be a few hours late on the first two stop to cover my backside and was just told to do the best that I could legally and safely. It turned out to be no big deal at the customers, as long as the delivery was made before they closed, all was good.

In the middle of that run I got word that they had a student waiting for me in Spartanburg and my next load put me through the terminal to pick him up.

From there I was put on yet another late dispatch load going to Houston for a strict appointment live unload delivery. I actually managed to make that appointment by the skin of my teeth only to be told that they were expecting no loads today. It was a Saturday and they don't accept loads during the weekend. I was sure that meant I would be turned away, but instead they let me drop the load because they had a few empty Crete trailers out back.

That got me a Bud load going back to NC (I though I had escaped east coast time). It was suppose to be a quick drop and hook, but turned into a 2hr ordeal. As I scaled out they informed me that the truck was light (missing product) and I had to go back to the loading dock. Not really a big deal, I've had to do this in the past and it doesn't usually take all that long, it's just a bit annoying.

What should have taken 15mins turned into a couple of hours because a dock worker was in a bad mood and didn't feel like working and his 15min break ended up being an hour. I eventually hunted down the warehouse forman to get the ball rolling again and got my extra two pallets and was on my finally out of the gate.

Along the way I decided to take a short detour and run along the Gulf coast. My student had never seen a body of water larger than a lake and I wanted to check out the whole oil debacle. There were virtually no tourists (very strange sight this time of year), but there were numberous cleanup crews all over the place. We had some extra time so I found a place to park.

Its one of the fun parts about being a trainer. Showing the country to someone who has never seen it before. He was like a 40 year old child playing in the sand.

A day at the beach, well maybe not the whole day.

No oil on this Beach. I guess Mississippi is fairing better than Louisiana and Florida.


When I made the delivery on Monday morning the load was still two pallets short. But it could have been worse. I could have been the CFI driver who was at the same customer. He had picked up a tcalled load of beer and had pulled in late Saturday morning to deliver it. When he opened the door there were 8 pallets lying on the floor or leaning over. It was too close to closing time and the forklift driver refuse to stay late while the driver restacked the load and the CFI driver had to sit under the load for the entire weekend. I don't know who was responsible for dumping the load over, but the 2nd driver paid the price.

Or I could have been the driver of this truck. It took over an hour of bumper to bumper traffic to get past this one north of Atlanta last Friday. They had just pulled the driver out and put him in an ambulance as we went by.




WEEK TWENTY EIGHT
Monday, July 12th through Sunday, July 18th
Miles include deadhead

Belcamp, MD to Jersey City, NJ.....................................................229mi
Avenel, NJ to Hickory, NC................................................................715mi
Claremont, NC to Columbus, GA.....................................................432mi
Winder, GA to Houston, TX...........................................................1007mi
Houston, TX to Greensboro, NC(first leg).......................................999mi

Total Paid Miles........................................3403 Miles
Actual Miles...............................3462 Miles

3403mi x .44 = $1497.32 + Stop pay (4) $120 + Training pay $85.71 + short haul pay $15 = $1718.03

 

Having a nasty week up to this point. Six loads so far and nothing over 470mi. Was given an 18:30 delivery the other day that turned out to be a 06:30 that was missed. It took over an hour just to get dispatch to fess up. A lot of good that did because I ended up sitting til the next morning. Now I'm sitting in Middletown OH waiting to get loaded. I had a 5pm pickup and arrived at 4:30 only to be told that there are 14 trucks ahead of me.

Five hours later I wondered over to check on my place in line only to be told that the forklift driver was going home in two hours and there were still 4 trucks ahead of me and I will not be loaded tonight. Therefore I will not be able to make my appointment tomorrow morning and could very likely find myself sitting for a day or more waiting for a new appointment with no real option for a tcall without going way out of route. All this for a 250mi run. And this whole situation reeks of no paid detention.

I'm not in a very good mood at this point.