Running With Watkins & Shepard

Chris,

When you say hitting your last tolls was a problem, does this mean you pay for your tolls up front or do they have E-Z Pass for you. Also, do they provide fuel cards for you or again is it up front out of pocket then get rembursed? Do you have phone numbers for W&S so I can get some information up front?

Thanks again.

 

Thanks Chris,

I have a one more question when you have time. Do you get paid when you are down, like when you were waiting for your truck to get repaired or you get paid only when the tire are rolling?

Thanks again.

 

Leaving around midnite is just fine and it's makes absolute sense to give yourself a buffer to work with especially since it's a holiday weekend. There's other reasons to arrive at the time you have planned but I'll "splain" that over the phone. I already told you how to log your fuel stops and as others have mentioned Atlanta can be a mother any time of the day, rush hour starts around 4 a.m. during the week. Average speed is probably closer to 58 mph but 55 is a good number to work with, you can always tighten things down the road.

Kh2 will probably be busy on Tuesday so the quicker you get empty and on the list the better chances you'll have of getting out. Might not be a bad idea to send cms a message to see if she has anything left over from the long weekend that you can roll with early Tuesday.

 

Chris--when I am figuring out how long it will take one of my trucks to get somewhere, I always use Practical Miles and 50MPH. Then adjust for Metro areas...in my case this is usually +1 hour for Chicago. I would agree that you should probably add 1 hour for Atlanta. This method seems to be fairly accurate. Also, I prefer to be pleasantly surprised when they are further along than I had figured, as opposed to PO'd if they are behind. In general, this will compensate for fuel stops and lunch break, or your 5 minute walk arounds. Generally, my drivers run during "normal" working hours. For example, 950 miles would be the equivalent of driving from Dubuque to Northern NJ. They would probably leave around 10AM on Saturday morning and drive to Hubbard, OH (OH/PA line on 80), arriving around 10-11PM. Take 10 hours off, and depart Sunday morning arriving somewhere in NJ Sunday evening, and get 10 in before delivering early on Monday with hours to get somewhere to reload and drive on Monday. They would typically load back to Ohio for delivery on Tuesday. Then unload/reload back to Chicago or Eastern Iowa. Depending on how things have gone, maybe another short trip back to OH/MI/IN. We tend to go out and straight back as quickly as possible expending 70 in 5-6 days. Take 36-48 hours off at home and start all over again.

 

I can hardly wait to hear the replies to your post. Getting the tech side of the truck set is critical to being satisfied. Lot of people will be able to assist I think.

On getting things to play through the truck stereo: I went to Wal-Mart and got a thing that will play a jump drive or MP3 player through the FM radio for $30. The MP3 plugs into the device and the device into the cigarette lighter. It can be tuned to several frequencies on the FM dial. I bought mine cause my pickup CD quit. So I plug the thing in the lighter, plug my MP3 player into it and voila!~ It even came with a remote, which was pretty cool, til I lost it. Now I use the button.

Google this: Car SD USB Drive MP3 Player Wireless FM Transmitter
It will come up. Should be pretty easy to find in a store.

Hope this may help a bit.

 

Ask the shop to put in a new stereo for you with the input jack and they should do it for ya...Also I've seen a lot of drivers put the cooler on the passenger seat and seat belt it in.
As for the headlight lenses, someone said a few pages back that they wont replace them..they will if you ask them right. Mention it's a safety hazard that you can't see at night and they will replace them. Thats how I got mine replaced, and my fellow meet/greet driver CAGEtrucker got his replaced the same way. On his, since he's in Phoenix, Missoula called SFS, SFS ordered them and I took them to him on one of our nightly trailer swaps. He was ok putting them in himself, and he says it's a world of difference at night.

Glad to see things looking up for you, Chris. Hope to see you in SFS someday. If/when you do get here, send me a text or something as I'm there everyday, at about 10pm, and again about 9am the following morning....we can get a cup of coffee or something from the lounge, or since my personal car is there we can go get some breakfast or something...