CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK THIRTY EIGHT​

Monday, September 20th through Sunday, September 26th​

I've spent two nights in a real bed and got to sit back and watch some football games in my hotel this weekend, but my reset has concluded and I have to be in Ardmore, OK to deliver my load by Noon. For the most part all goes well and I show up at 11:30. The guard gives me a door assignment and tells me to check in at receiving window at 12:30 when their lunch break is over. Riddle me this, "Why do I have a live unload scheduled during a lunch break, again?"

Time passes slowly, but when 12:30 rolls around I am standing at the window ready to get the show on the road. Oddly enough, no one else in the place is as interested in punctually as I. It's 12:50 before the clerk waddles in to take my paperwork and tells me to return to my truck. From that point I spend another 40mins in the truck before I feel the dock plate drop into the trailer. It's a good thing I was on time for this delivery, eh?

My second load of the week is a sweet one. With deadhead thrown in I'm looking at 297 miles with a 10am delivery the next day. Not that it makes all that much difference considering how much time I lost delivering this load. By the time all was said and done I completed a drop and hook pickup down by Ft Worth and had enough time left in the day to make it up to the Winstar Casino at the state line on I-35. I had a 14hr layover before I could get started the next day and thought the casino would be as good a place as any to pass a little time.

Tuesday started out with a quick hop up to Oklahoma City for another live unload, but unlike yesterdays debacle, this time around I was unloaded in less than an hour and ready for my next load. And unlike yesterday, today's load was a good little 900mi run. The only thing I didn't care for was the final destination of Columbus, OH. I've been getting far too many short dogfood or beer runs out of there lately. I really didn't want another one, but it seems to be all that is available to us out of there these days. For know I'll just enjoy my long run.

My pickup of beer bottles out of Sapulpa was a relatively painless, due in large part to the fact that my trailer was preloaded and even more so to the lack of motivation by a number of other drivers on site. I arrived at 12:40 and as I walked across the street to the shipping office, I noticed a handful of drivers standing around in the lot.

When I walked inside it became apparent why they were standing around. There was a sign at the shipping office window stating that lunch was from Noon to 1pm. Once again I am left wondering why I had a pickup window of 12:00 - 14:00 when the customer is shut down during half that time.

Having nothing better to do I simply stood at the window and waited for someone to show up. As 1pm rolled around the other drivers began stumbling in and by 1:15 there were 8 drivers and no shipping clerks. There's that punctuality thing again.

Once someone decided to make an appearance in the office it was all of 3mins before I had my paperwork and was headed to the back lot to pickup my preloaded trailer before the onslaught of other drivers started cluttering up the place. By they time they started pulling around the corner I was rolling merrily down the road.

The rest of the trip went swimmingly well and I pulled into Columbus the following day at 3pm with some hair brain plan of getting an "A" service done on my brand new truck. This would be its first, and since I was already close to 3000mi past the 15,000mi mark, I felt I had best take advantage of the opportunity. I fully well expected the standard, "We'll get to it in the morning", but instead I got all wobbly kneed when they said it would be about 30min. "In Columbus, you got to be kidding me!". Now of course it wasn't 30mins, but it wasn't much more than an hour before I was putting it in a bay door and barely over one hour before it was done. Unprecedented!

As a side note, interesting maintenance schedule they have these new Freightliners on. They will be getting an A service at 15,000 and 30,000mi with a B service every 50,000mi. I guess the new emissions are keeping enough debris out of the oil to warrant the extended service intervals.

I also tried to get my windshield replaced due to an untimely meeting with a rock last week, but I was told I would have to wait until 7am the next morning for the windshield guy to stop by. I had no problem with that, but my load was one of those "hot" jit loads with a 10am delivery and dispatch flat out refused to Tcall it. I had no problem with that and assumed it would be a no brainer to get the keys to one of the dozens of unoccupied trucks sitting around in the yard to do the shag with while they were working on my truck. After all, I've done just that in a couple of other shops over the years, but not in Columbus. NO! There it requires an act of God to get someone to approve such a thing. One person tells me I have to get clearance from dispatch. Dispatch flat out refused to acknowledge any request to do so. All I get from them is a "You must deliver on time."

"No kidding", can someone please get me a truck. Still dispatch pretends I don't exist. I go to the terminal manager in Columbus and am told I have to contact my terminal manager in Spartanburg for approval (well, it's now 5pm and they are out for the day). "What?" I don't want a new truck, I just need to borrow an idle truck for two hours at the most. Back to the shop manager, but he insists he has no authority to approve such a thing and I will have to talk to dispatch. Well, I already know how that works out. It just makes me shake my head. Needless to say, I still have a cracked windshield because I wasn't about to go back to the shop after making my delivery, only to be told it would be the following morning before they could get an appointment for the windshield guy to come back.

My live unload is done in very short order and I wait patiently for what is sure to be a very short beer run (because I am all of 1mi away from the brewery), or perhaps an equally disappointing short load of dog food with some unsightly midday delivery. A spin of the wheel and the answer is, Dog Food. But instead of what is usually a run of 300mi or so, this one was 580mi going to Appleton, WI.

Now here's the rub on this one. It has an 11:00am pickup. It appears to be a live load, but I've been to this shipper many times and it is always a drop and hook. It also has a delivery appointment of 6am the next morning.

Here's a little math question for "youngone". If you pickup a load at 11:00am today and average 60mph with a 6:00am delivery in Wisconsin (593mi away) the next day in a time zone that is one hour behind the time zone you are currently in, what time will you arrive in Wisconsin if you take one 15min fuel stop along the way.

This would also be a great little exercise for our load planners to take a look at. Assuming the load is ready to go when I get there at 11am(I will actually be able to get there by 10:45) and I log the required 30mins to do a drop and hook. I now have 9.88hrs (lets get crazy and call it 9hrs 45min and I'll try to go faster down some of the hills) to drive IF I average 60mph, but due to the timing of said load I will be driving though Chicago at the height of rush hour. If by some miracle I actually make the drive in 9hrs 45mins, I will arrive in the area at 8:15pm CDT time. After taking the required 10hr break and doing the company mandated 15min pretrip, as opposed to an occasional 15min posttrip (as allowed by law) when necessary due to time restraints (like this trip), the absolute earliest possible time of arrival for my 06:00 appointment would be 06:30 (this is a completely unrealistic and impossible ETA).

So if everything goes perfect I will only be 30mins late. Brilliant load planning! But of course nothing goes perfect and the above scenario does not take into consideration even one single break along the way (I've done it before, I can live with that), but from a load planning point of few its unacceptable. Nor does is allow for a fuel stop (I was suppose to stop for one along the way) or any traffic congestion, and we all know that is never a problem with loads going directly through Chicago, especially at rush hour and of course there is absolutely no road construction along the way to cause any problems.

The one glimmer of hope I had was to drive to the customer tonight. As it stood, I had plenty of hours to get there tonight. I had checked Google maps and could see that there was plenty of places to park in the immediate area of the customer. So as long as I made it there before my 14hrs were up, all would be good.

Now let's jump into reality. I arrived at 10:40 to find three trucks in line at the guard shack. By the time I get my turn it is just short of 11am. I am told to drop my trailer at a dock and bobtail out and turn on my CB. My load wasn't ready, but they would let me know when they were done with it. So much for everything going perfectly, if the trailer had been preload I would have been able to pull it off. Now it was just a matter of how late would I be.

I proceed to sit there for another 3hrs before the magical black box called out my name. I went in to get my trailer and gave dispatch my new ETA. They just said OK, get it there ASAP, legal and safe. So my butt was covered from that point of view, but I was really worried that I might not get unloaded when I arrived. It wouldn't be the first time I've been told to come back the next day due to a dispatch error.

Good fortune was with me however, and when I pulled in at 9am the following day they welcomed me with open arms and unloaded me in a matter of minuets.

Time for my Friday morning load, always a make or break my week reveal. Today it was shaping up to be a total bust. I was to pickup a load in Green Bay going to Kansas City, KS (665mi) for a Monday morning delivery. This was not good because it meant another 2800mi week for me. Of course I was instantly thinking Tcall at the KC yard and as I was typing out just such a request, dispatch beat me to the punch with a message to Tcall in KC. Now that's the way its supposed to work! This was a live load, but all went well and I was headed south in no time and pulled into the KC yard by 10am the next morning, ready and rarin' to go on my next load (if I could find an empty trailer). Good fortune was with me in that regard also, which is surprising for this yard because I actually had a few to choose from.

I started by sending a message off to dispatch asking them to Tcall my load along with my new trailer number and a request for a load offer. Almost immediately I am informed they "she" had read over my previous Qualcomm messages and pointed out that I was told I could not Tcall. Ugh! She had apparently misread the message that said "You can Tcall this load in KC" as "You CANT". It took three more massages and about 30 minutes to get that little problem smoothed out but I was eventually allowed to Tcall along with a message that said something to the effect of "they will get a load offer to you as soon as possible, they are short on freight today". Not what I wanted to hear, but its better than sitting under a load for two days waiting to deliver it Monday afternoon.

I assumed the wait would be a few hours so I grabbed my new Ryobi cordless leaf blower to clean out the trailer while I was trying to decide what to do with myself to pass the time. By the time I got back to the cab a couple of minutes later I noticed I had a new massage. What do you know, that's some freight shortage we got goin' here today?

I found myself looking at a THREE load offer. Holy Cow! Every one of them were real load offers (not a stinker in the bunch). All were picking up at various places in KC with destination choices of North Carolina (1100+mi), Denver (600+mi) and the one I ended up going with headed to Texas(812mi). I chose the later because it had just enough miles on it to burn out the rest of my 70hrs as I arrived and would allow me to put in a reset while I was at it.

It looks like my decision to shut down early last week to clear my log book hours with a reset was a good choice. I gave me a little down time in a hotel to regenerate the batteries and gave me 70hrs to run with this week. Final results, Great miles.



WEEK THIRTY EIGHT
Monday, September 20th through Sunday, September 26th
Miles include deadhead

Joliet, IL to Ardmore, OK(last leg)..............................................384mi
Roanoke, TX to Oklahoma City, OK............................................297mi
Sapulpa, OK to Columbus, OH.....................................................916mi
Lockbourne, OH to Appleton, WI................................................582mi
Green Bay, WI to Kansas City, MO..............................................665mi
Kansas City, KS to Victoria, TX...................................................812mi

Total Paid Miles.......................................................3656 Miles
Actual Miles.........................................3710 Miles

3656mi x .45 = $1645.20

 

It looks like another three months have passed us by.

The third quarter of the year netted me 40,465 miles bringing my year to date total up to 114,692 miles for a monthly average of 12,743/mth.

The short trips are picking up steam, as are the live loads, but the miles are holding up. I guess that's all that counts in the long run.

Here's the math:

 

Welcome to the tumultuous life of a truck driver. Keep us updated on how things are going for you. I would be interested in reading about your experiences and getting your point of view about this industry from the eyes of "newbie".

Best wishes and drive safe. Just remember, you have a much larger target on your back from a law enforcement perspective. Keep those points off your CDL. It has just become one of your most valuable assets. Good Luck!

 

I couldn't agree with you more. I had a similar experience last week in San Antonio. I've told this story many times, not about this driver, but one's exactly like him.

Due to a delay or two on my part, I arrived at a shipper about 5min after another Crete driver. That put him in the number one spot for getting loaded and me in number two. I was kicking myself for not arriving one hour early for my pickup, but as so often happens when I don't, I pay the price of those minuets with hours of my time. This day would once again reinforce my resolve to show up earlier than I did that day.

Both of us ended up sitting in the shipper's parking lot for about an hour waiting for some unknown person to arrive at work and then lead us to an offsite warehouse to be loaded. As we waited and chatted, oddly enough, the conversation turned to miles and the such.

He was quick to point out that he had been with the company for 8yrs and then started telling me how he had only gotten the required mileage for a raise twice in that time and how it was almost impossible to obtain such numbers. I of course disagreed with him which lead to more questions about my miles. And as so often happens, he looked at me like I was a pathological liar, especially when I told him that I had just completed a week of almost 3700 miles. I'm sure he didn't believe me.

The concept of the 34hr reset came up, which he flatly refused to consider as a viable means to a productive week. I began to plead my case, but soon realized (again) that there are two kinds of drivers in this world. Those you can have a productive conversation with and those that you can't. This driver was deeply entrenched in the latter category. He was also prone to extended periods of babble.

I had no problem with this since the loading process was moving along at a snails pace and his chatter was most effective at passing the time. I had deadheaded about 2hrs to get here and he had closer to a three hour trip. This seemed to bother him to no end because he had to get up at 3am to be here on time and continually brought up the fact that he had been up since 3am. Poor chap!

After about 2hrs of standing around and shooting the breeze, much of it directed at his lack of miles and his newly acquired CPAP machine he decided he had put in a long enough day and informed me that once his trailer was loaded he was going to head on over to the truckstop and call it a day.

"What? Why would you do that?" I asked him. After all, this was a 1300mi trip and by the way things were progressing, it looked like his trailer would be loaded by 11am or so. I was willing to admit that much of the day was already done, but his 14hr clock was still good up to 5pm or so and from talking to him I knew that he had enough hours to deliver the load on Thursday, a full day earlier than the required Friday delivery(drop and hook). If he left now, he would be able to at least make it to Dallas before his logbook would force him to stop.

His answer to that was something along the lines of, "Well, it doesn't need to be there until Friday, so I'm just going to head on over the truckstop, get something to eat, take a shower and get started on the trip tomorrow". Don't forget, it wasn't even noon yet, but he had been up since 3am so that was enough for him.

And he has the nerve to complain about not getting any miles. The funny thing is that during our conversation he kept saying, "I can't believe how stupid some people are." All I could say was, "I couldn't agree more with you."


It sure would have been nice if he would have allowed me get loaded first. Oh Well.

We were both going to the exact same place and I dropped my trailer by 7am on Thursday morning and I can only guess as to what time the other driver arrived on Friday. I wouldn't know because I was well over 1000mi away by the time Friday night rolled around.

 

No long winded update this week. I'm in Phoenix and have started my Vacation. No truck driving for me for awhile


WEEK THIRTY NINE
Monday, September 27th through Sunday, October 2nd
Miles include deadhead

San Antonio, TX to Groveport, OH…………………………………………1450mi
Westerville, OH to Elkhart, IN………………………………………………....274mi
Walkerton, IN to Romeoville, IL(Tcall)………………………………………135mi
Ottawa, IL to Vonore, TN……………………………………………………....689mi
Newport, TN to Fort Worth, TX……………………………………………..1006mi

Total Paid Miles…………………………………………….3554 Miles
Actual Miles……………………………………3570 Miles

3554mi x .45 = $1599.30