CRETE - A Year in Review

I'm not sure if it's Mr. Murphy, or just some fair-weather drivers that have the Weather channel app on their smart phone, but it's usually a bad weather year when I get to see the west or north west.

I did get some good news the other day. Before leaving the motel and heading over to see if any parking spots opened up at the Flying/Loves...I politely asked about the odds of getting an earlier appointment for my delivery. I received a response in short order..'we will check and let you know'. and 30 or so minutes later, I got a ''they can't take you today, but can take you tomorrow at 1800'' which is as close to perfect as I could ask. That'll give me a 34, and be empty 24 hours earlier that expected, plus it puts this 3023 mile load on Novembers mileage instead of starting December with a whiz-bang. Now my November is 10500+, and I'm a long way from home to start December...

 

I might get in trouble for this, but I had an interesting conversation with Dispatch the other night that pretty well sums up what a motivated east coast driver with Crete is now up against. I decided to stay out longer than normal to at least try to make the measly 10,084 monthly miles it takes to meet “goal” for November and had just delivered a turn & burn to General Mills in Orlando, FL. After begging my way out of the 141 mile run that couldn’t pick up ‘til 11:25 the next day, I got a 771 miler from Lake Wales, FL to Jackson, MS that was to deliver as early as 07:30 on 12/2. I bit the bullet and accepted giving a 12/1 PTA …

DISPATCH: You are aware that delivers on 12/02. Correct?

ME: Yes. I am going to try to deliver early unless you have something else with similar miles that delivers 12/1.

DISPATCH: No. Nothing delivers that early, and you won’t be able to deliver this load early.

ME: Why are all these loads being scheduled so as to make it impossible to meet drivers’ mileage goals? We are supposed to be moving 450 miles per day.

DISPATCH: Because unfortunately not all drivers want to run as well as you. They are missing appts so we have had to extend it so we aren’t missing anything.

Indeed …

 

So lets dumb down the fleet and penalize the good drivers because the lazy drivers can't get out of the truck stop. Indeed.

 

makes sense, that is the way the public school systems work now days too.

 

Yes that is true, let us average out to the lowest common denominator. Because of this there are high school kids graduating this year that have no idea what 'denominator' means. Oh, by the way, they all have jobs waiting for them at Crete dispatch. ;O

 

Well, Op's is back at the old "ignore 'em until they blow" mode. I delivered my load a day early as instructed...it ended up being a drop/hook...but only on the day you're appointment is on. Pulled in the lot, grabbed my paperwork and was headed out the door to check in...the yard spotter stopped me, told me what door to drop in, and to p/u my empty at the other building...then before I could get the doors on the trailer open, he changed the drop door...seems as though the receiving office had filled the door he told me...so I dropped as told, and as I headed over to hook to my empty, I saw another Crete pull in...counting my blessings that I got there first(sorry, sometimes I gota' be selfish) I hooked to my empty(the only one there) and parked in the staging lot waiting for my load offer. While sitting there, the other Crete bobtailed up to me and said, 'you got our trailer, they told us to hook to that one'(2 drivers - either team or trainer/trainee). I informed them that the spotter driver had already told me where to drop and hook before they had arrived, I guess he(the spotter) didn't deem it important to tell the receiving office soon enough. So they resolved themselves to live unloading. Now the shocking part of the story...At 1800 in the NW, I fully expected a 'check back in the morning' message, instead I got a multi-load offer. Both picking up 12/1(tomorrow), one out of somewhere north of the Sea/Tac area going to Hopkinsville, KY for Monday (It was still only Tuesday evening) 2350ish miles, or Longview, WA to Twin Falls, ID for the Thursday by noon. Since I know what comes out of Longview...(a heavy paper load, and it's still slick in the mountains) I took Longview. It'll put me in the 3700's by Thursday... Now the kicker. Got to the shipper at 1100, the load wasn't suppose to be ready until 1200, according to the Q/Comm. Was informed that it was scheduled to load, not at 1200, but at 1500...So now I've started my day, drove 30 miles from the closest truckstop to the shipper, and have to sit...Promptly told op's that since of the SNAFU in load times (again) I wasn't likely going to make it to del by 1200 tomorrow. I received a 'keep us posted' message. So once I was loaded (by 1430) I sent off a message of a new ETA to deliver...and heard nothing. Proceeded across I84 in OR, stopped for fuel at Biggs Jct...and sent off a 2nd message about my updated PTA, padding it a bit, because there was word that between Cabbage Hill, and Ontario, one of the other mountain passes had freezing rain, black ice, and an 8 mile backup because of people spinning out, or stopping in the middle of the road to chain up, and heard nothing back from Op's again...then by the time I stopped in Baker City, they had shut down 3-mile hill, and weren't expecting it to open until after dawn. Now at 8 am local time, it's open, but chain req's are posted for us....Ahhhhh Lovely, Lovely. Maybe Hopkinsville by Tuesday(next week) wouldn't have been as bad as this load is ending up being. And I still haven't heard a peep out of Op's...DON'T MAKE ME ANGRY...YOU WON'T LIKE ME WHEN I'M ANGRY.

 

I kinda sensed that freight was slowing off before Thanksgiving....so when I got dispatched on a pop-up fleet for walmart on 11/20 I was cool with it. Turned out they were very shorthanded at the Searcy, AR DC and didn't mind working with my limited hours on a couple days. Wound up driving 3714 miles for them in 9 days (could have been more...durn logbooks). I'll never figure out why so many drivers whine so much about working Walmart. This was my third time and I've always enjoyed it. They are pleasant and helpful to work with. The pay is descent at worst and often better than you can make pulling Crete freight, it's 99% drop/hook and I like how they use every hour on your log. Pretty efficient system they have over there.

On a side note...I was driving north on I45 yesterday in Huntsville, TX and saw something that I'll never forget. I was at mile 117 just getting ready to call it a day at 1355. Came over a little hill and saw a North American truck just pulling onto the shoulder, I moved left and quickly found out why he stopped. At first I thought it was a deer or a large dog, heavily mutilated...but animals don't wear clothes. Turned out less than a minute before someone had either fallen or jumped from and overpass right in front of that driver. As of this AM they still hadn't been able to identify the jumper/faller. I feel for that driver, he'll have to live with that for the rest of his life even though there was nothing he could have done.

 

That is a horrible thing to see and live with. I saw a guy get run over trying to run across I 35 in Minneapolis about 6 years ago. Even though I wasn't the person driving the vehicle that hit him, I saw it happen and was the first person to stop and try to help out. I still have a dream about it every once in awhile. Certain things like smells or a certain kind of lighting really bring the memory rushing back every once in awhile too. Not fun.