The Big Boys

Believe it or not, I am working for one of the previous owners of C&N.

 

I came off of the road to work for Carolina Freight around 1992(Calhoun,Ga.terminal) and stayed w/them until they shut the doors.Only union line allowed to operate during the teamsters strike of 94? so that should have been an indicator of what was going to happen.GREAT local job w/union pay,overtime after 8 hours,and I hate that they closed.Absorbed by ABF basically.

 

didn't you get a chance to end tail in? i know end tailing is getting screwed, but were you not allowed to wait for a spot to open up at abf, since they bought them out?

 

There was CTI(carpet transport,inc.) that had fast trucks.
seven hills transport still going but w/slow trucks now-also a carper hauler.
Storey trucking out of henager,al. was a favorite of mine.Still aorund but w/much slower trucks now.
It was an every week thing to drive to cali from ga and back solo in a week,5-6 days,on top of making about 11 picks of produce while out west for the backhaul east.
school boys(and girls) of today simply have no idea.Imagine electronic logs back then.Cruise control was a pulled out throttle lock and to idle many times you put a brick or piece of wood on the throttle pedal to rev it up enough.
fuel was what,$.85/gallon?
15 CENTS/mile was decent for back then.18cents/mile was great.comchecks for advances,cash in the wallet for your money-no debit cards,detroit had just produced the series 60 before that was the 2 stroke diesel.
cummins had the shims and buttons to turn up the fuel and cat had the screws.
drivers actually gave bear reports,stopped to assist another driver,carried tools to do on site repairs to get it off the side of the road(replacing throttle springs,cables,maually adjust the brakes w/a 9/16' wrench, jakes were a luxury item,and on and on.
I laugh at the stuff some of these newbies find difficult and all that they complain about while telling me that "if i am illegal,tough for me" in another post.
Spring ride,40"SIT IN bunks,lay down to take your pants off/put them on,DOT asking for pills,chain drive wallets BECAUSE there was actual money in it and not papers( NO i do not wear a chain drive but many drivers did because they operated on a cash for everything basis).
Okay.no more reflecting.

 

Other meathaulers.....Silvey? Pirkle? Curtis? Adams? Rowley Dubuque? Man I can still remember when the bisquits and gravy at Kylertown was the best thing going on I-80 coast to coast.

 

I had the chance,should have taken it and been retired by now almost ,but would have had to transfer to the chattanooga terminal at that time.
Kind of wish i would have now.

 

Oh yeah.I used to run w/Celadon drivers.Yep they ran outlaw,5000+miles/week SOLO back around 1987-88? Imagine that now.HAHAHA
TMC even had trucks that at one time would run 85+.Big motors and big trucks.look at them and celadon now. I met a TMC driver last week in Chatham,Va. that had only 6 months experience if I heard him correctly. We began talking after I laughed WITH him and not at him for his inability to back.

Can't very well laugh at a driver when i could not back during my first few months of driving but I was also in a cabover freightliner w/NO power steering and would duck going under overpasses.
NOPE I did not attend a truck driving school so asking veteran drivers was something that was done back then.They had no problems answering questions on the CB even.
Imagine that.Getting questions answered over the CB.What a novel idea.

 

I love reading some of these old threads. My very first driving job was with driver trainee inside (dti). Learned alot the hard way there. Was only there 6 months total when the owner was facing fedral prision time for tax evasion and swift bought them up. I didn't know my dispatcher's last day would end up being mine too. I think mainly it had to do with being an unwilling participant in a cover up involving a fuel spill i had a few months earlier when i ruptured the crossover line in a drop yard. I reported it on the qc macro but the only one to show up was the wrecker. When the driver asked me about it at the shop he wanted to call the hazmat team. i called my dispatcher (brian) and he told me to tell him mind his own buisness. That was the last i heard about it. While waiting for my bus at the moosic terminal i saw the mechanics going around asking drivers that were staying for $15 they would take the speed limiters off the trucks. I never realised tell much later how bad the screwed me out of money never reimbursing for scales tolls ane even fuel. I remember one driver talkin about how they owed him and his dad so much they had 2 dti trailers in ther back 40, idk if that was true. About a year later ran into a swift driver who cliamed he had an old dti truck that did triple digits..

 

I was gonna say.

I tried to run with some of them Monforts. Especially with one particular truck that was pretty outrageous. They were FAST. Maybe had a little more bawls than I had even. I thought I was fast. (And I was, topping out at 132ish and used momentum to stay there where possible and on certain downgrades let her exceed 140) What a crazy time that was.

Yellow, Preston, Consolidated, Colonial, Blue Diamond, Frock Brothers (Are they still even going? They have always patted me on the head and took my applications... ugh what a waste of my time they don't hire boys. I wonder what they would think of me now...) I can think of a few others. Many others actually.

And the discrimination I ran into with many companies in those days. The sort of people who will die with the predjudices against deafies like me, who am I to bother them with a full Class A and all sorts of 18 wheeling. They could not STAND me... how dare I actually buy a truck etc. etc etc.

I hope all of them are dead and buried deep. Some of what I have become in life is thanks to these hard men who simply told me to F off. I try to be decent still. But Iron strikes iron and sharpens a soul. Even today I try to be nice. I did alot of letting go and forgiving.

Gunthers come to mind. Such filthy company. and have dared to repeat again in Maryland. That tells me they were really stupid. They should have gone to Wyoming and run the company under a friendly stranger with a percentage of revenue diverted to them. But no, they did not get to be smart about their greed. A recent poster complained of 200 dollar checks ranging up to 700 now and then on a whim from them.

That tells me Trucking as a Industry needs to consider a Salary based on 57 mph average max at .50 a mile for newbies for 55 hours each week. 3135 pay miles at 1565 gross give or take a little bit salary. If they are paying 90K in fuel each year for that truck they can pay almost twice that in salary for a blessed driver who no longer has to fight, hiss, kick and scratch for stupid miles or run illegal etc. That makes a gross salary starting of 81K annually. That will solve many of the problems for newbies and companies.

I can go overboard and keep typing. But I think I already loosed a few thunder bolts and think that's quite enough for tonight. I get carried away easily.

 

My uncle started driving before he graduated from highschool early 70s. He drove for a company called west Virginia steel told me stories about monford. One day he pissed one of their drivers off he out ran him and they ended up at the same truck stop to eat and he wouldn't even look at him...lol