CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK TEN
Monday, March 7th through Sunday, March13th​

SPRING ahead folks, time to jump the clock ahead again. We don't want any late deliveries Monday morning, right?

My week continues it's dismal down spin out of control. It's very reminiscent of early 2009. Our freight out here on the West Coast seems to be almost non existent, at least from my point of view.

My disaster began last Saturday when I tried to leave the house after hometime. There was no freight available at that time and I stayed at the house for the rest of the weekend and didn't get a load out until Monday at noon. Now in all fairness I didn't exactly try all that hard to get a load out over the weekend, I just called in to get a rough feeling for freight levels and had my PTA moved ahead as soon as the dispatcher on the other end started himin' and hawin' about things being slow.

Although I did talk to a driver when I was up in Tacoma, WA and he had been in PHX at the same time as I. He came out of hometime on Sunday morning and spent the day in his truck because they didn't get him a load out until Monday that was also going to Portland like myself. Very odd to be getting loads out of PHX going to the northwest. How I long for a Texas or Midwest run like I usually get after my hometime.

Anyway, I was loaded by 3pm or so on Monday afternoon and covered the 1300 miles to make my delivery by 1pm Wednesday. The empty call went in and the waiting started with a flurry of "no freight" messages with instructions to check back in 2hr or 4hr and eventually "the next morning."

I faired no better on Thursday and had resigned myself to spending another day at Jubitz truck stop when I got a beep on the Qcom instructing me to drop my empty trailer at a customer in Camas and proceed up to Sumner some 150 miles away to pickup an empty trailer from one of our customers with too many units in it's trailer pool.

And that was it for Thursday, no freight available once I got up there. One thing I was thankful about with my previous load was that I had managed to get a run to Portland, which tends to have much better freight (relatively speaking) than the Seattle area and felt I would be more likely to get a load out than the empty trucks sitting up in Seattle. Well, now here I am, sitting in Seattle. Grrrr!

I did shoot off a message to assure myself that my little trailer shuttle hadn't returned me to the bottom of the "available trucks" list, but was assured that I had retained my place on the list, where ever that may be. I didn't even want to know how many trucks where ahead of me. The only thing that concerned me about my new home for the night was that the computer now dispatches trucks based on closest available to any particular load and now that I have been displaced to Seattle, the likelihood of a truck in Portland getting a load that should have been mine seemed to be an absolute certainty in my own mind. That is a question that I will never know the answer too.

The "no freight available at this time, check back in 4hrs" message that I received in reply to my load request first thing Friday morning did little to dispel my earlier suspicion. So there I sat, Friday morning with about 1500mi to my name since Monday and a crushing possibility of sitting here all weekend. I mean, if they can't get me out of here during the middle of the week, what chance would there be of getting a load out during the weekend when freight is traditionally much lighter. I knew that if I didn't get a load today, I was in big trouble.

I couldn't bear the suspense any longer and finally broke down, sending off a message to dispatch requesting "What is my place in line?" The answer, "1". That's it, just a "1". That made me feel much better, but I still wasn't out of the woods and my disposition wasn't improving any as I sat there for another 3hrs before the Qcom finally beeped. I was sure I was going to be reading "no more freight for today" for the third day in a row, but instead I saw the exquisite heading of Load Offering. Now I just had to scroll down for the dirty details. Would it be a saving grace or a disastrous pitfall.

It turned out to be something in the middle with a distinct slant to the Black Hole perspective. What was good about the load? Well it was 1100 miles. What was bad about the load? Everything else!

To start with, it didn't pickup until 2pm and it was around 9am or so when I got the load offer. So more sitting, but at least I know I had somewhere to go and that somewhere was the Los Angles area. Which brings me to the ugliness of this load, it doesn't deliver until 1pm on Monday. Under normal circumstances (productive miles for the week) I would have been thrilled with this load because it would have allowed me enough time to get to LA and fit in a reset before delivering my load. But as it stands, the last thing I need is more downtime.

I had spent the night at the Shell over in Sumner at the rate of $10 every 12 hours (the money hungry scum feeders won't even give you 24hrs for your $10). While there I had only noticed one other Crete truck sitting in the lot which I had taken as a good sign. I had wanted to talk to him to find out what his situation was, but it never stopped raining and I wasn't really in the mood to deal with that. Anyway, on my way out of Seattle I was to stop by at the Love's in Tacoma to pickup some fuel. WOW ! So that's where everyone is at. For those of you that have been up in this part of the world, you know just how insanely busy and small that Loves is (used to be a Pilot). I originally planed on parking there, but decided against it because it is such a hit and miss thing when it comes to getting a parking spot, not to mention I have seen more hoods taken off in that place than any other truckstop in the country due to how tight the parking is.

I now realized why there where no Crete trucks at the Shell where I was the night before, our entire northwest fleet was sitting in this Loves parking lot. They were everywhere and apparently the drivers of said trucks had decided to conduct an impromptu company meeting, for in front of one of the Crete truck there stood no less than 8 drivers conducting a little pow wow. I just had to know what was going on and wanted to head on over to get the latest gossip about what was happening but had to fuel first.

They must have sensed my curiosity because every single one of them saw me pull into the fuel island and each and every one of them headed my way. So this is what it feels like to be hunted down by a lynch mob! Help!

The stories ran the gamut. Many of them claimed to having been there for more than a day and a few were on day two which did little to comfort the guys that had just pulled in that morning. They were all hungry for tails of successful load acquisitions and treacherous tails of battles that transpires throughout the previous days that lead to my triumph.

My attempt at quelling the uprising seemed to be floundering as I regaled in the telling of my long fought battles with the atrocious dispatch peoples of the east in a far away land, the very tribe know throughout the land of Evil as the Big Reds of Lincoln. Just as I was in the midst of formulating an escape within the confines of my mind, I was miraculously spared the wrath of the mob as another Crete truck pulled into the fuel island next to me, momentarily distracting the misguided horde and allowing me the minute fraction of a second needed to facilitate my flight from a most egregious situation. My heartfelt condolence to the family of the man that selflessly gave so much so that I could continue my formidable struggle, he will be remembered; whoever he is?

I do try to make light of the situation, but if this company is truly concerned about driver retention, I would suggest that some thought be put into sending throngs of drivers into an area where it is well known that outbound freight is all but non-existent. I don't pretend to understand the financial end of a trucking business, or the logistic side of it (other than my small part of pointing the truck in the right direction), but I can not see the balance between the effort that is put into recruiting within this company and the blatant disregard for the absolute and sheer frustration that drivers experience when left in the back of a truck for days at a time. I can not even begin to explain the thoughts that go through our minds as we sit in the sleeper of a truck for 48hrs straight, not being able to leave for more than a few minutes at a time for fear of missing a load offer when it eventually shows up. Not to mention the depths of angst that is endured as the hours pass, not having any idea of how long you will be forced to sit in isolation instead of being home with our families. I realize, at least in my case it is an isolated event only covering a week in what has been a very productive year past, but a week is a long time when you are spending it in a space that is half the size of a prison cell (not that I would know, but I've seen TV). Such is the life of an OTR truck driver. Just had to vent there a little bit and I feel that perhaps it should be known what is like for us out here at times. There is good and bad in all situations, but that doesn't mean that the bad has to be covered up and ignored, but instead, maybe steps can be taken to reduce these experiences. I wonder, what costs more, deadheading an empty truck out of a freight challenged area, or replacement cost to reseat and empty truck?

Trust me, what I just typed on this page is NOTHING compared to what was being said by the drivers that I spoke with at that Loves truck stop. I've always been pretty good at tempering my response to adverse situations, but there were others that day that were less cordial and I am going to assume that Crete's recruiting department may have extra seats to fill as a result. I'm not one to be so quick at rash decisions, for I know that such occurrences happen from time to time in this business, and this experiance will be little more than a distant memory in days to come. I don't claim to give full forgiveness, but I am able to put things into perspective.

With that said, I pulled into our Fontana yard Saturday night around 9pm and made my first attempt at a Tcall, but was shot down almost immediately. Apparently there was no freight to keep me going, which was of no surprise to me because one of the drivers I had spoken to in Tacoma had just come up from LA and his story conveyed similar freight shortages in Southern Cali, although not to the same extreme. When he was down here, there was something to the effect of 15 empty trucks in front of him which delayed his departure by a half day or so.

He eventually got a load out going to Portland. That was followed by a 126mi run up to Seattle, which put him in the same boat as me up there. He also sat for two days and was fueling up at the same Loves as I. He had just picked up his load and was headed out of town and waved goodbye with a "Good luck getting out of LA".

So when the tcall was turned down I took it with a grain of salt and dropped my trailer in the Fontana yard. I wasn't done trying yet, plus I would have no problem finding parking while bobtailing, a feat much harder to do with a trailer in tow. It wasn't all doom and gloom however because dispatch did tell me to try back in the morning, which sure beats a flat out NO. My request the next morning (that being today, Sunday) had similar results. "Not enough freight to keep you moving", "other empty trucks in the area" and what not along with a note to check back after 1pm. So at 1pm I send in another message along with an offer to Shag or repower any load currently in either drop yard (as I had done in my other requests), but this time I also ask, if no other option was available, I would be open to taking on a Shag load that delivered first thing Monday morning as opposed to my current load that delivered at 1pm.

That did the trick and I was offered a Shag out of the yard that delivers at 7am just down the road. Now that doesn't do anything for my miles this week, but what it will do is have me empty by 8am with some hope of getting out of town before the sun sets which would have been all but impossible with my original load. Is it the perfect outcome to an ugly week, no, but it is an improvement. Certainly better than nothing! Now all I have to do is pray for a load going east. There's a first time for everything.



WEEK TEN
Monday, March 7th through Sunday, March13th
Miles include deadhead

Phoenix, AZ to Portland, OR............................................................1332mi
Longview, WA to Fontana, CA(Tcall)...........................................1300mi*

Total Paid Miles............................................2632 Miles
Actual Miles............................2719 Miles
*estimated miles due to tcal

2632mi x .45 = $1184.40

This is why I stay with this company and will continue to do so until the day I stop driving OTR. As bad as this week was, as much frustration and self pitty as I allowed myself to endure, as much as I complained, at the end of the week my gross pay is just shy of $1200. So maybe there isn't so much to complain about. After all, my entire village wasn't wiped off of the map by a Tsunami this week.

 

I know how you feel. I spent a few years swinging a hammer before I realized it was no way to make a living.

I think one of the biggest obstacles you are going to face is finding a training company that will hire you out of North Michigan. I'm thinking your choices will be somewhat limited.

Crete only hires students out of PTDI certified schools with very few exceptions. Crete also does not pay for your schooling or reimburse you for said expense like some other companies do, but Crete does have one of the highest, if not the highest starting pay for student drivers. I THINK? the current rate is 34cpm (might be 31cpm) for the first year(if anyone knows for sure, please correct me), then it jumps to 39cpm for your second year.

If you are looking for a company that will pay for your schooling up from, (most now deduct the cost on a weekly basis until you've paid it back) you will have to do a little research to find out who is hiring in your area and I really don't know what way to point you since I haven't been in the market to be trained for some time now.

One company that you might want to look at is Roehl (pronounce Rail). They have a reasonable reputation as far as training companies go. And of course there is always Swift. I hate to recommend such a company, especially since I put a year in with them some time ago when I ran team with the wife. I don't have much good to say about them other than you have to start somewhere and you could certainly do worse, like Warner for instance. And to be honest with you, if money was my sole motivation, I would seriously consider going back to Swift for two reasons. One, they have terminals everywhere, and Two, as a trainer with that company I could make close to 100K a year because they run there training trucks as a team from about day three and the training trucks never stop moving. When I ran team with the wife, it was nothing to get 6000mi/wk with them and it wasn't uncommon to break the 7000mi mark. The one BIG problem with that is I have no intention of ever sleeping in the back of a truck while a student driver with 4days experience drives us down the road. I don't think much of the idea of going to sleep and wondering if I will ever wake up again.

In my honest opinion, there is no better place to start your driving carrier than Crete, but if you can't afford to pay for your schooling upfront the idea is to find yourself an acceptable carrier where you can put your first year in to pay your dues, keep your nose clean (NO accident, NO tickets) and then move on. That's what I did, and that's what most drivers out here did. Companies like Swift thrive on providing that option to drivers just like you. They will take advantage of you, but they will afford you the opportunity to get your foot in the door.

This message board is packed full of information. Read all you can and make an informed decision.

Companies to avoid at all costs: Prime, CR England,Trans-Am(and any other company that shamelessly pushes inexperienced drivers into leases) and Warner. There are others, but those are the ones that jump out at me as I'm typing this.

Good luck

 

Can you tell I've been having a lot of extra time on my hands this week.

My banishment to the west cost has come to a merciful end. My wish for an east bound load has been granted. I was suppose to get a load going to Lincoln to pickup a student, but it looks like I may have to stop by Wilmer, TX if they have someone ready to go as I pass through. My MT call went in before 8am after delivering my Shag load. Shortly after, I was looking at load offer that picked up at the exact place I had delivered my load to. I didn't even have to pull out of the dock. Even though the load doesn't pickup until 1pm, they told me to stay in my door and they would get me loaded as soon as they could fit me in. Yeah, Good!

Once loaded I will be on my way to the coast of Georgia with a WONDERFUL run of 2400mi. How cool is that. It will be a nice change of pace from last week. Just like that, last week is a fading memory and I'm all giddy. All is forgiven.