No experience but getting Authority

There is NO justification for the high oil prices. I expect things to begin to slow down due to the high prices. It is a matter of how long before it impacts the economy to the point of stalling any recovery.

There are a lot of loads right now. It is a refreshing change from a couple of years ago. I suppose I just have a cautious nature, but I see early signs of things slowing, even though there is a lot of freight and some rates are up. There are still some cheaper rates. I am amazed that a broker can move a load for $1.60 or less with fuel this high.

We are going to be subject to high fluctuation in oil prices until our government gets out of the way in drilling oil in this country. We have the largest reserves of oil in the world in our Gulf. Clinton made national parks out of some oil rich areas to prevent drilling. This president has made it obvious that he doesn't want us to be energy independent. We have the largest natural gas reserves in the world, but lack most of the infrastructure. Competition will drive prices down to an acceptable level. Natural gas is cleaner buring than gas or diesel. I would think our government would do everything possible to encourage this type of development. We could cut our deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars overnight by moving toward natural gas and/or having open drilling.

It is competition in trucking that keeps rates low. The same thing would happen with oil. We basically have a handful of countries who have gotten together to control the world's oil prices. OPEC has extorted trillions of dollars from this country as well as others since the 1970's. We are financing terrorism with our purchases since some of them underwrite terrorists with their oil profits. None are really friends of the U.S. One other thing we could do to dramatically drop oil prices is to tie the price of oil to a bushel of corn or wheat. Rather than pay dollars, trade a bushel of corn or wheat for a barrel of oil. If these countries don't want to do business then let then eat their oil. We have not had an administration that would actively play hardball with OPEC. Having an alternative energy source would help. We have the largest coal and natural gas reserves on the world, but get on our knees to OPEC. Something is wrong with this picture.

 

Glad to hear you are doing well J. I am a little more optamistic than G/Man. I believe that we can fight our way out of this despite what our government wants to throw at us.

I am still seeing rates below $1. You have to wonder if they have been booking these loads at that rate on a regular basis how many issues they have? I mean, at some point when doing it that cheap you come up a maintanence issue that you can't afford.

We are in a catch-22 with oil prices. Speculators are keeping the prices high but we live in a free market and to put laws on these people that limits them seems wrong. I just think, what is next, regulate me? No thanks.

And to drive more supply into the market is one of the many reasons we need to look at increasing our production here in the US. And that includes refinery capacity. Wasn't it Columbia that we just loaned billions to to increase capcity? Guess we see the stimulus wasn't a great idea here so we will take it to other coutnries.

 

Thanks for the good words everyone. I just got back in from setting us up a legit, local parking place. It hasn't been a super high priority due to the truck normally staying out more than a week at a time. When he does come in, it's been a minor hassle to find a free spot somewhere, but I've been more concerned about security. He's been out more than 2 weeks this time so were parking until Monday. This time he'll have freight onboard and the reefer running until tomorrow am, so I bit the bullet and rented a space. We're located in a fairly truck-unfriendly area so the extra cost is worth the peace of mind and close location. It's at a small terminal that's pretty busy, has a locked gate, and security coverage.

G/MAN you're right on about not backing up. I think the one thing that many may not count on when starting up (and fortunately I planned for) is that cash flow has to be primed with some cash. Even if you're leveraging credit to get started either financing your rig or factoring invoices, using credit for daily operating expenses is a slippery slope in my opinion. We are factoring, but paid cash for the first couple weeks fuel and whatnot until the fuel card started getting funded. That kept credit lines clear to deal with major unplanned stuff. Like a set of drive tires LOL. Following that first two weeks, the business has been self funding.

Bill: No black cats or broken mirrors I'm afraid. The first two pull-overs were for cause. First was the dealer plate which I later found out was a photocopy of an actual Maine plate that practically begged the DOT for a closer look. The second was a headlight out, again a pretty obvious lure for a DOT guy with nothing else to do on a sunny morning. The third was I think a perfect end to a perfect day for him - the Missouri inspection was an hour or two after he left the scene of the mutilated landscaping. Probably saw the frown on his face and the clouds over his head from across the highway and just knew they should check that truck LOL.

Speaking of landscaping, I just followed up with the store owner and he's cool with things at this point. He said his lawn guy will be out tomorrow to check the sprinklers and roll out the ruts. I'm pretty sure once he gets reimbursed that will be the end of it. He's been reasonable over the phone and just wants it fixed. There will be no large boulder or cross-tie improvements funded and I didn't bring that up. Hopefully he won't get any bright ideas and the grass will be squared away for the next guy that takes the wrong turn. I took the approach with my son to get him thinking like a business owner. I could have cussed him out and docked his pay and it would do nothing to prevent the next one. He'd have chalked it up to me being the a-hole and forgot about it. It's way more valuable for him to understand the long range impact of something as simple as a short cut across a median. I've been in that predicament before personally so I also know that frustration. I'll never forget my own Dad teaching me to parallel park a trailer blind-side on a curb. I almost punched him and took a bus home that day.

Jopper: Good to see things working out for you. Don't wait too long on getting help with the taxes. We started three weeks before quarter-end and my wife had fits with the IFTA form, and she's been in government finance for the past 10 years. Now that she's cracked the code, next time will be easier. At least with the April filing, there was only 3 weeks of operation to reconcile.

I think the economy is going to continue improving with a few bumps. When the civil unrest in North Africa dies to a dull roar, the speculators will back off and fuel prices will level off and come back down a little. Not a lot. While the civil unrest has got everyone's attention, the Chinese are very rapidly becoming huge consumers of fuel oil and driving prices up with their demand. China is going through a transportation revolution like the US did back in the 1950's. The good news is that also drives up the price of their exports which will serve to ease the crunch on us a bit.

 

If we had a comprehensive energy policy and announce to the world that we were pushing ahead to find an alternative energy source along with easing restrictions on any new drilling, we could see some major changes in the price of oil. There is no reason we should not be energy independent. There are still wells in this country that have been caped due to government restrictions. Rather than encouraging energy independence our government seems to be working to discourage it.

Redforement, I am glad that you got things worked out with the store. I hope things continue to get better. Hopefully, your son will learn from his mistakes. It can make a difference when you look at the potential fallout or long term repercussions from how you handle certain situations. This event could have turned out much differently.

 

I like the way you guys think. IMO, our government has no interest in solving the problems faced by the common man. Our energy policies are insane and illogical to say the least. We could easily use our own resources while developing alternatives that would insure our future. I've tried and tried to come up with a reasonable explanation for the reckless and irrational policies that have mortgaged away our future as a nation. When I use deductive reasoning which eliminates emotions from the results I have to eliminate the possibility that the government as a collective group is crazy or stupid enough to have thrown away our future status as a world superpower and our standard of living. As a long time recovering addict I see clearly the patterns in their behavior and decision making that make the government as a collective look exactly like a large number of power or money addicts. However I do not believe that it is possible that this many people who are afflicted with the condition could become positioned to have this much power at the same time. I can come up with only a couple of plausible answers. Possibly they know that there is no future due to some hidden and unknown to the public catastrophic event that will wipe out most of the life on earth. Possibly they have a completely different agenda for the future that we as common men cannot rationalize with the information we have. The one world government is the most likely agenda that is being brought into existence. This requires the standard of living to be more globally balanced. So they will bring the strongest and highest down and raise the weakest and lowest up just as they did when implementing the European Union. Germany and Italy were too strong so they were systematically brought to a lower level of prosperity and standard of living before the EEU was formed. The good news is that water seeks its own level and the strongest will once again return to being the strongest over time just as Germany has in EEU. The bad news is that population control is required to preserve the resources of the planet for long term survival of humanity. Either way we will continue to be their beasts of burden to finance and build the infrastructure that is required to survive and prosper without the possibility of benefiting from either.

I may have gotten a bit carried away, forgive me.

 

Excellent job of handleing everthing that happened in that scenerio with store owner and your son. Things like how you handled yourself in that situation are the ''make or break'' things that seperate true professional's from all the rest,imo. Nice job,and continued success in your families new business adventures,RedForeman.

 

I think you've got it. However, I don't believe there's any secret agenda beyond short-sightedness. As private sector leadership focuses less and less on the long term, so does the public sector. They are all only focused on the current term. For the private sector it's this fiscal quarter or year. For the public sector it's the next election. In both cases, they are more interested in creating their legacy than long term success.

 

At one time we had public and private leaders who were concerned about long term planning and longevity. There are too many today who only focus on the short term and their self interests. I still think about some of executives of major corporations who have received huge bonuses when their companies have lost millions or billions of dollars. We used to reward achievement and penalize failure.

 

Started a new thread on new entry audit here. I have started by entering all the questions that are asked with DOT section numbers.

 

Well this week has been a good news bad news kinda week so far. I brought the truck back to Atlanta with a load of freight on over the weekend for a Sunday evening and o-dark-thirty delivery this morning. Knowing the driver's HOS would be pretty screwed for today, I had decided to put the truck in for PM on the reefer and at least front trailer tires. Thinking that would be doable before too late in the day and either load out tonight or tomorrow morning. The reefer was still showing a little over 300 hours to go, but I haven't had it done since buying it and the filters had a date on them from a year ago. Paying more for peace of mind with that one. The left front tires on the trailer were one short skid away from getting tagged by DOT so I figured better to pay now and get that handled. One of the good ones on the right would replace the 2nd spare we used a couple weeks ago.

I need to take on a third job as a psychic...

One of those times the coincidence is uncanny. Sunday afternoon I decided to ride along on the first delivery. It's probably 50 miles out from where we park to a Walmart DC in Monroe, GA. Pre-trip was extra thorough with me over his shoulder asking questions. Reefer was running like a champ and had been on for three days already. Everything was fine and we headed out. A pretty uneventful ride. Upon hopping out at WM we got the unmistakeable whiff of hot antifreeze. Uh-oh. Got the trailer dropped and checked it out. Radiator tank was leaking up top but not very much. The reservoir was probably down about 1/2 gallon so I told him we would run it and get the freight off. I'm mechanically knowledgeable enough to know that we weren't at great risk of a catastrophic loss of coolant with the short trips remaining to the shop. The loss was small and no bubbles coming up to the tank or fast pressure build to suggest bigger problems with a head gasket or worse. With the load a little lighter going back, the loss was even less. Long story short, he got the rest of the freight off without incident and was parked at the shop waiting for them to open this morning.

So the first sign of the apocalypse happens when they pull the trailer in to PM the reefer. This things been running like a champ for two months. Tech flips the switch on to warm it up...... and nothing. D-e-d dead. That sort of thing never happens to me (breakdown when actually already at the shop). In my case, that would happen only if I had a load of frozen freight on board. Fortunately, it was a corroded fuse and a quick fix. -whew!

Taking advantage of the service break, I had them check the a/c out as well. I thought we had a lucky break with the repair two weeks ago, but that wasn't the case and it had been tapering off in coolness. At least this time we were at a proper full service repair shop and not a truckstop just adding an a/c service to a PM like last time. No problemo - that will add another $900 to the tab. I've done enough automotive a/c in my lifetime to know it's throwing good money after bad to nickel and dime a repair on a 7 year old truck with 640k on the clock, so I went ahead with the repair.

I had waited to learn the damage on the rest of the work before quoting tires. I cracked the guy up when I called and told him I felt like I hadn't spent enough money there yet and figured some new tires would help with that LOL. The a/c repair put me over the top on doing all 8 trailer tires so I just ordered the front axle this trip. So tomorrow afternoon we'll be back in business a while longer with a tight cooling system, like-new a/c, and good tires on the ground for at least a couple months with what's still on the rear trailer axle. When I called back to ok the a/c work, the service writer agreed to throw in a "free" truck wash with a $4,000 service order.

So kids, let this be a lesson on my tab: I knew this was used equipment when I bought it and was diligent with checking it out. It took two months and 15k miles for the radiator to let go. And a matter of minutes for a sub-$2,000 sort of planned service visit to double. We got really lucky not to have any catastrophic problem that would have added to it with a tow bill or roadside repair.

In other news, I had originally threatened to get my CDL restored so that I'd be able to move the truck if needed. I had one years ago before they started the national CDL requirement. At the time I wasn't driving anything to need it and just let it go to a regular license on that renewal. Last week I went to the dmv and did the written test and now just need to get some time practicing for the road test. My new driverness is offset by my son's moving violation so the insurance nick isn't too bad.

So there's the latest. I'll be hustling up a load for Wednesday and keeping him out a while to pay for that cold a/c LOL