CRETE - A Year in Review

Good deal! How did the cpap machine conversation go packard? Well, I've been down 3 days now and freightliner just got in my truck tonight. Hopefully they will finish by noon tomorrow. This place is horrible on the inside.. 6 chairs.. ac barely works in the drivers lounge and it is always full. So wish me luck.. hopefully i can get back to work tomorrow. I had 1450 miles by Sunday night... and it looks like I'll have 1450 miles plus 3 days breakdown.. so hopefully i can get back on top.

 

That is one good thing that I can say about Crete. With all my dislikes, they are reliable when it comes to pay...with the exception of detention. In 8.5 yrs, I've only had 4 payroll issues, 1 was my fault, 1 they caught before I knew about it and had it fixed. Of the other two 1 only took a phone call to my terminal, the other was a two paycheck delay fighting over how much they said they owed me for working on the Walmart popup fleet.

 

Well, I have had no issues with loads, my truck or dispatch yesterday or today....because I am sitting in my Lazyboy recliner, a/c keeping the house at a comfy 72 degrees, a remote in one had, cold diet Coke in the other....Oh, wait...the boss is just getting home....gota go

 

I offered the Lincoln-Plantation some insight into the Asset-Manager progam.....the reaction I received was like I had spilled their margaritta. The flaw I pointed out that needed corrected was this: All the AM's are giving out chest bumps to each other (thinking they are the best thing to happen since sliced bread) and showing the headmaster the productive per day avg of their drivers over the course of a 7 day period. Scenerio-wise lets say a driver averages 390 miles a day over the course of a 7 day period ok. What is conveniantly NOT looked at is that many times it took that drivers whole 14 hr day to get that 390 miles for the day, Is this Productive? How can this be? Well that drivers day started at 0430 and he delivered at 0600 and now you want him to SIT all day and pu up this other load at 1500 that has miles on it, which will bump up the avg.

 

If possible can anyone tell me what % of Crete trucks have an APU? Also, where is the exhaust from the APU routed? Thanks

 

The majority of Crete's APU trucks(diesel powered) have either been sold or traded. They only put APUs on 1 model year, and only if the truck was under 200k miles. All our newer trucks now have the battery powered a/c and heat. We still have a few opti idle Cascadias. There are probably less than a hundred in the entire fleet. They're either Thermo King Tripac or Carrier. All Carrier units still have the straight out the side exhaust, TK's have the curved exhaust that comes out on the trailer side of the unit.

 

Do you know why Crete stopped doing APUs?

 

Ohhhh boy, now you've done it. You've shown them you are thinking...that violates some unwritten company policy...we're not suppose to know more than the All Mighty Wizards in High Command.(even though we do). You'll be visiting Coryland even more now.

 

presumably because the battery powered units were a cheaper way to reduce idling

 

I don't know the actual reason, but when the new trucks with the DPF came out, they stopped putting APUs on the trucks. Maybe because they require a tier 2 APU unit (it has it's own DPF) so I would think cost had something to do with it. Plus we didn't have the greatest luck with them. We had a lot of issues with both. The battery packs also comply with all anti-idle laws even though they run down and need to be charged by idling. They also don't weight much different than the diesel powered units. Driver comfort has little to do with it.