CRETE - A Year in Review

I'm embarrassed to admit I've never owned a cell phone.

 

I have a cell, but until Crete pays their part of the bill, it is a personal phone...not a business phone. I don't pay this much per month to waste my precious minutes on making the suits more money...if/when they will reimburse my cell usage, then my phone is available.

 

haha fixed your quote

 

Oh BTW. I saw two of the Military Appreciation trucks at Wilmer. A bit busy on the sides with all the stickers but I do love the flag up top. All in all though pretty neato bandito.

 

well i'm set up for orientation monday in greensboro, well the part of i can do there. and then sit in on a class at one of the main terminals....before i step in you know what, all help is needed, and appreciated.

 

Gonna have to quit bragging about how little trouble I've had with trailers I've picked up. Yesterday, got one with a missing mudflap. Today, hooked to one with no license plate. But it was a 540-mile day, with an 880-miler to deliver Saturday. Only gonna submit 1000 miles this week, but that was due to hometime.

 

This a pic of one I took in Lincoln a few days ago. each one is customized for the individual driver/veteran.

 

I am gona try this again. Spent 20 minutes this morning typing away on this p.o.c. Thunderbolt to post an update...then the thing replaced it with a duplicate of the 1st post. It almost was sent to the electronic grave yard.

I finally delivered in Van Wert, OH. No directions, and a waaaaaay wrong address. Q/comm had the customer on township road 127, b/l said state route 127, and the customer was on US127...the bad part, there was both twp rte 127 and US 127. Since there weren't directions in the system, and the msg 41 would pull up the wrong location, I pulled up Google Maps. Now, since some of the satellite pic's on Google are many years old, I have often pulled up an empty field on there, only to find that a warehouse had been built and opened since the pic was published. Thinking this was the case, I proceeded to attempt to deliver based on Google's routes. Bad move. When I got to the little cow path of a road, off of a narrow county route...it was a PITA trying to make the turn, but without taking up the entire road on both streets I might have made it forward. As I started in, a couple of county workers came out waving their arms for me to stop...it turns out, I wasn't the only one that has tried this. They said that they get 3 or 4 trucks a week trying it...and that the place I was looking for wasn't down that road. Then they gave me directions to where they were really located. The only problem...the county road I came in on has too many tight corners in town to get a big truck around. So, I had to get turned around and head back out the same way I came in...which means a blind side back, off 1 narrow aced road onto another. They were also kind enough to stop traffic so I could do it...I'm glad there are at least a few decent people left in Ohio! I found the delivery customer, got checked in, and waited. There was another Crete there that had been there over an hour, and they hadn't even opened the dock door on his load. So we both sat there chewing the fat while they got around to us. I ended up getting done 1st because I had long rolls of rejected house wrap that was being recycled, and he had a trailer load of all different size rolls of some type of fiber/plastic that had to come off 1 roll at a time.

Now on the way up there they pplaned me on a 600 mile load that picked up Wed, but didn't deliver until Friday in Memphis. I said no way, I had just done a reset, had 2300 miles by Wed afternoon, I needed something more productive since I had hours out the wazooo. With that good of a start, there should be no excuse for not getting a 3000 mile week. So they cancelled it. After I messaged them about the address issue, and sent them correct directions, they pplanned me on the same load.... Told them it doesn't suck any less the second time than it did the first time. Then they cancelled it again. Then they sent me a load out of Lima going to Pineville LA. 1036 miles...that'll put me at 3375 for the week which makes up for last week's miles, that got shorter between Friday's payroll cutoff, and Thursdays paycheck. The load last week that pu out of the Jackson, TN Owens plant, was shown to pick up in Milan, TN...and the miles were calculated from Milan as well...but once I got my check, it was changed to show Jackson. Add it all up through this load and it still puts me over 10k w/a full week to run...and the miles were acurate to where I drove, so I didn't get too upset.

But then I got stopped in Nashville. A couple of trucks decided to crash on I40 west of town, and they shut down the west bound lanes for 5 or 6 hours...by the time they opened it up, my 14 was waisting away, so I only managed to make it to northern MS by Thursday instead of Jackson, MS. So my Friday won't be as productive as I had hoped once I get to Pineville. But all in all, it still may be one of my better months this year...which is good since I have had my share of lousey ones.

For those in the midwest praying for rain...be carefull what you wish for. Earlier this year we Floridians were in the same boat(on dry land). But after tropical storm Debbie, and seemingly endless deluges of rain almost every day since...and now another possible hurricane...the animals are beginning to pair up looking for a big boat to board again. Since Debbie left, I think the river just outside the town I live near has been under a flood warning all but 7 or 8 days. No telling how high it'll get if this hurricane heads the way they think...right up the west coast of the entire state, which puts the wettest and wildest side right on the whole state. Oh well, that's all part of living in paradise I guess

 

Don't you claim your cell phone bill on your taxes as a write off? I used to. So technically it IS for business purposes. This is the problem I have with trucking, there is always an excuse as to why you are not running. I would use any means nessasary to acquire a load.

 

Except for one issue, taxes, like Christmas, only come once a year...my cell phone bill comes every month. The added expense of overage charges for the extra minutes add up. And how does this effect me running or not? Crete insists that we use the q/comm. They are constantly telling us NOT to call in...not using it to hunt down a customer due to screwed up load info doesn't change my miles all that much. The thing that screws my miles up here the most is whizz poor planning, and under spec'd and under maintained equipment. So, if you want to spend your money making Crete more money...my profit sharing thanks you