Day by day adventures of a new solo OTR driver

I WAS SO CLOSE. SOOO CLOSE. 585.6 miles today. Ya'll have no idea how hard I've been trying to break 600 with a Schneider truck. My previous attempt was 575, so we're getting closer. Driving around the fuel island NASCAR style at the truck stop did cross my mind. I mean all I needed was 14.6 more miles COME ON. If I didn't have to pull Fancy Gap and the WV Turnpike today, and would have found a spot to park further down the road, I know I could have made it. DANG.

Well, that being said I made very good time on this load. If I go to bed now and wake up at 0300 (ouch) I may actually be able to get this load there on time. However, I have to stop through an OC for fuel and I just KNOW that they will make me take this piece of crap trailer through the shop before they will let me back out with it. Also, when I got to the truck stop tonight I noticed the plastic tabs on one of the separate pieces of my front bumper had broken off and it was just kinda hanging there... after pulling it off there is lots more that's torn up back behind it. Looks like whoever had this truck before me was reversing and caught it on something then just kinda pushed it back in place and called it good. A couple strips of duct tape later and its at least held in place. Hopefully the shop has a new section and can fix that for me tomorrow, I can't go around with duct tape holding my bumper together on this fancy new truck I have. I will absolutely lose it if they try to blame me for it. That would be THE final straw if they did.

Other than that... yeah... I'm tired. I woke up at 0500 and started my pre-trip 10 hours and 2 minutes after going off duty last night, drove for about 4 and a half hours, fueled, parked and ate a sandwich and almost decided to take a half hour nap, but decided to just keep going. I drove for the entire rest of the day with my foot on the floor wherever speed limits permitted without stopping until I reached this truck stop here.

I was thinking about how great my miles were today, but then I remembered just how bad they were yesterday. Totally cancels out my great day. Oh well.

309 miles to go, plus a stop through an OC for fuel and hopefully a bumper fix, plus them probably wanting to do something with this trailer. Tires look kinda crappy but hold air and aren't flat spotted or low on tread, so who knows. I was surprised we didn't lose a recap on this thing considering my luck. Well, I guess I'll set my alarm for 0300 and see how I feel then. If I can wake up enough to feel safe driving I'll probably take off then and try to actually get the load there on time. I've done 0430 before, but 0300 will be really pushing it from the schedule I'm used to. If not, well, Schneider had plenty of notice when I called them yesterday to inform the customer that the shipper delayed me and my official trip plan said I wouldn't be able to make it on time.

*20 seconds later*

After double checking my "math" on my arrival time, counting on my fingers like a five year old, I realized I forgot to account for the time zone change that will give me an "extra" hour. Ok, 4am, thats a little more doable.

Once I'm off this high value load (please, who would load THIS trailer with anything of value, it looks like it would fall apart and dump its contents all over the highway) I'll update a little more about where exactly I'm at. I'll have about 11.5 hours left on my 70 tomorrow of which almost all but a few hours will be burned up delivering this load. I'm only regaining a little over 2 hours the following day, so it looks like I'll have to take a restart. Maybe if I'm lucky I can get a relay into an OC so I can spend a restart there. This is the second restart I've had to take during this time period away from home. The first one wasn't required, it just happened because of the load ready time. This one though, will be... just ran outta hours! I guess that's a good thing though, means I've been kept moving.

Usually I prefer to just keep rolling my hours though - I aim to stop with 2 - 2.5 hours left on my clock and have found that when I start "regaining" hours I tend to keep rolling with about 8-10 hours every day. But, loads don't always work out that way I guess.

So, that's the update for today. Until next time...

 

My old one never did, even when she went over my performance before passing me on to the new dbl she never mentioned it. It was at about 30% at the time LOL. My new dbl told me I needed to get it down. So I cruise when I can now. With the DD15 it's not too bad because it pulls hills ok at cruise rpms . Series 60 in the old ugly pumpkin had to have the rpms up much higher.