EPES TRANSPORT-Greensboro, NC

can say this...if you smoke.....flyingmusician just might be your trainer! Looks like we'll find out in a few days!

 

Well, I made it through orientation today. I'll call my trainer in the a.m. and see when we'll hook up. Met my DM today and he seemed pretty cool. It'll feel weird going out with a trainer after being a driver trainer with USX. lol. But I'm looking forward to it.

 

so i'm coming up through the woods from Valdosta to augusta to hop on 20 and about halfway up through there this morning just after daybreak. just enough light to barely see but not enough light to say it's daylight yet. I know the road pretty well since I've been up through there quite a few times. 45800 of water in the box so it's heavy and top heavy.

I come up to this long, tight, blind curve and know there's a good long straight off the turn up a long hill......thankfully i'm slowed waaaayyy beyond what I would have been if i'd had a light load in the box since that water is heavy and I can feel it slosh around as i'm taking the turns. about 46mph as I looked at the gps coming through the turn in a 55 zone. just get back to the fuel as i'm coming out of the turn and soon as I get to where it's coming straight and I can see ahead........there in the middle of the road is a pulpwood truck not 100 yards out of the turn. stopped. in the lane. and a car coming in the opposite lane.

no triangles out. no flashers going. no markers. no tail lights. no driver standing in the turn waving a flashlight. nothing. just dark road, scant light and the shadow of a truck stopped in the middle of the road.

that'll get your attention and wake you up right at daylight after you've been running since 2am lol. I got it stopped in time but just barely. if i'd have been light I wouldn't have been so slow in the turn and honestly don't think i'd have gotten stopped before I got logs in my grill and probably up to my legs. same for if it was middle of the night dark even as slow as I was. the shadow of the truck in the breaking light and in the car's headlights was all I could see to tell something was wrong as I came out of the turn until I was already on the brakes and got close. too close.

the car passed and I pulled around him and off on the shoulder with my flashers on so at least somebody else coming could see them. as I pulled around him his hood was up and nobody in the cab. my intent was to pull over and hand him his ### for not doing SOMETHING to warn oncoming traffic he was dead in the road just out of the turn. nobody home. nobody anywhere. no driver to be seen anywhere.

I grabbed my big flashlight and a triangle with the intent of at least walking down the turn and at least being able to warn oncoming traffic until it was good daylight and call 911 to report the hazard but about the time I walked around his truck a pickup pulled up with the driver, another guy and some triangles. i'm sure steam was coming out of my ears and surprised my head didn't spin around on my shoulders I was so livid the guy just left the truck there and wasn't trying to warn traffic in some way. they didn't say a word. probably good thing for them they had the good sense not to.

rolled on and had an uneventful rest of my day. that was enough excitement for one day.

Qualcomm flipped out on me Tuesday right after I left Lakeland. just keeps turning itself off and on and trying to reboot. new truck bugs. gotta love 'em. tried unplugging it. pulling the fuses. checked all the connections. killed the battery power for 30 minutes to try and reset it. nothing worked. still flipping out and saying no connection. and won't shut up. home home home messaging messaging home please complete a vehicle inspection home you are out of hours of service drive time home messaging please complete a vehicle inspection you are in violation of hours of service messaging.......lol.....over and over and over again and I couldn't make it shut up. none of the buttons worked. even when I pulled the plug it still kept talking. drove me crazy for 2 days until I finally got it in. I went on the qc website and it said they did a driver update for the software Tuesday. apparently mine didn't like the update. so, on paper logs for 2 days, bug the hell out of my dm for load info and bounced back to the shop tonight. now i'm going to have to go in and try to edit and reconstruct 2 days worth of logs when they get it fixed. it was stuck on duty or driving for just over 2 days and I couldn't change the status. that should be fun.

so at home midweek. i'll either get an out and back or be stuck out 2 weeks again. guess we'll see. at any rate it's going to be a slack week.

 

Dinky I appreciate the info on Verizon......walked into the Wendover office this morning and she hooked me right up with the discount. she said the guy at the high point office where I got my phone either was incompetent or just straight up lied to me when he said we didn't get the discount. wait till I see him next time I go in to pay the bill. poor customer service is right at the top of the list of things that just push my buttons.

been dealing with extremes lately. couldn't get home last month.....so far this month been home too many days. finally got the QC fixed this morning but showing me with 45 hrs straight on duty. took the paper logs up to Kathy but she said it would just be 'sometime today' when they were fixed and updated. so, not much I can do today since it's showing me out of hours. dm says not too much going on anyway until weekend freight comes out so i'm just in until Monday 5am when I reset. ####### new rules. under the old rules i'd have reset 330 Friday morning. now I have to sit for 4 ####### days to reset. what a crock of ####. I may go back out anyway sunday on recap. i'll carry enough hours over into next week and what I gain tue-thu should have me good for the week and maybe I can reset my reset to something better than 5am Monday which is what i'm stuck on right now.

my poor dogs are all screwed up lol daddy's been home during the week for the last 2 weeks. they're so used to me being in just on weekends or sunday/Monday timeframe their internal clocks are all out of whack now that I've been in so much last 2 weeks. but they are glad daddy is home I can't keep them off of me. especially my big one. he doesn't know what day it is now and thinks every morning we have to take our ride to the store to get the sunday paper lol

but at least I get some time with the wife and I've got work to do around the house. but the next 2 checks sure are going to suck.

 

no problem...sorry you had to go to Wendover for that...but you get your 8% FINALLY! That's what counts...did they put you under EPES Leasing? hehe
Got 10 hours out of 70 left and 2 and a half to roll to Roanoke in the morning....I NEED TO MAKE IT HOME TOMORROW! If they send me in the opposite direction I guess it'll be me DENYING, DENYING, DENYING! haha Good thing is, I've been running hard...but so hard I don't have hours left and this recap thing is starting to suck!

 

So a couple of questions to the guys that work with epes.
Can you get more then 2500 miles a week?
Do they work with the same customers? is it always different runs?
Do they have any freight coming into Michigan?

Thanks!

 

the "average" miles is between 2100-2400....I've had 2800 weeks...Flying has had alot of 3000 weeks. I know that if you stay out 2 weeks you can rack up miles! As far as different places.....I usually go to alot of the same places, which I kinda like, but lately it's been new places as well! Yes, we do go up to MI. We have a run up to Grand Rapids. That's the only place I've been to up there....the other guys might have been to different places, but I'll let them answer that one for you!

 

Couple of customers in Grand Rapids, Detroit, Muskegon, Hart. Those are the only places I've been to up there then generally run up there to deliver then over to the west side of Chicago out of there to pick up at one of several shippers in that area and roll back east or south/southeast from there.

I do about 30% same trips between customers and its pretty evenly split beyond that either new places on both ends or a new place on one end and somewhere I've already been on the other end.

2500+ consistently is possible but lately you REALLY gotta work for it, more so than we used to. If you have good time management skills, can work a split to your advantage when you need to, and can work the subtle nuances of the elog to your advantage, yeah you can average 2800+ pretty consistently and see some weeks 3000 or better. It's get harder though with the new HOS. it's working out pretty much as I had figured before implementation that its effectively cut me one trip a week. That restart provision is hitting me squarely in the miles and the wallet.

Getting a good DM is a big part of that too. Get a good one and you'll run your wheels off. Get a not so good one and you'll be on the lower end of the miles lottery. Luckily I established a good relationship with mine and he's runs me to death. Most of the time anyway. But I do trade a little home time for those miles I think

 

also, talked to DM about MI! Best to call recruiting and ask! They did say there was a guy that worked for us out of MI and he was only able to get home only 2 weekends a month. Just because it is kinda hard for us to run up there. I ALSO heard we lost the Grand Rapids account! So, no more 180 degree turns in the wintertime, for now! Watch me get the first one, if we get the account back and it's a RAGING SNOWSTORM! That'll more than likely be my luck! smh lol

 

That customer in Grand Rapids needed to go. Guard would come out and check you in the night before , then say you we're late .