THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

LOL.

I wish I had a manual, previous owner must have walked off with it. I'm sure I can find the adjustment and make them move but setting them correctly? I have no idea and would probably just make things worse.

Today was a pretty slow day, but hey no complaints from me about that. I delivered my load from NC in Albany, took about 2 hours to get unloaded. After that I headed out for my pickup at Meadwestvaco in Cottonton, AL and grabbed that load headed back into GA. I hauled ### and made it to the customer at about 1630, my appointment was for 0800 the next day. I decided just to stop by and see if by chance they'd want to unload me tonight, or if I could spend the night in their yard. The guy who I gave my paperwork to looks at the forklift operator and says "10 rolls, anything you can do in 20 minutes?"

15 minutes later every roll was unloaded and I was done. I thanked them profusely for unloading me early and being so fast, the forklift operator thanked me for helping clear the cardboard and wood blocks each time he pulled a roll, and that was that. I will be sure to deal with that customer more in the future.

I didn't preassign myself another load since I wasn't sure if I'd be unloaded tonight or tomorrow, so I hopped on my laptop and took a look and didn't see much. I thought about heading to the Atlanta OC but that was 70 miles and I didn't really NEED to go there so I just went to the truckstop and parked it. My check engine light was on and off again and has been today, each time the DPF regen needed light came on for about 2 seconds after the check engine light turned off. When I pulled into the truckstop the DPF regen light stayed on, so I parked and ran a regen cycle and will see if that clears things up. If it keeps coming on more its probably a sign the DPF needs to be cleaned out. If it hasn't been done before, its about time with this truck having 320k miles on it. Depending on costs I may try to get it done in Green Bay if need be because I have that coupon for it. If its not much different I'll just try to get it done at Cummins or Freightliner not too far from home. But, hopefully the parked regen cleared it up and we'll be good to go anyway.

I checked out the load board and booked myself another load for tomorrow that I'll deliver either tomorrow night or Saturday morning depending on how quickly I get loaded.

So far I'm having an absolute blast with the whole o/o deal, I enjoy the process of finding my ow loads and the fact that this is no longer a "MILES MILES MILES" game is really really cool. I look forward to totaling up the income from the loads from this first week and seeing how I did. Hopefully I can have a feel for fuel mileage (although I doubt it, its gonna take some time to get a better idea). Then I can look at how much I made off the loads, and subtract the average fuel mileage based on the daily driven miles reported from the Qualcomm, and "pretend" take off my truck payment amount (since that doesn't start until the 29th) and then I can look at how much I would have actually brought home.

 

Thanks for the tips, I'll try to get them taken care of soon.

The good news is that I didn't see any of the check engine light today, looks like the parked regen may have cleared everything up. We'll see if it stays that way...

Today I picked up a light load out of northwestern GA and brought it down here to the FL/GA border. Aside from the traffic around Atlanta (why is it when the speed limit was 55 everyone was running 70, and now that they've upped it to 65 everyone is running 10 under???) it was a very easy run down I-75. Stopped for a 30m break along the way and took a look at what was on the load board. Ugh, the weekend.

One thing I am learning is to plan a load through the weekend. Come the end of the week the load board fills up like crazy and looks really good until you realize all the loads pick up on Friday and don't deliver until Monday. Some pay real good, but if my wheels aren't turning over the weekend what's the good in that? If I had a reason to stop, sure, I'd do it and take a restart while under the load, but I want to keep moving. So, I sucked it up and picked up a good paying 800+ mile run from GA up to DE. Its HEAVY though... we'll probably be pushing this tractor to its front axle and gross limits. I'll be going in with 1/8 to 1/4 of a tank of fuel tomorrow to pick it up and scale it, then hopefully be able to put some more fuel on.

It looks like the Cummins is much heavier than the Detroit I had in my last Cascaida. With the Detroit I could have my 5th wheel almost all the way up and still pull all but the heaviest of loads without axle weight problems. I've only got 3 notches left to go back on my 5th wheel now and I was still a bit over 12k with that last paper load LOL. The cheapo steers Schneider put on here aren't rated for much more than 12k combined, I don't even think I can push 12.5k without legally being over the weight limit of the tires.

Hopefully it'll all work out with that load. I really don't want to be spending that $500 for a repower. But, judging on my previous scale ticket weights I *should* be able to take it. We'll find out tomorrow lol. If I can pull it, like I think I can, great, I'll no longer have to worry about a 44k load. If I can't, well I'll suck it up and pay for the repower and get on with my life, no sense in never hauling a heavy load because I'm scared to see what I can and can't pull.

Like I said I really don't WANT to go up there, but its a good paying load, and its a drop and hook to a familiar customer and I will bobtail my ### out of that area before I go any further north. It'll keep me busy over the weekend and set me up for one hell of a first week.

Here is what my loads have paid so far. This is starting on Monday with my fresh 70:

(These are rounded by a few dollars up or down just to make it easier to type)

1. 585
2. 665
3. 875
4. 465
5. 580
6. 1675 (tomorrow's load, assuming I can pull it LOL)

Load #6 should be delivered by Sunday. So, those are the #s for a full Monday-Sunday week. I realize the paycheck will split the Monday load off of the list, this is just purely for me to keep track of how I did for my first full week.

That comes to $4845 for the week. Will I be happy with that? Oh my God. Absolutely.

Ok, so lets figure some miles into this. I still have the GA to DE run to factor in to my existing week of miles, workflow says 800 something miles, so just for the sake of this lets say all told its 1000 miles.

381+213+555+342+479+1000 = 2970. So lets say 3000 miles. These numbers (not including the 1000 I am guesstimating) are my daily driven miles according to the HOS log on the Qualcomm.

Alright now just for the sake of "play it safe" lets say I am a speed demon and shift every gear at 1900 RPM balls to the wall everywhere I go and only get 6MPG.

Diesel down south here seems to be in a 3.70ish range, but again, for the sake of play it safe lets say we pay $4 per gallon everywhere we go.

3000 miles / 6 MPG = 500. 500 * $4 per gallon = 2000 in fuel.

So, $4845 - 2000 for fuel. Now we're taking home $2845.

Oh but wait. We've still got that truck payment. It's not starting for me until the 29th, but come on, I know its coming. So lets factor that in.

Although I haven't seen my actual total payment with the truck payment, maintenance account contribution, insurance, and all the other little fees come out on a check yet, I believe it will be very close to $1000. So, continuing with the trend, lets play it safe and say $1200.

$2845 - 1200 truck payment = $1645 left over to my bank account. And remember, that's saying I am doing some serious supertrucking getting 6MPG and am paying $4/gallon everywhere I fill up.

I'm sure I'm missing something, please correct me if I'm wrong. Honestly I'd be perfectly happy bringing home half of that considering I'm making a truck payment now. I'd be absolutely ecstatic to bring home that much in 7 days.

Do I expect every week to be this good? No. Is there a chance I will have to relay a load (lose $500), break down, have an expensive repair, etc? Oh yes, absolutely. That could all happen tomorrow. But I'm prepared for it the best I can be at the moment, and will continue to prepare for it further until I have a safety net I am very comfortable with.

I won't go too in-depth about how/why I picked my loads as I did, but I will say the following:

1. I was not afraid to deadhead considerable distances
2. I used my experience from working as a company driver to figure out what customer was what before accepting the load
3. I looked at the load board before accepting a load and "looked ahead" to see "where will I be able to go next"
4. I focused very hard on keeping my per mile rate about 1.50 according to the load boards calculator
5. I ran loads to small oddball customers that paid very good rates
6. Miles meant nothing and simply came along with the loads

So... now the question is... Will I actually be able to pull that load tomorrow and finish off my first week that strong??? TO BE CONTINUED...