Good night from...

after waiting for a couple hrs, got a preplan that delivers in hilland mi. no thanks after talking to dl,sent a mac 9 saying out of comfort area specially in winter. then sent a preplan that picks up after my 14 is up and has an early friday delivery in fernley nv.sent a mac 9 saying what hrs i can p/u and del on, and that got taken off. been sitting since. so drove over to walmart and lot i use to park at says no truck/trailer parking now. sign all over their lot too. so parked over at toys r us(after getting permission). got some xmas shopping done while i was sitting here lol. be safe

 

I had a tiring 36 hours. Left the Morton, IL shop that has my '12 Freightliner to get a taxi, go to the Peoria bus terminal, then take a bus trek to Terre Haute, IN... with a 5 hour layover in Indianapolis. Fun times trying to catch some sleep in cramped bus seats and on the concrete floor of the Indianapolis terminal.

Arrived in Terre Haute to meet the people giving up their O/O '12 KW T600. It felt good to get back with a 13 speed. However, I've grown to absolutely hate this truck. The work area is way too cramped, without any kind of slots or cupboards to stow items I need while driving. The "condo" sleeper is fine, but again the storage is weird. It took me almost 2 hours to transfer my things from the Freightliner Cascadia into the KW after I drove back to Morton.

Other bits I don't like about it... the cruise control functions about half the time, although when it doesn't function I can go MUCH faster than the Freightliner (like 69 mph)... and sometimes when the cruise control does function I can still go 69 mph... no red lights on the Qualcomm... DOH! Just hope I'm not getting flagged for overspeed, nothing yet.

The curtains don't close at all. I'll have to sleep tonight with street lights shining in my face.

The Qualcomm functions half the time. Otherwise I have to repeatedly try to select what I want to do, pounding away on the item I want, until it finally recognizes my command.

The Navigation system in this truck is seriously bad. At one point it had a typical "Out of Route", but then the map started spinning in circles! That went on for over 15 minutes.

I finally got my stuff into the KW and got a dispatch, deadheading to Olney, IL to pick up a load going to Des Moines, then another load from Des Moines headed to Phoenix. I already asked my dispatcher to get me another truck in Phoenix, hopefully a Cascadia, anything but this cramped old thing.

 

Excellent movie.
It held true to the book, even though much had to be left out due to time constraints. They could have made it a trilogy if they had wanted.
My 12 year old daughter loved it and can't wait to get some of the books in the series tomorrow when we go shopping.
My 10 year old was impressed as well; she said there were no boring parts.

Great special effects, especially the battle room and the final battle.

This is a rare movie where it doesn't matter if you've read the book first, or read it after.

 

Suffolk, VA. Richmond got my truck in to take care of the regen problem and then sent me to a dealership for my alignment. I honestly don't notice a difference, still pulls to the right. Got a preplan to pick up in Suffolk going to York, PA. Can't pick up until after 16:00 on Thursday or deliver until after midnight on Friday. A whopping 270 miles. Had to find an empty first. Was sent to a DC but no empties on site. Security sent me down the road to drop yard; no empties there. Yard driver comes by and says go back to the DC, he'll find me something. First one he finds has a flat; send in the maintenance message about. Second one he finds is good, not part of the UPS lease pool, go ahead and take it. Send my MAC 6, get back an error message about needing to send plate number in. Gotten that a couple times so sent it in and started moving in the direction I need to go since there is no place to hang out there and wait for actual dispatch. About 20 miles down the road, get an urgent message saying that the trailer IS part of the UPS pool. So I have to turn around and drag it back. Turns out ALL of the Swift trailers there are part of the UPS thing and I shouldn't have been sent there for an empty to start with. An hour after that they sent me two miles down the road to grab a trailer from another DC.

Not going to lie, this first month here has been terrible. Literally one problem after another. Earlier this week was given another short load from Indy drop yard to Hebron. As soon as I got there it was clear something wasn't right. The tandems were almost all the way back, and no scale ticket. Pulled in out of the spot and it felt really heavy. Took it straight to the pilot to find I was very heavy on my drives, and over gross. It came all the way from Idaho that way. Told to take it back. Gave me another tcall going to the Columbus yard. Got there a couple hours later and went to bed. In the morning they gave me 13 mile load that I couldn't deliver until 13:00 with a follow on to deliver 600 miles away by 21:00 the same night. Decline that preplan. Got to the consignee with the short load only to be told this was three days late and they unload by appointment only. Convinced them to take it since they were slow but took 3 hours to get product off. Next load was returning a lease trailer from a Walmart store to the leasing company. Dropped my empty in Columbus and headed to the store. Arrived only to find the trailer was fully loaded. Manager couldn't understand why I was there because they were told they had until Wednesday to get stuff off and he didn't want to unload it that night. Called night dispatch only to be told to send a message and hung up. Finally convinced the manager to let me take it if I unloaded it. An hour with a pallet jack and I was on my way.

Just out of curiosity, how are you guys miles looking? I have had driver after driver bragging about their 2500 mile weeks. That seems terrible to me. Even trainers saying the average 22-2700 with a student on the truck. 2800 should be a bad week, IMO. 2500 is certainly nothing to brag about. I would kill for 3000+.

 

when I picked up my load at the DC it was heavier than usual so stopped at the FlyingJ in Bakersfield to scale out, went in to get my ticket and the machine was out of paper, after waiting countless minutes they got paper from the back but took 3 different people to get the machine back in order, the guy told me I had to pull around and scale again so I did and he gave the scale on the house but the whole thing took almost a hour to do....

went and dropped the load then headed over to General Mills in Stockton, got on their scale and the drives was 35800 with tandems slid all the way, I was told a knight driver sat for 6 hours getting his reworked and I realized there were no scales going south back to Shafter so I said screw it and went down the road

Got my plans for tomorrow, heading to Pacoima to drop a load and pick up a sweep heading back to the DC then grabbing a load taking to Woodland hills for a live unload at midnight, if there are enough hours on the clock im heading over to Yussen to get a load coming back. I figure I will start my clock around 1500, if I can at least pick up the load at the Yussen then I can shut down on the street there if I dont have enough hours to get back, the guy said I could probably go to a truck stop after woodland hills if I am low on time, I laughed at him and said I doubt I will be finding a parking spot in the LA area at 3-4am...

I originally planned to hit the Flyingj for a shower and stuff but parked on the side street again so maximize my hours for tomorrow, I wish company drivers could use the off duty driving for personal stuff. Hopefully they will give me a moderate Friday so I have time to get shut down for a shower and stuff, I hate going more than 2 days without one.

 

London, oh. Dropped my load and said that they can not release any mt trlrs today. I counted over 30 mt here at target. Mpg for the trip, 5.8. Reset PTA for morning trying to get a good ld and get a pplan, grove port to manteno. No way. Crap area to get a decent weekend load

 

picked up a load at dropyard in calexico going to el paso tx. was suppose to be in el paso yesterday. d said it was late coming from mexico. said to take it and send mac 22 wwith hours you can make it. i waas hoping to get it there tonite, but have 4 hrs 45 min. of drive time and about 275 miles from where i'm at now. so gonna shoot for anthony tx to delverr it in the morning

 

rightcoast. when swift first starts you out on solo, your miles will be a bit low at first. they usually give you plenty of time to get there. want to see how you handle the job by yourself for a bit. job can be frustrating at first. hang in there. it'l become easier. be safe

 

Came back from dinner, 2 pplans waiting on the QC. PU ldd trlr at terminal and take 20 miles for a live unload in morning, then bring mt back to Columbus so that can drop for a ldd trlr and take to NC for Saturday. All of 360 miles. Nope, not worth my time. I have 14 hours avail on 70 come morning, and was not wasting playing live and drop and hook and then heading south in this weather down WV on I-77 and get stuck in NC on a Saturday. November about all of this good freight and miles. Truck is running, sure would like to see some.

 

Rightcoast, are you running most of your miles in the East? If so you might try requesting "home time" out west, or ask your DM if you can pull a load to LA for example. Usually the runs are much longer out west, from my experience, lots of distance between metropolitan areas. If you get out West and then make your home time request back home in NY, then you might find more miles in your paychecks along the way.

East coast runs from my experience do tend to be much shorter and much more time consuming to run the miles. I'm based out of the LA area, so most of my miles are run west of the Ohio to Mississippi region. I rarely get sent to the east coast states. I'm averaging about 2500 miles per week, including home time about every month for a couple days, and the odd 34 hour reset or shop time (although this last week was extraordinary with 4 days sitting in a hotel or traveling to get a new truck when my original truck had to get major repairs).