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

So its been a while since I've shared a typical DFO-style adventure with ya'll... today, it was one of those days. HERE WE GO.

Ok, so remember last night I mentioned how I would jinx myself by feeling pretty good about a piece of driving I did, and then the next time would go back to feeling like I'm on day 1? Yeah, shoulda just kept my mouth shut. It NEVER fails.

So I'm sitting there in the Carlisle OC this morning, in my same spot on the fence side by the gate I park in EVERY time (I got my little routine goin' now at Carlisle lol), on the load board. It's approximately -17*F outside, so I'm laying there in the sleeper, curtains shut, but wide awake for about 2 hours before I get up the courage to open the doors and make the trek to the OC to take a piss. I'm on the load board trying to figure out what to do. Charlotte still shut down. Call home in Chapel Hill, hear its still pretty nasty there too. Browse web and see pictures of Atlanta... holy ****. I read one story about someone got stuck on some ice and spun the tires until they caught fire and the whole car turned into an inferno. Jesus Atlanta, get your **** together MY GOD.

Knowing that I don't want to head into the apocalypse that is the southeast, I start poking around for some short runs that I can make to stay busy today, because I never like to just sit, I get bored and I'm not making money. Sitting is for hometime, not for being lazy.

Start weighing my options for loads, too much heavy crap going to crappy places. Eventually after refreshing the board for 2 hours a new load pops up from York down to Richmond, 10k lbs. Sweet. So I start planning more loads, where am I gonna go after that, because this is how I plan loads. Unless I know I'm going into an area that always has freight moving in or out, I always look ahead to make sure when I go somewhere, I can keep moving.

Eventually I end up with 3 preassignments, from York PA to Richmond VA, then to Petersburg VA to Williamsburg VA, then deadhead way down to Sanford NC and pick up a load heading up to Winchster VA.

1.90 a mile for the load to Richmond, then a super short, but heavy, but paying 6.31 per loaded mile to Williamsburg, then a 2.31/mi load up to Winchester, with a 221 mile deadhead bringing the total rate of that load down to 1.39 a mile. Not awesome, but hey its a super easy 5000lb load. Deadhead = no problem for the way I run. Wheels rolling, making money, as long as the rate is good enough I will deadhead across the country if I need to. With the other option being sitting and trying to find another load, I always take the option to keep moving.

ANYWAY, so off to the delivery from Carlisle. Get to the delivery in the typical PA-style locations of "lets put our facility in the middle of nowhere, right on the outskirts of this tiny town, oh but lets make the trucks drive through the middle of town to get there because we can!!".

Leaving there, Swifty being not so Swift making the turn onto the main street of town, and is all jacked up going back and fourth doing I-have-no-idea-what in the middle of the intersection with the trainer flailing his arms at the driver from the outside as they're trying to make the turn without running over any cars. So, after sitting there for a few between the two of them they make the turn, I buttonhook the entire intersection, and finally get out of that place.

Cruise on over to York on the PA backroads running through more small towns, big*** W900 with a 144" sleeper in front of me is pulling a stepdeck, he gets to the roundabout and is just like "MAN **** THIS" and runs over half the middle of the roundabout with his trailer as his truck has a turning radius of the Exxon Valdez, man I was cracking up. I hate those stupid roundabouts, fricking useless just put in a nice intersection.

Get to the pickup, Frito Lay place I've never been to before, of course every one does something different, so I ask the jockey for some help, he tells me where to go and what to do. So I go drop my empty which is at a yard a good mile and a half from the main facility, then look for my trailer. Can't find it. Go bug the jockey who was in front of me on the way down to the drop lot for a 3rd time, he looks on his computer and its back at the main facility.

Ok, back there again. Another Schneider driver shows up looking as confused as I was, walks over and I relay what the jockey told me and we share a laugh about how stupid some of this **** gets.

Finally get out of there, after my fingers about to fall of after putting my load bars in the trailer in a pitiful attempt to keep the boxes of chips from falling all over the place. I don't get it, they want the load secured, but load it past any room for us to get straps in, and WTF is a load bar gonna do against about 500 boxes of chips. They should put in some big pieces of cardboard or air bags or something... its just silly.

Anyway, finally get the hell out of there and head south, on the same route I've taken every single trip south for the past month.

Finally get to Frito Lay in Richmond, its about 9pm at this point, dark, icy, no clue where to go as this is obviously one of the tiny Frito Lays that is... well just a typical tiny Frito Lay facility.

After checking a few doors, ringing a buzzer, about to walk back to my truck when a guy stumbles out randomly one of the doors signs my bills and tells me to drop it in the back.

Yeah, this is one of the redneck Frito Lays where its just every man for himself. Snowpocalypse all over the yard which is now a sheet of ice. They've got one of their special full sized chip trailers backed up to one of the doors for the small delivery vans. Its like a maze going through this place. Ok, people just drop trailers wherever they feel like it. Not wanting to be "that" guy, there is one spot left that I'm going to try to put my trailer in. Its either blindside into a tight spot on the ice from a bad angle, or turn around and have a much easier go at it. I opted for turning around.

Bad choice. Get to the back of this lot and again, its just trailers dropped wherever the jockey felt like dumping them. So I start getting turned around, have to stop and back up to jackknife even more to squeeze by a truck left in the dock.

Somehow, man I just do not know how, but in this process I managed to spin the rear of my trailer so perfectly, and I mean SO PERFECTLY, it literally looked like someone just backed it straight up and stopped within about 3 inches of the mid section this other trailer behind me at a PERFECT 90 degree angle.

I had gotten out to look a few times during the spin to make sure my tail overhang wasn't going to hit this other trailer, so I get out a 3rd time and I'm just going man you have got to be ****ing kidding me this **** isn't even possible to get in this position if I tried. I'm jacked so hard to the side there's no point in trying to slide the tandems because my truck is 90* to the trailer. I know if I try to back up and reposition myself, the tandems are gonna pivot slightly differently as always and I'll hit this trailer behind me. So, VERY VERY VERY slowly I continue my spin away from this trailer and somehow managed to pull it off without incident.

So I put my trailer in the hole, need to pull up to correct myself but oh no I can't because now I'm stuck on this sheet of ice and can't move forward an inch. So I back up an inch or so, then put the truck in low gear, lock the power divider and every so slightly ease out on the clutch, I mean a snail could have been faster than me moving here, get a little forward movement without spinning and then it grabs. Thank God. I know people say "put it in a higher gear" to help move if you are spinning, but honestly a lot of the time that is BS especially on a big truck. You have a grabby clutch and a long driveline with a fair amount of slack in it from free play in all the gears, rear ends, etc... you know the feeling you get when starting out, cab rocks a little up and down as the slack comes and goes when you first start out. I've always found that using the slowest gear along with extremely precise control on the clutch is the best bet.

Anyway, somehow manage to get that trailer dropped and out from under it (I'm glad I can dump airbags on this truck). Then I had to get my load bars out, which of course means dodging but also trying to catch the small avalanche of chip boxes that always come off the very top row. Then trying to pry my bars out from between a few more boxes that fell over on the side I didn't open the door on. 10 minutes later, got those out.

Then looked for any empty.

There are none. I have a 9am pickup tomorrow morning. No time for a trailer search, need to take my 10 and leave time to get to the shipper. I'm exhausted, its cold as hell and just... done for the day.

Oh wait there's one!!

Walk around and of course it's blocked by the same trailer that was in my way as I was trying to spin around earlier.

Just. Another. Day.

My options are trailer search or just move this other trailer so I can get to mine. No yard dog around here. I decided to move this other trailer. Probably against the SNI rule #34831642 or something, but you know what I moved this other trailer up a total of 20 feet so I could get mine out, I did what I had to do big deal, sue me.

Drop that. Back up to mine. Move mine out. Not gonna be a **** and leave this trailer I moved sitting in the middle of Frito Lay's yard, so I hooked back up to it and put it back on the hole I pulled mine out of. Of course this trailer has the landing gear crank on the passenger side, so I'm standing there in a fricking cedar tree that was trying to violate me with its branches as I put the gear back down on this trailer. I didn't crank them all the way up, but enough to move it safely without causing any damage, so I couldn't just pull out from it. Jesus.

Then back to my trailer, hook up to that one, close the doors, drive out of the lot and park where I was told I could park. DONE FOR THE DAY. FINALLY.

Spent a good hour and 15 minutes in this place. Hopefully provided night shift on the security cameras with some good entertainment...

Tomorrow, first my short run to the pickup in Petersburg, then a quick trip to Williamsburg easy 320 bucks to the truck in 75ish miles total, then will make my deadhead trek down to NC, pickup isn't until the 31st on that load so I'll take my time, need to find a Wal-Mart to stock up on some food...

Hopefully a little smoother trip at the next customers.

 

Ran across your thread on the sidebar and replied to it then realized that was you, lol. Added a few thoughts about the trucks you had listed, honestly tough choices, all decent trucks but its all about the little details that make or break the truck, I added a few thoughts on stuff to look into. I'm sure I'll be coming through Charlotte again sometime soon, I'll shoot you a PM next time and if you're there we can shoot the bull.

 

Yep that would be it, lol.

 

Got live loaded in Petersburg then a short trip over to Williamsburg for the delivery today. Easy stuff. Was weird seeing snow that close to the coast in this part of the country.

After that deadheaded all the way down to Sanford NC. Not really any place to park nearby, but a little place in town with some truck parking but a "no overnight parking" sign in the lot... ooops maybe I didn't see that sign. Looks like I'm not the only one though, lol. I would have stopped by home for the night as it would have only been about 30 miles OOR, but... no place to park with the trailer still.

Pickup isn't until tomorrow afternoon, then its off to Winchester, VA. I wanted to put some more loads on me, and had a good run set up, but with the late pickup tomorrow and not really knowing when I'll get to Winchester, I had to hold off as it was too risky to schedule those loads so tight. Gotta figure out something though as I don't want to get stuck sitting in Winchester. Hopefully I can either find something to take me south through Charlotte or north to Carlisle, I've been at OCs so much this month I get frustrated when I'm not spending at least every other night at one... I get used to the convenience I guess.

Honestly I'm on the lookout for a set of loads to get me home now, I need a break from the truck! Still need to get that little tube off the exhaust manifold loose to see if its clogged up... stupid thing. Still get the "false" DPF face plug code from time to time, which is usually related the exhaust backpressure sensor not getting correct readings, and that sensor is fed by that little tube. If only I had a oxy-acetylene torch at home to heat the area up around the fitting... man I miss working at a shop. Once my truck is paid off I'm going to build one of my own... my mancave dream come true. Big truck bay... another bay for the Deuce... and a smaller one with a 10k lb lift. Yes.

I get a little fed up with being in the truck for so long, but then I have a nice good run and keep saying to myself "oh just run a few more days"... LOL. Been doing that for what feels like weeks now. But I've been doing so good its like I hate to slow down the going while the going is so good, especially for January. But, don't want to burn myself out either.