Good Night From II

Waiting to be unloaded at Verizon in Sandston, VA then down to Suffolk to pick up one headed to Amsterdam. I've always dreamt of going there, but New York wasn't exactly where my goal was.

 

Nearing Gallup, NM en route to Phoenix from Denver. The truck we recovered in Grand Junction can't idle more than five minutes at a time and the bunk heater keeps cutting out. Intent on arriving in Phoenix is to change trucks (no trucks were available in Denver). Denver shop said only Freightliner can change the idle settings, they can't seem to do it at Swift terminals.

The shipper in Rifle ships sodium bicarbonate in bulk (baking soda). As soon as I received our first dispatch in the recovered truck in Grand Junction I saw the weight of the load, then looked at available truck scales at truck stops and realized there is a scale in Grand Junction (about 60 miles west of Rifle) and no other scales listed until Denver.

The dispatch didn't indicate anything about scales on site, and a quick look at Google Satellite View showed it was a small warehouse without a scale. I called my DM to see if I would need to drive back to Grand Junction to scale the load before heading to Denver and get paid those miles for the round trip. There's no way I was going to run to Denver and risk getting pulled into the DOT scale with an overweight load. He looked through additional notes and didn't see any information about a local scale in Rifle, but said I should ask the customer if they know of a local scale. If nothing is available then call him to request permission to run the round trip to Grand Junction and get paid the miles.

My DM at that time noted that the load was a problem, because the last driver ran all the way to Denver and couldn't scale it legally and couldn't t-call it in Denver so she had to run all the way back to Rifle to get the load reworked. Then she quit and left the truck in Rifle.

When we got to the customer I asked if there was a local scale. "Sure!" he said and pointed out a building about a mile down the road, a rock shipper. We hooked to the trailer and went to scale it and it was 600 lbs over gross, so we returned to the shipper. After sending a Mac-50 and Mac-13 to *CSR. He got his customer service involved and after about an hour he had us pull into a dock to rework the load, removing a pallet from the center of the load. The load scaled fine after that.

Meanwhile when I mentioned that the first driver had quit after bringing the load back on the 2nd, he said, "Well that makes TWO of them!" He showed me the CAT scales from 12/29 at the Pilot in Denver and 1/2 at the TA in Denver. The driver on the 29th quit as well.

When we got to Denver I scaled the load at the TA to get a CAT scale ticket, then t-called the load. The gentleman at the dispatch window thanked me profusely for handling the load, he personally rejected both the t-call attempts as over weight.

Apparently the notion that you can ask a shipper if there is a scale nearby never occurred to the other drivers. Normally any shipper that sends out heavy loads will know of nearby scales, whether they are CAT scales or otherwise. There's really only one instance in my year and a half with Swift that I've run into a situation where there wasn't a scale within 75 miles of a heavy shipper.

Always ask.

 

I know that shipper well. They can be a royal PITA, especially if the product is going to Glister Mary-Lee. They can at times be worse then getting cans out of Golden as far as a Inspection on the trailer.

 

The heck of it is while I was in the office listening to the warehouse guy talk to customer service he was complaining that he had 16 pallets that he'd had to pull off of "domestic shipments". That means at 16 drivers that were overweight. They never reworked the load from either of the first two drivers, claiming they "didn't know how to slide their 5th wheel". My 5th wheel was already adjusted to pull maximum weight off the drives. Only by scaling locally, doing a Mac-22 and a Mac-13 to *CSR can you overcome that objection.

I also advised *CSR to add instructions to the local scale and advise the driver must scale locally before departing Rifle.

 

I'm at the Petro in Remington, IN.

Lepton1, thanks for the update and info.
Hopefully those instructions will be included from now on.
It's hard to believe someone would quit and abandon the truck just for that.


My current load is very tight on time.
Not running time, but hours on my 70. I only had about an hour leeway.
Had.
Black ice on I-65 slowed everything WAY down, along with a couple trucks and cars in the ditch. So I ended up running short on my 70 to make delivery today in Manteno, IL.
So I'll deliver it tomorrow morning, and hopefully the roads are a bit better when I head out. I'm not leaving until the sun comes up.
My next load picks up at Costco in Morris, but it has enough time that there should not be a problem.

 

I took one of those Morris loads the other day. I'm still trying to make it home, home time was supposed to start today. That Morris took me 700 miles out of my way heading east, so I could get stacked with a load heading west, where I live. I'm 700 miles from home and just ran out on my 70. So it's a 34, and then a day and a half of work, and then home for three days. Should be a huge paycheck lol.

I'm in the Denver terminal for my 34, I was hoping that when swift bought central that they would have a huge yard we could move to, but I guess not lol. Still I swear there's more room than the last time I was here.

 

At the Petro in Beaumont TX, heading for Kansas City in the morning.

Delivered my load from Cali to the consignee in Houston this morning down the street from the terminal. As I drove up it started pouring rain and getting colder by the minute. The security gal had the usual bad attitude and kept telling me the BOL looked "wrong" to her (the shipper was the same as customer). After getting soaked and going back and forth with this idiot I blew a fuse and told her either you accept it and let me in to drop this trailer or you stamp REJECTED on the BOL and print your full name on it with a date and I'll leave but I'm not standing out here getting jacked around in the pouring rain one minute longer!! She opened the gate and I did the drop. Needless aggravation plus no mty to leave with.

Went by the terminal and grabbed an mty and went to the shipper in Beaumont. This customer has fanatical security so it took a while to get in. Put my empty in a door for them and went hunting for my load. Turns out it's a POS old trailer and I had to fight the tandems, as usual. Plus..mac30 said the load was 25K lbs but it turned out to be 44K lbs. Fought the tandems again, in the pouring rain, when I scaled it at the Petro. Just been one of those days.

 

I was at the Denver terminal 10 days ago and while still crowded had the most room I've ever seen there. Looks like most of the red tagged/scrap trailers that were taking up room were finally removed. I was actually able to find a decent MT.

 

Personally I would have gone to the TA.
Better coffee, better food, better facilities...

 

That was the plan. Unfortunately slow going through Michigan and Illinois during the snow caused me to hit the terminal with 15 left on my 70. After the T-call I had 7 minutes. I still debated making a run for it haha. So now I'm parked bobtail watching tv for the weekend.