My Truck, My Choice, Out of Denver, Colorado

It helped that I got out of Denver for $1.23 per mile. The $300 in detention pay showing pending on this week's settlement bumped that rate up. Otherwise, I would be $300 shorter on the weekly total.

 

OK, so since I last wrote I drove up into IN and parked at the welcome center on I74. I got to my delivery in Lafayette by 630am and they had me unloaded by 715am. I drove the 2 hours or so to Decatur, IL for my next load that was supposed to be a D/H. The adventure begins.

I got to the shippers facility and dropped my MT trailer like I was instructed to in the load assignment in a drop lot about 1 mile from the pick up point. The drop lot had several MT SNI trailers in it so I knew I was in the right place. Got my MT dropped and went to the shipper. After going to the wrong place, even though the address was what was listed in the load assignment, I got the the right place and was told my load wasn't loaded because they didn't have any MT trailers. Ummm WHAT? I told them I dropped my MT in the drop lot right next to a ton of MT SNI trailers. They just kind of looked at me and told me I would have to be live loaded and that they were really busy. You know, if they were too busy to load my trailer, that's fine, but I really HATE BEING LIED TO! Just tell me you blew off my load. At least then you are being honest. Don't tell me it's because you don't have any MT trailers when I know you have a pile of them!

Anyway, they told me I could go get an MT and they would put me in a door to get loaded as soon as they could, or I could wait for a hostler to go get an MT. Duh! Wait for a hostler? Nope! I ran back over to the drop lot and got my old trailer back because I knew it was in decent condition and ran back to the shipper. I was told to wait along the building and they would call me when a door was available. OK, no problem. 3 hours later, problem! I walked back to the guard shack and they called shipping and the guards told me I was next, as long as a truck with an appointment didn't show up. Umm, What? My trailer was supposed to be loaded and ready to go hours ago!

I finally got into a door and got rolling about 6 hours after I got to the shipper. Dumb! I was planning to get a reset in VA after delivering this load and before picking up the next. That isn't going to happen now. Oh well. I got close to Indianapolis and stopped for the night. This morning I drove down through KY and over into WV. I stopped at the Pilot in Nitro around 1pm and called it a day. I could get alot closer, but what's the rush now. I won't have the time to reset and I have until tomorrow night to deliver this load, only 5 hours away. I'll get it delivered tomorrow by early afternoon and drive the 90 miles or so to Lynchburg, VA for my early Monday morning pickup.

My Monday load goes to Zanesville, OH, then I have a 1pm pickup Monday near Columbus, OH going to Rockford, IL.

On a side note, I have had all live loads/unloads since I left Denver on Monday. (I actually left Tuesday morning, thanks Coors!)

Are we there yet?

 

I'm not sure what I have, but it picks up in Dallas on Monday and delivers on a Wednesday morning at 7am. I already booked my loads through February 4th.

Edit: I looked, I have Nestle stuff.

 

Well, I got down through WV and VA yesterday and delivered to the Walmart in Gordonsville around 10am. Then I drove to Lynchburg expecting to have to wait until this morning to get my load, but the maintenance guys at the shipper told me it was ready and they went to the shipping office and gave me the paperwork for it and I was on my way. I made it up to the Beckley service plaza on the WV turnpike for the night. This morning I started up I77 towards my delivery in Zanesville and ran into ice and snow as I entered OH. By the time I got to Zanesville it was pretty miserable. Snow packed roads, even I70. I delivered and headed towards Columbus for my 1pm live load and by the time I got about 20 miles from Columbus the snow was gone from the roads and it was just wet and messy. My load took until about 3pm and I got to the Pilot at the 10 mile marker almost to IN. No rush tomorrow either, I only have about 7 hours to my delivery in Rockford, IL. I'll probably stop through the OC in Gary to grab some more trip sheets and stickers. They didn't give us many at orientation.

 

Today I drove to Rockford, IL, stopping at the Gary OC for about 30 minutes on the way. I got my delivery done by 1pm and stopped at the Flying J in South Beloit about a half an hour later. I have about 175 miles to my pick up in De Pere, WI tomorrow at Noon. It's a big deadhead, but even with the DH miles, the load pays $1.46 for all miles for 1367 miles down to TX. Not awesome, but I need to get to TX so I can get home to Denver! I'm looking forward to sleeping in a bit tomorrow morning.

 

Doing well. (As I knock on the fake wood dash!) I still worry that the DPF emissions stuff might screw me sometime, but for now, she seems to be working as advertised. She also seems to pull pretty well as I had those heavy loads into and out of VA.

 

Better person to ask would be DFO or maybe TennMan. I got my truck from Lone Mountain Truck Leasing, not Schneider. As for what is better, it depends on your situation. If you have money saved up for a down payment and maintenance, you could go the route I went with a used truck and a lower payment, but you need to be ready for the truck to break down. I would say about $15k would be good to start with. That's about what I had and used part of it for the down payment and the rest is ready for the breakdown that will happen sometime. You can go with a gently used or new truck from Schneider and probably be pretty safe breakdown wise, at least you have some items under warranty, but you would still have to have money saved to cover fixed expenses and your personal income while the truck was in the shop. Others here with a lot more experience can comment better than I can on the Schneider side of things.

As for income after expenses, that all depends on the driver. The difference between getting a truck from Schneider and one from Lone Mountain is about $550 a week. If you can put $7k down, you will OWN the truck in about 3 1/2 years. It will be a used fleet truck, mine came from Swift, but it's still a good truck that I got with about 465k miles on it.

Again, as to income, everyone will be different. I will post some numbers here at the end of the month, but YOUR income will be different than mine. I value hometime over money, so I run a few weeks and I'm going home for 6 days. That's the beauty of the Choice Program. You can run it how you want. Because of where I live, I need to work harder to get home and out of the house than some drivers, but again, every situation is different.

My fixed expenses are about $525. So everything I earn after that is my income, minus fuel and 15 cents per mile I put in my maintenance fund. This week I'm on track for about $4100 in revenue, so I should see about $1800 after everything comes out, including 20% for Taxes that I put in a separate savings account.

If I only run one trip going home, my revenue would be about $1200, depending on where I get the load from, so that week, I would only put $350 or so in my personal account. (If I had a truck from Schneider, I would be negative.) But, the weeks I run hard bring the average up to around $900, but, I like being home, that's my Choice.

Maybe some other driver can jump in here, but my limited experience says every situation is different. If you want to earn the same or even a little better (a lot in some cases) than a company driver, have control over where you run, when you go home, and for how long, the Choice Program might be for you. Just remember, you will earn more, but you will have a lot more skin in the game. High Risk = High Reward.