CRETE - A Year in Review

2008​

WEEK TWENTY TWO​

Monday, May 26th through Sunday, June 1st


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My 5 days and 6 nights of hometime was absolutely wonderful (with the exception of the new hole in my mouth, finally got that pesky wisdom tooth yanked yesterday) and although I would have liked to spend a little more time out of the truck I needed to get back on the road and make some money. As is a common problem around this country at the moment, we don't seem to be having much luck selling our house in NC and it looks like we are going to need some cash for another down payment. Such is life.

Well, it's Thursday and home time has once again faded away into a memory, I'm back in the truck and ready to roll. Now that I am taking hometime in Phoenix I am looking forward to a nice long run straight back to the eastern side of the world. There is always the chance that I will be stuck with an LA turn and all the traffic hassles that go with it but I hope for the best. Actually, my biggest concern is that it is now Thursday and I could very easily get a load that picked up today with a Monday delivery, leaving me stuck in the back of the truck for a good portion of the weekend. That's that last thing I need right after hometime.

I let dispatch know I was ready to go and received a single load offer in quick order. As I feared; a good mileage load with a horrible delivery time. I was to pickup a load of insulation in Eloy, AZ and deliver it to Kansas City, KS (1374mi) on Sunday morning (holy crap, that's over 3 days). It was a short lived panic though because it was an open delivery window, meaning a drop and hook and I knew that I would be able to get it there by Friday night. I would be out of hours for the most part by the time I got there, but I could spend the night at our terminal and be ready to go Saturday morning. KC is a great freight base for us and I had high hopes of a good load out.

The other concern I had about this load was related to the PU time. Here I am, in PHX at 8am and this load has an appointment time of 3pm. I'm only 65mi away and if I start out now and try to get loaded early I will run out a large portion of my 14hr clock if I have to wait until my appointment time. However, if I wait until my appointment time I will be driving long into the night and will have to stop before using it all anyway so I wasted an hour or so getting everything situated in the truck and decided to head on down to Eloy.

I arrived at 10am to find another Crete driver just pulling out of the dock. He stopped to chat for a bit and I was encouraged when he told me that he had a 1pm appointment but was able to get loaded early. Looks good for me. He was also coming off of home time this morning and wasted no time in telling me that he got a great 2500+mi run going to NY. I don't know if that constitutes good luck, but I'll give it to him. I also found out he was in the process of moving to eastern NC. He thought a house trade would be a good idea, too bad his house was 50mi outside of PHX.

As hoped, I was allowed to PU my load early. It was a live load and took a couple of hours but I was rolling by noon and intent on making it to Tucumcari before my day was over so that I would be able to make it to KC by Friday night with a little time left on my clock to allow for another PU should a load be available. The days drive was relatively uneventful and I was thoroughly enjoying a very strong tail wind. It's nice to get a little push for a change; sure makes for great fuel mileage.

I did make it to Tucumcari around midnight local time and had no time left on my log. I didn't think I would have much luck finding a parking spot at the Loves or J and decided to stop at the old Shell TS. I knew that it was no longer open for business, but it is out of the way and not many drivers venture that way these days. I arrived to find one truck in the entire lot and found myself a nice quiet spot under the fuel island canopy so that the sun wouldn't heat up the trucks interior in the morning and shut down for the night just as a nasty little storm started to blow through. The temperature went from 82 to 68 in a matter of minutes and the intense wind gusts made for a nice rocking motion that put me to sleep almost instantly.

Friday morning was a late started because I had to drive so late into the night. It's definitely a bit of a pain when you wake up at 6am and have to sit around for 4 hours to complete a break. Especially when you are sitting in the middle of a defunct businesses parking lot with absolutely nothing to do. I guess I could always work on updating this posting.

Once I was able to get going I made my way across the wonderful Hwy 54. It's a very annoying stretch of two lane highway across the pan handles of TX and OK and on through KS that has an endless line of cars driven by locals that are in no hurry to go anywhere. Even though the speed limit is 65mph most of the way, I am seldom able to maintain that speed and passing options are few when you are in a loaded truck. Another obstacle that is becoming far more common on these two lane roads is the O/O drivers out here who are driving 55-58mph in an effort to conserve fuel. These drivers may be troublesome when trying to get around them on the interstates, but they are an unbearable road block on these back roads. There is almost no way to get around them and for some reason they don't feel any need to display any degree of professional courtesy and pull over occasionally (there are ample opportunities as one passes through a number of small towns along the way) to let the line of 20+ vehicles behind them pass.

I finally made it to KC with my load around 10pm and went to the address provided to me. What I found was a locked door and no one around. Now, this load was originally set to delivery Sunday morning after 7am. I was lead to believe that this was going to be a drop and hook, but it was looking like I would have to wait until the morning to get my paperwork signed. I made one more pass around the building and found a note taped up inside a window a few steps away from the receiving door that showed directions to another warehouse in the event of after hour business. I guess that's where I need to go. The directions weren't exactly clear and I drove past my destination a couple of times looking for a truck entrance. I turned out that I needed to park along the street and take a fairly long walk to a not so well marked entrance, but I finally tracked someone down and got them to sign my BOL.

The next ordeal was talking them out of an empty trailer. They were low on trailers and were reluctant to cough one up but eventually released one to me. I had a feeling I would be pulling a loaded trailer out anyway and told them I probably wouldn't be taking it out anyway. Sure enough, after putting in an MT call I was giving a two load offer. One picked up the next morning and was going to TN and the other was a D/H PU from the very place I was sitting and going to the Dallas area (517mi) and was a D/H delivery by Monday. The TX run was a bit shorter but the D/H on both ends meant I could get it there early tomorrow evening (two days early) and have plenty of time to get started on my next load.

I actually had another 1½ hrs of drive time left in the day and considered driving out so that I would have more time available to me after my delivery, but there was parking available to me here and I knew I would be hard pressed to find parking on the back roads of Kansas (another day of two lane routing laid ahead) so I put in for the night.

Saturday was another late start due to running later into the night than I usually care to and outside of a quick stop for fuel I drove straight through to my delivery south of Dallas. My drop and hook went quickly and I put in my MT call and preyed that I didn't get a crappy short run that delivered Monday morning. Always a strong possibility after a weekend delivery.

Unfortunately, that is just what I ended up with. I was even given a choice of two loads that picked up in the same place with a note that said sorry, but this is all they had available at the moment. This of course was total BS, I know because the shipping clerk here had just asked me if I was taking one of the 6 preloaded trailers that they had sitting in their lot. The fact was that dispatch had two horrible loads that no one would take and time was running short on getting them out. Lucky me.

One of the loads was going to Houston (344mi) with a 00:30 delivery time on Monday morning and the other going was headed to AR (380mi) with a 03:00 delivery. Both were crap loads with horrible PU times. Based solely on parking options I went with the Houston load. The AR load was headed to an area with no options I was aware of and the hour constraints I was looking at required me to park very close to my customer to avoid potential logging violations. This was a customer I had been to 4 other times and each time took 5+hrs to get loaded plus this customer was out in the middle of nowhere and there was no parking available in the area. The appointment time to PU was also setup in such a way that I had just enough time to get there tonight, but the appointment time was 6am the next day. With no on site parking, that wasn't an option. If I drive part of the way and take my 10hr break at a truckstop I wouldn't be able to get there until 8am (therefore late). Dispatch had told me it would be OK to PU the load late, but I knew if I did that I would be put on standby and they would leave me sitting until they could fit me in. This would make it impossible to make my delivery on time. Fun all around on this one.

After mulling it around for awhile I figured I could put in an 8hr sleeper berth and take advantage of the extended sleeper berth provision. Once I got to the shipper I would be able to finish my required break time while I was being loaded and would have enough time to make it to Houston if I was loaded in a reasonable amount of time. If I have to sit around for 5-6 hrs again I was going to be in bad shape. One of the headaches of running legal. I was going to get all the rest I needed, but fitting it into a legal log was going to be a headache. The one thing I had going for me was this load was going to a Costco store and I had permission to park on property, this would allow me to take my break there and not worry about showing up late if the loading process took too long. Regardless of what happens, I was looking at a very messed up sleeping schedule.

Upon arrival at the shipper on Sunday morning just in time for my 6am appointment I was please to find that I had a preloaded trailer. This feeling was quickly followed by frustrations because I could have put in a full 10hr break because I didn't have to be there at 6am. Dispatch had told me I could arrive late, but never bothered to tell me it was a preloaded trailer. To top it off, I was out of hours due to my sleeper berth extension and now had to spend two hour sitting before I could legally drive again. This problem was solved by a dirt lot that we are apparently now allowed to park in. Last time I was here they chased me out, but someone in the company must have made a deal with them because there was a number of Crete trucks taking their break there. All this information would have been very helpful to know in advance.

I had put in very little sleep the night before and I had a little extra time so I took a 3hr nap and then drove the entire 220 remaining miles of my trip in on shot. How exhausting!

So here I sit in a Costco parking lot at 2pm with a midnight delivery. It's only 90+° with a humidity level that is less than pleasant and a new idle policy that doesn't exactly fit well into this scenario. I made one attempt at arranging an early unload (I knew this to be a futile attempt) and spent the better part of the afternoon wondering around various stores in the area. Best Buy can keep me busy for hours. I knew I would be unloading in the middle of the night and probable get an early morning PU so I tried to get a little sleep but that was all but impossible. I ended up catching a couple of movies online and checked in at 10pm when the crew arrived at the store. She told me park outside (I didn't bother telling her I have already been here for 8hrs) and they would let me know when they were ready for me. The fact that they had 5 dock doors and each one had a trailer parked in front of it and no trucks to be seen was not an encouraging sight. After an hour or so of banging around in the docked trailers someone came out and told me I could put my trailer in a door if I would move a couple of trailers for them. What ever it takes is my motto and I pulled three trailers out for them and put mine in. This is turning into a very long sleepless couple of days.




WEEK TWENTY TWO RESULTS
Monday, May 26th through Sunday, June 1st
Miles include deadhead


Eloy, AZ to Kansas City, KS...................................................1374mi
Kansas City, KS to Waxahachie, TX..........................................517mi
Hawkins, TX to Houston, TX....................................................344mi


Total Paid Miles..................................2235 Miles (short week Thu - Sun)

Actual Miles....................2226 Miles

2235mi X .42 = $938.70 (not bad for 3½ days of driving I guess)

 

Knighton5 wrote:

Yeah, I'm due in 900 miles. I think I'll wait and see how long it takes someone to send me a message to let me know I'm past due for my A service. I'm hoping I can push off the inevitable for a couple of weeks.

The day I consider this job work I'll start looking for something else to do. I still look at it as a past time that I get paid for. I used to work for a living, now I just sit on my butt all day.

vols021 wrote:

I haven't heard of a solid date yet, but we were told that the trucks are currently rolling off the production line and I've heard rumors that there are a large number of Crete Red trucks sitting outside of Freighliners production plant. I hope so, I can't wait for that APU. I'm so excited about getting a Microwave. It's the simple things that make me happy.


Lostboy wrote:

This is highly irregular with regards to Crete payroll. I watch mine extremely closely and have only had one minor $30 issue that was cleared up with a phone call. This is the general consensus of every Crete driver I have ever talked to regarding payroll. Not knowing any of the facts associated with your troubles I don't want to point fingers but it seams very odd that you are the only one that ever brings up payroll issues, you seem to be having one hell of a unlucky streak. I truly hope that your problems are cleared up soon. There is nothing worse than working all week and not getting a paycheck at the end of the week.

Please keep us updated on this one.

 

Yup, afraid so. I am assuming that they want you to run with a trainer because you have been on a dedicated run. It's not really considered OTR to them because you are not dealing with the same situations that a irregular route drivers does. They will want you to put some time in with a trainer, not to teach you to drive, they know you can do that, but to make sure you can deal with the new regiment. They will also want to make sure you can deal with the strict log requirements that Crete imposes. If you can put up with it for a few weeks you will be in good shape here. It's a great company for the most part.

You will have to get used to being more of a number though. I too worked for a smaller company before coming here. It was nice to be know by name but the paychecks just were not cutting it. I'll take my number and $25k payraise. At least they leave me alone and let me do my job. I sure can't say that they micro manage.