The Food Service Rant thread

Bid week here, too. Somebody decided it's best to route at the corporate level, so every bid got completely torn up. Every bid I thought I wanted was gone when it got to me. Lots of drivers doing things I never thought would happen. I ended up with a cushy bid, but not the days I wanted. Weekends for me for about six months.

On another note, I have a brand new trailer on its maiden voyage today. We got two new ones delivered this week, and I think somebody wants my input. First air ride trailers we've had since I've been around.

The only negative is the Hendrickson suspension doesn't allow for a ramp carrier in the back, so it's a midship mounted folding ramp. Mixed feelings on those.

The TK President is amazingly quiet. I opened the doors when I got to my hotel, and it looks like a common rail fuel system with automotive type fuel injectors, like just about every diesel these days. It was a bit unnerving, because I couldn't hear it running as I was driving.

 

That's far and away from the old school super IIs

 

If it says whisper edition on the front of it i know it's gonna roar all day and leak like a sieve out of the condenser lol

 

So you have pulled a GFS trailer before!

 

Sometimes it's like it's raining in the trailer.

 

We are getting a lot better trailers but we still have a few that are 20+ years old and have been road hard. They say that they will be put out to pasture soon but they keep coming back like an old stray dog you feed once lol

 

Yeah they keep saying that about are cornbinders, but they still keep using them as spares although I don't really care that much I have for the most part a decent assigned truck although I'm scared to see what happened to it this week while I was on vacation, however I'm fortunate my truck is one of the better one's GFS didn't keep the cornbinders around very long they didn't really like International of course were almost 100% Volvo and from what they say and I know it's true because Russian Rabbit has said it, GFS has been having trouble with the Volvo's almost as much as they were with the Internationals, I guess it's time to go back to the old Ford L9000s. Our trailers are usually pretty decent the thing with us is the newer divisions have a monopoly on all the new trailers and our division pretty much for a while we were like a modern day railroad totally starved for power, but 14 new tractors did show up, however now dispatch says were getting a little tight on 28' trailers and they haven't put a 28' trailer out to pasture in a long while I think there's 1 at the warehouse that they are not running any more, but we have a lot of older units and besides a couple and I mean a couple of 2016 50ft trailers which do not really mean a thing to me, my divisions trailer fleet has been pretty stagnant and I don't see that changing.
I know for a while the division was just barely getting by with the few 50ft trailers they had and now there running tight on 28' I know there are a couple new 50fts, but have not seen any new 28' trailers and probably won't.

Although we do have enough converter dolly's they have pleanty of those at the warehouse. The normal one's to for a long time GFS had this strange tandem axle converter with a single wheel on each axle so instead of a dually it was two axles with one wheel on each axle on each side here's a picture:
This picture was a promo shot taken circa 1992 this was back in the old days when the trucks were registered in Michigan this was probably one of the first trucks with the new GFS logo at the time which they just got rid of that logo end of 2014. See 1992 was the start of the transition year the Yellow Ford L9000s were being repainted white and the old style tandem axle pup trailers were on the way out:

This photo was taken sometime in the early 1980s if I had to guess that's def a Ford L9000 they had those trucks for a very long time pretty much the 60's, 70's, 80's and then the 1990's was the transition to the Volvo's. Of course there was the Sterling Era of 2003,2004 and 2005 which is now long over and I think most of those are gone from the fleet now they were not very popular with the drivers or the shop.

Any how that converter dolly those are not dual those are single tires on a single rim. GFS had that style of converter dolly from the 1960s till the present however most of them are gone now, but from what I heard there's probably a few still floating around in Michigan.

I've asked this question on here a million times and that strange old style tandem axle single tire convert I don't really know what the purpose of it was, I'm thinking weight distribution that's all I can think of. Another thing is being a Michigan outfit Michigan has different weight laws compared to Indiana, Ohio and IL so that also has something to do with it. The tandem axle pups were also strange however I think what happened was the DOT started cracking down real heavy on bridge formulas and stuff and the tandem axle pups quickly disappeared in the early 1990s. Technically this model is incorrect:

Those trailers are each missing a set of axles and that wheeler also needs another set of axles to make it true to 1985.

 

On sales service that is generally the case, although GR has a rebid system where they bid out individual days instead of week-long schedules, so the more senior guys can custom make a schedule. Pros and cons to that I suppose. But chain bids whenever there is significant business pickup/loss or a drop yard opens up. All three of those things happen a lot down in Atl, so we're having another rebid sometime next month. And corporate did the routing, and the TM gets to play legos with the routes corporate built to make the week-long schedules. Nobody is all that pumped. Rumor is only 2 5 days routes and every one else is going to be on 4 days. That would be fine if we actually had a ton of cases on the truck, but we have no such thing.

 

Our chains in "The Valley" are all 4 day. I know chain business is all up down and all around. It seems like some come and go pretty quick while others stay for a while.

 

Hi everyone! How are you all this evening?
Well sad to report my vacation has come to an end.
But the flip side is I get to go to work tomorrow! It'll be alright LOL! 15,000lbs tomorrow and I then I have another week off after this one or something like that early October and then it's going to be a long long long long while before I have any more time off. Well the year will end will have to put in for time off and then they redo the vacation schedule.

Anyhow good vacation by my standards I guess. I got the roof of my truck painted and Maaco our Maaco did a heck of a job will see how it holds, up but very pleased with the job I got out of them.

Then also got the ball rolling for mortgage pre-approval so that's important too, looked at some houses today which I do every Sunday, there was one alright one I saw today the rest kind of stunk.
So what ever anyhow back to the grind stone tomorrow or as 21 Pilots said "Wake up you need to make money."