Great Plains Transport - A company that cares about drivers... NO BS.

Pfffft..... the past few days have me wondering if I'm going to lose what's left of my sanity.....or if there is some kind of conspiracy to drive me insane before I can get home for that vacation.... which at this point has never been closer but now seems like any hope for it has been obliterated. Wound up going from 1 1/2 hours ahead of schedule to 15 minutes late getting into my delivery near the DFW area. It started out decent enough, stopped for a quick reefer fuel top-off and got to the routes I was supposed to jump off at... only to find they have been turned into toll roads!! On top of that Texas toll roads don't take the passes we have... I go to take another more direct state route... now that's also a toll road!!.. wth??? Also the only way to avoid that toll is to take the frontage road if highway 121 which serves as the "free" route... along with stop lights EVERY STINKING MILE. I wonder what idiot at TX DOT dreamed this idea up??? Also it didn't help that one of those stop lights decided to malfunction that day, staying red for 1/2 an hour. Luckily the receiver got me right in and I got unloaded quickly and was able to reload and park it nearby before my 14 went up. The big concern was they have me going clear out here to California delivering a week before my vacation start time 2800 miles away at home... and now this wonderful new Thermo King APU decides to take a ####.... I really hope dispatch doesn't screw my vacation up, especially since I already booked all the flights and hotel, etc,,, they screwed up nearly EVERY home request for the past year, despite my putting these requests in by the book. I really don't have all that much confidence in them to honor it, when I inquired if they are aware of my upcoming get home time before going to get this load I just got a curt "yes we know"... I swear they better not screw this up. As for the APU, the control won't work, just goes black instead of starting the engine... the dealer just did a reboot and fixed to botched installation of the Espar fuel pump. The unit worked great last 2 nights, and now when I shut off and when to run the AC, same thing....not too happy at this point.

 

Finally some light at the end of the tunnel... or I hope anyways....got into deliver, no load yet but got word that I will hopefully get a load going to the mid-west then bounce to home... hopefully by the 1st. Which will make it tight since my first plane takes off on the morning of the 2nd...

The other big question is this #### APU...

 

I am telling you. Book writing is in your future.

 

Lol maybe.....

Anyways, more progress. I let the TK place tear into the malfunctioning APU, half expecting a stay in a motel while they waited for parts and I wound up cancelling flights and stewing about a vacation trip cancelled.....not so fast. Of all things it was a stupid inline fuse!!! apparently the geniuses at Amarillo TK never bothered to check that little gem. Apparently it's somewhat of a common problem... either someone tightens down on the fuse block mounting bolt too much and it cracks the holder causing a poor connection, or as the mechanic told me, sometimes the fuse melts. Either way the little bugger causes a bunch of chaos to erupt in the motherboard, resulting in the APU acting screwy..also finally got me a load picking up in the AM heading east for Saturday... not quite home but close enough I can hopefully get something delivering near home. So I guess now I can sleep easier....I hope.

 

Hope everything goes well for you. I Got my home time load to dfw area for this weekend so I Can go to six flags for Halloween.

 

I just came off home time had a blast

 

Well.... now it's crunch time and not sure because of getting delayed by this Ohio receiver....pushed it in here early after I got a preplan, was told this was a 24 hour receiver and have 7 trucks ahead of me... unfortunately my preplan told me to get into the next shipper by 2 pm and it'll be a work in.... when I get her about it that's also all the info I got. finally got a hold of the broker and found out the actual pick up time was....6 am???? I can guarantee if this goes south and I wind up cancelling all the plans, flights, and losing the money I invested on this vacation, I'll be having a talk with higher-ups about this dispatcher, (one of the younger ones) since she has screwed me over many times in the past. I'm not ready to give up on this company, but things are getting sloppy again after the last few months of improvement. As of right now in the past 12 months I've only had a couple of home requests that didn't get messed up,,, it's usually when I have something specific. I've been making the requests exactly as I was supposed to even 2-3 days ahead of whatever event I have. Obviously they don't guarantee it because of things happening beyond anyone's control, but when it's repeatly screwed up and I find things were changed without my notice, there needs to be some improvement. The last 3-4 months were an improvement but it seems to be slipping again.

 

Believe I'd park it at a truck stop and rent a car or get a flight home before I threw away money on the vacation

 

@Anonymousproxy thats meesed up whas your vacation overseas

 

It is, but looks like I managed to get things back on track...was nearly out of my 14 when I got to the shipper, but they allowed me to stay there until I had hours again. No way was I going to give up on this yet lol