Finally got my own truck

About greasing. Yes I want to grease my truck. Since the Speedco wouldn't do the oil change, I'll take it up to Graff Volvo in Flint that's nearby the house and have them do it. I just wonder how much it will be? Speedco wanted $259 for the full PM and that's with the regular Rotella 15w40. I wanted the T5 which is the 10w30 and they want another $50 for it. So $309+ whatever tax.

Since I just had them do everything else they normally do besides the oil and filter change, it was $70.

I would grease my trucks every week if I knew where to grease. How do you grease the U joints? Just stick the gun where it spins and squeeze it in there? Or are there designated fittings where you shoot it in with the grease gun? I haven't looked that closely at it all.

What kind of grease do you recommend? I read something about Shaeffers grease, supposed to be really good.

 

And about the negativity going on, I wish it would stop. No bickering back and forth, please.

If you got $3.25/mi from say Chicago to Orlando, and you deadheaded 900 miles into southern IL, you're an idiot. Sure the very good rate down there paid for it, but you could have gotten another $900 for the trip! So not only did you lose out on $800-$900, but you wasted a day and probably a half, if you could have gotten reloaded the same day you unloaded.

It costs me $1500 a week to operate for the weeks that I operate, with my weeks off figured into that, so that my 7 weeks off per year are free. And then on top of that, I have fuel, and then my boss' 12%. So normally costs me about $2800/week to operate. That's with $200/week put away for maintenance expenses.

If I did 3,000 miles for a week, I would have to gross $3,200 to break even with no pay to myself at all.

EDIT: Now if I wanted to hire someone to drive this, on a W2, and I paid them $60,000/year average, it would cost $75,000 with employment taxes, workman's comp, etc etc.

So add another $1,500 a week onto that, and I get a total cost of about $1.60 to break even.

 

Didn't mean to personally call you an idiot.

It just seems like a wasted opportunity to add more revenue. But I guess if you found that the time involved and the extra fuel burned wouldn't justify going back empty, and the time saved helped you to get another good reload for good paying freight, then I suppose it would work.

On the surface, it just seems stupid to drive empty all that way without bringing in any revenue. It would be something I would be afraid to do, to drive empty 900 miles. $300 in fuel.

If I had emptied out early in the morning, or knew that my appt was early, then I suppose I would have my dispatcher find me something the day before to get me out asap. But if say my appointment was mid-late afternoon, and my chances of getting a reload were not as good, then I suppose rate down there would have to reflect that wasted day, and it would probably be a good idea to drive the rest of the day empty and save time to get reloaded the next morning in a better area. I don't think in that situation I would be too afraid to deadead 300-400 miles. Depends on if I drove some miles that morning to get to customer, or whether I slept that night near customer and had to sit there half the day waiting to be unloaded.

And that's another point I was thinking about. Let's say your appointment is noon. You get up at 7am after your 10hour break and drive to customer, hoping the appt is actually just FCFS or they can get you early. You get there at 8am and they don't take you early, so you have to sit there until noon, then 2 hours to unload. So on your clock, you have 7 hours of your day already gone. On e-logs, that's just wasted time - can't get it back, can't tear out your log page and make it look like you started your day at 11am. So it's either you have to charge for that half day wasted, which turns your $1200, 500 mile one day load, into a 2 day load. Are you gonna ask for an extra $1,000 for the day? You aren't gonna get it - are you gonna be able to get another load that goes any kind of distance with only 7 hours left on your clock? No. You're screwed.
You have to NOT attempt to deliver early, and HOPE they get you unloaded quickly enough that you can feasibly get a reload that same day and still have hours to run. And then you end up ending your day at 1am and there's no parking, and worse yet, you can't start the next day until 11am, because your 14 was used up.

Either you get unloaded early and get reloaded asap, or we will end up with so much wasted time that it's going to ruin a lot of people. The mega carriers all they have to do is find a driver close by and swap trailers.