CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK THIRTY EIGHT​

Monday, September 15th through Sunday, September 21st ​

Well, my week of home time has come to an end and it's time to be a truck driver again. My previous week on the road had been a little disappointing due to a slowdown in freight around the Labor Day holiday and I was ever hopeful of better days to come. I arrived at my truck at 7am and put in my ready call and crossed my fingers. Fortunately there were a couple of empty trailers in the yard, that's one big hurdle. Next concern, after home time I never know if I will be dispatched on a hot load that has to go now and have me rushing around or if I will be dispatched on a load that doesn't pickup until the afternoon, thereby leaving me sitting in the back of a truck instead of at the house. It would be nice if I could call in and find out what they have to offer and plan out my departure from home, but that never seems to work for me, especially on a Monday morning.

I didn't have to wait very long to get my answer. A single load offer picking up anytime after noon in Nogales, AZ going to Ft. Smith, AR (1370mi). Not to bad at all, good miles, but it doesn't deliver until 5pm Wednesday. That's a little disappointing (OK, very disappointing) because I would be able to make it to my finial destination much earlier in the day. A delivery late in the day also greatly decreases my chances of getting a load out once empty, at least for the rest of the day. I guess I can always take a shot at delivering early.

I was also a bit annoyed once the load info came through. I had failed to notice that this was a two stop delivery. That explains the late delivery time. The first stop was scheduled for a few hours earlier. One good thing was that the two stops were in the same area, and the same customer, looks like two difference warehouses. That will improve my chance of getting unloaded a little earlier than originally planned.

I made it to the shipper by 11am and was assigned a door, but just because I arrived early didn't mean they would start to load me early. The load assignment said anytime after noon, and that's when they started loading me with no apparent urgency, I might add. Progress was slow, but I eventually headed on down the road with my 7000# load of electrical harness. I wasn't pressed to get anywhere soon, so I decided to make a short day of it and held up in Alamogordo for the night.

Tuesday was another day with no real urgency to it and I putted my way on down the road. I had planned on spending the night in OK city so I could spend some time in good ol' Bricktown. I still had a little time left on my log for the day, but due to my delayed delivery time I would be looking at about 15hrs of downtime before heading out in the morning and I didn't really relish the idea of sitting in a service plaza on the OK turnpike for that long. If I'm going to be sitting still for that much time I would rather be somewhere that offers some form of entertainment. This way I could at least catch a movie or a good meal. Although after my week at home, I really didn't need anymore heavy meals for awhile.

Wednesday was a late start. I had tried to call the consignee to inquire about an earlier delivery, but the number only got me an answering machine and I didn't want to take the chance of showing up early and being forced to wait. That would take a big chunk out of my 14hrs clock. I decided to take off at 11am and hope that I would be able to get a load out tonight. We have a couple of drop/hook customers in the area and I might still be able to make a good day of this, although it would mean driving well into the night. Something that I haven't had to do very much of lately.

I arrived an hour early and went about finding someone in charge of receiving. I also noticed at this time that there were two empty Crete trailers sitting in their yard. I was afraid of something like this. When I finally hunted down the person I need to talk to he told me to go ahead and drop the trailer in their yard and grab an empty. Oh, how I would have liked to do just that. But I had two PO's on this load and I told him that I was to deliver the other half of the trailers contents up the street to their assembly plant, (I was currently at one of their satellite warehouses). He shrugged his shoulders and said "alright, put it in any door and we'll get to you when we can". That's not something I ever want to hear. The wait wasn't as long as I had suspected and I was soon on my way to the next stop. I would be arriving more than 2hrs early, but I assumed it wouldn't be a problem.

What was a problem was finding the stupid place. Directions were less than accurate and after driving around for about 30mins I finally found it. It must have been almost a whole mile away from the first stop, to bad I had to drive over 10 miles to come to that conclusion. At least I was finally here and there were a large number of empty trailers sitting around which lead me to believe that I would be dropping this trailer. I went through the normal procedures with the guard and made my way to the shipping office.

The first question I get is, "why are you here with this product, it goes to the other warehouse?" I then go into the explanation that I had already been there and delivered half the load, now I was here with the rest of it, "see, here is the BOL with your address for the final drop." "That doesn't make any sense", he says and picks up the phone. Ten minutes later and it is confirmed, the rest of the load has to go back to my original delivery point. Oh, I'm starting to get a headache!

Back to the first stop I go, this time it takes almost 2mins to get there and it looks like another search is in order. There is only one guy that deals with receiving and he seems to have perfected the hide and seek thing. After 20mins of wondering the dark corners of the place I finally found him having a cigarette break with a co-worker. I started to explain my situation to him and he cut me off with a "Yeah, I figured the whole load was suppose to deliver here, I probably should have said something the first time you were here."

Oh my God! Where do these people come from?

He just tells me to head on back to the dock and they would unload me after they finished with the other truck. That truck took them a good 30mins and I once again backed up to the dock to finish the unload only to find myself once again waiting for someone to pull off the remaining 7 skids from my trailer. I was anxious to get going, and even though the unloading had yet to start I went ahead and put in my MT call and used one of the empty trailers on the lot as my new trailer. At least this way I could get the process going on my next load. If they insisted on putzing around too long in the warehouse I could simply leave my loaded trailer in the door and grab the empty trailer and be on my way, which is exactly what would have happened in the first place if I had known the whole load was going here. It's just one of those days.

My next load offer came in rather quickly and as I had hoped, it was a preloaded trailer sitting here in town. It was to pickup anytime today and deliver anytime before noon tomorrow in Amarillo (438mi). Not the longest run in the world, but I would be able to run it out as fast as I wanted, plus it was getting late and the noon delivery window was already getting tight.

The unloading process started just as I was getting my new load info and by the time I was finished writing it all down the trailer was empty. Since I had used one of the empty trailers on their lot in my MT call I went ahead and dropped my current trailer and grabbed the other one to keep things straight in the computer system without bothering dispatch. It had been a rather frustrating afternoon, what could have be a 15min drop/hook had turned into 2½hrs, but it was now behind me and I headed on over to my next PU.

My fun for the day had not yet come to an end, however. This was suppose to be a quick drop and hook, but when I went in to get the paperwork I was informed that the BOL # that I had was for a load that wasn't ready to go. They did let me know that they had a preloaded trailer going to Amarillo with a different BOL #. Well, I didn't really care what the BOL#'s were as long as it was going to the same place, but I didn't figure dispatch would have the same point of view so back to the truck I went to send a message explaining my situation.

Crete's system works very well when every thing is clicking, but once you throw a wrench into the works, well, not so much. The day crew was still in control, however, and I held out hope that this could be resolve relatively quickly. It better, that noon delivery window is getting real tight, I really need to get my butt on the road within an hour or so. It took about 30mins, but I finally got a response. My initial dispatch was cancelled and a new load plan was sent out to me and I was told to go ahead and pull the load that was ready to go. Sounded simple enough, right! I went inside to get the appropriate paper work and headed out to their back lot to get my preloaded trailer. Of course, it was nowhere to be seen. There were 4 other Crete trailers back there, but none of them matched my paperwork. I started to drive back to the front of the building when I noticed a yard jockey coming from the back side. I didn't think it could do any harm to check and drove in that direction. Sure enough, there sat my trailer in a dock door. I then looked in vain for a dock worker, no luck. The green light was flashing which usually signifies that it is OK to pull the trailer out, but some places get down right pissy about who can pull a trailer out of a door and I sure didn't want to rustle any feathers over such a thing. It's actually a rather sever safety issue in many plants.

So back to the shipper's office I go realizing that my delivery window is getting insanely tight. I know it wouldn't be a problem if I told dispatch the load would be a little late, but I would rather get it to where it needed to be without involving anyone else. Especially since it appears that I am just hauling back a load of specialized pallets that they use to transport material on. I have little doubt that this will simply be a drop/hook delivery once I get to where I'm going with no particular urgency to the actual delivery time. But it's in the Crete system to be there by noon and I would like to be able to do that.

After returning to the shipping office for the 4th time today, I confirmed that my trailer was ready to go and made sure I was allowed to pull it out. He says, "Sure, go ahead, I saw you walking around the trailer and making sure everything was safe. I figured you would have pulled it by now." I love the way everyone around here seems to communicate after the fact.

I finally found myself driving down the road. This was a relatively heavy load and felt that I needed to stop to scale it out and I would also have to get some fuel at the Pilot on my way through OK city (always a frustrating fuel stop). A quick check of my GPS and a mental calculation, "I might be able to pull into the customer's lot by 11:45 for my noon deadline.

I was trying to decide if I really needed to stop to scale out. This load was at 42,000# and I felt that I had the tandems in a good spot and really needed to save time. I was also not very likely to come across any open scales. Oklahoma wasn't likely to be open this time of night and Texas doesn't have any permanent scales along the way that I have to worry about.

After lamenting between my need to save time and desire to avoid the possibility of an overweight ticket I decided to pull into a truck stop in Roland, OK. I had a choice of two, the Shell or the Pilot. My truckstop book showed that they both had a scale and I opted for the Shell station knowing that scaling in a small Pilot is a pain in the backside. It's always such a hassle to deal with the traffic in a Pilot, especially the smaller ones when you are in a hurry. My choice of the Shell turned out to be a poor one. As I was pulling onto the rather dilapidated scale I notice a very thin yellow rope across the exit side. Apparently it was out of order and it didn't occur to them to put the rope up on the entrance to the scale. So I backed up, parked and ran inside for a quick McDonalds fix. I wasn't going to have time to stop for anything better and I was getting a bit hungry.

I had decided to take my chances by not scaling out with this load. I felt fairly confident that I was legal on all axels and even more confident that I wouldn't be crossing any open scales. I did, for a very short moment, consider crossing the 4 lanes of traffic to scale out at the Pilot, but a plumb of black smoke billowing up from what appeared to be the fuel islands made that decision for me. I've seen that kind of smoke before. It could only mean one thing. TRUCK FIRE! On a fuel island to top it off. The smoke was thick, but it was obvious that it was just getting started. I was thanking my lucky stars that I pulled into the Shell instead of the Pilot. I could only imagine the cluster F that was going on over there. I had barley been able to see any smoke as I pulled out onto the road, by the time I made it onto the Interstate the flames were clearly visible and the smoke was intense.

My only regret was that I wasn't able to snap a few pictures of the event. I was able to Google up a video of it that another driver posted on Youtube and pulled a couple of screen captures from it. I've included a link to the video if you want to check it out. The guy even caught a tire blowing out.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spyom7tGGTE


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I was amazed, even with all this going on and my warning that I was offering up on the CB, trucks were still pulling into the parking lot, completely oblivious to the inferno on the other side of the Pilot. I guess they assumed a funnel of black smoke going hundreds of feet into the air was a daily occurrence and nothing to be concerned about.

Thankfully, I had avoided getting caught up in that mess and I was once again on my way down the road. My stop at the Pilot in Oklahoma City was a hassle just as I figured it would be. Too many trucks and not enough pumps and it ended up taking me 25mins to get in and out. I was now on an extremely tight schedule without a minute to spare. I drove out the rest of my hours and put in for the night with 15mins left on my 14hrs. I had pushed my luck a little tonight. I was lucky to find a place to park at this time of night. It was after midnight and I kind of had to make a parking spot.

I started my Thursday 10hrs later. I had 72 miles to go and 75 minutes to do it. About 15mins after I started driving the Qualcom beeped with a message. I didn't have time to stop and read it, but I already knew what it said. Someone in the main office was shooting out a message asking if I was going to be on time. I managed to pull into the customers drive just before the noon deadline and contacted receiving on the CB. I wasn't surprise when they told me to sit tight. I had no doubt that this wasn't exactly a priority load before I arrived and sure enough, they were in no hurry to get it through the gate, but as long as I was able to show an on time delivery I was content.

I had also received a pleasant surprise that was out of the norm. Yesterday I had been sent a preplan to pickup a preloaded trailer from this customer once I had dropped this load. It's nice not having to worry about getting a load offer after being empty for a change. I let the customer know that I was dropping a load of pallets and picking up a load, but they wanted the pickup number for my next load. Well, I don't get that until I put in an empty call. I'm sure glad I was here on time! It took another 20 minutes before I was able to get the pertinent information and I was once again told to wait. This customer had a small lot and only allows 3 trucks in at a time and if those three trucks take their time, well I wait. I finally made my way through the gate about an hour after arriving and did a quick drop and hook and was on my way to Portland, ME (2035mi). In the words of Eric Cartman, "Sweeeeeeet".

This was the perfect load that would finish out an awesome week for me. As I was driving down the road I started planning out my days. If I put in 3 solid days of driving and didn't waist any time along the way I would be able to put in for a 34hr reset somewhere in the Connecticut or Massachusetts. The only problem is that it was an incredibly optimistic goal. So close as a matter of fact that I had to pull out the calculator and go through it a number a few times. Taking PTIs into consideration, along with the Pennsylvania and New York mountains that I would be pulling this 45,000# load over I was looking at three 11hr days with absolutely no stopping outside of fuel, and they would have to be quick ones. I might be able to fit in a 2-3 min stop each day at the most. If I failed to stay within these time constrains or hit a traffic backup along the way I would still be able to make my delivery on time without concern, but without the reset I would find myself unloaded in Maine with about 2hrs left on my 70. This would leave me stranded for another day before I could pickup another load, so off to the races it was. Runs like this really make me miss the lightning speed 65mph trucks of yesterday. That extra 3mph would have given me the extra hour that I sorely needed at this point. Anyone that says 3mph doesn't make a difference is wrong.

My next three days were on the verge of being ridiculous. Outside of my 10hr and 8min breaks for the night I drove 1900 miles after picking up my load with two 10min stops for fuel and a grand total of two additional stops of 2mins each. I usually drink a large amount of water and soda during any giving day, but I found that severely limiting my liquid intake made the extended periods between stops much more tolerable and I prepared meals during my breaks so that I wouldn't have to stop to eat. I could just reach into the cooler and feed myself on the fly. So went my Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

A little scenery from the trip.


I managed to pull into the Pilot in Sturbridge, Ma by the early evening of Saturday with just enough time to put in my reset. Mission accomplished! I don't mind pushing, but that was a little more pressure than I care to deal with.

Now that I was settled in for the weekend I finally found myself with all the time in the world. After being pinned up in the truck for the last three days I took the opportunity to get a little exercise and walked into town. It was about 4 miles away and made for a pleasant evening. The walk back that night was a little intense though, wow it gets dark on these backwoods roads without moonlight. It's the time of year up here when the weather is just about perfect and once I got away from the truckstop I found it to be a rather tranquil area. A little nature walk if you will.



Where's Froggy?




WEEK THIRTY EIGHT
Monday, September 15th through Sunday, September 21st
Miles include deadhead

Nogales, AZ to Fort Smith, AR...............................................1370mi
Fort Smith, AR to Amarillo, TX................................................438mi
Amarillo, TX to Sturbridge, MA.............................................1893mi

Total Paid Miles...................................3701 Miles

I still had the hours and ability to put in another 180 miles on Sunday and spend the night at the customer, but if I had done so I would not have been able to put in a 34hr reset and would have been force to sit for an extra day after my delivery before gaining back hours at midnight. With the reset in place I would be in a great position to run some great miles again next week!

Actual Miles................3760 Miles

3701 x .43 = $1591.43 plus $30 Drop pay

 

I'd like to thank SuperSnack, Redbeard and the others that have been keeping up with the questions posted in my absence. I've been a little preoccupied of late.

Havn't been having very good luck with the miles for the last couple of weeks either. I've been expecting a slow down and it looks like it is here, at least for me. I've been using every trick in the book and am still having a tough go of it. Almost every run I've gotten over the last two weeks has a rediculous amount of down time on it. I've managed to pull off some miracles to keep moving but I'm starting to see a lot of delays between deliveries and pickups. I'm currently sitting under a 750 mile run the doesn't deliver until Monday late morning and I repowered that from a driver Friday night after sitting all day Friday waiting for a load. This slow economy thing stinks.

Last week netted me 2900 miles and the week before was an awful 2500 or so. Still nothing to complain about I guess, but I'm used to running all the time and all of this sitting around is driving me nuts. I don't know how you guys that like to run like this can take it.

How's everyone else's miles, am I just hitting a bad stretch or are you all feeling the pinch?