CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK FOURTYTWO​

Monday, October 13th through Sunday, October 19th​

Although I had to take an unwanted 34hr reset to finish off last week, it afforded me the chance to visit family while I was in the area so it wasn't a total loss and I had a fresh 70hrs available for the week that followed.

I was still under dispatch on last weeks load and had a 05:00 appointment time first thing Monday morning. I headed on over at 4am in the hopes of getting the unloading process started a little early. I had hoped it would be a drop/hook, but I had stopped by on Saturday when I pulled into town and knew that there were no Crete trailers on the lot, live unload it is. When I arrived I found two other Crete trucks had beat me there. One was in the door with his 4am appointment and the other truck was a 6am appointment. He wasn't happy to see me pull in because it meant that he would have to wait for is set appointment.

The fork lift operator was aware of the fact that he had a truck scheduled at the top of each hour and made no attempt to speed up the process. He managed to time it out perfectly so that I backed into the dock at my appointed time and pulled out empty with just enough time left for the next truck to do likewise. It's interesting that I was loaded with the 7 rolls of paper in less than ten minutes at the shipper, but some how it takes almost a full hour to take the same 7 rolls off. Must have been a union shop!

The empty call went in and I had a single load offer within short order. It was a healthy deadhead trip down to Kansas City and then on to Columbus, MS (873mi). The P/U was a live load and I was looking at a few hours of downtime if I showed up as scheduled and hoped that if I pulled in a few hours early I might be able to get loaded. Never hurts to try and I pointed the truck southward.

The early arrival worked out to my advantage and I was assigned a dock door and the loading commenced and ended in a very timely manner. I was ready to get this load to where it needed to be, but once again I was under a load that had a ridicules delivery time attached to it. It was now late morning Monday and I had 690 miles to go with an 8am Wednesday delivery time. Well, I'll be there by 8am alright, on Tuesday. There is no possibility of a Tcall because we have no terminals between here and there. This is also a live unload, so an early drop/hook delivery is out of the question, but the BOL shows that this load is going to a small local business as opposed to some Big Box warehouse type of place. So I hoped that I would be able to find a little flexibility when I get there a day early and head that way. Once again, I had considered calling the customer to request an earlier delivery time, but it's much easier to say no over the phone than it is face to face and decided to take my chances, the worst thing that could happen would be to have them ask me to come back the next morning. I can't really see that happening and wasn't too worried about it.

I pulled into the customer's yard at 8am, one day early and they didn't even flinch about my early arrival. Business as usual and I was unloaded within the hour and waiting for my next load offer. The wait was once again a short one and a single load offer. Live load not to far away going to Columbus, OH (698mi). Good miles, but they did it to me again. Another stupid delivery time that will have me sitting on my butt for over 30hrs. It is now Tuesday and this load has a 3pm delivery on Thursday and like the last load, I should have it there by 8am the day before that. This is also a live unload destine for a Big Lots warehouse, so an early delivery is out of the question. At least this time around it's going to a place that happens to have a Crete terminal close by and I prey for a Tcall. As long as I don't dilly dally around and get there early enough in the morning I don't see how they could refuse the request. If however, I take my time and pull into town midday there would be a much greater chance of being refused.

I arrived at the shipper in the middle of nowhere Mississippi to find what looked like a bunch of large, run down, tin cover shacks and was sure I was in the wrong place, but as it turned out I was where I needed to be. Definitely not what you would call modern facilities, but they were turning out their American made furniture. What do you know, there is actually some manufacturing going on in the fine country.

When I pulled in there was another truck that had just beat me to the punch. I would have to wait for them to load him first and was told it would take about 1½ hrs (45mins to load and they had a 1hr lunch break coming up). Yup, that's 1¾ hrs, but this is Mississippi so I can't really hold it against them. They eventually got me into a door and loaded and I was ready to go after spending 3 hrs there. It could have been worse, while I was waiting for my turn three more trucks pulled in behind me and they were running at a pace of about one truck per hour. Sure am glad I pulled in when I did.

That little delay had put me a bit behind schedule, but I was still on pace to make it to our Columbus yard before noon tomorrow. I drove out the rest of my hours for the day and started my Wednesday as soon as I could so that I would have a fighting chance at a Tcall. I had a little over 300 miles to knock out and was able to pull into Columbus by 11am and put in my request along with an offer to shag a load if they needed help.

The reply that greeted me was, "Ok to Tcall, what empty trailer do you have?" Alrighty then, that's what you would call a mixed bag of good and bad news. Good news; I'm going to be able to get out from under this load, so I won't have to sit around all day waiting to deliver tomorrow afternoon. Bad news; I've already done a lot check and there isn't an empty trailer in sight. I informed dispatch of my little predicament along with an offer to re-power any load that was sitting in the yard.

There were a number of preloaded trailers in the yard that had been Tcalled by other drivers. Realizing that I would have a hard time getting a load without an empty trailer, I foolishly hoped that my offer to re-power would be successful in moving me on down the road. There were even 3 loads going to the NJ and NY areas. Not my favorite destination, but it isn't anyone else's either, so I figured it would be a slam dunk to get one of those if dispatch thought they had a sucker on the line. No Luck! Or depending on how you look at things, luck was with me.

Now I didn't exactly get a message from dispatch telling me that they didn't have a load to re-power, what I actually got was a silent Qcom. I wasn't going to complain too much and get the good luck gods mad at me. After all, the Tcall was successful right! I assumed dispatch was a bit busy and applied a smidge of patience to the situation. Even if things went horribly wrong and I didn't get a load for the rest of the day, I would still be getting a load out in the morning and that sure beats the 3pm delivery time that my previous load had attached to it. I was feeling a tad grungy and decided to hit the shower and hope for some information by the time I was finished.

My eventual return to the truck garnered no change in my current status, "driver W.O.T" (without trailer). It was now more than obvious to me that there were no loads in the area that I could bobtail to and dispatch wasn't in the mood to deal with me as things stood. I made one more pass around the lot to see if an empty had magically appear in the last hour (nope) and set my mind to remedying the situation.

First stop, the Sears DC (or is it a Target, can't remember) adjacent to our terminal always has a number of our trailers. The big question was, "do they have any empties?" It's a real hit and miss kind of thing over there. The big problem is that some Crete drivers know that they can pull in at any time and will be given an empty if they have one on the lot (I should probably kept that to myself, too late). I was feeling lucky when the guard told me that "there should be a some available", and let me wonder off to find one. My optimism quickly faded to false hope soon there after when a couple of trips around the lot turned up nothing but loaded trailers. I even stopped in at the shippers office to inquire about any soon to be unloaded trailers; again, no luck.

All hope was not yet lost; still have a spot or two that I can check out (going to keep those my little secret).

My first option was only about 15 minuets away and usually rewards me with an empty about 50% of the time. They almost always have empties but success often depends solely on the mood of the receiving clerk on any particular day, but I was going to have to wait to learn my fate. There were three other drives in front of me vying for her attention. The first two were processed in a timely manner, but number three was a time consuming problem. Something about an invalid drop number ensued by a lengthy discussion about a live unload as opposed to a drop delivery. Whatever the cause, the result was 30mins of me pacing back and forth, certain that there was a fresh message on the Qcom with a load offer that could be pulled at any time due my failed response.

The big moment finally arrived and I once again found myself in the graces of good luck. One trailer left and it was all mine. Skipa de doda, skipa de day, my oh my what a wonderful day. This day's events aren't exactly flowing at a timely pace, but I'm making progress. As soon as I hooked to my new found treasure a message was shot off to dispatch and I made my way back to the terminal, confident that a load offer would soon follow. This time I wasn't ignored, this time I got a message, "check back in one hour". Ugh! Well at least I'm on the load board and in line.

Just as the prescribed hour was about to expire, the Qcom came to life and the long awaited load offer was presented. I would have been just as content with a slap in the face, but the load offer was just as effective. It was a one, two punch kind of thing, followed shortly there after by an upper cut. My head was spinning as I made an attempt to process what I was reading. The first stinger was the realization that the load I was to deliver was a preloaded trailer, usually a positive, but in this particular instance it was just short of maddening. Why? You may ask. BECAUSE the blasted thing is sitting two spaces away from my, IN THIS YARD! I can't help but reminisce of an earlier time, a more relaxed time, a peaceful time, you know! A time long, long ago when I had asked about re-powering a load. A time before now, a time when I didn't have an empty trailer.

OK, here comes the left hook. 108 miles! And the knockout blow, it delivers tomorrow.

....7....8....9....10!

So I'm being a little dramatic, what's it to ya.

There was, of course, the final kick in the gut as I lay unconscious on the mat. I disconnected my recently acquired, swept out trailer only to watch someone else bobtail into the yard and casually back up to it in less than one minutes time, completely unaware of the days events that lead to his timely good fortune.

After having a little time to digest all that had just transpired I got myself into the mindset of tomorrows delivery and consoled myself with the fact that I was allowed to Tcall my load and would be rolling tomorrow morning instead of sitting around until midday. I had put in a shade over 300 miles for the day anyway and I needed to do some laundry so not all was lost. If things went well I would be unloaded by 8am or so and be off on my next load anyway. The short load wasn't really what got to me; after all, I had offered to take a shag earlier in the day. It's just that I could have done without all the waiting and trailer hunting between now and then. But as we all know, that's truck driving.

Thursday morning started out nice and early so that I could make my 7am delivery and get on with the rest of my day. I had rolled out early enough to arrive about an hour early, but due to Cincinnati's lovely rush hour traffic, the final 5 miles crawled along at a 25min pace and I pulled in about 30 before the appointed hour.

This particular load had me a little confused from the start because of some conflicting information in the load plan. One sentence emphasized that this particular receiver would only accept two loads a day and that I should call ahead the night before to make sure they would have empty trailers available; making it sound like it was a drop/hook load. If so I would be able to show up early. But the very next sentence specified that I must arrive by my appointment time, "no early deliveries". The two statements combined made no sense and I pulled in not really knowing what to expect.

I had followed a roll off dump truck into the property and he had set to work switching out a dumpster and I went inside to find out where I needed to be. Once I had hunted down someone that knew what was going on he was quick to tell me that my load was a live unload, but an appointment had not be set. As a matter of fact he told me that someone from Crete had called the day before and was told they were over booked for today and instructed them to call another department to make arrangements. Apparently that call was never made, but Crete sent me in anyways. I wasn't exactly thrilled about how this was working out and was getting the sinking feeling that I was going to be stuck with this stupid 100mi run for a good part of the day.

All was not lost however, the gentleman in charge of receiving was very understanding and knew that I was just caught up in the middle of some bad communication and said he would sneak me in so I could be on my way. All I had to do was back up to door four and he would unload me. That sounded simple enough, but when I went outside to do just that I found that the roll off truck that arrived before me had decided to use that very area to drop his empty dumpster while he hooked up to and pulled out the full one. Urgency was not on the mans list of personality traits and I spent the next 30 minutes watching him lumber around and do whatever it was that caused time to crawl.

I was eventually able to bump the dock and found myself unloaded shortly thereafter and waiting for my next load offer. My reward was a drop/hook pickup in the middle of Cincinnati with and appointment delivery midmorning tomorrow in Montgomery, AL (591mi). Not exactly a screaming deal, but not really anything to complain about and I made my way to the shipper through more of the lovely rush hour traffic that rivals some of the worse in this country.

Other than dealing with three trucks maneuvering around in a very small yard the pickup went fairly quickly and I was on my way. This load was also a drop delivery, but it was one of those that specially stated that I was not to deliver it early. That's a bit of a bummer, but wasn't too big of a deal. It just meant that I would have to take a 13hr break tonight instead of a 10hr break.

Friday morning arrived and I dropped my trailer at its appointed time and found myself an empty trailer with grand plains of getting one of those nice weekend runs where I could run most of the miles off today and tomorrow with just enough time to put in my reset. At which time I could sit around and count up all the good miles for this week. Instead I started counting minutes that turned into hours. Almost immediately after sending in my MT call I received a message from dispatch that there were no loads available in the area and to "check back in three hours". This was something that I had not expected on a Friday morning in this part of the country. I never have a problem getting a load in these parts. That all changed today.

After the initial three hours where up I sent in a little reminder of my loadless presence in the world only to be told to try back in a couple of hours, "you might want to find a place to park". So there I sat, empty on a Friday morning with nothing but a long weekend to look forward to, not good.

I sat for a few more hours and by this time it was starting to turn into early afternoon and I decided I had better head on over to the TA to claim a spot for the day. It was 15 miles away and I don't usually like to drive that far when I don't know which direction my next load will take me because it can run up my out of route miles, but it was starting to look like I might be here for awhile. A few hours later I was finally sent a load and it definitely wasn't anything to get excited about.

Apparently there was a regional driver on his way into town so that he could spend his weekend at home. I was to repower the load he was bringing in from Atlanta and deliver to northern Indian (736mi), Monday morning at noon. Ouch! That hurt. Remember, this is Friday. Oh well, I'll take my lumps and hope for a better week next time around. The other driver didn't show up until 8pm, and by then I had been up all day and decided to stay put for the moment and take off very early the following day.

I started my Saturday at 2am so that I could pull into our Indy yard before they closed the shop up for the day. My truck needed a little work and since I had plenty of down time on this load it seemed like as good a time as any to have a few issues taken care of. I had heard rumors in the past that the Indy shop would actually let you set an appointment and I thought I'd give it a shot. Sure enough, I told them I would be there by 1pm and they said they would have a place for me when I got there.

It's a good thing I called, because when I arrived I went in to write up my truck and was told they were booked up for the day and they wouldn't be able to get me in. "But I called in and made an appointment" I says, and then he sez "Oh, that changes everything, put it right there and well get to work." WOW, does that make my day, I actually feel like a real person. I could get used to shops that work like that.

By the time the truck came out of the shop I had decided to call it a day. I could have put in the final 180 miles to my final destination and looked for a place to park in the middle of nowhere for the rest of the weekend, thus giving me a 3000mi week, but I opted to hang out at the terminal and knock out a reset. This load didn't deliver until noon on Monday anyway, so I would have plenty of time to get there.

Can't wait to see what next week has in store for me.

WEEK FOURTYTWO​

Monday, October 13th through Sunday, October 19th
Miles include deadhead

N. Kansas City, MO to Columbus, MS..................................873mi
Pontotoc, MS to Columbus, OH..........................................698mi
Columbus, OH to Fairfield, OH............................................108mi
Mariemont, OH to Montgomery, AL.....................................591mi
Montgomery, AL to Indianapolis, IN (first leg).......................575mi

Total Paid Miles..........................................2845 Miles

Actual Miles..........................2847 Miles

2845mi x .43 = $1223.35

 

I'm not sure that I have a very good grasp of what your numbers above are referring to because they don't have any real correlation to my routing. Example 28-Califorina I would assume means that I have had 28 trips in that area and 0-DE,KY,NH,WV would suggest that I have had no routing in that area. Both of these assumptions and most of the other numbers are way off. Over the last year I've only been to CA 2-3 times and I've had multiple trips thru KY and WV and a few that have had me running in DE and NH.

I'm going to assume you are interested in where you would spend most of your time with Crete. The answer for that would be mostly east of the Mississippi (and a little bit west of that) and the majority of that freight, for me has generally kept me in the TX,MO,PA,Ga loop area. But that doesn't mean I don't see the whole country. Just check out the tail end of each of my weekly updates and it will show you the exact pickup and destination points.

As to your CPM thing, there are a number of varibles that will affect starting pay. I've heard nothing about them increasing pay in the future based on lower fuel prices. I've pulled an excerpt from Crete's website:

Check out the drivers pay section at their website for more details. It's all spelled out in detail.

 

Supersnack wrote:

Thanks SS, it was a pleasure finally meeting you, I figured it would happen eventually, but I would have never guessed that the one sole figure sitting in our cracker box Ottawa terminal would have been you. I would have liked to spend a little more time catching up (and getting the dirty little details of your meeting) but they sent me off to Boston with my new trainee. I'm out of hours, but he was able to drive up up here (he's and experienced driver, I've got him signing onto the message board so he can join in the fun) while I stayed on line 4, will make for a nice 3600mi week. I only have 85hrs run up on my logs. Looks like I will be looking at life through the windshield from the passengers seat for awhile. All the little delays with the trainee situation has just cost me a reset by about 1hr, so I'm screwed from that point of view.

And for all you wondering, SuperSnack isn't the crazed lunatic that we all envisioned, he's actually a pleasant individual. Sorry to blow your spot SS. Enjoy your hometime whenever you manage to get there.

I've been meaning to mention these new little treats. I got mine about 6 weeks ago. They are actually quite a pain in the butt. You will no longer be able to top the tanks off. They seem to reduce my fuel capacity by about 10gals or so. The slots at the top of the sleeve are small and the foam caused by the fuel gets caught up in it and spits fuel all over the place. It is also very easy to have the fuel nozzle slip out, make sure you use a bungee to hold it in place or you will have a mess to deal with. I've been very careful with regards to this but still managed to give myself a diesel bath just yesterday. The nozzle didn't actually fall out, but as I was setting it, it slipped up just enough to cause a nice little shower to spit up out of the tanks and soak me down a bit.

Don't get to comfortable with the gadget. It stops the casual siphon thief, but any determined individual with a steel rod can bypass it with little effort. I had it happen to me a few years ago when I was with a different company. I went in to take a shower in a California truck stop and returned to an empty tank. Better than nothing though.

 

Weazz wrote:

It's just a little 20" Toshiba flatscreen with a built in DVD. Great picture, especially with the new DH digital stations that are being broadcast today.

I don't have a dish attached yet, but I have the setup from years ago sitting at the house. If I ever get back to PHX I'll probably pull it out. The one with the metal pole that you see in the truckstops that you attach to the back of the truck. I've seen a number of guys that just attach a PVC pipe to the mirror and mount it that way, but then you have to find room for the dish inside the truck when you are not using it.

Redbeard wrote:

I don't mind at all, I'm glad it's working out so well for you. That GM account seems like it's the place to be these days.

OK, we really didn't need to know that

Kinghunter wrote:

Yup, I'm evertrainerr now. Pay it forward. Thanks for the dinner offer, hopefully I'll be able to take you up on it some day.

Beans wrote:

Hometime is great on the SE, you will probably be home most weekend if you want, depending on where you live, but the miles will reflect that connivance. From what I've been hearing the SE guys get around 1800-2200mi/week. There are a few on the board that might be able to give you a little more info.

weazz wrote:

These stories have been poping up alot lately. Apparently companies are selling loans and a miss communication on their part results in your payment getting to them and not the new holder of the loan. Foreclose proceedings then go into effect and the homeowner is left scrambling, trying to figure out what is happening as the sheriffs show up at the door to escort you out of your house.

oldernewbie wrote:

If you put "NO", you will not be hired. Not only with this company, but any other trucking company. It's an insurance issue, they can't take the chance of hiring someone that is physically incapable of doing the job per duty responsibilities. With that said, I have never been required to unload a truck with Crete. We use lumpers that the company pays for. There are some loads that require tailgating (pushing it to the end of the truck, usually bails of insulation) but I have yet to get one of those.

I didn't go through any physical test, just your normal DOT physical.

upsizer wrote:

It's good to see you are getting some good miles.

The Northeast definitely seems to be the stumbling block. My bad weeks seem to have a direct correlation to PA. I stayed out of the region last week and would have ended up with 3200mi but picked up an experienced trainee who had enough hours to get us up to Boston (back to the NE with turkey day coming, ick) and I will end the week around 3600(would have been 3850, but we stopped in Jersey for the night so he could visit family).

 

I hit my first snow of the year. Hwy 224 west of Akron, OH last week. I should have stuck to the toll road. The roads were icy enough to play an impromptu gave of hockey. GAME ON!