CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK FOURTYTHREE​

Monday, October 20th through Sunday, October 26th​

Well, I'm sitting around in a truckstop with nothing better to do, so I guess this is as good a time as any to whip out an update.

This week started out with me sitting in our Indy yard. I had decided to hold up here at the end of last week to get some work done on the truck during my reset. With that accomplished, I was ready to hit the road first thing Monday morning and make my delivery in the northern part of the state. I had pulled out with enough of a time cushion to arrive about 1 hour early but hit a snag when I got close to the receiver. I was only about 5 miles away when I can across a closed road and was forced to take a 30 mile detour through a number of small towns with a lot of stop and go traffic. It was close, but I managed to pull in with 15mins to spare.

The first thing that got my attention was that every dock door was occupied, and most of those where reefer trucks. I knew what that meant before I even went inside. This was a Meijers DC and I was looking at a live unload. Not exactly a grocery store warehouse, but it was operated just like one. That's means I showed up for my appointment and was told they were behind schedule and I would have to park in the lot with my CB on and wait to be called in for a door assignment.

More waiting was not what I had in mind. I had already been under this load since Friday night (after unloading Friday morning) and put in an unwanted 34 reset. Now here I sit late Monday morning, waiting once again.

My wait was lengthy, but I guess it could have been worse (not really). I got the call on the CB to back up to my door and was ready to be unloaded 2hrs after my appointment time. As I sat in the truck waiting for the unloading to begin a noticed the truck next to be who had also just dock head on into the office. Oh yeah, this is a grocery store warehouse kind of operation. Looks like I better go inside to make sure they know I'm docked and ready.

Upon passing this information on I was then informed that the lumper service would need $75 to unload my truck (this cost is paid for by Crete). I hadn't seen that coming, I was under the assumption that this was a customer unload facility, but the large number of reefer trucks unloading here should have been enough to make me realize otherwise. "OK", I say. But then I begin to wonder and step back up to the window to inquire about the breakdown (if it didn't require too much work I was thinking about doing it myself to speed things up).

Breakdown is a term used in the industry to refer to how the customer wants the product palliated once it is taken off the truck. It is not uncommon to have to restack pallets of products to conform to a customers needs. A pallet on the truck might have been stacked 8 tie (cases) high, but the customer may tell you that all pallets must be 6 tie high. That would mean that 2 tie would have to be pulled off of each pallet and restacked on another to conform to their needs. Another common scenario would be a pallet on the truck with lets say, 20 different products on one pallet in the truck, like 20 different flavors of soup stacked 30 cases high. Each of these different flavors would then have to be separated onto 20 different pallets to separate the product. It can often be very labor intensive and lumpers will charge as much as $200-$300 for the more complicated loads.

Anyway, back to my situation. I had been quoted a price of $75 which indicated to me that there was at least some kind of breakdown associated with this load. I knew it was all fruitcake, but thought there must be more than one flavor involved or perhaps the pallet height would have to be adjusted due to the $75 charge. If it were just a straight unload, just pulling pallets off of the truck, the price should be less than that. But then, lumper services often overcharge. At this time I was told that was the cost to simply pull the pallets off the truck, no additional breakdown was required. Well, that clenched it. I wasn't about to pay (let Crete pay) that kind of money to these rip off artist and I told the lady behind the window that I would do it myself. She looked at me like I was crazy.

It would be great if I would get the $75, but this industry doesn't work like that. Trucking companies, at least Crete, doesn't really want their drivers unloading trucks unless absolutely necessary. It's just another way for a driver to get hurt and paying these high fees to drivers would just encourage us to unload. As it is, Crete pays $35 to pull pallets off of a truck. Not a lot of money, but I had been sitting under this load for awhile and didn't exactly have the best week. So $35 was better than nothing and it wasn't going to be that much work anyway.

I was also in luck because they let me use one of their powered pallet jacks instead of the hand pump models that most companies make driver use. This would make for a very quick and easy $35. Just as I was getting started, one of the lumper guys came over and made on last attempt at talking me into letting them do it. I just told him that if they weren't so greedy and charged a fair price up front I wouldn't be back here doing it myself. He then offered to adjust the price, but by then I was in the mood to get to work and said "no thanks, maybe next time".

It took a few minutes to get a warehouse guy to tell me where they wanted the fruitcakes and I went about my duties. After getting about half the truck unloaded I was approached by this same person and told that I had stacked the pallets too close together because he need enough room to walk between them to put his little stickers on them. I really wanted to ask him why he didn't say something from the start, especially since he had walked by a half dozen times before that (I assume it had something to do with me not using a lumper), but decided to just say, "Not a problem" and reshuffled the 20 or so pallets around to suit his needs and continued with the rest of the trucks contents. It was also at this time that he handed me my signed BOL and told me they were going on break and he didn't want to wait around for me to finish. If I had used the lumpers I would have been waiting around that much longer with a half unloaded truck, if they would have even bothered with started unloading me before their break that is.

Even with the little reshuffle of pallets I had my truck empty within 40mins, had just added $35 to my paycheck and was out the door at least an hour faster than if I had used the bloody lumpers. Can you tell that I don't have a high opinion of lumpers.

Time for the empty call; I cross my fingers and hope for a load offer but get the seemingly standard, "Light on freight, check back in an hour". There was no long term parking available at this customer and I pulled out and headed to a nearby truck stop. I was just getting ready to settle in for what I anticipated to be a length wait and was very surprised to hear the familiar beep of the Qcom. Not only did I get a load offer, I get a choice of two loads. One was headed to PA and had very agreeable PU and Del times (drop and hook on both ends) and the other was going to NC with less than optimal circumstances. Not only was it a live U/L, but it was a two stop delivery with late night appointment times. With those choices and not really wanting to have anything to do with PA, I went with the NC load. I also had home time in for this week and it got me close to the house, sort of. Not close enough to deadhead, but close enough that I could get to our Spartanburg yard in SC and rent a car if I couldn't get a load to the house. I actually expected things to work out this way because I didn't think I would have any luck getting freight out of the middle of NC going to the east side of the state. I had just as much confidence in getting a load out of PA going home and that would have been a much further drive in a rental car.

In any event, it looks like my fear of delay has been squashed. Well, not exactly. It was a load for today, but not scheduled to pickup until 6pm-10pm. In reality, not all that bad because it was already closing in on 2pm and I had a good 90min trip to get there. I'll show up early and hope it's ready to go, if not the wait shouldn't be too bad.

I arrived at the shipper with a preloaded trailer number in hand and saw it sitting in their yard and figured I'd be on my way in short order. But it was not to be. Even though the trailer was loaded, the paperwork had not yet been finalize and was told to check back in an hour or so. Back to the truck I go.

I patiently wait for the hour to expire and head back into the office. This time the paperwork is ready to go (I didn't even want to know how long it had been sitting there) and I grabbed my trailer and headed out the door. Even with my delay I manage to get my trip to Charlotte (883mi) started by 5pm, one hour before the scheduled PU time. Between getting hungup at my delivery today and my little snag here I lost a lot of time and decided to head back to where my day started, arriving in the Indy yard just short of my 14hr clock with a grand total of 434 miles. Tomorrow will be a better day.

What do you know, all of that and it's only Tuesday morning. I have a lot of miles to go today and my first live delivery is scheduled for 7pm. I sat tight for as long as I dared to avoid starting my 14hr clock too early. I was going to need most of it today and if I started too early I would run the risk of running out of hours before making my finial delivery. As long as my first delivery goes without too much of a delay I would be fine, if they hang me up I might have a problem.

I managed to time my departure satisfactorily and arrive at my first stop 30 minuets early. It took a while to hunt down someone in receiving but I was able to bump the dock as scheduled and had the first half of my load off the truck within the hour. So far so good, plenty of time to get to my final stop with a little time to hunt down a truckstop once empty. Hopefully the Pilot just up the street will have a spot open at 11pm (I hope you sense the anxiety in that statement).

My last delivery was only about an hour away and I made it by the prescribed hour of 9pm to find that this would not be a live unload. Happy Happy, Joy Joy. They had empty Crete trailers on the lot and told me to drop mine and help myself to an empty of my choice. I was in and out in no time and found that I had a number of choices when it came to finding a parking spot to call home for the night at the local Pilot.

It was late and my MT call garnered no load offer, but I had expected that. I was hoping for that magical load to get me home. I was still 250 miles from the house, too much to expect a deadhead and too close to actually get a load. I figured I'd wait for the load offer and if there was nothing that worked for me I would simply park the truck at our terminal in Spartanburg and rent a car.

I awoke a 5am to find a load offer on my Qcom. It was an ugly little run of 191 miles and was a preloaded trailer sitting in our yard. But I wasn't about to complain because it delivered to Darlington, SC and put me within 130 miles of the house. It would have been nice if I could have delivered it today, but it had a noon appointment the following day. Again, I'm not going to complain (too much).

Since I had all day to pickup my load I took my time and eventually found my way to a Pilot that was only a few miles from the delivery point and called it a day, a very short day. This won't do too much for the ol' paycheck, but home sweet home makes it all worth it.

I arrived a bit early for my Thursday delivery in the hopes of getting home just a little sooner, but this particular receiver seemed to have a very tight schedule and I ended up waiting around for a couple of hours to get a door. While I was there I had a chance to chat with a Knight driver and he was saying the same thing that so many other drivers are. He used to get plenty of miles, steady 3000 miles a week, but that was then. Now he said that if he got 2200 miles he considered it a good week, and he often ran 1500-1700 a week. My miles have been slipping a bit lately, but I'm thankful that it's not that bad for me.

Once I finally got backed into a door things moved along quite nicely and I was soon empty and ready to point the truck homeward. I sent off one last message to dispatch to ask them if they needed me to do anything else, if not I was headed home. I got clearance shortly thereafter and managed to make it back to the house with enough time to put in a quick 9 holes.





WEEK FOURTYTHREE
Monday, October 20th through Sunday, October 26th
Miles include deadhead

Indianapolis, IN to Middlebury, IN (final leg)..........................161mi
Portage, IN to Gaffney, SC................................................883mi
Spartanburg, SC to Darlington, SC......................................191mi

Total Paid Miles..................................................1235 Miles (short week due to home time)

Actual Miles.........................1410 Miles (130mi due to deadhead to the house)

1235mi x .43 = $531.05 plus $30 drop pay

 

longbed wrore:

Yup, I is a trainer now. Trying to get used to spending all of my time in the passenger seat. Driving me a little crazy to be honest with you. I figured being a trainer would be helpful in getting me consistent miles and I feel a little responsibility towards helping new drivers get a good start in this industry. With the way things are looking at the moment I can only assume it won't hurt any. Having two people in one small truck takes some getting used to, but it's not all that bad. My current trainee is a very pleasant individual, so that helps.

I did start the training process about this time last year, but I picked up that nasty little MRSA bug and got sidelined at the house for 10 days and on my return trip in a rental car to get my truck (I had left it in a Shreveport truckstop) I went and got myself a speeding ticket (1st one in 13yrs or so). That disqualified me as a trainer for a year. Almost immediately after that year was up I got a message from the training department asking me to help out. So, here I am.

jdrentzjr wrote:

I just read a study that was overseen by the Canadian government. One of the things they tested with regards to fuel efficiency was tire pressure. First runs were with all tires at 100psi and the second were with all tires at 85psi. Proper air pressure alone showed a fuel mileage savings of 3.2%.

nathanl23 wrote:

It's not the only reason tires blow, but it is by far the leading cause. But even checking air pressure doesn't guarantee trouble free tires. I have lost a number of retreads due to separation. The tread will fly off at times and leave a completely inflated carcass on the rim.

otrtruckerscott wrote:

Looks like you had a load of plastic wrap or whatever it is, heavy stuff. Were they as rude to you as they were me. That warehouse manager there hates the world.

 

Last week was a very good one for me. I would have had 3200, but my trainee got on board last week and made it a 3600mi week or so. This week has had a lot of waiting associated with it. Thanksgiving can have that effect. The first load of the week had us sitting for a day waiting to deliver, but my trainee was able to visit family while we held up in NJ. After that we got a load that ran us through NYC (3hrs to go 20 miles) and once unloaded I was given a choice of a 850mi run to PA that delivered on Saturday or a 2600mi run going to NV. The only problem is that I had to sit for 40 hours or so before I could pick it up. I'm sitting at about 75hrs on my log anyway, so a reset will make it possible for me to drive again if the trainee needs a break. Not wanting to deliver in PA on a Sat and hope for a load out, I went ahead and took the NV run. So, here I sit waiting for them to load my "preloaded trailer" that is currently one hour late. It's going to be an insanely tight delivery now. Four solid days of driving and I might just be able to get it there for it's Monday night delivery, if they pound on the door within the next hour or so. Feast or famine. I'll be able to pull 3000 miles out of this week even with 2+days of down time.