CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK FOURTYFOUR​

Monday, October 27th through Sunday, November 2nd​

Home time flew by once again. I had planned on leaving the house on Tuesday morning but found that I was running out of time to take care of what needed to be done and put in a call to my FM to request another day at the house. A quick explanation of my reasons was all that was needed and I was granted the extra time.

Wednesday found me back in the truck and ready to go. I sent of a ready call to dispatch and got my load offer in short order. Just as I has expected (and feared), I was to pickup a load of Campbell's soup and run it up to the last place on earth that I wanted to be. Yup, PA it is. Looks like a 558mi run to York. This state is really starting to get on my nerves. It is almost a guarantee of another layover day. Considering the fact that I only had three days of layover in my first two years with Crete, I am now finding them to be business as usual in the Keystone state.

This particular load had an open delivery anytime the following day, but I had plenty of time to get up there tonight. All I had to do was pickup what I assumed would be a preloaded trailer and head on up. For all practical purposes, I would be out of hours by the time I dropped the trailer at the customer tonight, but by getting it there ASAP I would get myself on the list for a load out in the morning. If I held up short to guarantee me a parking spot for the night and waited to deliver the load until the first thing Thursday morning, I would find myself much further down on that list. The only problem that I could foresee was that I would be driving around looking for a parking spot tonight (not always an easy feat in those parts). If worse came to worse I would have just enough time to make it to our terminal, but that would be a last resort because it would run up the out of route miles. I'll worry about that when the time comes.

When I pulled into the Campbells plant I was relieved to find that my trailer was indeed preloaded. There were a couple of other Crete trucks sitting there that were not so lucky. I didn't envy these drivers. I've been held up here for hours in the past. Today is my luck day, I even found that I would have the dubious pleasure of pulling a bigger than life Crete billboard around for awhile. At least the guy in the picture gets a red truck.




My run up to PA passed quickly enough and other than sitting in line for 30mins once I arrived, I found myself empty and ready for my next load in short order. I wasn't the least bit surprised when I was told to find a place to park and check back in the morning. I had anticipated just such a message and had already found a spot at the good ol 83 Dinner. Just in time too, it was one of two holes left and there was a truck on my tail to get the other one.

Ok, Thursday is here and day one back from hometime went well enough, now here I sit in PA, once again waiting for a load. I didn't even have time to send in a message to inquire about a load this morning. I awoke to find a blanket message that had been sent to all trucks in the area. It went into some detail, but the short of it was "no freight, don't bother us so we can spend our time fining you loads, we'll let you know when we have something for you". Oh boy, this is going to be a long day.

The wait wasn't quite as long as I thought it would be. It was shortly after noon when I got the beep. I was thrilled to get a load offer so soon in this part of the world, but that elation was premature. My heart sunk as I saw the pickup date. It was to be shipped tomorrow just 30 miles up the road and not until 1pm to top it off. Ouch! As bad as that was, the worst was yet to follow. The delivery was an appointment drop next Tuesday at 6am. It was a drop delivery, but I had been to this customer a number of times and they don't allow early deliveries which was not a pleasant reality. Not only will I be sitting for over a day in PA before I can pickup this load, I would find myself at the customer's door two days prior. Even though this Dallas run had good miles on it, 1462, my layover today combined with the downtime on the back of this load I was looking at 5 days before being empty again. What a sinking feeling. I realize that freight is short these days and it would do no good to complain. I was grateful that this load had some decent miles on it and more importantly, I was finally going to get away form PA. There is always a silver lining, sometime you just have to look a little harder. I just looked at it as one of those things and accepted the load without delay. The rest of Thursday was spent in the back of my truck, sitting in the parking lot of a restaurant. This is so much better than spending time at the house. That's truck driving.

The situation wasn't quite as dire as it initially seemed however. I would be there two days early, but I had an ace in the hole. The Wilmer yard was only about 25 miles from the customer and I held out hope that my situation could be remedied once I arrived. I'll just make it a point to get there as soon as possible and hope they have enough freight moving in the area to justify a Tcall.

Friday eventually rolled around and I was anxious to get going. This load had a pickup window of 13:00-24:00 today. This means that it is a preloaded trailer and in most cases I can get away with showing up much earlier to get my trailer. But in this case I knew better because I had tried that in the past with this customer and found myself waiting for my trailer. They had never had a trailer loaded early in the past and I didn't figure today would be any different.

Getting started too early in the day would burn up my 14hr clock if I had to wait for my trailer, so I held out as long as I could stand. The appointed hour finally drew close and I headed on down the road and arrived one hour early. This turned out to be perfect timing because I was told that my trailer had just been released and was sitting in the door waiting for me. In no time I was hooked and headed to Texas.

My ultimate plan was to Tcall this load at our Wilmer yard if all else failed, but in the mean time I would be driving past two of our other yards and do my best to get rid of this load along way. My first attempt came when I pulled into our Knoxville yard after a day of driving. But first things first.

This trailer, unlike many I hook actually had a current PM service sticker on it. As a matter of fact it had been through a shop less than two weeks ago, but that did little to prevent one of the air pods from springing a leak. Nor did it prevent the previous driver from dropping it here in need of repair. Thank You!

I had to stop by the New Kingstown yard just up the road to get fuel anyway, so I'll see what I can do about getting it repaired once I get there. That turned out to be wishful thinking because I was told it would be tomorrow before they would be able to get to it. Unfortunately that is a common occurrence at many of our shops these days and the fact that I had all the time in the world to deliver this load didn't give me any pull to get it done any sooner. It wasn't a bad leak and I opted to head on down the road with our Knoxville yard in my sights. The guys in our Knoxville shop are top notch and work fast, so much so that I make it a point to pull my trailers through here anytime I'm in the area. Today was no different. I pulled up to the door and within 30mins I was parking my trailer in the lot and sending off a message to dispatch trying to work out a Tcall.

Did I say that the Knoxville mechanics are awesome! For any Crete drivers reading this, make it a point to get your work done there. Especially trailer PMs. They are fast.

The Tcall attempt (along with an offer to shag a load in the morning) didn't go quite as well as my trailer service however. My biggest obstacle seemed to be the fact that I was trying to get rid of this load on a weekend. They actually responded in a tone that lead me to believe that they could Tcall the load, but they also let me know that they had a number of trucks in line for the morning loads and I probably wouldn't be offered a load until the following afternoon. As bad as that sounded, waiting a day here would be better than waiting for two days in Dallas. I mulled it around for awhile, but this load still had over 800 miles left on it. Even if I did get a load out of the area tomorrow (Saturday), there would be a very good chance that it would have a Monday delivery and an ever greater chance of being less than 800 miles. A bird in hand kind of thing, so there really wasn't any compelling reason to Tcall at this time and I had put in a good 600+mi today anyway. I decided to let it rest for now and try my luck tomorrow when I was down by our Memphis drop yard. At least I have options with this load.

Saturday was a late start because I wasn't able to get into town until after midnight. I made one last attempt at arranging a Tcall in Memphis before heading out and was told to check with them when I got in town. I did so and got a message similar to the day before. I would be able to Tcall, but freight was short and I would have to wait around for a load. So off to Texas I went. I didn't waist any time along the way so that I could show up as early as possible in the hopes of getting a load out of TX. When all my driving was done I pulled into Wilmer late Sunday morning and sent in my plea. "I'm in the Wilmer yard with a load that doesn't deliver until Tuesday, how about a Tcall. Empty trailer xxxx is available. I can repower a load or run a shag for you in the morning if it helps you out."

I didn't expect a response anytime soon but they tricked me and replied with, "Tcall OK, no shags available, will send out load offers for tomorrow". Great!, Tcall good, tomorrow, not, but I wasn't about to complain. It wasn't a total loss, I had run over 600 miles for each of the last two days and put another 200 behind me today. Anything is better than sitting around until Tuesday. With that I headed into the terminal to clean up and settle in for the night.

I was completely in the mindset of spending the night at the terminal, but I returned to the truck from my shower to find a little present waiting for me on the Qcom. Not only was there a load offer, they were giving me a choice of 2 loads. One going to Omaha and the other to Memphis and they both had live appointment deliveries, yuk. The mileage was almost identical with deadheads thrown in and I was just about to take the Omaha load because I figured it was further away from PA and should afford me a better freight base once empty, but at the last moment I realized that load delivered a day later. Not good, so I went with the Memphis load.

Now instead of spending the night in TX I had a load that picked up tomorrow morning with 200mi deadhead. I would be able to run up to OK City tonight and put in some good miles before the day ended. All is good. I managed to make it up to OK City with about 15hrs of spare time before my pickup, so I walked over to Bricktown to get a good meal and catch a movie.

Well, there's another week in the books.


WEEK FOURTYFOUR
Monday, October 27th through Sunday, November 2nd
Miles include deadhead

Maxton, NC to York, PA....................................................558mi
Lancaster, PA to Wilmer, TX............................................1441mi
Edmond, OK to Oklahoma City, OK (first leg).........................230mi

Total Paid Miles..................................................2229 Miles (hometime week, worked Wen through Sun)

Actual Miles......................... 2283 Miles

2229mi x .43 = $958.47

 

Almost every Freighshaker I've ever had leaks somewhere, so far with Crete I've been lucky and stayed dry.

SuperSnack wrote:

I just called my FM, YES, Christmas is still a guaranteed day off, guess we will all have to wait and see how that works out. Lower fuel costs should help us out, at least they won't be quite as stingy with the deadhead miles.

Weazz wrote:

Yup, no more than 4 days off, regardless of how many weeks you were out. Not the greatest policy for sure, but your FM has some flexibility with regards to hometime. If you are a productive driver they can grant you a more time off at their discretion. Personally, I've never had a problem getting extra time at the house. I've also found that if you put in for a particular day off and they get you home early, they wont expect you to go back to work early, in my experience that is. I've talked to other drivers that have had similar experiences. I guess we could always buy our own truck and run as an O/O and take all the time off we want.

 

It's been a crazy week. I had to sit in a truckstop over turkey day because the shipper was closed. Once I got rolling I had a 2686mi run out to NV with a very tight schedule and managed to make my delivery with 45mins to spare and then they flipped me around and shot me over to MO (1538mi). Just over 4000mi in the last 6 days and I've only spent a few hours in the drivers seat.

I'm now sitting in the Lincoln term getting some work done on the trailer. Some how a 3hr job has turned into a 9hr job and counting. It decided to blow an air line after our trip though a WY snow storm. I think a buildup of ice caused a problem.

Tried to Tcall it here, but they are going to make us deliver it in the morning which has us sitting around all day doing nothing. I'm at 72hrs on my log anyway. This training is exhausting