CRETE - A Year in Review

Yes it looks like they did.

Quote from their website:

I've seen many other companies doing the same thing, except their starting pay is in the 32cpm or less range and many are HHG (short)miles.

 

WEEK FOURTYFIVE​

Monday, November 3rd through Sunday, November 9th​

I drove up to OK City last night to put myself into position to pickup my load this morning. It’s a 9am appointment and I assume that it is a live load. I arrived about an hour early to find out that I was picking up a preloaded trailer and it was sitting there and ready to go. Sure would have been nice to know that earlier so I wouldn’t have had to sit around all morning waiting for an appointment time. Oh well, I’ll know better next time around.

As I was signing the BOL I was taken aback a bit by the weight of this load. 46,359# was going to put me at the limit. My new APU added a fair amount of weight to this truck and I also made the mistake of topping off the tanks before pulling into town yesterday. I knew this was a heavy load, but the Qcom had listed a 45,000# load. A mind fart that shouldn’t have happened. This concern became a reality when I pulled onto the local scale at the Pilot, 80,400#. Crap! After a little wiggling I was legal on my tandems, but thanks to full tanks of fuel I was over on the drives. I now had the option of contacting dispatch, which could have resulted in a canceled load or run with it and hope that the scales at the AR boarder would be closed. Actually, by the time I get there the load should be much closer to legal. Being a heavy load I figured I would be getting about 5.5mpg and burn off about 300# of fuel by the time I get there. That might just be close enough to get away with, even if they are open. I elected to run with it.

When I finally made it to the DOT scale in AR they were open, of course! The tension was high, but the light stayed green and I was on my way. That will teach me to watch load weights a little closer in the future.

Soon enough I made it close to the receiver and found a parking spot for the night. It would make for a fairly short day of 450 miles, but this was scheduled for delivery first thing the following morning and I should be able to put in some good miles tomorrow.

Tuesday morn started out with a quick hop over to my live unload, which took a couple of hours. My load offer followed and it looks like I’m headed to TX once again. Good news; a drop/hook PU one mile away. Bad news; it’s going to Midlothian, TX (456mi) and has a live unload Wednesday evening at 5pm. 456 miles in 1½ days. Looks like it’s time to start wheeling and dealing again. This load was also scheduled to be picked up after 1pm, but I showed up a couple of hours early to find it waiting in a door. A quick hook up and pre trip (some air into a couple of the tires) and I was off.

I pulled into the Wilmer yard that night for the second time in the last three days and once again put in a request for a Tcall. More of the same, “I’m under a load that doesn’t deliver until late tomorrow, can I Tcall, can shag a load if you need help”. I was once again allowed to Tcall and waited for a load offer. By the time one came through and I got the pertinent information it was too late to do anymore driving for the night and I planed on an early start the following morning.

Here we go again; right back to the same place I picked up my heavy load just the other day. This time it’s going to the middle of nowhere MS(755mi). And this time I won’t top off the tanks. See, I told you I learned my lesson.

I also know that I don’t have to wait for my appointment this time around and pulled out of the Crete yard at 3:30am when my 10hrs were up (after putting just enough fuel in the tanks to get me to the customer). Once again it was a very heavy load, but when I scaled out I was under gross weight limits and even had enough room to put on some fuel, about ½ a tank. This didn’t work well with my fuel solution and I had to make a call to my fleet manager to make some adjustments and stop for fuel a couple of times instead of once, but at least I didn’t have to worry about an overweight ticket today.

Now all I had to do was deal with a 9pm delivery the following day. Again, I was going to be there well before that and a message sent in to dispatch asking for a earlier appointment was answered with a “that’s the earliest appointment available, you can always try to deliver early”. Ooooo, I would have never thought of that. I arrived at 10am and was told to check back with the next crew at 2pm. They start unloading at 5pm and they might be able to fit me in. I never like a delay, but my hours where actually getting short and I had the time to spare. While I was sitting there, another Crete driver pulled up at noon and I gave him the run down. He decided to go in and hear the story for himself and came back grinning ear to ear because he was waiving a check in form. What the %##&! Off I go to find a different person behind the counter and I too get my check in form. Well, we didn’t get a door at 5pm, but we did get an early door assignment, well, the other driver did. I had to wait for him to get unloaded first. Luck of the draw. This day was shot anyway and it took them 3hrs to pull my load off and I was the last person to pull away from the docks at 10pm. What a fun day this turned out to be. I figured it was over and planned on spending the rest of the night here and found myself a parking spot nearby.

I put in my MT call fully well expecting a load for the morning and was astonished to get a load offer and it was on a preloaded trailer and ready to go. It was headed to the Atlanta area (469mi) and had a pickup date of anytime today. Problem was that it was now past 10pm and it was about 3hrs away via back roads. Looks like they didn’t get the load covered today and I must have been the only one in the area that could get to it within a reasonable time frame.

The other problem I had to deal with was my shortage of available hours. I ran through the numbers a couple of times and even though it was a fairly short run, I wouldn’t be able to get there until roughly 2am on Saturday. This load had an anytime drop delivery for Friday and I figured if it could be delivered on Friday at 23:59 and be considered on time, then a drop 2hrs later in the middle of the night couldn’t really make any difference. I sent a message off to dispatch to let them know that if I accepted this load it would be a little late due to hour constraints and gave them the option. A few minutes later I got a confirmation from dispatch. “Go ahead and delivery load as soon as you can, will inform customer of late delivery”.

At this point I could have shut down for the night and picked up my load first thing in the morning without affecting the finally delivery time. I was going to have to spend the better part of Friday in a truckstop anyway waiting to gain back hours, but this load was suppose to be picked up by midnight and I had been sitting around all day, so I decided to run on over to Tupelo to get it and find a place to park afterward. If all went well I would be shut down by 3am or so.

The entire trip over was on Mississippi back roads and took a little longer than I had expected, but I finally managed to pull into the shippers yard to find my preloaded trailer waiting for me. The drop and hook was a painless endeavor and I was on my way down the road in short order. It was my initial plan to find a place to park for the night shortly thereafter, but I was well rested from my day of lounging around in the back of the truck and I ended up running down to Birmingham and put in for the night, well day by this point, at my favorite pit of a Pilot truckstop. Parking was very limited, but I managed to squeeze into a spot and prepared to camp out for the rest of the day.

I only had one hour left of my 70, so instead of getting some good sleep and driving the final 3 hrs to my delivery point during the day when I was wide awake, I would now have to sit around all day long twiddling my thumbs. When 11pm rolled around I would be able to take off and as the midnight hour hit I would gain back some hours as I was driving and be able to make my delivery by 2am.

I was mildly annoyed by a message that I received from dispatch in the middle of the day during one of my thumb twiddling sessions. They wanted to know, “Why aren’t you moving, send reason and ETA”. There’s that communication thing again. Apparently night dispatch didn’t feel it was necessary to make the appropriate notations on my screen or update the delivery schedule. They just wanted their load board covered and threw me under the bus in the process.

I simply answered, “Would love to be rolling but out of hours for now, load will be delivered by 2am. Load was accepted only after making this clear to dispatch last night and was approved by them, please read Qcom messages from last night (would be nice if they would have thought of that on their own)”.

That must have satisfied them, at least that’s the assumption I had to make since no one bothered to reply in any form. Again, common practice. They expect complete and detailed communications from us, but offer little in return. Nature of the beast I guess.

Well, after a less than fulfilling day of truck stop camping the magical hour of 11pm finally arrived. I had managed to catch a couple of hours of sleep just prior and was rarin’ to go. I was annoyed that I had to waist my entire day waiting to gain back hours and was also very concerned about getting a load out of Atlanta on a Saturday. Freight in these parts has been a bit iffy and I would have been in a much better position if I had been able to get this load drop early Friday morning. But due to the timing of my last load I had been forced to drive in the middle of what would have been a 34hr reset. The 34hrs were put in, but a short 2hr drive in the middle of it did the damage. That one hurt. If I had been able to do a reset I would have been in a great position. I would have had the load delivered early Friday morning and been ready to go. But it was not to be.

This is the first time in resent memory that I have not been afforded the opportunity to reset and it had very negative results which were immediately felt. Not only did I spend an entire day sitting in a truck stop waiting to gain back hours, I was now delivering my load at 2am on Saturday morning and my MT call garnered me the infamous message, “No freight available, check back at 10am.” Exactly what I was afraid of. Now here I sit in McDonough, GA with no available parking and no load.

There were no viable truck stops in the area and there was little hope of finding a spot at the ones 20 miles down the road at this hour, not to mention the likely hood that I would probably end up driving in the wrong direction. I thought about running up to our Marietta yard, but that was 50 miles north and Murphy’s Law would dictate that regardless of the direction chosen, my next load would be in the opposite direction and the resulting out of route miles would be excessive not to mention what really concerned me, wasting time on my logs. There was a strong possibility of getting a load (eventually) in this very area and I didn’t want to be running back and forth. It was the middle of the night and I went on a search of the back roads in the area looking for a place to park. This is an industrial area and I was hoping to find a warehouse for lease that I could hide in. There is one good thing about and economy like this, a number of warehouses are vacant and after a little snooping around I found one that didn’t have a gate and managed to find a hiding spot out of sight and put in for the night.

The presubscribed hour of 10am finally rolled around and I sent off a message to dispatch in the hopes of getting a load. “Working on it” was the reply. Another hour went by and the Qcom came to life. A single load offer heading to Houston (another fine freight dead zone) that would add 900 miles to my paycheck. Good miles, but I wasn’t at all pleased with the scheduling of the load. First and foremost, the pickup time for this drop/hook load was 11/08 00:01-23:59. That’s anytime today! Well it is now 11am and I’ve been sitting in this parking lot since 2:30 am and I’m just now being dispatched. I’ll simply file that under the heading of “not so mildly annoying”.

Big problem number two; this load has an appointment delivery of 8am on the 11th. A whopping four days away. I pray that I will be able to Tcall this in our Houston yard. When freight is strong it’s not a problem, but with the way things have been lately there was a strong possibility that there would be no freight to keep me moving and I would be told to deliver the load. All I can do is get it there ASAP and see what happens.

OK, I finally got a load that could have been picked up right after I delivered in the early AM, but now that I’ve been sitting here for so long I find myself needing another 1 ½ hrs to complete my 10hr break and have to sit around that much longer. I could have done the extended sleeper berth thing, but I didn’t really want to deal with the constraints that would follow later in the day and sat tight for a little longer. I was finally able to start my day shortly after noon and headed on up the road to get my waiting trailer. The rest of Saturday and Sunday were spent making my way to Houston and I arrived in town in the late afternoon. Time to see what I could do about dumping this load.

Finding an empty trailer here is never a guarantee. It’s not exactly what you could call a large yard and I was worried that I would be unable to locate one, but luck was with me today. There were actually 3 of them waiting for me along with a couple of Tcalled trailers that delivered in the area the following morning. I was confident that I would be able to get a load out with one of the empties, or in a worse case scenario, I would be able to shag one of the loads in the yard tomorrow morning and be on my way.

I shot a message off to dispatch to let them know that I was in town with a load that didn’t deliver until Tuesday. It was now Sunday night. I also informed them that I had three hours left on my clock for the day, or I could shag a load in the morning. The Tcall was approved in short order along with a message, “do you want a load offer now, or wait until the morning? How much time to you have available today?” I swear, they never read more than the first line of a message. I once again told them I had 3 hours available and waited for my load offer. It didn’t take long to get one and I was soon wishing I had waited until Monday morning because all I got was a choice of two loads. Both picked up in the morning and neither one of them was more than 250 miles. If I had waited until the morning to get a load I probably would have had a better load, but I wasn’t all that upset. I went with a Louisiana load (237mi) that had an open delivery time. I figured I could get loaded first thing in the morning and have it delivered by noon and be ready to roll on my next load. I’m not at all bothered by short runs as long as they are not encumbered with ridiculous delivery appointments. I have never had a problem getting a load out of the area that I was headed and assumed I could make a good day of it.

I was content with the way things had worked out. I had been able to Tcall my Tuesday delivery load and would be on my way first thing in the morning to start out my next week of adventure. With that I dropped my trailer and set out to find me some crab legs for dinner.


WEEK FOURTYFIVE
Monday, November 3rd through Sunday, November 9th
Miles include deadhead

Oklahoma City, OK to West Memphis, AR (last leg).......................474mi
West Memphis, AR to Wilmer, TX..............................................442mi
Edmond, OK to Indianola, MS...................................................755mi
Tupelo, MS to McDonough, GA.................................................469mi
Winder, GA to Houston, TX......................................................900mi


Total Paid Miles…………………………………………..3040 Miles

Actual Miles…………………….3110 Miles


3040mi x .43 = $1307.20

 

Supersnack wrote:

OK, THAT'S ENOUGH! You are really starting to freak me out. I really must insist that you start complaining again.

Just missed ya, I pulled in around 11am. Went up to the break room, but the place was packed with drivers waiting for a load so I just went back to the truck for a nap.

I love the work that the Columbus yard does, right up there with Wilmer.

Fred Flintstone wrote:

I would suggest ASAP! Call recruiting and ask them what their requirements are. They used to hire on after 4 months experience, but they may have changed recently. You will be required to run with a trainer again if you don't have a full year in, but over the long run you will be much better off. A lot of companies have instituted hiring freezes, from what I've heard in the break rooms, even Crete has a couple of areas that they are not hiring in. I wouldn't wait too long. A lot of drivers are loosing their jobs and available slots may soon dry up.