New to Reefer, tips?

I found McKesson in Memphis to be the best reefer work. It needs a little cooling in the south to keep at 60 and actually heating in winter to keep at 60 because is a million dollar load no one is interested in losing. You get seriously treated well here provided you do not lose the #### thing to predators. And you keep your mouth shut and say you are hauling cold air or heated air. Which is true enough to pass a Polygraph. (I never tried it but I do wonder...)

God help you if you got out of Flatbedding for a little ow in the back into the fire of reefer work lumping Cider by the case, 6 gallon size glass bottles that break and leak if you set it down a touch too hard. We fixing to find out just how much pain you can stand.

Or sit in east st Louis downtown at Associated at 2 am on a Friday Saturday morning. Your life has no value there. Nor does your load. Unless you are late one minute when the customer lady starts bawling where is my #### apples. (Taken from NW Atlanta Safeway and borrowed for this scenario...) at exactly 7 am. Come to find out they cannot kick you out because you have been logged in as arrived as of midnight prior by the gaurd shack.

You will learn not to hear the reefer. I'm not trying to be funny. It's dead serious. You don't hear a #### thing from that reefer until something fails in the howling of the high range pressure cooling and it gets asthma and literally coughs and whines needing TLC literally within the hour as your temps now rise.

The last time mine did that had a set point of 50. It happened that it was exactly 48 degrees outside in the rain at Grand Junction at 10PM one night when it failed. There I am coughing and waking up half the old truckstop there. HEY GET THAT NOISE OUT OF HERE. SO it becomes a total off the logbook run into Denver 5 hours across the Steamboat and many other hills and canyons. Totally illegal but when you are looking at a 40,000 dollar cold cash loss of the entire load... a 100 dollar logbook violation is not a deterrence.

Do not sleep at the customer stupid. Seriously. You are there nested in your bed dreaming sweet dreams of home and paradise until

BAMBAMBAMBAM YOUSE NEED A EFFING LUMPER ####### I NEED MONY... &*^%$

Good morning to you too [profane word.]

Hey man you got a smoke #######?

And your day goes down hill from there really, really really fast.

Should I go on?

 

Some try to save a couple of bucks by not running the specified temps on BOL, always run what it says on the bills, they have temp recorders hidden sometimes and explaining the discrepancies can be hard, running the reefer real cold to get back to that temp will freeze the product or they see it is out of range and you will be stuck trying to get rid of product.

 

Yeah that's really stupid. Trying to save $20 worth of fuel and end up with a $20,000 claim. Probably it's your operators running old inefficient water logged units doing that. Newer trailers are so much more efficient. The one I pull is a very low hours 2015 unit and I'm always amazed at how little fuel it will burn running continuous on a frozen load.

 

Save yourself the nightmare and just hop in
A dry van. Your life will be a whole lot easier
For the same paycheck.

 

Don't park next to a dry van or a skateboard.EVER!!!!!

 

Unless it's the middle of the night and there's only one spot left. Then it's like, oh well sorry. Otherwise, I usually seek out another reefer to park next to, or park where there are multiple spots available.

 

I'll call BS on that one. I've pulled in some great money with a van. I do much better with a reefer. Better rates and more consistent. I've always used potential BS on any load, van or reefer, to leverage for more money. Money has a way of smoothing things over.

 

If I've said it once I've said it a dozen times. Reefer experience varies wildly depending on the company. It's not all the same. In fact, there is probably more variance among carriers in the reefer segment than any other.

 

I'm certain that is true. I pick and choose every single load that goes on my truck. I determine if the rate makes me happy. I reject lots of loads that go to known hell holes unless the payoff is huge to make up for the headache. This control over my truck makes the reefer business palatable for all of its warts.

Now if I was a company driver or owner operator who was force dispatched depending on the company to load my truck - I would not ever pull a reefer in that scenario. Most companies don't care if places are hell holes. You're a driver and you do what you're told which is what you signed up for so no complaining. They'll send you to hell holes all the time and you'll do it too or don't let the door hit your ### on the way out.

 

This is what I'm trying to say is not necessarily true at all places. I work at a place where they blacklist receivers and brokers and shippers regularly based on driver feedback and other problems encountered in the office. Yes, I'm "forced dispatch", but I make them money and they keep me busy and we only rarely have to deal with a "problem facility" and in those cases, we are paid detention. But this happens very rarely.

We rarely do broker loads, and we have a very dedicated direct customer base and we generally pick and choose our freight lanes and end-points to avoid the BS receivers. I like this job running reefer as a company driver better than any past dry van job, and I've had a few of those. I'll never go back to dry van unless at some point I need to go back to a local or regional gig for personal reasons.

As I write this. I'm at one of our direct customers who does a lot of production facility transfers. I'm unloading and reloading at the same dock. I will be in with a load, and out with a reload in about 60-90 minutes. And this happens more than you might think. And anything under 1,300 miles is a short load.