My Day By Day Experience At Eastern Freightways Flatbed Division

Day 10

Alarm goes off at 1:00 errr.. Snooze till 2:00 decided I didn't want to walk to the terminal so I got an Uber. Found my truck talked with the mechanic. Yup all set he says. Hook to the load and head off for Portland. No traffic and smooth sailing.

Get to the receiver and start unstrapping and untarping. Notice a small puddle on the ground next to the same tire that just had the seal replaced. Hmmmm maybe some remnance? I look it over carefully. Looks pretty fresh.. Move into the building and get unloaded. Yup, another puddle. Come on, it's the Friday of a holiday weekend but what can you do? Call dispatch and get sent to the Portland terminal. 5 1/2 hours left on my clock. I explain the situation to the mechanic up here. He takes a look. 5 1/2 hours left you say? Headed to Newington then Concord? He asks. OK lets get it done. He says 3 1/2 hours later he's done. Come to find out the Mechanic from the night before never cleaned the rust from where the seal is supposed to seat. Well that mistake, oversight, laziness just cost an extra 3 1/2 hours of labor, 2 sets of brake shoes, 2 new drums and 4 hours of my early day lost. These guys up here at this terminal were great. Will come here if in the area and need anything done.

Got back to my terminal around 17:00 and started my weekend. Ended the week with the following miles:
M-448
T-408
W-591
TH-550
Fr-429

2426 actual miles. (To bad we're paid Rand McNally. )Not bad for the North East. Wednesday is when I started getting on the road by 1:00 or 2:00 Definitely a big difference in miles.

 

Day 11-12-13

It's been a week since I last posted. I don't remember if I had said it or not but I Am/Was/Did get Married on June 2nd. The days leading up to that were crazy! Summarized 11-13:

Decided to leave out on Monday afternoon, Memorial day. Headed to Jersey from Concord in hopes to get a jump on the week and be home early on Weds. I assumed there would be some holiday traffic heading back around 15:00 but not as much as I encountered. Took longer than I had hoped but stopped at our S. Plainfield, NJ terminal to park and sleep. This place was a lot bigger and busier than I thought it would be. Surprisingly after several minutes of the yard jockey slamming trailers around (I'm wondering how much was on purpose) I fell asleep.

Had a short 45 minute drive to the receiver in the morning. Got unloaded quick and got my preplan to pick up in Avenel, NJ headed to Portland, ME. Pick that up, fix the tarping job and head out. Drove straight through to our Portland, ME terminal! Saw I had a message from dispatch. Checked it out and never guess what it said?!

"Just drop this load in Concord"

HaHa We can't read our messages while driving sooooo. I sent a message back and said I was already there. Unloaded the next morning pretty quick called dispatch and headed home. Took Weds-Sun. off for the wedding and came back out Monday morning.

 

Thank you all for the congratulations! We've been together for 12 years and finally made it official! I couldn't be happier

 

Day 14-15

Coming back from most of last week off I didn't have a load to deliver so I headed to Newington, NH to get a load that was headed to Beltsville, MD. Left Concord around 6:30 with some heavy rain. Got to Newington and it had let up. Dropped and hooked and proceeded to fix the tarping job and the heavens released the dam! Heavy downpour and I was 3/4 of the way done. Said screw it and finished it off. Got dried off and headed down towards NYC, Decided to stay at a service plaza in MD that had 1 spot left.

Planned on starting at 5:00 the next morning but ended up shutting off my alarms and falling back to sleep. Finally got going at 6:30 Got to the receiver and unloaded quickly.

Next load was in Baltimore, MD I've been there before when I was training and remembered that the lot was behind a store. I thought I was heading in the right direction until I ended up in a low income area sitting right next to the industrial park. Signs everywhere saying no trucks... Ehhhh Pull over, google earth and message my trainer and get a better idea of where I'm at. I took a right instead of a left and that's how I ended up there. I find a road to go down that trucks come out of and turned around headed back and drove right past it. HaHa 7 more miles I find another place to turn around.

Finally find the yard. Drop and hook and this one is headed to Staten Island. #### it, not sure if i'm ready for this one. I drive to our Plainfield, NJ terminal, get shut down and am looking forward to a shower... Nope not happening. I guess they turned that area into a driver training area so no more showers here. I could have gone 20 miles up the road to a truck stop, filled up with more expensive fuel and got a free shower. Oh well a baby wipe night it is.