CRETE - A Year in Review

luvtheroad wrote:

Yes, they are hiring grads at this point, but I do believe there is a hiring freeze on in certain parts of the country. Atlanta and other parts of the SE for one and I heard something about the Michigan area. These are some of the rumors I have heard recently, I don't really know how accurate they are.

Students are hired from PTDI certified schools and from what I understand you have to graduate with a scoring percentage in the upper 90%'s. Again, call recruiting for accurate guidelines. Once hired you will be put with a trainer for 8weeks and upon successful completion of that training you will go through a 2 day orientation and be assigned your own truck.

They are the same company with the same DOT#. Only one application is necessary. Personally I would suggest sticking with Crete. Dry freight has far fewer headaches attached to it and many more drop and hook loads. Refer freight also involves a lot of midnight to 3am deliveries that can really mess with your 14hr clock. It's a personal preference kind of thing. I've done both and would never go back to pulling a refer unless it was a dedicated run that kept me close to the house.

If you are looking for more miles, you will need to go OTR. If regular hometime is more important to you, then regional would be a much better fit. For the most part, regional driver make less than OTR guys because they are payed 3cpm less and do more live loading/unloading and get more of the short runs to keep them in their area. Even though regional makes less than our OTR drivers, they still make what many OTR guys with other companies make.

RedBeard wrote:

Doing good, up until the last 5 days or so. Been doing way too much sitting around lately. Due mostly to the fact that my last two loads have delivered in PA and Boston. Two very bad places to be sitting around with an empty trailer.

If you or anyone else is in the area of the Citgo TS on the SW side of Boston (Rte 1/S) today, feel free to stop by and say hi to me or one of the other 5-6 Crete/Shaffer drivers sitting here with me.

Andrew5184:

They are an unruly bunch to say the least. It was all in good fun though. But I could see how someone without a thick skin for that kind of thing could get short tempered in such a situation and get themselves into trouble real fast.

Gar-rose wrote:

Mid-eighties eh! I transferred there in 84 and graduated in 87. I would imagine we crossed paths a few times, perhaps at the Devil House. Every night started with the James Bond theme and many of my hangovers originated from that place. Oh the debauchery; #### good memories. Never went to a Wrangles/Outlaws game, but caught most of the Cardinal games when they came to town. I always bought end zone tickets in the Loge section and sat at midfield because there were so few season ticket holders for those high priced seats. Usually got to sit in $200 seat for $50 or so. The free food up there was a nice bonus too.

You said it!

 

Well the good ol' trucking life over here at Crete hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs for me over the last 5 days or so. It started when I dropped off my trainee and then had to sit for a day because I was completely out of hours. So that is one day lost. Not the end of the world at that point because I needed a 34hr reset anyway to give me a clean slate with my hours. Without the reset I was looking at some fairly restricted hours over the next few days.

The problem with this plan is that I wouldn't be done with my reset until Sat around 6am. Not a good time to be looking for a load. Freight has been a little tight around here. The last time I was down here I sat for a day waiting for a load. My reset was interrupted by a load that needed to be repowered from a truckstop 30 miles down the road. Apparently another driver had broke down and they wanted me to go get it and deliver it to PA. Well that's just great, a 470mi run and not only do I not get in my reset, but now I have to pull out at 2am in order to make this delivery ontime and I'll be empty in PA on a Saturday morning with little hope of getting a load out. And that is just what happened. Dropped my trailer and told nothing available, "find a place to park".

We'll, now I get my reset, which I no longer need because of all of this down time. But I did get to watch the football games, so I wasn't really all the upset to be honest.

My next load is another 500mi run with a few stops on it (good for an extra $60). I make a couple of stops on Monday and the final delivery up here near Boston on this Tuesday morning and once again get the very annoying "no freight message".

So I'm looking at under 1000 miles over the last 5 days (4 days to be fair, I was out of hours for one of them), if I don't get anything offered to me today. And it's not looking all that great. There are at least 4 Crete drives sitting next to me and a Shaffer or two and they were all here before me, two of them with parking permits (yup, have to pay for parking here, which will not be reimbursed by Crete) from last night in their windshields. NOT GOOD!

Whoa is me At least my last two weeks were 3200+ and 2500+, so not all is lost.

 

WEEK FORTY NINE​

Monday, December 1st through Sunday, December 7th​

This week stared out with us finishing off the final leg of our cross country jaunt to NV. The last few days have been nothing but driving under a rather tight schedule. The trainee has been doing the vast majority of driving, but I've had to put in a few hours along the way. This load was scheduled just a little too tight for a solo driver. A team could have had it there effortlessly, but since we were running on a solo schedule I was not allowed to let the truck run outside of the 14hr clock. This also means that the truck is supposed to stick to 11hrs of driving a day. I had planed on sticking to that, but because my load wasn't ready when it was scheduled to be I would have to make a slight adjustment to our driving limits in order to arrive on time.

It wasn't all that drastic, I just started out each day with an hour of driving and then turned it over to the trainee and he put in his 11hrs or so. By doing this we kept the truck within the 14hrs of operation and managed to get close enough to the customer to get there on time. We now found ourselves with around 600 miles to go today and enough cushion to make a couple of 5min stops while the trainee stayed on line 3 "driving" with nothing more than a flag to denote a quick visual inspection. If all went well we would be able to put into the customer's yard with 15-20mins to spare. The timing wouldn't have been quite so bad if this was a light load, but we were sitting under a load close to gross and looking at a number of hard climbs that would slow us down a bit.

We were also set to fuel once more along the way, but time was short and we had enough fuel to get to where we were going so I opted to bypass that one. When all was said and done we arrived at the guard gate with a handful of minuets left before our appointment time. That ended up being a 2700mi trip with a little less than 15mins to spare. Sure beats sitting around waiting for a load. You know, like the 40hrs I had to sit waiting to pick this one up. Oddly enough, the wait isn't all that bad when you know what you're waiting for.

Our reward for arriving on time was pretty much just what I had expected. "We don't have a door available, park off to the side and we'll let you know when we are ready for you." Good Grief! I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I've pushed to delivery a load on schedule only to find out that I was the only one worried about what time it showed up.

A short hour later we were finally given the green light and we made our way to the dock and put in another two hours waiting to get unloaded. I didn't really care how long it took them because I was collecting detention pay and didn't have any real drive time left anyway. They had overnight parking available on premise and I already had my parking spot scoped out for the night. Once they were finished I drove across the lot and parked it for the night and put in my MT call.

I had grand hopes of getting through PHX with my next load. I wasn't able to make it over Thanksgiving, due largely to my new student, but I still wanted to make it by the house so I could clean out my truck and make a little more room for us. I currently had every cubby packed and a fairly large pile of belongings that had to be relocated from my bunk to the passengers' seat on a nightly basis. But home time would once again have to wait because this trainee was only scheduled to be on the truck for 10 days for a refresher course and we needed a run going east to get him back to his truck at our Ottawa yard.

I sent a message off to dispatch which stated as much and was informed that they didn't have any freight going east at the moment, "are you kidding me!" That has got to be a first. I was informed that I would probably have to take a short load into Cali the following day and then get a load going east from there. I was told to check back in the morning when the AM freight was posted. That was fine with me, but I don't think the trainee was overly enthusiastic about the news.

It had been a long day and we decided to hit the sack. As I was getting comfortable the Qcom came to life and there sat a load offer that picked up just down the road and had us going to St Joseph, MO. What do you know; they found a load going east.

The delivery wasn't schedule until the 6th and we would be there by Thursday the 4th. I assumed that it could be delivered early because it had a delivery window of 07:00-14:30. After doing a little mental arithmeticin' I realized that we could easily have it there before they closed on the 4th and be ready to go the following morning to get a load that would run us through Ottawa and I could get my trainee back on his truck and I would have a truck to myself once again.

Another option was to Tcall this load when we arrived in Lincoln if an early deliver wasn't possible. Either way it appeared to be a win win situation. I didn't think for a second that there wouldn't be some kind of load in the Lincoln area going to or through Chicago.

Tuesday morning rolled around and we pulled out and headed to Sparks to pickup our load. It was only a 20 mile drive, but plenty of time to get a call from dispatch. Apparently there was a driver picking up a load from somewhere in Northern Cali and he didn't have the hours to deliver it ontime to the Denver area. So they wanted us to exchange loads in Sparks because there was plenty of time on our load for the other driver to deliver it and we would be able to deliver the Denver load. A few questions later and I just couldn't justify this one. I have never said no to dispatch, but this load made absolutely no sense.

First of all, the trainee's time was almost up and this would have him sitting in my truck making trainee wages instead of in his own truck. Next, this other driver hadn't even picked up his load yet and he had a good 4-5hrs of driving to get here. So we would have to sit around for most, if not all of today waiting for him to show up. To top it off, this load wasn't scheduled to deliver in the Denver area until Thursday. That would end up being 1000 miles over the next 3days.

Dispatch's one argument was that our load wasn't going to Ottawa anyway, so why not take this load and try getting a load out of Denver going that way when empty. I told them the difference is that with our load we would be empty outside of Kansas City on Thursday instead of in Denver on the same day. OK, I'm a team player. My question to them, "Do you have any loads in the Denver area that you can preplan us on once where empty that will get us pointed towards Chicago?" Answer, "No, it doesn't look like we have anything on the books, you can always check back with us once you get there." I then respectfully explained that I would love to help out, but it just wouldn't be fair to the trainee to expect him to stay on a trainer's truck for what would end up being at least a week past his time. Not to mention Crete would be incurring the additional cost of paying me for my training time and the additional $600 cost of paying the trainee. Dispatch finally relented and we were left to our own devises.

I was feeling guilty about it, but I just couldn't justify it from any point of view other than covering dispatches butt. The cost from everyone else's point of view was just too high.

All this and a little more than 15mins had passed. But we were once again on course and looking for the shipper and the trainee was breathing with a sigh of relief (He was listening intently to my side of the phone conversation). Directions were a little less than accurate and we wondered around for a bit before we were able to zero in on them. A few minutes later we were docked and bouncing to the rhythm of the forklift as they loaded us up.

We were loaded in short order and on our way. The last trip had been a tab bit pressured and we had little time to relax, or do anything as far as that goes. This trip on the other had left us with all the time in the world to make our delivery, but now it was the trainee's choice to push us along. In order to deliver this load before the consignee closed their doors on Thursday we would once again have to move along with little or no stopping. Between the mountains and usual Wyoming snow storm along the way we would once again be tight on time. The only difference this time around is that if we hit a snag along the way we wouldn't have to worry about a late delivery. We would simply be delivering it the following day, but the trainee was determined to get us there yesterday.

The rest of Tuesday went without incident and we shut down for the night in the desolate wasteland of western Wy. Not that I'm complaining, it sure beats the congested disaster of the eastern seaboard.

Wednesday had us looking at an uncertain trip across Wy. I had pulled up the local weather radar for the area and it wasn't looking too good. No where near as bad as I've seen in the past, but definitely no picnic either. My trainee had been driving for about 3 years, but had shown signs of trepidation when it came to icy and snow covered roads. Concern and caution is a very good thing in these conditions, but it was obvious that he had little experience in these conditions (he said he dealt with very little adverse weather last year) and was perhaps a little less than confident.

We were also both in a position where we were getting tight on hours. If things worked out right we would be able to get to Ottawa in a timely manner if freight worked to our advantage, but we would both be out of hours and have to shut down for a reset. One option that was available to us is that he could sit out the day in the sleeper and complete his reset while we were rolling while I drove all day today. This way he would be able to roll out when we got him back to his truck (and start making some decent money) and I would be the one driving over the Wy mountains and dealing with the snow. A comfort to both of us I believe. The only downfall to this plan is that I would be the one sitting in Ottawa doing a reset with no hours available.

So our Wednesday went with a nice little drive through the snow covered mountains. Most of the trip went fine with the exception of the normal trouble spots on the stretch of road around Laramie and Cheyenne. Things got a little hairy, but we made it through unscathed (sort of, but we didn't know it at this point) and everything was peachy once we hit the NE line. That is until we got about 60 miles into Nebraska. That's when I started to hear the slow air leak. You know, the little hissing you hear from the air valves on the dash when you first push them in. The problem is that I hadn't just pushed them in and the hissing progressively got worse. The compressor was having no problem keeping up with the leak in the system, but it would drain down from 120psi to 100psi every 5 seconds or so and it wasn't long before it just sat at a constant 100psi as the compressor could only maintain that level.

My assumption was that an air pod on the trailer had decided to fail at that moment, but upon a quick inspection I found a small hairline crack in one of the air lines under the trailer. I could only surmise that our little drive across the ice and snow pack roads had caused a large enough buildup of ice on the airlines to put enough strain on them to crack an old line. Once the ice melted away as we drove across a warmer Nebraska the leak made its presence know.

The hole needed to be fixed, but it was still manageable and we now had a decision to make. I didn't have enough hours to make it to our Lincoln yard. If I shut down for the night short of Lincoln we could start up again in the morning and pull into the shop by 10am or so. Showing up this late for repairs would make it impossible to deliver this load on Thursday. Option two would be to drive into Lincoln tonight. We could pull this off because by the end of my driving day the trainee would have completed his reset and could take over the driving responsibility for the remaining two hours. This would result in a 13hr driving day, but we would still stay within our 14hr clock. Not necessary from a legal log stand point, but required by the training department. Actually, we were supposed to stick to an 11hr drive day too, but under the circumstances, I didn't think anyone would get too bent out of shape over it.

I put the question to the trainee and got the exact answer I had expected. "Let's run it in tonight". That way we could be waiting when the shop opened and our trailer would be the first one in the door. I made a quick call to the shop to cement our place in line and off to Lincoln we went. Once there we parked in front of our assigned door and waited for 7am to roll around. If all went well, the air line should be repaired in short order and by the time our 10hrs were up we could be on our way to make it to the receiver's doors before their 14:30 closing time. We even had a couple of hours to spare if necessary.

Even though it was now midnight I wasn't at all tired and grabbed my laundry and headed into the drivers lounge to do some free laundry and throw myself into the shower while I was at it. I also had the time to whip up an awesome batch of Pork Chile Verde that any self respecting Arizonan would have been proud of.

The following day's events that we had planned for Thursday may have been well thought out, but reality had a completely different idea of how things would play out. First off, the shop guys weren't content with a driver's diagnosis of the problem. The trailer would first have to be pulled around to the inspection bay so that it could get its' scheduled service. At that point they then determined that it needed to have an air line replaced, and while they were at it they would go ahead and have all the air lines replaced. "Should be done in three hours", they tell me. Well that would still make it possible to deliver this load today, but "three hours" in the truck shop world is akin to "two weeks" in the construction business. In other words, "not a chance!" But I remained hopeful. Silly little me!

I made myself busy in the drivers lounge and caught a movie online and when the three hours were up I made my way down to the shop for an update. I really wasn't all that confident that I would get a positive response, but what I hadn't expected was to see my trailer up on jacks with one of the axels removed and a couple of guys going at it with a torch. Apparently they found more wrong with it than just the airlines. I knew at that point the day was lost and headed back to the drivers lounge to pass on the bad news. We would be spending the day in Lincoln and delivering this load on Friday. But there is always a bright side; we were still going to deliver the load a day earlier than it was originally scheduled.

I couldn't even pull off a Tcall, which really surprised me. I was sure there would be something in the yard that we could forward to the Chicago area, but it was not to be. Even if they would have let us Tcall, there wasn't an empty trailer to be found and there were a handful of drivers waiting around for them too. It was just one of those truck driving days that crawled along at a snails pace.

The trailer finally came out of the shop in the early evening looking as good as new. Friday morning rolled around and we were set to show up at the consignee when they opened at 07:00. I wasn't overly thrilled about taking off so early because it would cost me a reset. I was currently sitting at 72hrs on my log and could do no driving. The trainee had just put in a reset while we were rolling the other day and had all the hours in the world. The problem I was facing was that leaving at 5am would negate my reset. If I sat until 10am, I too would have a fresh clock. This would mean that after delivering this load, we could get a load Chicago (or some other point NE) bound and I could drop him off at his truck and be on my way.

The risk of waiting until 10am to pull out would be that there probably wouldn't be any loads available to us after we put in our MT call and we ran the risk of sitting until the next day to get a load going in the right direction. Leaving at 5am would greatly improve the chances of getting a load going back to his truck today and he was already 2 days past his 10 day training period. I knew the trainee was unaware of the particular situation I was facing and it pained me to do so, but I kept my current dilemma to myself, bit the bullet and started our day at 5.

We arrived as scheduled only to find a number of refer trucks sitting in line ahead of us. Apparently they had spent the night there and got the jump on us. I was a little confused by all the refer trucks. This was obviously a cold storage place and we had a dry load, but the address on the BOL and Qcom matched as did the company name on the side of the building. Has to be the right spot, Right?

The delivery got off to a bad start when I stood in the receiving office for almost 45mins waiting for someone to stick their head in. Once I finally saw someone and was able to get their attention they were quick to point out that I was in the wrong place. Of course I was; why should I expect a door that has "Receiving" on it to be the correct door? Silly me!

Off I go around the corner to an unmarked door to check in with the incognito receiving department only to be greeted with quizzical looks of confusion. Uhg! Once again I was informed that I was in the wrong place. This was a dry load, (yeah, I know) and needed to go to their satellite warehouse down the road. This was followed by a jumble of directions and finished up with an, "It's an unmarked building; take care that you don't drive past it."

We finally arrived at the final destination a little more than an hour after our initial arrival and were unloaded rather quickly. That was followed with an MT call along with a message that we need a load going through Ottawa so the trainee could escape from my truck. It took about 30mins but they came up with a load going to Waterford, NY (Oh the joy that brought to me). We would have to be rerouted a bit to make it work, but the trainee was tickled pink and we were on our way down to Kansas City to pickup our load.

I had assumed this would be a preloaded trailer, but it was not. We would have to do a live load and it wasn't an easy one. It was one of those places where you had to back into the dock from the street. There were about 12 docks and one driveway to get to them with a fair amount of traffic on the street to really complicate things. Once checked in I went out to the truck only to realize I was pointed in the wrong direction and drove on down the street a ways to find a place to turn around. Upon returning I found that I had lost my place. Actually when I drove off there was no one else cued up. Now, of course, there were two truck parked in the street with no drivers in them because they were checking in. There was a constant stream of traffic coming from the other way and I was dead in the water. I could see my empty dock door beckoning, but all I could do was wait.

Just as I saw an opening, so did one of the drivers backed to one of the docks that apparently was now loaded and waiting for his chance to pull out. So, as soon as a spot opened up he pulled up and decided that was the perfect place to park it and get out to close his doors. I guess being courteous to the other drivers and pulling out onto the street and parking curbside wasn't an option to him.

Well, there I patiently sat, (OK, not so much at this point) waiting for him to take his sweet ### time doing what ever it was he felt he needed to do and catching his log up to date as I waited in the street behind the two unoccupied trucks with the nose of my truck sticking out far enough to allow traffic to pass from both directions (one direction at a time that is, very narrow street), but with my blinker on to clearly show my intentions (especially to other truck drivers that should understand the situation). It was at this time another driver pulled around me to what I assumed was to go on down the road like many others had done. It was also the same time that the truck that had been so effectively blocking the drive had decided to pull out at which time I made my move and started to pull into position to back into my dock only to have the truck that had just passed me hit the brakes and bring us all to a stop.

He seemed to be under some misguided impression that he was the only SOB in the world and could do whatever he wanted. I, of course had no intentions of backing up and he seemed quit intent on holding his own ground come hell or high water. I gave him the benefit of doubt and allowed him a few moments to come to his senses to no avail. At first I simply thought that he was trying to find a parking spot in the street, but it was soon apparent that he was simply an _______.(please insert inflammatory remark of you own choosing, any will do nicely)

We seemed to be at a standstill and I finally got out and approached ####'s truck. A very interesting conversation ensued shortly thereafter which started with a number of very heated and down right vulgar remarks from said driver. Something about him being a local shuttle driver and owning the road around here along with a threat of having my butt kicked out of here for interfering with him. I brought up something about his absolute lack of professionalism and illegal driving habits on public roads and made it painfully clear (in a far more subtle and toned down approach than he had chosen to use) that "he would" be the one to back down in this stupid little standoff. That was followed by an invitation to join the plant manager and myself to continue this conversation when we weren't blocking off the entire street. Shortly thereafter I was backing up to my dock and waited for him to stop by my truck to take the discussion inside. He, of course chose to decline the offer. I don't care for these kinds of situations, but there are certain times when you have to stand up to guys like this that seem to take such pleasure in asserting their ill perceived authority in the most ridiculous manor.

Upon checking in I was informed by the shipping clerk that this was a very heavy load, 45,496# to be exact and he then proceeded to look at me like he expected me to voice some concern. When I said "no problem, I can manage that", he looked a little surprise and said something to the effect, "You guys must have some light rigs." "I guess so, I can handle another 1000 if you got it."

The loading wasn't exactly done at break neck speed, but we still manage to get rolling within a couple of hours and headed on down the road. We wouldn't be able to make it to Ottawa by the days end as we had hoped. The delays of the day would force us to hold up well short of there, but an early start would get us there first thing Saturday morning so the trainee could be on his way. And that's what we did.

Saturday was another bad day for me. Once again I was out of hours, sitting around 73 on my log when we pulled into Ottawa so I was stuck there for the remainder of the day. This would also be the second time I was prevented from putting in a 34hr reset. Because I had put in 2hr on duty in the passenger's seat today so that the trainee could get back to his truck, the reset was interrupted. Even though I sat around for the rest of Saturday and sat idle for a total 35hrs on either side of that 2hrs on-duty. Grr.

The week ended with a Sunday of driving towards my final destination. I managed to make it into western New York and shut down for the day.


Yet another exciting week comes to a close in the life of Evertruckerr!




WEEK FOURTYNINE
Monday, December 1st through Sunday, December 7th
Miles include deadhead

Lyman, WY to McCarran, NV (last leg)......................................594mi
Sparks, NV to St Joseph, MO....................................................1538mi
N. Kansas City, MO to Allegany, NY (first leg).........................1102mi

Total Paid Miles...................................3234 Miles


Actual Miles................3234 Miles

3234mi x .43 = $1390.62 + $150 training pay = $1540.62

 

Well, there you have it, straight form the horse's mouth.

Now, what can you do about gettin me a load out of Boston!:smt090:smt069

 

Wow, all I had to do was ask. Two minutes later the load offer comes in. How'd you do that

Coincidence I know, but gave me a good chuckle anyway. To bad it doesn't pickup until 3pm 2mrw. But it's a good 800mi run that's a drop ASAP in NC. This is my 3rd run from this place this month going to the same place. Don't even need a map anymore.

 

Evertruckerr wrote:

OK Mods! This is getting a little silly. Since when is #### a bad word?
***********************************************
Subsequent remark made after attempting above question in which the "offending" word was once again deleted by the software!

OK, can someone please explain how a very well known clown who's name begins with a B has a couple of O's thrown in and a random Z can be considered an unacceptable word. This politically correct stuff is really getting out of hand, jezz!