CRETE - A Year in Review

Driver Bill wrote:

Nope, but we were able to rent it out. Looks like I'm a landlord now. We'll also be renting the condo out in Phoenix once we find a home. We just put in an offer for a house that was accepted by the seller. This home sold for over $500K three years ago and we will be getting it for $239K unless we find something better before the bank approves the short sale. The housing market in Phx is awesome if you are buying.

Knighton5 wrote:

Yeah, that seems to happen from time to time.

EliteTrucker wrote:

I used to get hotel rooms and rent a car on a regular bases, but the problem with all of the down time lately is that it is accompanied with a paycheck that is much smaller than I am accustom too. So now I spend much more time in the back of the truck in an effort to conserve cash. I do like to get out for a nice long walk when I can but truckstops are not always located in the safest areas.

Longbow wrote:

Oh! That can't end well. Maybe you'll get lucky and get a load out before the hopeless weekend trucks start to back up.

 

Well, I'm back from hometime. I prefer to stay out for 6 weeks at a time so I can spend a good week at the house, but with the way freight has been I'm finding it more productive to put in for my home time every three weeks and put in shorter homestays. This makes the first week out good because I can always count on a 2000+ mile run out of AZ back to the east side of the world. The second week is questionable and by the time that week is over I'm looking for a run back to AZ that will get me a 2000+ mile run back to the house.

And that's just how it has been working. My trip back to the house was a 2500mi run to Cali. I ran 2100+ miles off of it and I Tcalled it in Phx.

Spent 4+days at the house and pulled out Tues morn with a 2044mi run to Columbus, OH.

It's a 2stop P/U with the first part loading in Phx. There was a little hiccup with that one. My pickup number was wrong and they wouldn't release the load. It took about 30mins to straighten out but I had pulled in early and was still able to leave before my original appointment time had arrived.

The second P/U was scheduled for 7am this morning (Wen) in El Paso. I showed up about an hour early and had to wait for the rest of the hour for the gate to open. That will happen some times. I then went into the shipping office with my PU# and was promptly told that no one from Crete had called for an appointment time. A few messages later let me know that Crete was under the impression that this was a FCFS place. It isn't!

That was 3hrs ago and I'm still waiting to be loaded. They said they would fit me in when they could. Now my 14hr clock is running and this day is going to be all but shot by the time I get out. I also had to let Crete know that this load can not possibly be delivered on time due to the delay. This is going to a Big Lots DC and will require a new appointment, most likely the following day which has the potential of laying me over. However this delivery is going to a place that is only a couple of miles from the terminal, so I don't imagine I will have any problems getting a tcall arranged since the delay was Crete's fault to start with.

Even though a Tcall may do me little good for I will find myself empty in Columbus, OH on a Friday afternoon. My recent trips through there haven't been all that fruitful. At least a layover there will make it possible to amuse myself for whatever part of the weekend that I find myself there. I can choose between a movie theater, sportsbar (March Madness) or the always entertaining drivers lounge. I might even be able to get my truck in the shop for an A service that is overdue.

It's been an interesting month. Twice I have found myself running out of hours. I was going to deliver my Cali load last week to pickup the last 500 miles on it and work on getting a load through Phx from there but didn't have the hours. I managed to make it to Phx, but only with a handful of hours left on the log.

During the first week of the month I also found myself out of hours but that was balanced out with a dismal 1700 miles over a 8 day period in the middle of the two.

All in all, I can't complain though. I ran through the numbers for the month and it looks like I will have 10,585 Miles after delivering this load some time Friday. That will leave me with 4 1/2 days to add to the total.