CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK THIRTEEN
Monday, March 30th through Sunday, April 5th
Miles include deadhead


Week thirteen started out with a bad omen. My request for directions from the Crete system only garnered me a “No directions available for this stop”. The address given didn’t seem to exist. My GPS was as confused as I and turned up no results. My Streets & Trips had similar results and no online mapping sites could find it either.

Multiple attempts at a phone call where fruitless as it was a Sunday when I received the load info and it appeared no one was at the factory. I was looking at a 7am pickup appointment and no way of knowing where I was headed. I assumed they opened at 7am and wouldn’t be answering phone calls until that time, making it impossible to arrive my usual one hour early, let alone on time. I hate the idea of being late but didn’t really have too many options to avoid just such an outcome.

We had held up short at a truck stop 20 miles away the day before and when 6am rolled around I decided to head in the general direction and hope for the best. The one thing I had going for me was that my destination was in a very small town and I had to assume the chances of stumbling across the shipper would be fairly good. If not, these little towns almost always have a dirt lot or some defunct business that would afford me a parking spot until I could reach someone on the phone (if my cell worked that is).

Upon pulling into town I spotted a small convenience store that was open and surrounded by pickups. This was obviously the local morning gathering spot for the farmers to grab a cup of Joe and catch up on the day’s gossip. It’s a pain in the backside when you are headed somewhere without directions, but it actually served as a good lesson to the student. “Sometimes you have to figure things out for yourself”

I pulled off on the side of the highway and we headed inside for a look see. As suspected there were a bunch of locals chewin’ the cud and every one of them stopped their conversation and stared at us as we walked in. These little towns are acutely aware of new faces. Something I can relate to having grown up in one of these small communities. Having commanded the full attention of everyone in the place by simply walking in, it was a simple matter to ask the closest spectator if they could point me in the general direction of Kelly’s Bean barn (that’s Nebraska for ya). Moments later I was back in the truck with detailed directions to said “natural gas emporium.”

As it turned out I only missed it by a few blocks and within a couple of minutes I was pulling into the property. I also noted that the address given, 1 Bean Blvd (how cute), boar no resemblance to the area street signs. There was, of course, no one around because it was before 7am. But I wasn’t late and would be the first one loaded when they did decide to show up. This also gave me ample time to show the trainee how to send in updated directions into dispatch so that other drives in the future would not have to relive our dilemma.

All my worrying about pulling in late was for naught, (I has suspected as much from the start) because the employees didn’t even start pulling in until 7:45. Apparently their day didn’t even start until 8am and I quietly thanked dispatch for that under my breath. Oh well, it’s not the first time that has happened to me and I’m more than confident that it will not be the last.

Once everyone rolled in for a new day and got the ball rolling everything proceeded in a timely manor and the truck was loaded with my 5 pallets of beans within 30mins and we were off and running once again. This was a two stop pickup and the next one was down in KS the following morning some 600 miles away. It would make for a good day of driving and an early morning pickup the following day before making our way down to OK for the final delivery later that same evening.

Tuesday morning found us about 70 miles from the final pickup address. We had plenty of time the day before to get there but since we had ample time to make the run I held up short at a Pilot so we could catch a shower and the trainee could get a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant. He is new to the industry and hasn’t yet developed my distain for that fine truck stop cuisine. He couldn’t understand why I always eat in the truck when there are so many places to eat everywhere we stop. All I could say is “count your money and step up on a scale at the end of each week.”

It was a short hope to our next pickup, which went by without incident (for a change) and we were in and out in less than an hour with a fully loaded truck. We arrived a few hours early and waited at a nearby truck stop for our appointment time. Another one of those annoying “no early delivery” loads.

Time crawled as it often does in these circumstances, but the appointment time eventually approached and we found ourselves pulling in one hour ahead of said time. Our reward was to be immediately assigned a door only to sit for almost two hours before the forklift started rocking the truck. As the forth hour approached the empty call went in and the load offer followed shortly there after. A load picking up in Edmond, OK (super heavy dog food load, no doubt) first thing the following morning going to Baton Rouge (768mi) for a Friday delivery. That’s a less than desirable number of miles over the next couple of days, but it could certainly have been worse.

If it had be a Friday morning delivery I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with this load, but this was one of our infamous delivery times. The load info simply stated a delivery date of Friday 00:00 to 00:00. This means that it will be an appointment delivery and the appointment has not yet been made, which almost always results in delivery late in the afternoon or evening and a wasted day. The uncertainty of the situation wasn’t made any better by the fact that we were headed to some place called “Associated Grocers”. Time would tell. In all honesty I didn’t need to wait for time, I knew #### well what kind of a delivery appointment I was going to get, a LATE one.

Wednesday morning came along soon enough and we knocked out our drop/hook in short order and headed on over to the nearest truck stop to scale out. This was a load of dog food and they are always pushing the weight limits of the truck, especially with the added weight of the APU, student and his belongings. I had purposely avoided our scheduled fuel stop where we were supposed to fill up the tanks before arriving at our pickup. I had done this once before when pulling a load out of this shipper and learned the hard way. That little mishap found me sitting on a scale with a gross of 80,800# or something to that effect. I wasn’t about to put myself in the position again.

As it turned out there was little to worry about on this particular load. The BOL showed a weight that would put me well within legal limit, although a full take of fuel may have made things a little tight. As it were, I was sitting with tanks close to a ¼ full and no worries about being overweight. As we headed out of town I was going to have the trainee pull into the Flying Hook to scale out but it was obvious as we approached that it was a cluster as usual and I opted to head on down the road. We would scale out at a less congested truck stop along the way.

As we headed down I-35 I pulled out the truck stop guild book to search out the best choice of a place to scale out at and decided on the last truck stop with a scale before the state scales, a Total in Pauls Valley (not that I really had a choice, it was on only one I could fine between here and there). I was fairly confident on the position of the tandems, but really needed to get a scale ticket before crossing a set of state scales. There was one to contend with in OK, but that one is always closed and TX is basically a free for all. For the most part it was a moot point however, because we would pull in at the Total, scale the load and make any necessary adjustments and be on our way.

Sounded like a grand plan to me at the time. All was fine and dandy until my trainee pulled into the truck stop only to see a “closed” sign at the entrance of the scale. All righty then, this is not so good. Here we sit with a 44,000# load and no more than a thumb pointed up in the air, one eye closed guess as to tandem placement. The next closest truck stop with a scale was just 30 miles south, unfortunately the state scales were 20 miles away in the same direction. Option two would be to drive way to many miles back north.

I had certainly put us into a bad situation by not scaling out in OK City. This was a cleaver little rouse on my part with the sole purpose of teaching the trainee a very valuable lesson (you believe me, right?). Intentional or not, it accomplished just that.

I now found myself in the very uncomfortable position of “hoping” my load was properly balanced and counting on the state scales being close. After all, that scale is never open. Why would today be any different? At this point, I’m sure you all ready know the answer to that pointless question. I got out of the truck and made one more visual assessment of the tandem placement and decided to slide them one extra hole. Again, sounded simple enough but I had the good fortune of being hooked to one of our ancient trailers that have not yet been traded out of the fleet. I made several attempt to get the pins to release and eventually gave up in frustration with a “looks close enough”.

Up to this point the trainee had been doing the driving, but I wasn’t about to allow him to be in the drivers seat as we crossed state scales with a questionable load. If anyone was going to get a ticket it would be me and we headed on down the road. That was a long 20 miles to say the least, but I was still confident that I would pass by while reading a “closed” sign. But that was not to be the case for the blasted thing was open and I was anything but sure of what was about to happen. Anyone want to take a guess.

As luck would have it, the scale operator was preoccupied as I rolled across the scales. He was inside, but I could see that he was on the other side of the room doing what ever it is they do inside of a chicken coup to occupy their time. A waive of relief wash over me as I pulled back onto the interstate and made a beeline to the Loves down the road to find out what the Cat Scale had to say.

Final result; 78,000# gross with 34,580# on the drives with no fuel in the tanks. It turns out that last little adjustment I wanted to make back in Pauls Valley was right in line with what needed to be done. Time to fuel up and make the necessary adjustments, which put me in the mood to become an aluminum salvage dealer by the time I got the pins released on that #### trailer.

My frustration was to get a little reprieve in short order however. While I was in mortal combat with the trailer a message came across the Qcom with my delivery appointment for the stupid load. Exactly as I had not anticipated, my Friday delivery was set for the prime time of 3am along with a message that the load could be delivered up to 4hrs early.

Now that I new what our schedule was I found that we still had an abundance of time and I figured this would be as good a time as any to put the truck in the shop for a seriously overdue A service. I could stop off at the Wilmer yard with limited out of route miles and have a few things taken care of, including my A/C which had decided to stop working while in PHX during my last home time. So after a very short 5hr day I found myself sitting in Wilmer, one of our finest shops. (Insert hardy laughter).

I had actually contemplated tcalling our load here but the scheduled time of the delivery wasn’t all that bad and the truck needed to go into the shop anyway and I was expecting the typical “we wouldn’t be able to fit you in until the following day.” I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they would be able to get in into the shop by 3pm. I wasn’t quite that gullible, but I held out hope that it could be finished before they closed the shop that night.

The rest of the day was spent in the terminal. We were fortunate enough to pull in on a day they were having one of their “driver information” meetings and scored a free meal in the process while listing to a handful of your traditional stereotypical truck drivers dominating the conversation with there mindless babble as the rest of the room shook their heads in amazement. I would like to personally thank them for embarrassing an entire profession. Crete tries to do a good think with these meetings only to have them derailed by, OK, I best stop.

It turned into a very long day because the truck was still in the shop at closing time and I was called down only to be informed that they weren’t quit finished with it yet. There was still some A/C work that needed to be attended to and they would finish it up in the morning.

Thursday morning started with a mechanic pounding on the door ready to get to work. Surprisingly enough, they were finished with it in a couple of hours. We had just over 400 miles to go and sat around for a few more hours before starting our day out because we didn’t want to arrive too early. Start time eventually rolled around and before we knew it we were in Baton Rouge. Even with our late start we still had a few hours to spare and spent the time practicing various backing maneuver to pass the day.

Our acceptable early delivery window finally presented itself and we pulled up to the guard gate only to be directed to the back lot where we were to await further instructions on the CB. Just like my old refer days, some things will never change. The rest of the evening was a mixture of annoyance and aggravation and a short 5hrs later I was putting in the MT call.

I certainly didn’t expect a load offer at this time, but that is just what I got. A preloaded trailer was sitting 30 miles down the road and headed up to the freight waist land of PA (1316mi) for a Monday delivery. That would make for decent miles, but not great for a 3 day run not to mention the fact that I just spent a shop day in Wilmer. But what really concerned me was the final destination. I have been reading nothing but bad things about freight up there and was sure that my Monday morning MT call would be answered with an endless taunt of “no freight”.

I made one last ditch effort to Tcall the load at our New Kingstown yard, but it was pointless and we ended up spending the weekend at the yard. We were still about a 100 miles away from the final delivery point, but it was a load with another “absolutely no early drop delivery” messages that would result in a very frustrating stretch of less than productive days.

WEEK THIRTEEN
Monday, March 30th through Sunday, April 5th
Miles include deadhead
​

Scottsbluff, NE to Ardmore, OK (final leg)………………………………......874mi
Edmond, OK to Baton Rouge, LA………………………………………............768mi
Zackary, LA to New Kingstown, PA (first leg)…………………….........1212mi


Total Paid Miles………………………………………..2854 Miles
Actual Miles…………………..2917 Miles

2854 Miles x .43 = $1227.22 + Stop pay $30 + Training pay $150 = $1307.22

 

Hello all,

First off, I would like to thank SuperSnack for filling in during my absence. I appreciate the help and enjoy your posts.

I'm back in the saddle and knocking out the miles.

I apologize for my lengthy periods of absence of late. I've really been preoccupied with the home search thing. Phoenix is the center of the housing crash and as a result the home prices have collapsed making it an incredibly good time to buy a home. The down fall to this (as I am finding out) is that 80% of the homes being sold are distressed properties, i.e. in foreclosure, short sales, bank owned, vandalized, etc. This makes for insanely cheap homes but unbearably slow processing of offers by bank officers. We are almost 8 weeks into our first home offer and still don't know if the lean holders will agree to the price (they will be taking close to a 300K loss). In the mean time we have had to put offers in on a couple of other homes in the event this one falls through. So all of my time is devoted to finding homes online for my wife to look at when she gets off work. Blah Blah Blah.

It's a pain, but will result in on hell of a deal. I was even able to find a home that sold for 600K a few years ago and might get it for $250K and it comes with a guest house. Not bad for a dumb ol truck driver.


Anyways, back to life at Crete. It looks like things are really starting to pick up again. I have been hearing the "we're overbook" thing a few times and have been running hard. As usual, they bee lined me to the east coast once again after my hometime. They even called me up a day early and tried to get me to run a 1000 hot load up to Northern Cali. Unfortunately (or not) they called me at lunch time while I was sitting in my favorite Mexican restaurant half way through a pitcher of beer. No worries, the wife does all the driving when I'm at home.

When I did go back to work it was a run out to TX of 1000+ miles followed by a two more good loads. But one again I find myself on the east coast, or about as close as I can get to it. It only took 2500 miles and 4 days to do it.

You'll never guess what message I got after my MT load up here in Northern Virgina this morning. "Short freight, find a place to park, don't count on a load today."

I eventually got a load offer but it doesn't pick up until tomorrow morning and has me going to AL for a Monday morning delivery. I will try to Tcall it in Knoxville tomorrow, but even if that doesn't work I'll have 3200 miles for the week. If I actually pull off a Tcall I'll be looking at the possibility of a 3600mi week.

Other than today, I've been racking up the miles compared to the last few months.