Where is everyone #5

Me too. I wanted to say something but didn't feel like receiving a verbal gang bang. Night time was invented a long time ago for sleeping, and I see no need to change it.

 

I prefer to sleep at night too, but the lack of traffic and idiots at night is a welcome change......

 

Did ya find yer vibration

 

That's a perk a lot of companies are overlooking as ways to give drivers a raise without actually raising their rate. But, oh no! Our truck's fuel economy will drop! Yeah, and you'll lose drivers because you keep punishing them by turning down their top speed, and "upgrading" their elogs to track every metre the truck moves (kicks into driving whenever the truck moves, and will steal drive time if you don't have at least 5 minutes on-duty before moving). But not actually giving them more money per mile to make up for it.

This is a situation going on right now for a friend of mine at my old deck company. They are getting so worried the DOT is going to go after them for unaccounted driving distance and have taken away the driver's ability to edit the on-duty/off-duty time. I'm glad I jumped off that sinking ship when I did. They've lost almost a dozen good drivers since this time last year.

The difference between a 64 mph truck and a 75 mph truck is $58 a day in the US, that's an extra $5.25/hr.

This is why I've come to dislike regional work. You still work a full day (or longer) and still have all your commute times to and from, so you get no personal time except eat, shower and sleep at home.

Being out for a week and home for resets, if you work for a good company, you'll get two to three nights at home (if you want all of them), at least 48 hours off, and won't be bothered except to tell you where you are going.

It's not quite OTR, but it's the best way to make big bank, especially if the company isn't sending you to places like Atlas Tube to throw away a day of time for no pay.

 

Man, those elogs sure are a benefit for the industry.

 

My wife and I have been going to BP's for the over 10 years we've been together (Jim Treliving is from Virden, MB) and have yet to have a bad experience. Food, service or otherwise. One of the few chain restaurants in Manitoba we've had such a good experience with.

 

That burgundy color is nice. We've got a cousin lodging with us at the moment and she recently got a regular Cherokee in the same color. It's nice looking. While we were there, I got my bride a 300 AWD. It's black though.

I seen your remarks about the 5.7. Not even available on the 300 unless you get a top of the line limited for $55k, and then not avail with AWD. At first I thought I was settling with the 3.6. Couldn't have been more wrong. That thing will scoot. One rainy day I had a chance to test out the AWD. Front drive comes on when the wipers are running (or <40ºF ambient which won't be any time soon around here). I had to make a left from a side street where there was really poor visibility for oncoming traffic. I got on it and it pulled out on wet pavement like it was on rails. We like this car much better than the Acura RDX it replaced for a lot less money.

The dealer thing is universal. Years ago I bought a couple new at the nearby Dodge dealer. Last time we were there, got treated like dirt and ended up in an Acura instead. Not sure what changed besides us being about 10 yrs older.

Since then I've bought two at the mega-dealer for Atlanta. Went out to their Athens location to get my pickup, since they put the HD inventory out there for the farm boys. Went to Morrow instead for the 300 since I guess that's more of a city thing and they had those stacked up at that location. I was treated so well with the pickup sale that I didn't think twice about using their other location for the 300. Kind of an awkward start since the salesman was an African dude that's used to dealing with deadbeat buyers due to the neighborhood. Once we got past the initial meetup he was quite cool to deal with and the rest of the deal went without a hitch.

 

On the topic of buying used, reliable cars, go Toyota. Yeah yeah, import blah blah blah. The 1995-2005 Toyota 4-banger is a 400k - 500k mile motor if taken care of. The car around it will fall apart before the motor does.

My parents recently gifted us a 2005 Toyota Camry with the 1MZ-FE V6 with 135k km's (83k miles) to help me get to and from work easier. Apparently it's the most reliable V6 Toyota has ever made and will run 300k-400k miles without problems. 190hp and has got a lot of good highway pulling speed. Great fuel economy as well so far (haven't had two fills yet in over three weeks so no real numbers yet, but I've only put in about 70 litres).

 

Got by without tarping it looks like. Hope things went well on your trip

 

The new hemis get pretty decent. I had a 15 model pickup with 3.92s and the auto 6 and itd average 16 in town and 21 on the highway, with me driving like a #######