BD69: The Owner Operator Chronicles

This was one of those days where I chopped like hell but there weren't no chips flying. Ran my 14 down to 45 minutes for a total of 347 miles. Now there is an upside. I got a load on me at 1400 that wasnt scheduled to be picked up until 2300 tonight. Got it about a 100 miles down the road, so I am a little ahead of the game on this load...back to Brundridge, Alabama. Filled up this morning and penciled out 7.94 mpg on a 39,000 pound load on that Midwest winter blend. Running a whopping 19,300 pound load now on Southern diesel so i hope to bring in about 8.5 on this one. So far things are going pretty good. Getting held up on the yard for 3.5 days sucked donkey balls but that's trucking. I worked out a rudimentary P&L sheet today and was very pleased with the early numbers. We'll get more into that once I have a larger sample size and I work out a comfortable way to share my number publicly. But at the moment, I'm doing much better than I thought I would right out the gate.

More later...

 

Demopolis, Alabama and out of time. Big wreck on 20 just ruined my day and has thrown my schedule for tomorrow into chaos. I think I can still make it work, but I'm going to use every minute of my 14 doing it. Had to drop the hammer last 3 hours today to close the gap on my drop tomorrow. Mileage suffered. Ended up penciling out 7.73. Outbound load is going to be heavy, so more Howes and more hill work outs for the old girl...hey, it worked out ok last time.

More later...

 

I've had a day to forget. I pulled off the delivery, deadhead, trailer washout and arrival at the shipper with 2.5 hours left only to discover my dispatcher was wrong...they couldn't load me when I got there. So over to the Petro I went to try and force myself to sleep so I can go back at 2230 to load then drive all night to keep this load on schedule . I used to love to drive all night but I've gradually gotten away from the Vampire life. Figured this summer I'd find my way back to it to save fuel and tires, but it's February and I thought I had a little while to go.

More later. .