BF/GF team heading to millington, TN 2/2/15

Hey guys!

Truck got fixed yesterday after lunch, Black Pete is back on the road!

So today has been hilarious, we had a load from laredo that delivered in nebraska today, I took us out about 6 hrs yesterday and let her take over.

We try to keep a 7 to 7 ish shift.
I wake up this morning just south of Nebraska with 170 miles or so to go. Easy peasy, except CSR starts changing the load, the customer added a stop in kentucky! Hahaha wut?

So I call my DM, sure enough....he says customer added the stop, he changes the route so I get paid miles from my current position, because not only is there a stop in KY....but it's BEFORE the final which I'm 100 miles away from at this point! All I could do was laugh and ask if CSR got a Margarita machine lol.

But that's fine, I tell him I'm game cause they haven't stacked anything on me anyway, another 1600 miles won't hurt my feelings. So I change course and goat path through NE to I-29 and on the way CSR changes it again....

Now the load doesn't deliver until 08/03...
F$!# that, I'm not interested in sitting on a load for 3 days. So call my DM and get it T-called in edwardsville. Get with a planner and get a gravy load out of edwardsville going to rancho cucamonga, but it delivers on the 3rd...wtf. lol. So I take it, get a T-call set up in phoenix...load gets in from Iowa an hour or so ago and we're on our way! Hurray!

 

Been a weird day. Productive overall, but I saw a truck burned to the ground today, and miles of Texas on fire just west of junction.

We're headed east through texas for an amazon delivery. Adventuress took over an hour or two ago and I'm fixin to get some shut eye cause I've gotta do the drop and hook. ETA is probably 6am in humble.

Had to call the planner in Lancaster because they've been sending daycab loads to my qualcomm for like 24 hrs. Get told they have no freight for teams around Houston or Dallas or San Antonio..

End up playing "let's make a deal" and taking a 390 mile load to laredo with a promise that they will stack something long on me, laredo has always had good team freight. We'll see what we come up with tomorrow. Seven or snake eyes?

 

This is extremely good advice, especially for newer drivers that may read this. Never let planners make a deal with you without them fulfilling their part first.

Luckily for me, I had already been warned that Lancaster has a new "team planner" and I have a number for the planner in laredo. So I didn't bother to wait for her to hold up her end and got myself a T-call and a 1300 mile load to hebron, ky. Which will finish us at 5200 for the week.

 

You're only slightly off.... we actually run 4500-5500 depending on the week and what freight is doing. We live out here pretty much, we go "home" once every couple months but what little we didn't sell or donate before going to academy is in storage. 6k, if you can run it is a fast track to burning yourself out, and we like it out here. We want to make good money, but don't want to burn ourselves out doing it.

We have looked long and hard at our best options, I don't do anything without exhaustive research. Overage miles will amount on average, to $810 a month... or 9,7xx A year for full years. Which, if we carried the full term of the lease amounts to just under 30k. Assuming miles per year stay the same roughly.

This is actually a good question, and I had to break out my lease in order to review a few details.

Assuming I finish my lease out completely, the "SLV" (stipulated loss value) or the amount they say the truck will be worth at the end of my lease... will be a little over 66k. So, assuming my ~30k goes toward it, I would still need another 33k to purchase a truck that will have ~680,000 miles on it. Which, coincidentally is 180k after Cummins' warranty runs out on the engine and these trucks become black holes for money.

I've worked on vehicles since I was a kid, I have owner operators in my family and I know a decent amount about trucks.
What I can tell you is, new trucks are not made to last anymore. After treatment and EGR systems along with new electronics ensure that these engines rarely, if ever see 900k+ without massive overhauls, and complete after treatment system and sensor replacement.

I'm not interested in this eventuality, as many have stated and I can attest....swift's program Is a LEASE, not a lease purchase. It has a purchase option, but only swift wins here. They keep their SLV on the contracts overvalued through the entirety of the lease schedule. They intend to make their money whether you lease or buy.

I choose to look at it, for the time being as the cost of doing business. I'm (or rather the truck since technically it shoulders the brunt of the work) paying money to make money. The truck pays for itself and affords both of us a much better paycheck Than we used to make.
If properly budgeted and allotted, it also pays for its own maintenance... then, after the warranty runs out they can have it back.

 

Hey guys!

We picked up that load in laredo yesterday and rolled out in no time! 15,600 lbs of air filters from mexico.

Woke up this morning still in texas, let this be a lesson to you boys and girls. Swift's directions are the shortest route mile-wise, however this does not generally coincide with the shortest route time-wise. Especially out west.

When I got up she had been goat path g it through texas all night on some god forsaken back road route swift had set up. We should have had already been in Arkansas. We would have been had we taken i35 out of laredo to i30 out of dallas.... it will NOT happen again.
Not adventuress' fault though, I should have checked the route before I went to bed and I neglected to.

Anyways, handed it off to her a little while ago about 240 miles from the final. We're set to deliver at 08:00. Then a 34, because pete needs a bath and a service. I've decided I'm changing the oil at 30k when the oil pressure first starts declining rather than waiting until swift's 50k interval.