Calex Express....My New Home!

Thanks pal. Real glad things are looking good for your wife. Happy for you being able to get home more often with the new job. Take care and keep in touch. God Bless.

 

Got my dispatch Friday on my way home after doping my last 2 drops. Same as last week, deadhead to Greenville for a drop and hook tomorrow night and drop the load in Mountain Top Tuesday night. I'll be leaving about 9am in the morning. Be safe all, God Bless.

 

ooops......Instead of worrying about my spelling, you need to be enjoying your home time with the wife and kids. And anyway, I had 2 random drug AND alcohol tests within 6 weeks of each other over the summer. And I might add the results were the same then as they have been the last 30+ years, clean and sober. Enjoy the family, call me when you leave out for San Antonio.

 

Feel better Rob, at least you're home. Like my mom always says, nothing like a hot bowl of soup and bed.

 

Just got off the phone with dispatch. I have to be in Greenville Monday before midnight for a drop and hook going back to Mountain Top for Tuesday night. Same backhaul the last 3 weeks. Louie called me yesterday to let me know one of my customers isn't shipping Wednesday, which doesn't bother me none. It's the one where I need to be up at 4:45 am on Wednesday's to pick up, then when I get home Thursday evenings I need to leave the house Friday mornings at 5am to drop that product. Now I'll be able to sleep in an extra 2 hours both days.

Because I'm going on vacation the end of December and Christmas falls before that I will be off for 3.5 weeks. I will leave the house on Monday the 10th, get back to Pa on Wednesday the 12th, leave with my run on the 12th then when I get empty on the 14th reload immediately to get back up to Pa to get my truck serviced and whatever write-ups I have on it, then leave back out on the 19th and be empty home on the 21st. I am allowed to keep my truck home with me for the 3 weeks I'll be off. I have a place that's fenced, gated and secure that I park it at when I'm on vacation. Here's a picture of our mode of transportation starting New Years Eve for 11 nights, the Celebrity Equinox.

 

Thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad you've enjoyed mine and a few other of my fellow drivers posting here. For the most part I try and convey my every day trials and tribulations that I go through. I stopped being a cheerleader about the company a while ago, I surmise people can figure out that I'm still here, am quite content doing my job, and have nothing handed to me as some sort of entitlement.

People have asked me how can I constantly be upbeat about my job, easy, I have a dedicated run that's mine for the next 3.2 years if I want it, Calex has had this account for many years and have put their top drivers and teams on it, so I guess it's mine until the end, (retirement). My upbeat attitude has a lot to do with the job at hand that I still enjoy, but also realizing that I'm at the end of my career, not the beginning. I have read here on TTR that drivers will retire with their current employer, just as they leave orientation. Here it is going on 4 years for me here and I finally can say this will be my last place of employment in a big truck.

Your are absolutely right when you say a lot has changed. It has, but I still find that sliver of daylight every day that keeps me motivated to do this job to the best of my ability, safely. I was just talking to one of my friends here at Calex that also has a dedicated run. He too has been around the country a few times. We were comparing notes about when we first started driving OTR back in 1980. I-10 thru Phoenix wasn't done, I-90 through Wallace Idaho still had a red light in the middle of town, Gay Johnson's(Flying J for you newer drivers) in Rawlins Wyoming still had a phone system that you had to go through the operator for all your calls. T/A west in Ontario Ca was a 76 truck stop, T/A east wasn't there, and what is now the Ontario Mills Mall was a Bingo fuel stop. Times have changed, but one thing is a constant, my memories of the old days.