CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK FIFTY TWO-year end​

Monday, December 29th through Sunday, December 31st​

What do you know; a whole year has gone by along with another 150,000 miles. Somewhere along the way this year I hit my One Million Mile mark and managed to do it without a ticket or accident. It’s hard to believe that many miles have slipped away over the years. Looks like my last update of the year. If I had known what I was getting myself into when I started this thread I may not have been quit as ambitious. Perhaps I would have been wiser to stick to a simpler format with a few highlights thrown in along the way followed by the weekly totals. Sounds like a grand idea for 2009. It gets a little tedious following the ol’ Monday I did this and then Tuesday was, followed by guess what happened Wednesday and so forth.

I’ve got a running total of pages at the bottom of my MS Word document and I’m up to 290+ pages. Good lord, what a bunch of rambling.

Week 52 that I recently posted would generally signify the end of a year, but there appears to be a few extra days left to account for, so here they are. Nothing to exciting for a change.

We woke up early Monday morning and put in the last hour of drive time to get back to the Wal-Mart DC. We had a backhaul load that we dropped off and then signed off of their system and headed on down to Fort Smith where I was to pick up a preloaded trailer filled with AC units heading to PHX. Finally! That made for a very long 9 weeks out, I won’t be doing that anytime again in the near future (I hope). I missed Christmas, but it looks like I will be there for the New Year’s celebration.

It was a rather boring trip for me. By this time the trainee was doing the vast majority of the driving and I was delegated to the passengers’ seat. One last insult was thrown at me along the way. I didn’t have enough hours to make it to Phx on Tuesday and actually had to hold up in Flagstaff at 4pm. It’s 70° in Phx and I’m sitting up here in 3ft of snow. That’s just plain cruel. I was two hours away from a home I hadn’t seen in 9 weeks and had to stop driving in the middle of the day. Oh well, that’s trucking in a 100% compliant world.

It gave me time to find a place for the trainee to spend his time off in PHX while I was doing my thing. The company had supplied me with the name of a hotel that they use close to the terminal, but I knew the area and didn’t see any reason to put him in a place like that. The company rate was $45 a night. I figured I could find him something close to the Tempe area for that price instead of sticking him into an industrial area where there were no options for entertainment.

Why Tempe, well it just so happens that it hosts the nations best New Year’s Eve Block party. It is routinely ranked in the top 3 and occasionally tops the list. I thought that might help make his stay a little more enjoyable. Phoenix was also unavailing its’ new light rail system and he would be able to visit a large portion of the valley for the cost of a $2 fair.

I pulled out the ol’ computer and went to my favorite booking site, that being Priceline and went to work. I did a little searching and the cheapest room I could find in the area was $60 at a Motel 6 (not bad considering it is the height of tourist season) but since I don’t have to worry about truck parking this time around I was able to go to my absolute favorite section of Priceline. That would be the “name your own price” page. I chose my preferred area (you get to choose an area and the star level, but can’t pick the actual hotel), and entered a price of $40/night for 5 nights for a TWO star room. If the price is accepted by a hotel you are informed of your winning bid, your credit card is charged and you are locked into the room. If the price is not accepted you must choose a different area or different star rating and try again.

Anyway, I put in the offer of $40 and was stunned by what poped up. Not only was the price accepted, but I was informed that my room had been upgraded to a 4star resort. Yeah, a resort in Tempe called the Fiesta Resort. I checked their room rates by going to their actual website and the cheapest room was $125/night. If I would have been thinking a little quicker I would have never told him about that particular room and would have spent the time there with the wife and put him in a different hotel. Nice place. But the pleasure was his and I would have to say he enjoyed his stay in PHX.

;

Tuesday was a quick hop down to Phx where I Tcalled my trailer of Trane AC units in the Phx yard. Interesting little side note here; my very first load of this year was a 3 stop load of Trane AC units that had been dropped by a driver who was taking home time and my very last load of the year was the exact same shipper and customers.

After dropping the trailer I took the trainee to a Laundromat. He had originally planed to wash his close at whatever hotel he was staying at but the unexpected stay at the Resort threw a wrench into that idea. Those kind of places tend to do it for you at an exorbitant price. I had to wait for the wife to get off of work anyway, so it really wasn’t a big deal. After that I dropped him off in his luxurious accommodations and started my abbreviated time at home. After a stint on the road like I had just finish up I would have made it something closer to a week off, but because the trainee was sitting in a hotel room waiting for me I had to knock it down to the standard 4 days.


Well, that concludes a year in the life of Evertruckerr. I wonder what the next one will bring?




WEEK FIFTY TWO –year end
Monday, December 29th through Sunday, December 31st
Miles include deadhead

Bentonville, AR (Wal-Mart P/U fleet)…………………………………55mi
Fort Smith, AR to Phoenix, AZ……………………………………..1267mi

Paid Miles……………………………………………1322 Miles

Actual Miles……………….1377

1322mi x .43 = $568.46 (Monday to Wednesday morn – home time)

 

Ok, I finally caught up on the updates for 2008 and can now post my year end numbers.

Here they are:

The chart below shows the miles for each run of the past year. Please note miles are posted on the day the load was delivered and monthly totals are not adjusted to show partial miles for trips that begin in one month and end in another.




And of course, a breakdown of the above numbers:


*it appears there is a miscalculation for the D/H % for the third quarter. It totals 110%, but the year end percentage is still correct.


2008 Summary – Adjusted Gross Income

Final Pay .........................................................................$65,366.47
Less: First paycheck of 2008 for last week of 2007................... -1,612.59
Add: First two paychecks of 2009 (all miles run in 2008 ............. +2181.00
Add: Accrued 2008 vacation pay (2 weeks # $1220) ................ +2440.00

Net Pay for 2008 ..............................................................$68,374.88

This total includes 2 referral bonuses of $1000 each.

I will go ahead and throw in a copy of my last pay stub of 2008.