CRETE - A Year in Review

I have some amazing news to report. I pulled into the Wilmer terminal around 1pm this afternoon for the day because I am out of hours. Since I was stuck here for the rest of the day I went ahead and signed the truck up for an "A" service with the hopes of getting it done sometime before noon tomorrow. Much to my amazement it was in the shop by 4pm and back in my possession in just over one hour. HOLY COW! An all time record. Who saw that coming. I'm stunned!

Oh yeah, here's a little quiz that I know one fine driver has the answer to (I was reading the walls while waiting for some paperwork).

Who was the driver of the year for the Wilmer terminal in 1999.

Hint: He has become an O/O since that time


When last I left you, I was under a load headed to WY. That sounded like a fine place to go, but the delivery schedule would have had me sitting around for an unwanted 34hr reset and a resulting week of 2400 miles or so. In an attempt to solve that little dilemma I high tailed it up to Denver and went to work on a Tcall. It was a bit of a pain but I was eventually successful and have been running balls out ever since. As I said above, I actually ran out of hours, and of course I'm under my first ASAP drop load in recent memory (that figures). I could have had it there today, but will have to hang out until after midnight before picking up more hours. All in all, not to much to complain about at this point.

As a matter of fact I've managed to hit the three year mark with Crete as of yesterday.

It wasn't as good of a year as I would have liked, but I was still able to surpass the required 121,500 miles necessary to earn my 1cpm pay raise (yes, some companies are still giving pay raises). I actually obtained that goal two months ago and ended my fiscal year (from date of hire) with a total of 132,356 paid miles.

I could have added another 8,000 or so miles to that total but elected to take some extra time off. As a matter of fact, over the last 2 months I spent a total of 26 days at the house.

The economy has been a real stinker and has resulted in more layovers in the past year than I care to recall. But the end result is that I'm still getting respectable miles. I may have to work a little harder for them and have to be a bit more creative, but they are still adding up.

 

bduke wrote:

Goodness, you are being very generous. You will find it necessary to slide that decimal point over a notch. The raise is good for $1200-$1500 per year based on miles.

In my opinion, any driver here can get the miles needed if they are motivated and efficient. After all, I pulled in over 130,000 miles in this awful economy and could have pushed it over 140,000 if I had wanted to do so. Also, keep in mind that mileage figure is from date of hire which includes the last part of last year in which I was getting much better miles. My 2009 numbers (Jan-Dec) will be closer to the 125,000 mile range if I run 10,000mi/month for the rest of the year.

I also feel that the company needs to reduce the requirement to make it more obtainable considering the challenges posed by this economy.

Yes the company rewards drivers that try. Those are the drivers that surpass the requirement. Unlike the unrealistic world in which our children are being taught that everyone is a winner and everyone gets a trophy at the end of the game, in my world you actually have to cross the finish line first to win.