CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK THIRTY FOUR
Monday, August 24th through Sunday, August 30th


Looks like it is time to start another week. I had arrived at the customer’s front door last night and found a place to park in the street across from the dock door. From this vantage point I was sure to be the first truck unloaded in the event another was to show up in the middle of the night. It was a first come first unloaded place and I wanted to get the day started as soon as possible so I could get to work on my next load.

I had already noted that this was going to be a fun delivery just based on how the dock was set up in relation to the street. I paced it off last night and found that there was all of 37ft from dock to street. Subtract that from the 75ft of truck that I had to back up to it let me know I wasn’t really going to enjoy the experience. I can only imagine that early morning traffic will make it that much more interesting. Little did I know that the traffic would be the least of my worries.

The earliest delivery time was supposed to be 8am and I could have slept in a bit, but by the time 5am rolled around I was tossing around in the bunk and decided to go for a little walk. By the time I returned to the truck I couldn’t help but notice a large number of street barriers and cones that had mysteriously made an appearance in the immediate area. It looked like they had been haphazardly tossed off the back of a truck for later placement. “Very odd”, I thought to myself.

It was still a bit early and no one had yet arrived to accept my load, so I climbed back up in the truck to wait. A few moments later I found myself being surrounded by city maintenance vehicles and the barriers started going up all over the place. “This can’t be good”. It wasn’t.

It didn’t take to long before an orange vested individual approached me and asked if I were making a delivery. I let him know that I was, hoping I wouldn’t hear the inevitable. Hope did little good and he informed me that this particular road was scheduled for resurfacing today and I would have to move and return after they were finish. “And how long might that be?” “Not more than 3 hours or so”. I hate Mondays.

I saw my day falling apart before I even had a chance to get it going. I made a suggestion that maybe they could start at the other end and by the time they made it this far down the road I should be out of their way. I also pointed out how tight this particular dock was and let him know how much jockeying around I was going to be doing, which was going to make a massive mess of their newly paved road. You can probably guess how effective that argument was. So I pulled out of the way and parked next to a nearby rail road track across the street and settled in for what I assumed would be a length delay.

It was about 10 minutes later when a pickup pulled up next to me to ask me if I had a load of beer for him. It was the owner of the distributorship to which I was delivering. I let him know that I had his beer, but had been chased off by the street crew and was told it would probably be after noon before I would be able to deliver the load. He just crinkled his face and told me he would take care of it and to sit tight. Sure enough, 10 minutes later I was backing up to the dock. Apparently this guy had that small town pull to get things done. Now, they were waiting for me, impatiently I might add.



When I arrived last night I had assumed I would have to back into the dock as quick as possible and then drop the trailer so that the truck wouldn’t be blocking the whole street. I wasn’t crazy about that setup either. Even with by truck pulled out from under the trailer, most of the street would be blocked and I would then have to worry about someone who wasn’t paying attention driving under the trailer. Now that the street was blocked off I could stay hooked to the trailer and all was good. It was still a tight squeeze to get into though.



I had the undivided attention of the forklift operator who was under instructions to unload my ASAP which translated into a 20min unload after which I headed back to the dirt lot next to the railroad track to put in my MT call. I was still counting my blessing for the early unload. If I would have had to wait until noon to unload this beer I would have been faced with the very real possibility of sitting until the following morning to get another load. As it turned out I was sending in an MT call by 8am instead.

All had been good news up to that point to start my day out, but it didn’t last much longer. I only had to wait a few minutes for a load offer and wasn’t exactly thrilled by it. For starters it had way to much down time on it. Second of all it was headed to Houston (730mi) which always has the underlying threat of no outbound freight and the fact that it wasn’t scheduled to deliver until 11am didn’t exactly bolster my confidence along those lines of thought. I had also put in for hometime and had hoped I would be getting a load going in a direction that didn’t have an eastern direction associated with it. The final insult was that this was a preloaded trailer that wasn’t scheduled to be ready until 4pm and it was only an hour away.

As I was mulling over the details and thinking about contacting dispatch to work out another plan of attack for getting me home another message appeared on the Qcom. Dispatch was letting me know that they had no freight going to Phoenix from my area, but if I ran this load down to Houston, they could then get me a load going to Dallas the following day which would put me in place to get a California bound load that I could Tcall in Phoenix. Sweet! If indeed all worked out as it was being laid out to me, I would even be home on the exact day that I had asked for. Gotta love that. All of a sudden I wasn’t all that concerned about my Houston load anymore.

I had been hanging out for an hour or so and decided to run on over to the shipper and take a chance on finding my trailer ready to go, even though I would be there many hours earlier than it was scheduled for. If it wasn’t ready at least I would be there and from previous experience at this shipper, if they know I’m there they will get started on my trailer to get me out as soon as possible. But then, I couldn’t help recalling that I had been there exactly one week ago and had been forced to wait 4hrs pass my appointment to get my load. Hopefully today, things will be going a little smoother.

As I was revving up to get underway and bringing my logbook up to date I began hearing the sounds of the railroad crossing come to life and shortly thereafter found myself sitting next to a very noisy train. I assumed it would make it’s way past and I could then be on my way. Not so much.



What it did do was begin the very slow and arduous task of separating the tank and box cars in a lengthy chain of cars onto separate tracks. This resulted in repeated pull-ups, stops and back-ups as each car was relocated. And during this time which ended up being a good hour or so, the #### dinging of the railroad crossings never stopped and the blasted train was constantly blaring the air horn. Wow, are those things load when you are only sitting a few yards away.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t in any hurry because I was boxed in. Since I had nothing better to do other than stick my fingers in my ears I decided to revert back to my child hood and did the ol penny on the rail road thing to pass the time. That never stops being fun.

I finally saw an opening and made my escape and headed on down the road to pickup my load of insulation. Unlike last week which found me waiting for my load, this time around it was ready to go when I arrived about 5hrs before the scheduled go time. Cool, makes last weeks wait a wash and far more importantly it will make it possible for me to just barely squeeze in a 34hr reset at our Wilmer yard. Not all that important for this particular trip, but it would be invaluable to me after that time. Without the reset I would be hindered by limited hours for the remainder of my time out on my way back to the house. The reset would make it possible to run hard and inevitably result in arriving home one day sooner.

While in Wilmer I went ahead and put the truck in for an B service which was now due. Nothing really worth mentioning except for the new drive tires they decided to put on. A bit odd because I had just had my truck in this very same shop 5 days earlier to have a flat fixed. At that time they just put on a pre-mounted used tire to save time. Now, a mere five days later that very same tire was change out with the rest of them on that axel. Insert shoulder shrug.

The reset passed by uneventfully and when Wednesday morning rolled around I was headed on down to Houston to make my delivery. All went well there and I even ran into a driver from one of my old companies, Michael Lewis which distributed airline food and supplies to the airport kitchens. Apparently they had gone through quite a shakeup and over half of their drivers had been let go. Imagine that? He was picking up a load to go back to Phoenix with. How nice it would have been to get his load, but I wasn’t overly concerned about it. Instead I put in my MT call and started to receive the load information for my trip back to the Dallas area. I had received a pre-plan the day before and already knew where I was headed. I had also been preplanned on my load out of Dallas the following day, and because of my reset knew that I would be back in Phoenix by Friday afternoon. All was good in my world for now.

My next pickup was only about 4 miles away and I was loaded and headed back north within a couple of hours and outside of the tedious Houston traffic the day was nothing to complain about and I once again spent another night in our Wilmer yard. I would be able to get an early start in the morning to beat the rush hour traffic. I would have to sit around for an hour or so once I arrived at the receiver waiting for them to open, but I would much rather do that than crawl along in that traffic. There would be plenty of that to deal with when I pulled out and made my way to my last pickup of the week.


The unloaded was painless and quick and I pointed the truck in the direction of Dallas rush hour traffic. I’ve been very good about avoiding Dallas during it’s ugliest times recently, but today I was smack dab in the middle of it and what would usually take 30mins or so was stretched out to 90mins. I eventually made it to the shipper and took a shot at picking up my load early. It wasn’t supposed to be ready until 5pm but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try, even if it was only 9am. Well, hope did no good on this day and I was turned away. My trailer wasn’t ready, but they did allow me to drop my empty trailer on their lot. At least it would make it much easier for me to find a parking spot (not a simple task in this area). I was also giving a number that I could call to check on my load.

I was grateful to be on a load that was getting me home, but the wait for my trailer related directly to my arrival in Phoenix. Each hour spent waiting meant another hour that I would not be spending at home. I had started the day hoping for an early load and end the day waiting much longer than I had ever anticipated. A few calls earlier in the day had not resulted in a positive answer and it got to the point where I would now have to wait 2hrs past my pickup window so that I would be able to work in an extended 8hr sleeper berth period. But even that time was surpassed and I ended up sitting around until 10pm for a load that was suppose to be ready by 5pm.

That really messed up my driving schedule for the trip home. Instead of driving on a normal schedule I now found myself in a position where I would have to drive until 6am or so in order to get close enough to Phoenix to make it there with on more 11hr day of. If I stopped any sooner than that I would have to spend two 10hr breaks in the truck and pull in on Saturday morning. 6am it is. This meant that I would be pulling into phoenix in the middle of the night, but I would be spending the night in my own bed instead of in the back of the truck.

Home Sweet Home!

The wife even manage to get some company tickets to a Diamond Back game while I was home. Life is good in the front row.






WEEK THIRTY FOUR
Monday, Aug 24th through Sunday, Aug 30th
Miles include deadhead

McPherson, KS to Houston, TX……………………………………………...730mi
Houston, TX to Garland, TX…………………………………………………...255mi
Roanoke, TX to Phoenix, AZ………………………………………………...1098mi

Total Paid Miles(Mon-Fri, Home week)………………..2083 Miles(Short Week)
Actual Miles……………………………2114 Miles

2083 Miles x .43 = $895.69

 

jdretzjr wrote:

Only if you have recently received a 2.5 million mile award

and:

Those are some pretty sweet numbers there Wade. (think Fargo)

Nice mileage, mine have been getting better but I keep getting messed up with odd pickup and delivery times that have prevented me from getting my resets. Without them I can't get my totals up where I would like them. I keep running out of hours and find myself shutting down in the middle of the day. I finally managed to work one in this weekend on a trip going up to Boston. My first trip into the North East in the better part of 2months. It's been a nice reprieve.

 

bduke wrote:

It's a relatively easy goal to meet. I've only come up short of that twice this year. One of those months I spent a week at home and the other one I spent 3 weeks at the house.

This month I'm already over 11,000 and still have a few days of running ahead of me.

I don't even consider it a good month unless I hit the 12,000+ mile range.

Supersnake wrote:

I thought that little statement might set you off. It's just my option, but I stand by it. I'm a little short on time a the moment, but will address your post when I'm in attack mode. This is starting to feel like the good ol' days.


dodgeram440rt wrote:

Another misguided soul. Let's all prey for him.

Shelby GT500KR

Gar-rose wrote:

I have two answers for this. One, some of us prefer driving back and forth across this grand country and seeing every corner of it. It's simply a personal choice.

Two, you make the assumption that anyone can go out and get a regional gig and pull in $50-something a year. That used to be the case for most experienced drivers, but with the beat up economy that we are all dealing with those opportunities have dried up in many parts of the country. As an example the want adds in Phoenix used to have 4-5 pages of driving jobs alone and the entire want-ads resembled a smaller cities entire Sunday paper in size and bulk. The last time I was home I took a look at the want-adds and found a grand total of 5 pages devoted to want adds. That included every job opening for the entire city.

I had actually planed on moving over to one of Crete's' regional gigs by now so that I could be home every weekend and was more than willing to reduce my income to that level now that I'm in financial position of "maintaining" my cost of living as opposed to "capitalization" frame of mind that I've been in for the last few years. But once again, the economy has altered my plans for the time being. Such is life.


Tucker wrote:

I'm sensing a generous portion of sarcasm here.

 

Life has been pretty good on the road over the last couple of weeks. I've been hitting the 3000 mile mark or better and the only thing keeping me from getting more miles is my lack of resets. I was able to get one in today and will be on my way up to Boston tomorrow for a Monday morning delivery.

I have a home time request in and could have gotten out of this load because it was going in the opposite direction. But I couldn't see myself turning down the 1500+ miles with a chance at a reset along the way. Now I will find myself on the east coast with a minimum of 2700mi to get me back home with a fresh 70hrs to do it in. Should make for another good week on the flip back to the house.

I finally got a resolve on my Indiana traffic ticket too. As promised by the lawyer representing me, I ended up with a littering ticket with a $120 fine. That was a very pleasant surprise because I had been told to expect up to $400 in fines and court fees. The lawyer fee was $250. It only took 3 court appearances and 4+ months but I have a clean CDL. Yeah! Always get a lawyer folks.

Now I can go back to training should I choose too. Maybe I can shorten the wait for a student driver who just cant wait to join the life we all live. I don't know if I'm willing to give up my APU though. If I go back to training my first student will get my truck and they will put me in one of the new trucks. OH, what to do?