CRETE - A Year in Review

They will hire students, but you must attend a PTDI certified school or one pre-approved by Crete. Call recruiting to get details.

They start students with $500/week during training and 34cpm for the first year once you get your own truck, that goes to 41cpm after your first year.

 

To the best of knowledge they will not pay to get you home. As a matter of fact, I've had to rent a car twice this year to get home. If you are in an emergency situation they may spring for transportation at the time, but I'm sure it will be deducted from future pay. Many companies will do this if the circumstances dictate.

I know how you feel, hometime has never been one of Crete's strong points, but then, I was well aware of this when I signed on.

Looks like I just missed you, I spent most of Friday sitting in the drivers lounge at Marietta waiting to get a new starter put in the ol' girl. That one hurt, I had to turn down a 800mi load, D/H on both ends only to be sent off to NJ at 4am this morn (Sat) after I got the truck out of the shop. It was going to be another great week, but it turned into a 3000 miler instead.

Good Luck getting to the house.

 

Thank you for your kind words and I apologize for the delay this week. The longer the delay, the better the miles. It was a busy week with a number of very early starts and more importantly, I couldn't seem to find the right motivation this week.:smt079

I have some unwanted downtime this week, so I'm guessing the update will be of a timelier nature this time around.

 

Thx for the recommendations. Now that I know how to get into town with relative ease, I'll make a point of checking those spots out next time I have the opportunity.

 

2008​

WEEK SEVENTEEN​

Monday, April 21st through Sunday, April 27th​

It's Monday once again and I'm ready to go after my reset and a day at Wrigley Field.

I have an appointment across town about 45 miles away. It has an open live U/L delivery window of 7:30 - 21:00. I want to beat the morning rush hour traffic and get an early start of 5:30. I realize that in all likelihood there won't be anyone around when I get to the customer, but I have a Shaffer trailer that I need to get rid of. As it turns out the customer is less than one mile from our drop yard so I will use the extra time to swing by and see if there is an MT Crete trailer waiting for me. If there is, I can put my lock on it and pick it up when I'm empty. I wasn't surprised when I found nothing but loaded trailers. Oh well, I can stop by after my U/L. There were a number of loaded trailers sitting there that needed to be delivered in the area this morning. If I'm lucky someone will drop and empty when getting one of these loads.

I drove around the corner and found my customer for this morning's delivery. As suspected, no one was home and I backed into one of the two doors available and waited for opening time.

After a 45min wait I was allowed to check in and of course directed to dock in the other door. I did as instructed and was unloaded shortly there after.

So now here I sit with an empty Shaffer trailer. The last thing I want is to have a Shaffer trailer attached to me. Last time that happened I was stuck with one live load after another and it took forever to get rid of it. Once you are stuck with one, the only way to dump it is to deliver a load in very close proximity to one of our yards. If it is anything more than a short hop, you will just be put on another live load. And it would very likely be a refer load. Late night PUs and early AM deliveries at cold storage warehouses just isn't my idea of a good time. It would be to my advantage to bite the bullet now to avoid these headaches over the next week or two.

I waited to put in an MT call until I had a chance to run back over to our yard and see if any empty trailers had arrived. I didn't want to give dispatch the chance to send me off on a refer load. There was a slight bit of irony here, there was a driver dropping one so he could haul out a loaded trailer, but it was another Shaffer driver.

With no empties on the yard I considered my second option. I went through the yard and wrote down each trailer # along with their destinations from the bill of ladings. My next step was to send a message into dispatch. "I'm MT and have a Shaffer trailer; I am in the Romeoville yard and would like to drop it here. There are a number of loaded trailers, so I can Shag one of them (this sealed my fate for the next load) or re-power one of the GA loads so that I can get back under a Crete trailer."

It didn't take too long to get a response. I was informed that the GA loads weren't schedule to move today, but if I would take a Shag out of the yard I would be preplanned on something to keep me moving. By the time everything is said and done today will not be very productive, but if that is what it is going to take to get a Crete trailer I was all for it.

I accepted the offer and had them send the info, it arrived on the Qcom within a matter of minutes (looks like the Qcom delay issue may have been solved). It wasn't as bad as it could have been. I had to run a load down to Kankakee just south of town. It was a 50 mile run plus $35 shag pay and I would be going south instead of into Chicago during rush hour.

My reward was a preplan that I was to PU on the south side of town and delivered to Ponca City, OK (888mi) with a two stop delivery. Great (not so much), and to top it off the finial delivery was scheduled for next Wednesday afternoon. I wasn't thrilled about that bit of news; I guess they can't all be good loads.


The shag load was a pain. I had to run a two lane to get there and then had to wait a couple of hours for my appointment time along with another hour to unload. I put an MT call in while being unload so that I could get the information on my next load. The Qcom was acting up again (so much for the Qcom fix, it's really a hit and miss thing these days) and after waiting for an hour or so I called my fleet manager to get the info I needed to PU my next load.

With a quick jaunt up the road I arrived at the shipper and hit my next road block. Apparently the three PO#,PU# and the B/L#'s that I had were not sufficient to get me through the gate. I was told to call dispatch and get the appropriate #. I sent in a message to this effect and waited. About 20mins later I received it and headed back to the shipping office. Sure enough, that's what he needed. "That's the number for your first stop, what's your second number" Ugh! Back to the truck I go and send off another message. This time it takes 30mins and back to the shipping office I go. "That works", I'm told. "Park along the fence and we'll let you know when we are ready for you." This just isn't my day.

After a good hour I am finally called in and given a door assignment and treaded to another hour of waiting before loading begins.

I finally get rolling and find myself with a little over 3hrs left in my day. Not a very productive day, but the Shaffer trailer is no longer following me down the road.

I was to suffer one more drawback before this day ended. My chosen route took me across I-72 (which has very limited parking) to shave a few miles off my suggested routing, but I knew of a good sized hole in the wall truckstop that always has plenty of parking that I could get to before running out of hours. There is also a Pilot just up the road from there, but it always fills up early. My plan feel apart when I got to my preplanned parking spot because it was boarded up and the parking lot had concrete barriers all around it and the Pilot was packed as always. My only choice was to use my last 15mins to back track up the road and park in a rest area. Sure am glad that day is over.

Tuesday has me looking at a 600mi trip to my first stop. I'm not scheduled to deliver until Wednesday morning, but with an early start I will be there by 3pm today. It's a Tractor Supply store and they always have plenty of overnight parking. My hope is that I will be able to unload when I get there and hopefully have enough time to make it to my second stop before running out of hours. If not, at least I'll be able to get an early start on Wednesday.

The first few hours of the day were a little trying to say the least. I found myself driving through one of those Midwest thunder storms that give you the impression that a tornado could pop out at any time. This concern was reinforced by an occasional bought with hail and blinding rain. I finally drove out of it as I made it to the interstate outside of Columbia, MO. The rest of the drive was uneventful and I made it to my first stop at 2:45pm.

Time to cross my fingers and see what I can do about getting unloaded. I went inside to let them know I was here. The cashier pointed out the gentleman I need to speak with and off I went. As I was waiting for him to finish his conversation with a customer I overheard him explaining that they didn't have that many fence posts on hand, but they were expecting a delivery in the morning. That was my cue, "Excuse me sir, but I think I may be able to help out here, it just so happens that I have a semi load of fence posts out back." I was unloaded shortly there after.

I had noticed a Wal-Mart on my way into town and had one hour to spare and made a quick pit stop to re-supply and headed down the road to my last stop. I had just enough time to get there tonight and park in their lot. I knew it would be too late to make a delivery, but I could bump the dock and get unloaded first thing in the morning.

Wednesday started with me waiting at the door when the employees arrived and I was unloaded bright and early. Now instead of showing up with my delivery between 1-3pm and hoping for a load this afternoon, I was MT and ready to go at 7:30.

My happy go lucky feeling was soon squashed when I received my single load offer. I was another live load just up the road with a ridiculous live unload appointment of 10am Friday and delivered to Bowling Green, KY (863mi). Running as I do, I would find myself there by Thursday morning. That has me looking at close to 24hrs down time and little hope of a Tcall.

We do have a drop yard in Memphis, but that's 250mi from the consignee and I know my chances are not good. This wouldn't have been that bad of a load, but Monday was a less than productive day and I wasn't keen on the idea of loosing another day. I can't get 3800mi a week running like this.

All I could do is accept the load and worry about it later. The loading process was painless for the most part. There was no one in line and I docked as soon as I got there and loading was done in less than an hour. While I was loading I sent a message off to dispatch inquiring about the possibility of Tcalling this load or rescheduling the delivery appointment and awaited a response.

After driving for a few hours I stopped to stretch the legs and realized I had not yet received an answer to my Tcall inquiry. I repeated my request and continued on. In the meantime I took it upon myself to call the receiver and see if I could work out an alternative delivery time, but only succeeded in getting a voice message. The Qcom chirped after an hour or so, but I didn't want to take the time to pull over and read it. I figured it could wait until I made it to Memphis and put in for the night at the Pilot.

The message turned out to be "Where checking on it". That was the final communication from the company for the day.

I still had some drive time left in the day, but didn't want to lose out on a chance at a Tcall and wanted to stick close to the drop yard. I shut down for the night and planed on getting up early to deal with this load then.

Thursday morning it is and the first thing I do is send off a message to once again make an attempt at Tcalling this load. It's 5:30am and I did the standard offer to Shag a local load and waited. And waited. And waited. Should I continue? That pesky night crew is at it again. I don't mind negative answers, but I have a hard time being ignored. After an hour or so I decided to take a shower before the morning rush and hope for an answer by the time I return. No Luck!

With that I decide the Tcall thing just isn't going to work out and got settled in for my drive. I only had about 4 hours of driving to make it to the consignee, but knowing there is no parking to speak of in the Bowling Green area I thought a night in Nashville would be a pleasant diversion. I could park at the TA in the middle of town and have a short walk of a mile or so to get downtown. There are a number of great restaurants in the area and always a multitude of bands playing.

I had passed on fueling up when I arrived the night before for an available parking spot because a ten minute delay in that town can cost you a resting spot for the night. So I started the truck up and pulled up to the pump. When I had finished I noticed that I had a message waiting on the Qcom. "Are you in Memphis now?" What do you know; I might just be able to get this load Tcalled.

I replied that I was indeed in the area and hoping to Tcall this load, "Do you have a load available in the area". I head back to the parking lot and waited. And waited. And waited. I was a little perplexed by the wait this time. Usually when I'm asked something like that it means that they are working on something. I didn't want to bother dispatch too much because it was early in the morning and I knew they were busy, but after an hour or so I sent of a quick reminder message and waited. And waited. And waited.

By this time frustration was beginning to set in. I really hate to be ignored, it's really inexcusable as far as I'm concerned. Again, I don't mind a "no", at least I can plan out my day that way, but I can't see the justification for being left in the dark. If nothing else, just give me a "working on it" or something.

The worst part is that I receive the initial response after I had fueled. My 14hrs is now running and 3+hrs of it is gone. If they do come up with a load I'm loosing time. If only I would have waited 15mins to fuel. Oh well, that's the trucking game for you.

I finally gave up on any resolve of this matter and decided to get going.

As I was making my way to Nashville I thought I would try calling the receiver again. If figured why not, I didn't have anything better to do at the moment. This only resulted in getting voice mail the day before, but today was a different story.

Low and behold (whatever that means), Nancy answered the phone at which time I let her know I had a load of flower that was due to be delivered tomorrow at 10am, "Would it be possible to make my delivery early, I'll be in the area by 3pm?" She actually asked if I would like to delivery today or tomorrow and put me on hold. After a few minutes she said bring it on in, where a little busy, but we'll fit you in today.

This is very good news and I'm a little annoyed at myself for waiting most of my morning at the truckstop. If I had called earlier in the day I could have been there before noon. Who am I to complain, at least I'll be empty today instead of noon tomorrow.

Things went swimmingly well and from the attitude of the dock guy I got the feeling they needed this product. I was immediately assigned a dock and the unloading began. With that I put in my MT call so that dispatch could get to work on my next load offer. I had wasted a fair amount of time sitting around this morning and was looking forward to saving this day.

I have mentioned this before without going into too much detail, but we are not suppose to put in our MT call until we have a signed BOL in our hand, but if I feel confident that a trailer will be unloaded in a timely manner and there is little chance of a product count discrepancy or damage claim I will send in the MT call to get the ball rolling on my next load. This does a couple of thing. If there is another Crete truck being unloaded in the area at the same time as me, I will be one ahead of them. Also, it allows me time to get all the pertinent information necessary for the next load and I can start driving as soon as I'm empty instead of trying to find a place to park and start the whole process at that time.

For the most part this strategy works out quite well for me, but on a couple of occasions it has bitten me on the butt. This ended up being a possible out come with this situation. As it was, I was immediately sent a single load offer going to Atlanta (316mi). It was to be picked up 5mi down the road and had an open PU time for today. It was a short run, but I had no problem with that because I already had close to 300mi in for the day and this load delivered mid morn on the next day. The only problem I had with the load is that because I started my 14hr clock when I fueled and the sat around for so long I would run out of hours somewhere between and have to take my 10hr break. Not a problem if I was actually empty and able to get over to my next PU, but I was a bad boy and I now had a window of about 3 hrs. Anything more than that and I would be late with my delivery.

Right about that time the unloading of my trailer came to a stop. The forklift driver was either distracted by other duties or on a break, but my clock was ticking and I was getting nervous. My next PU was close by, but it was a live load. This could be bad; I would prefer not to explain my early MT call to dispatch.

After a ½hr or so unloading resumed and I was finally released and I high tailed it to my next shipper. I was down to a 2hr window and need to get loaded quickly, but the gods were against me. I checked in and was informed that the majority of my shipment was still on the production line (it was suppose to be ready by 3pm and it was now 4:30), but they should be able to get to me within an hour. "Back into the dock and we'll get to you when we can, should be within the hour." It ended up being closer to 3hrs.

That seals it, this load will be late, unless!

I notice that they have a large dirt lot next to the building, if I take my 10hr break on property I would be able to start driving at 3am and make the delivery on time. A short chat with the warehouse personnel lets me know that I can do just that. With a sigh of relief I head out to the truck and wait. This isn't an ideal situation because it makes for a short day and only 300 miles. I would have been much happier if I could have run a couple hundred miles off this load tonight. That way I would have much more time available to me after my delivery tomorrow morning, but a least the load will be on time. Not to mention I'll be sitting in Atlanta at 10am tomorrow instead of at the dock of my previous load if I had been forced to stick with my original appointment time.

Friday gets started at 3am so I can make my appointment time and I make it there 30mins early. The driver currently in their only dock door was just leaving and I was able to back in shortly thereafter. I only had 12 pallets of paint or stain (this was my 4th HazMat load with this company in 1½ yrs) and would be unloaded very quickly, so I put in my MT call and awaited my next load.

In very short order I was sent a single load offer going to TX (890mi) and it was a D/H PU and Del with an open delivery window. The perfect turn and burn run. I can have it there around noon on Saturday and if I can get a decent run I will have my 3rd week in a row of 3700+mi. Awesome!

I am unload within minutes, my load info came through even quicker than that and I'm lovin' life and I jump in the truck and turn the key.

NOTHING!

It's not starting. The starter isn't engaging, not even a click. I of course try it a number of times with the same result. It's not a battery issue, plenty of volts and everything is powered up. My mind goes back to just last week when I was saying that I have not lost one day of productivity due to shop time with this truck, "620K+ miles and going strong" if I remember correctly.

It's not a battery issue, but I checked the connections anyway. All the fuses were good and the starter cables have a solid connection and no corrosion was present. It has to be the starter. Time for the good ol' standby, grab the hammer and pound on the starter for awhile (but I couldn't get close enough to give it a good whack). No luck.

Well, I'm a dead duck sitting in the customer's only dock and there is another truck staged for delivery. I had sent a message off to breakdown as soon as I realized I had a problem and was still waiting for a response. Not that they could do anything, but a tow truck seemed to be in order. I sent a message to dispatch to pull me off my next load and take me off the board for now. So much for my 3700mi week.

I wasn't ready to give up just ye though. I was in need of some assistance and headed over to the waiting driver to ask for a little help. Not like he had much choice, this could turn out to be a long day for him too.

I had pulled out my crow bar and instructed him to hit the casing of the starter as best he could as I turned the key. After only 4-5 smacks the thing actually engaged for a moment, but because I was flipping the ignition back and forth too fast I missed the opportunity. At least there is a glimmer of hope and sure enough, a few minutes later she was running.

I had a running truck, but needed to get it to the shop. We have a terminal in the area, so I sent another message off to breakdown (I was still waiting for a response on the first one) and I pointed myself in that direction. While I was sitting at a light I finally got an answer from breakdown, "Try tapping on the starter with a hammer". I answered that with a "Beat ya to it, it's running and I'm headed to the terminal for repairs". The reply, "God I love it when things work out". I couldn't resist, "Easy for you to say, you don't have to deal with the Atlanta shop." I got a smiley face for that.

Once at the shop, I left the truck running and went in to talk to the foreman. My hope was that they would have me put it in the shop so they wouldn't have to deal with a truck that wouldn't start in the yard. Just wishful thinking on my part. I dropped my MT trailer in the yard with my lock on it and a red tag that said "repair needed, hole in roof" On more than one occasion I've had my lock taken off by shop personnel at this terminal so that other drivers could take my trailer, only to leave with no empty and dispatch refusing to give me a load until I can find one. Maybe this will prevent a similar outcome today.

I was told my truck was on the list and to check back with the night foreman when he gets in at 4pm, it was now 11am. I gathered my laundry and computer and prepared to spend the day in the terminal and hoped it wouldn't stretch into tomorrow. Just to annoy myself I turned the key, yup, started right up. Not only once, but every time I tried it.


Back to the shop I went with this information. After a detailed description of what had happened I was told they would test the circuits, but if it continued to start there would be little they could do. I didn't think much of this explanation and told them I didn't want to spend the entire day sitting around only to be sent out with a starter that would eventually leave me stranded. After a little pow wow with whoever was in charge, they assured me they would go ahead and put in a new starter.

The rest of the day was agonizingly boring and the truck finally made it into the shop by 5:30 (better than the next day I guess). But getting a truck in the shop and actually getting it worked on are two entirely different things. I checked on it every hour or so and saw no progress. Work finally began around 9pm, and as is the case on many occasions the repairs were miraculously finished 15mins before closing time. Our mechanics seem to be well adapted at milking the clock.

Its midnight and I get into the truck and start it up. It's like a turbo starter. I hadn't realized how week my last starter was getting. I had actually had the shops check my batteries over the last 6 months or so during a number of previous A and B services because I thought they were getting very week. Turns out the starter was slowly dying on me.

I'm now out of the shop and have been down long enough that I can take a load, but I've also been up since 3am and was in the need of some sleep. I could have waited till the morning for a load offer, but wanted to get a jump on the other drives that would be looking for a load in the AM and sent a message off to dispatch. "Truck is out of shop, need some sleep, do you have a load offer that I can PU in the morning." Five minutes later I had 3 loads to choose from. If I was looking for a reset, as I usually am over a weekend, I would have been thrilled, but as it were, not so much. They all picked up at various times Saturday morning and didn't deliver until Monday morning. One load going to VA(575mi), one going to Baltimore (750mi) with a 7:30am delivery (who want to deal with that traffic) and the finale load going to south NJ (863mi) with a 3am delivery. I'm still annoyed that I lost my TX run and these loads are really rubbing in that fact.

I have an immense dislike for NJ, but it's the longest run with the earliest delivery of the three. If things work out I will be able to get an early load out of the area. I've delivered to this address twice in the past and this customer also has overnight parking. I know that I will be able to back to a dock door whenever I get there Sunday afternoon and won't have to start my Monday clock for the day until I'm unloaded and ready to go. If I drive in from a truckstop for my delivery, I would have to start my 14hrs around 1am, which would severely limit my activities for the remainder of the day. In all likelihood, based on previous trips, I would be picking up a load around 7am and the later I can start my 14hrs the better.

My next hurdle will be getting a load out of NJ. I've gotten good loads out in the past, but more often than not they end up being crappy little northeast runs. Monday morning will tell.

What was setting up to be another great week ended up falling flat on its face due to my problem with the starter. So instead of another 3700mi week, I've ended the week in the 3000mi range. Nothing to complain about I guess, but I will anyway. I didn't even get my reset in. Hopefully next week will run a little smother.






WEEK SEVENTEEN RESULTS
Monday, April 21st through Sunday, April 27th
Miles include deadhead



Gary, IN to Romeoville, IL(last leg).......................................39mi
Romeoville, IL to Kankakee, IL(Shag).......................................50mi
Chicago Heights, IL to Ponca City, OK....................................888mi
Enid, OK to Bowling Green, KY.................................................863mi
Bowling Green, KY to Mableton, GA.........................................316mi
Atlanta, GA to Deptford, NY.....................................................803mi

Total Paid Miles................................................2959 Miles (This is only my 4th or 5th week under 3000 miles other than hometime weeks in 1½ yrs and was due to a breakdown day)
Actual Miles...........................3048Miles


2958mi x .42 = $1242.78 plus $30 drop and $35 shag pay.