CRETE - A Year in Review

WEEK THIRTY SEVEN
Monday, September 14th through Sunday, September 20th​

This week started out with a mid morning delivery to a Bud distributor. I had parked at a little truck stop that was a stones throw away from the place and was ringing the gate buzzer at the appointed hour. This was another FCFS kind of place and I found that I was the first one to show up and once everyone got up and moving it didn’t take all that long to get unloaded and I was soon waiting for my next load offer.

I was in the middle of Oklahoma and could end up just about anywhere from here, but today the destination would be Houston. I had grander hopes, but it was a reasonable 600 mile trip. The idea of heading on down to Houston didn’t exactly get me all excited though because freight availability can always be an issue down there. I would be picking up a load of beer bottles, in their packaging of 24 bottle cases. Every thing you would want in a case of beer except for the actual beer and the caps. It seems everything comes from somewhere else in this world. Beer there, bottles here, caps from somewhere else (I’ve actually hauled truckloads of just caps in the past). Some how it all comes together for your drinking pleasure at a bar of one’s choosing.

This particular load was to be delivered anytime during the following day and from some of the details in the load plan I was leaning towards the assumption that it would be a drop load. As I have done in the past, I assumed that if this load could be dropped tomorrow it would only stand to reason that I could drop it tonight. I had enough hours to get down there and give it a shot. If I where turned away I could simply find a place to park for the night and pull in first thing in the morning. I even knew of a little hiding place that I had found during a previous delivery that was just a few block from where this load was going. I wouldn’t really have any time left to do anything once empty anyways. The main desire to drop my load tonight was to get my name on the top of that load board for the following morning. Every minute saved in that town can make a difference as to how long I might have to wait for my next load.

Knowing that my 14hr clock could become and issue later on in the day I didn’t waist anymore time than necessary and went about my business of picking up my preloaded trailer and getting it down to Houston with as little wasted time as possible. Outside of a quick leg stretch and a fuel stop at our Wilmer terminal the trip was uninterrupted and I was able to pull into Houston by 9pm. My bid for an early drop worked out great and within 20mins I had dropped my trailer and pulled out an empty.

My 14hr clock was shot for the most part and I didn’t bother sending in an empty call at that moment. This was a small yard and I wanted to get out of the way and headed over to a small truck stop across the street from the Bud Plant. It is very small and always full and I didn’t expect to get a parking spot, but I figured I could spend a few minutes at the fuel pumps, put in my MT call and grab a bite to eat while I was there. From there I could head on over to my secret hiding place where I can always find a place to park and put in for the night.

When I arrived at the truck stop I was amazed to see a single parking spot awaiting me and made a beeline for the coveted spot. I was now in a somewhat safer place than what I had in mind and went about winding down for the night. The MT call went in and I set to work at updating my log and what not. I had less than two hours left on my clock and assumed I would be getting a load out sometime tomorrow. The Qcomm chirped shortly there after and I was truly surprised at what I was reading. Instead of a late afternoon pickup the following day that I had been suspecting, I was looking at a load that needed to be picked up tonight over in Baytown. It was only about 30 miles away, but by the time I got my bearing, headed on over and dealt with the pickup (drop/hook) I would be hard pressed to find a place to park. I didn’t know the area at all and the prospect of finding a parking spot at this time of night would be challenging to say the least.

I had every right to turn the load down as being too time constrictive, but then, I love a challenge and even more than that, I had set my sights on the 800mi, drop anytime delivery. I’ve been inundated with appointment deliveries lately and wasn’t going to let this beauty get away. I put in the acceptance and waited impatiently for the load info to come through. The second I got an address I put the truck in gear and high tailed it out of there. I had 75mins to do this thing and the first 40mins would be eaten up getting there. I was flirting with a log violation, but I was hoping that I would either be able to park at the customer or find a dirt lot nearby. I guess I’ll find out when I get there.

It was a very tight push, but in the end all worked out. I actually noticed a little convenience store not far from the shipper that had room for a couple of trucks on my way in, so that little dilemma had been solved, which relieved any concerns I was having with regards to my log book. The drop and hook that followed went by quick enough and shortly thereafter I was once again shutting down for the night. So instead of stopping for the night outside of Houston and making my drop delivery as scheduled on my previous load, I was able to get rid of it the night before and I was now looking forward to a nice day of driving. Not really.

It would have been great to put in a nice, uninterrupted 11hr day of driving for a change, but my logbook had caught up with me. I had been running good miles since doing my unwanted reset last week in GA. The weekly totals don’t really show it because of the holiday layover, but in the last 7 calendar days I managed to turn 3605 paid miles. The crappy thing about this run though, is that it has to deliver tomorrow and it is just outside of what I can drive in one day which prevents me from doing a reset and delivering it after words. Instead I drove out my remaining four hours, which was enough to get me to the Wilmer yard by noon to take care of an A service and then spend the rest of the day wondering around trying to amuse myself until the following morning.

Now I once again find myself in the world of revolving hours. I hate this game of how many hours do I gain today, when do I have to stop driving, can I accept this load or that? It really puts a damper on miles when I have to start shutting down in the middle of the day. I had plenty of hours to do what I wanted to today, but I could see the next few were going to be a problem child.

I made my drop delivery in Kansas shortly after noon and put in my MT call with a couple more hours available in my day. I wasn’t sure if dispatch would want to deal with my short hour situation or not, but it turned out that they had a preloaded trailer sitting just up the road and wanted me to run it on up to MI. It was a nice 760mi run, but didn’t deliver until 6pm on Friday. Not many miles for the time frame involved, but my looming shortage of hours due to my inability to fit in a reset on the last load didn’t make it possible for me to get there any sooner than that anyways. There was actually enough time on this load to work in a 34hr reset too, if I could pick the load up tonight (I could) and get at least 100mi down the road before shutting down for the night. If I could pull that off, I would find myself right at the 660mi mark remaining on the trip and could run that out the following day. I could then do a reset and have just enough time to make my delivery on time, but no matter how many ways I looked at it my log book just wouldn’t let that happen. I came down to about a 20 miles shortfall. All I needed was and extra 30mins to make this work, but it was 30mins I simply didn’t have. That hurts.

At least I was now under no pressure and could wonder on up there at a leisurely pace. I picked up my load Wednesday afternoon and had enough time to make it to our Kansas City yard where I dropped my trailer and then headed on over to the casino next door and made a rare appearance at a blackjack table. Didn’t win, but didn’t lose either and walked away after a couple of hours at even money. No harm, no foul and I managed to amuse myself for a time before hitting the sack.

I spent my Thursday burning up what hours were available on my log for the day and made it to a little truck stop that was about two or three miles away from Lake Michigan. It was mid-afternoon and I decided to take a short walk down a local road in the general direction of the lake that kept getting smaller and smaller until it disintegrated into a single lane gravel/dirt road marked “private drive”. Form the look of the properties that I had seen up to this point it appeared that this was the area where Chicago’s money spent it’s down time. Pretty impressive to say the least.

Well, so much for that idea and I back tracked the two miles or so out to the main road, but I was determined to set my eyes on this lake before the sun went down and pulled out the Blackberry once again to hunt down a route that wouldn’t land me in someone’s back yard again. The nearest public access looked to be about four miles away and the sun was starting to hang low in the sky but I felt I had enough time to make it to the shore for the sunset, however, the walk back would be a little on the dark side. It was a pleasant enough night though and I made my way on down the road. I really should get around to strapping a bike onto the truck for days like these. I like walking to get some exersize, but sometimes my destinations can be a bit of a hike that would be more pleasurable on two wheels.

I took a little while and I started to wonder if I was going to get to the beach before the sun settled in for the night. I was seeing a lot of quaint country cottages and some downright huge mansion type properties, but still no lake.

But I finally ran out of road and entered into a very small clearing in the woods that offered enough parking for maybe ten cars and a wood deck overlooking lake Micigan and an extended wooden stair trail down to the beech. A view well worth the trek to get here. I found a comfy place to relax and watch the sun set into the lake while listing to the waves on the beach.

;

Now all I had to do was walk back to the truck in total darkness. The street lights were far and few in between, but the moon afforded me enough light to make my way which made for a very peaceful walk. I even stopped along the way and sampled a cluster of grapes, ripe off the fine. The crop was so ripe that you could smell them as you walked down the road.

The days walk made for a very relaxing night in the bunk and I sleep in the following day. No point in getting up too early. This dumb load wasn’t scheduled to deliver until 6pm and I was a whole two hours away. The morning crawled by, but go time eventually rolled around and I made my way to the customer where I was treated to a live unload. That went by without too much hassle and my MT call garnered me a preloaded trailer sitting about 3 miles from my current location and was headed to someplace in OH that would net me a whopping 228 miles. But since it was already past 6pm and this load was a drop and hook on both the pickup and delivery side I didn’t get too worked up by it. All I would have to do was pick up the load and head on over to Ohio. I could have it there by midnight or so and be ready to go on my next load.

That plan lasted all of 10 minutes. When I arrived to get my preloaded trailer I found out it wasn’t. I also ran into another Crete driver that had been there for 3hrs and was also waiting for a preloaded trailer. The shipping clerk had told him that they were waiting for product to finish loading him and that he would probably be waiting until the next morning to get loaded. My news was a little better, “maybe by midnight”. Well, so much for this day. What a total bust it turned out to be. I finally get a drop and hook load and this happens leaving me with a grand total of 134 miles for the day. I just loves trukin’.

There was no use getting all wound up about it and I told the shipper I would be back in the early morning to get the trailer after I finished my 10hr break. After all, I was exhausted. This three hours a day is really wearing me down. Grrr! They had onsite parking and I was able to spend the night on their lot. Sounded like a good idea at the time, that was until one of the dock guys started pounding on my truck at 1am to let me know my trailer was ready and sitting “over there”. Gee, thanks, “I’ll pull out when my break is over”, and went back to sleep.

Yesterday had been a miserable disappointment, but I really hadn’t expected it to work out from the moment I received the load from dispatch. After all, delivering at 6pm up in the middle of Michigan left me with little hope of getting a load until the following day anyways. So when my preloaded trailer turned out not to be I was already in the mindset of loosing a day of productivity.

This day had the promises of making up for lost time. I had a short hop of 200 miles or so with a load that I could drop ASAP and I started the day out as early as I could in the hopes of getting another load once I got rid of this trailer. I was putting in my MT call about four hours later and was a little miffed at the reply. Although it was better than a “no freight” message I was once again looking at a 6pm pickup that evening and a delivery of 10pm the following day going to Wisconsin (690mi). Reasonable miles for the run, but I would once again spend the majority of a day sitting around waiting to do something. This is driving me nuts, it seems like I’ve been getting an endless barrage of stupid pickup and delivery times. Nothing kills a day like delivering in the morning and getting a load that doesn’t pickup until the end of the day. This particular trip would once again wipe out my 14hr clock and make it tough to get any miles in.

Oh yeah, one other little detail of this load that really had the potential to cause me problems. I had started my day at 4am and this load picked up at 6pm. A little quick math should tell you (and dispatch) that “this concludes your 14hr day”. I either had to do an eight hour extended sleeper berth thing and arrive for my pickup 30mins late or arrive a few hours early and see what I can do about getting loaded ahead of schedule. I waited around for as long as I could stand and headed on over to WV to get my load. I ended up arriving about 2hrs ahead of schedule with high hopes of an early load. The plan worked out well and all I had to do was wait for one truck to be loaded ahead of me and I was backing up to the dock. It didn’t take long to get loaded because it was another heavy metal load. Just 7 pallets of sheet metal headed to a canning plant. All I had to do was put spike plates down on the floor of the trailer as the pallets were being loaded to prevent them from sliding around. It took all of 15mins and I was ready to head on down the road once again with another very heavy load.


Hours were tight and I was able to put all of 60 miles behind me before my logbook shut me down for the day once again bringing my day to an end at the 360mi range. At least I knew tomorrow would be a better day. I had about 550 miles to go and would get there as soon as possible. The load was scheduled to delivery between 10pm and midnight, but I was hoping to get unloaded early and pulled in by 4pm. I was there, but that was the extent of the list. There were four unoccupied dock doors and I laid my claim to one of them and commenced waiting. I’ve been getting really good at that lately.

As the magical hour approached more trucks started to arrive and it didn’t take long for each of the other dock doors to grabbed up and by the time the receiving office was unlocked (30mins late) there was a total of eight trucks sitting around. Apparently we all had the same delivery window and I was thankful that I had parked it here instead of at the local truckstop. First in means first out and it didn’t take to long before I was headed out the gate. I had noticed an abandoned warehouse across the street earlier in the day and made my way over there to hide in the back and put in for the night. Another great day! Actually, this one hadn’t been so bad and I ended it with 554mi to add to my total. I had done a lot of sitting around, but it was a product of my own making by arriving so early in the hopes of finagling an early unload.

Once unloaded I got a quick response on the Qcom to pickup a preloaded trailer the following morning and run it over to Indiana, but that would be the beginning of next week, for this week has come to a merciful conclusion.





WEEK THIRTY SEVEN
Monday, Sep 14th through Sunday, Sep 20th
Miles include deadhead

Sapulpa, OK to Houston, TX……………………………………………592mi
Baytown, TX to Ottawa, KS…………………………………………….795mi
Spring Hill, KS to Jackson, MI…………………………………………..758mi
Jackson, MI to Beach City, OH………………………………………….228mi
(228mi x .44 + $15 short haul = 51cpm)
Weirton, WV to DeForest, WI…………………………………………..690mi

Total Paid Miles…………………………………………..3063mi
Actual Miles……………………..3076mi

3076mi x .44 = $1353.44 + $15short haul = $1368.44

 

At the time I started, Crete's starting pay was 41cpm and up. At the time they had just done away with all their incentive bonuses and instituted a 3cpm across the board pay raise. That was what convinced me to drive for Crete over a couple of other companies that I was thinking about at the time.

Due to the economy and large number of applicants, the starting pay has been reduced to 37cpm to 40cpm depending on experiance and how many jobs you have had over the last 5yrs. Details can be found at their website. Students start a 34cpm for the first year and jump up to the 37cpm mark after that first year (from the date of getting your own truck, not the date that you started training). Student drivers are paid $500/week during their 8 week training. Limited experience drivers are paid $600/week during training for 2-8 weeks depending on circumstances and I am not sure what their starting pay is.

 

Starting that old tune up there again are they. It is definitely a hit an miss thing this time of year. Hopefully you are on the move again.

There is no snow over here in Pennsylvania, but then there is no freight either. It's worse this week than it was last week. At least last week I got a 230mi run out of here. This time around I delivered in York at 6am and have been sitting ever since. It's now around 1pm and counting.

No truckstops within 25mi and I'm sitting in a posted dirt lot hoping the local police will leave me alone as long as the sun is up. If I don't hear something soon I'm going to pull out and hope I go in the right direction to find a parking spot. Past experience tells me I'll go the wrong way and have to backtrack to get a load (when ever that happens to be)

I ended this miserable week with less than 2800 miles. The kicker was that I had to turn down a perfect drop/hook both end load last Friday going to TX because I was short on hours to get it there. Instead of that I was put on a blasted PA load of 1100 miles that delivered Monday(today) and destroyed my week.

I don't like it, but the two previous weeks out of the house were nothing to complain about. Week one out netted 3741 and week two was 3167 so I will have to console myself by looking at the average.

I knew I should have put in for hometime after two weeks to get me going west again. But then, all would have worked out great if I didn't have to turn down that TX load because of low hours. It really does a number on me when I don't get my reset in.

So here I sit in PA. AGAIN!