CRETE - A Year in Review

2008​

WEEK TWENTY ONE​

Monday, May 19th through Sunday, May 25th ​

Monday morning has me looking at a delivery anytime after 06:00 just down the road a bit. I can't leave as early as I would like because I have to finish my 34reset and I made it to the receiver by 08:30. It's a beer distributor and I find that I am the only truck around when I get there. This is a bit of a relief because I have been held up for hours at a number of these places waiting for my turn to unload. I have to wonder around for a bit to find someone but am eventually told to bump whatever dock I want. I have a choice of 6 and grab the closest on. No one seems to be in any hurry here so I got back in the truck and turned on the auxiliary fan we have mounted above our dash for a fresh breeze across my face (don't want to idle to much these days) and was amused to watch the fan blade drop off of the motor. Looks like another addition to the fix-it list.

It takes about 30mins for the unloading to begin and I feel the truck bouncing around for 15mins or so and stop. After another 30mins or so with no further unloading I get out to investigate the delay. I am extremely annoyed to find my signed BOL under a rock at the back of the truck. The lazy jerk that unloaded me couldn't even muster up enough energy to pound on the side of the truck. I wonder about these warehouse guys sometimes, and they say truck drivers are social misfits.

I send in my MT call and hope for a home bound load (not likely form TX). That would get me home during the middle of the week and I could stretch it out through the weekend. I really want to get out of this truck for awhile. It is not to be however. I get a one load offer that is to PU in Paris, TX and has a appointment delivery of 06:00 Wednesday outside of Chicago, IL(834mi) with a suggestion from dispatch that there is a good chance of getting Phx bound freight from that part of the country. I take it with a grain of salt and accept the load.

My PU is an appointment time a few hours from now, but when I get the load info I see that it is a customer that preloads our trailers so I take off and get there 2 hours early. Sure enough, my load is ready, I do my drop and hook and take off. I had hoped I would be able to make an early delivery too, but this load is destine for a Costco and there isn't a chance in hell of a early delivery to one of those warehouse, I'll try anyway. The load info also states that they have overnight parking, so even if they say no I'll be sitting there first thing in the morning.

The rest of the day is a non eventful drive ending in Springfield, MO and a marginally acceptable meal at the local Applebee's. Better than a truckstop I guess.

Tuesday morning starts like any other, a quick walk around and a check of the fluid levels. The way my truck has been going through oil and coolant requires a little extra vigilance these days. I also took a close look at a trailer tire that I have been concerned about. It has some erratic tread wear and it is getting thin in a few spot. I noticed this when I picked up the trailer and was hoping to make it to our Ottawa, IL yard after my delivery to have it changed out. Of course I wasn't quite that lucky.

I made it 32 miles down the road before it blew. That makes the second tire in two weeks. I was getting spoiled. It has been many months prior to that since I've had to deal with tire problems. A blown tire usually isn't a big deal. All you have to do is pull into a tire shop (if there is one close by and there was) and have them put your spare on. My problem today is that I used mine last week and the last two company shops that I stopped at didn't have any extras available. I imagine it has something to do with budget cut backs and decreasing inventories.

Anyway, I needed a new or at least a used tire and contacted breakdown with the information. The tire shop didn't open for another 30mins so I decided to wonder around for a bit. I had an idea. This was a good sized truck stop and if I could find another Crete truck on property I would be able to grab their spare (with their permission of course) and avoid having to buy a new tire from the local shop at what is usually a significant cost. Last time I sat through one of our company meetings we were informed that the highest on road expense next to fuel was tires. We carry 3rd generation recaps as spares and we were told they cost $30 in bulk. That seems a bit low, but I think they are trying to make a point (they charge us $75 if we want to replace one without proper documentation, i.e. if you sell one off and try to get another one for free). They also told us the average on road tire bill was around $400. "Do your part to help keep these cost down", we are told.

So that's what I'm going to do; my part to keep cost down. I did manage to find a Crete truck and no one was in the cab so I assumed he was inside getting a bite to eat. There were a handful of drivers in the restaurant and I eventually hunted down the Crete driver and explained my situation to him. He was more than happy to help out.

Fun little story here, probably not, but I got a kick out of it. Remember that brand new trailer I picked up last week from the factory and dropped in Indy. We'll that very same trailer was now hooked to this drivers truck. He was wondering how I knew he had just come out of Prime Distribution with his load.

Anyway, I headed back to my truck to send a message off to breakdown about being able to get my hands on a spare to save the company money thinking they would be open to my grand plan. Of course, common sense was not to prevail. The message I receive instructed me not to do that, instead they told me to buy a tire from the shop. ????????

I was dumbfounded; I just don't have the words to explain the dismay. Stupidity in its purest form and it was only going to get worse. I sent off another message that I had talked to the other driver and he had no problem with my arrangements, but if they wanted my to buy a tire I would. They didn't answer that one.

The next dilemma was, do I buy a new tire or a used one. I knew that the tire next to it was worn so a well worn used tire would be the best match up. I talked to the shop guy and was given the following prices used $130, recap $170 and new 1st generation very deep thread tire $310. Guess which tire breakdown told me to get. These bozos make me want to pull my hair out. I decided to call and let them know that the new tire wasn't even a recap (Crete uses only recaps, even on the trucks), and that the tread was very high. If they insisted on not buying a used tire, at least buy a recap with a much lower tread. I also made it very clear that if I put on the new tire next to the older, well worn tire it would be a matter of days before the older tire would fail.

Well, it turns out I'm just a dumb driver with 10yrs experience that doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. Breakdown didn't want to hear any of it and told me to "just by a new tire". Fine, there is no reasoning with stupidity. I just signed off on the $407 charge to the company and left.

Once I had my brand new tire next to my very old tire with a ridiculous difference it tread height I headed on down the road. After a few hours I pulled into a Loves to fuel up and notice an air leak coming from the back of the cab. A short search for the origin of the leak leads me to one of the cab airbags. It's a good sized pinhole leak and drains the air tank by the time I finish fueling. That's enough of a leak to get me red-tagged if I get pulled in for an inspection. Add it to the fix-it list. Hopefully I will be able to make it through a Crete shop after my U/L in the morning, if not I'll have to stop at a TA or something along those lines.

Down the road I go and make it to Costco by 3:30pm for a 06:00 appointment delivery the next day. It can't hurt to try an early delivery, but it did me no good. I was turned away at the gate and allowed to park in their very large auxiliary parking lot until the next morning and told to walkup to the window no more than 10mins before my appointment time tomorrow morning. I was 1 of 4 trucks parked here at the time. When I woke up the next morning there was about 50 trucks parked and a line 10+ from the guard shack out onto the road. I must have watched another 50 trucks pull in while I waited for my appointment time to roll around. This is one busy place.

As instructed, I walked up to the window just before my appointment time. When my turn came around I handed over my paperwork and awaited instructions. Time to start pulling my hair out again. When she returns she tells me to drop my trailer in the yard and head over to the truckstop to PU an empty trailer. When I ask her why I wasn't given this option yesterday (14hrs ago) when I arrived, she just shrugged her shoulders and said the night crew didn't know what they were doing. All I could do was smile. What's done is done, at least I won't have to sit around and wait for a live unload.

I did as instructed and dropped my trailer, although I found it interesting that this was the only other OTR trailer in sight other than a few hundred Swift trailers on this particular pad. Whatever, I bobtailed over to the guard shack and wait for clearance to leave and get my empty from across the road (why would they keep our MT trailers at a truckstop?).

Now the confusion begins.

I begin with "Good Morning"
"Where's your trailer!" is the short tempered response I get from Mr. "I really wanted to be a cop"
"I was told to drop......"
"Where's your trailer"
"I was saying, I was told to drop my trailer and PU an MT from across the road"
"You can't drop here, go get your trailer"
"But, I was told to......"
"I'm not going to tell you again, go get your trailer!"

OK, this guy is really starting to ruffle my feathers.

"OK, I can play that game too. I'm not going to tell you again (with a smile of course), I was told to drop my trailer by the pleasant lady working with you. Here is the signed BOL that she signed. I will be happy to get my trailer, but you need to go inside and find out why I was told to drop it in the first place. Then I need you to tell me what door to go too."

He took the BOL and his confused self inside and I waited. After a few minutes, the nice lady returned and I was once again allowed to partake in a civil conversation. She apologized for the confusion. Apparently she had seen my BOL and assumed it was a Swift load, (I guess it looked very similar) because it was a Swift appointment time. Long story short, I would have to return to the staging area and wait until the other people showed up (I have no idea who these people were) at 7am. "Just park and we'll call you on the CB in 20mins or so".

I wait patiently for 40mins and walk back to the window and attempt to explain the odd set of circumstances that had lead up to this moment and point out the nice lady and the hostile man. I must have done a bad job of explaining because a look of utter confusion has washed over this poor lady's face. I suggested that she have the other lady come out and she thought that would be a dandy idea.

The news I got was not good. Through some mix-up I was given a Swift appointment time. Swift appointments were apparently drops. But I wasn't a Swift driver and couldn't drop. I also couldn't get a door assignment because I didn't have an outside carrier appointment time. Are you starting to see my frustration?

Once again I am told to wait and come back in 30mins. I do so and after a fair amount of back and fourth with 3 different people am told that I am in luck (that's open to interpretation, but I keep my thoughts to myself). I get a door assignment and head on over to bump the dock. After all was said and done and 4hrs later I was empty and waiting for my next load offer.

It's a very short wait and I hear the Beep! Through all the aggravation of the morning I had completely forgotten about my attempts to get home. I just wanted to get out of this place, (I'm having no problem remembering why I despise Costco warehouses, every bit as bad as Wal-Mart when it comes to live loads). I'm elated to see I have just been offered a load that is going to Flagstaff, AZ. The PU time is less than optimal, 4pm over in IA, but I'm going home and I'll take it. I can be there long before then, but I do need to get the truck in the shop for the air leak. If I turn the truck off for more than 5mins the tanks are drained. If the hole becomes anything more than that I'll be left on the side of the road, but I could always crimp the line if it comes to that, so I'm not overly worried. I will be able to keep it moving in any case.

It just so happens that we have a terminal shop along the way in Ottawa. It's a small shop and I don't know what luck I will have getting it in but find myself tickled silly when I'm told to pull it into a bay. Because it was a serious problem and a quick fix the shop foreman would squeeze me in. He wasn't kidding about the quick part. They were done with it in 10mins. The tire problem was out though, I had been watching it and the old tire was wearing down at an alarming rate (just as I knew it would). They didn't have time to get to that until later in the day and I wasn't about to miss out on my load home. I did everything I could to solve that problem yesterday and washed my hands of it. I did ask for another spare however, and they too were out.

I topped off my fuel tanks and headed over to IA to PU my load. I arrived 3hrs early but was giving a door assignment anyway. This was a good sign. If I could get out of here at a decent time I would have enough time to make it to the KC yard to take care of my tire problem during my 10hr break. It didn't work out that good though. Loading started right away but came to a grinding halt after 45mins or so. Apparently they were waiting for some product to show up from another warehouse, therefore I was waiting. I ended up sitting there for 4+hrs. It had been a 4pm appointment anyway, so even though I had been there for what seemed like all day, it was 5pm (one hour after my appt) when I was finally able to leave. This turned out to be one long day and very few miles. I managed to put a few hours of driving in before shutting down for the night.

My first and primary goal for this fine Thursday morning was to stop at the KC yard and get my tire problem taken care of. But my plans were once again foiled. KC was also out of spare tires and couldn't get me in to change out tires until later in the day. I took another look at the tire (not getting any better, but the shop guy didn't seem overly concerned by its appearance) and down the road I went.

The rest of the day was just a balls to the wall driving to get me as close to home as possible. I was feeling like an old trail horse heading back to the barn. I wanted to make it to Tucumcari for the night but had to hold up in the little village of Nara Vista, NM. I'm close to home now. I had made it far enough to make it possible to drop my load in Flagstaff and still have enough drive time left to deadhead down to PHX. My final duty for the day was to take a walk around the truck for a quick post trip inspections with my questionable tire being foremost in my mind. What I found was a tire in worst shape than I had expected. The tread was completely worn down on half the tire and the other half had only the slightest grove. This tire would fail soon.

I sent off a message to breakdown and arranged to have the tire replaced at a shop down the road first thing in the morning and went to bed.

Friday morning gets me going on my last leg to the house. I stopped at a TA to get another new $400 tire with a 2½ hr delay and was on my way to Flagstaff to hopefully drop my trailer. If this was a live unload I would be screwed because my 14hr clock would run out before I could make it to Phx and I would have to spend the night in my truck just a couple of hours from home. I found myself with about 20mins to spare as I pulled into the customer and was thankful that it was indeed a drop load. A quick hook to an empty and I was on my way to Phx.

Mother Nature made one attempt to slow me down by throwing, of all things, a nasty snow storm at me. Here it is, just a few days short of June and I'm driving through a very heavy snow storm. The kind of snow that has extremely large flakes and made it a little hard to see but it wasn't sticking at this time. From what I heard the next day, it actually got much worst later that night but I was gone by then.

Time to put truck driving out of my mind for awhile and spend some time with the wife and family.




WEEK TWENTYONE RESULTS
Monday, May 19th through Sunday, May 25th
Miles include deadhead


Texarkana, AR to Commerce, TX (last leg).................................104mi
Paris, TX to Morris, IL...................................................................834mi
Davenport, IA to Flagstaff, AZ ..................................................1546mi



Total Paid Miles..................................2484 Miles (short week Mon-Fri)

Actual Miles....................2567 Miles + 149 DH home

2484mi X .42 = $1043.28

 

If you have recent verifiable experience within the last year or so and meet their other requirements I think they will considerer you. I had actually been out of a truck for 1 1/2 years when I started with Crete. But things have changed in the trucking industry of late and hiring standards are being tightened up by everyone. They will look at your previous work history and they look closely at the number of jobs you've held in the past and the length of employment periods.

 

I do my best not to be "rude", but there are certain individuals that you have to play the dumb alpha male game with. Fortunately it's not all that common.

I just ran a load out of Hawkins 6am Sunday morning. I was expecting another 5hr delay getting loaded like my last three PU's there and was amazed to get a preloaded trailer. Too bad it was only going 344 miles and had a mid-night delivery the next day. Not what I would call a productive load. Makes keeping that idle % down a challenge when I have to spend an entire day sitting in a parking lot in that hot humid hell hole of Houston.

 

I was reading the info sheet in the terminal. All units will be installed by Thermo King or Carrier shops and will take a day to install. A hotel will be supplied while the truck is in the shop, but we will not be payed layover or breakdown pay. Also, only 2007 trucks will be getting APUs and will be required to maintain a 10% or lower idle percentage. Older trucks will continue to utilize the Opti-Idle and will be expected to keep their idle percentage below 30%. All new trucks will be delivered to drivers with an APU installed or a battery pack (not a great alternative from what I've heard). The packs are suppose to last ten hours, but fade after 7-8 hrs and the trucks won't idle to recharge the batteries. If you sit in one place for any longer you have a bit of a problem. Hopefully they will address that little hitch.

I'm not thrilled by the 62mph thing myself, but I've been expecting it. The drivers in the terminal are up in arms about it and many are spouting off about going else where, but when I ask them where they can go and make the same pay they don't seem to have any real answers. Not to mention many other companies have already turned down their trucks and I can only suspect that others will be following suit.

I'm willing to hang around and see what happen. I keep detailed records and it will be clear soon enough if my monthly miles are affected.

I've driven a 62mph truck as a team driver with my wife back in the day and still managed to run around 300,000 in a year. With the liberal delivery schedules that we deal with here at Crete, I can't imagine it will have much of an effect. OK, I'm doing my best to be optimistic, it does annoy me, but I guess I could always buy my own truck, pay for my own fuel and drive 58mph to save fuel, right.

 

Trucks must be taken into one of our shops to have it turned down and they want all trucks turned down by 10/01/08. The adjustments will be made as trucks go through the shops for service. I just got my truck out of the Columbus shop today and was told that they are not doing it yet. Something about waiting for a program to update the CPUs or something like that.

Until our trucks are turned down they are asking us to voluntarily drive 62mph immediately.