CRETE - A Year in Review

Today has been a perfect example of the "love" part of the "love/hate" relationship I have with Crete.

Stopped to get a B service, about an hour from my delivery, which needed to be at the consignee by 1900. No problem. I'm scheduled home this weekend, any time between Friday and Sunday. Don't have anything pressing, so I've got a window this time around. Even before I'm out of the service bay, BING BING come two pre-plans that will put them in a good position to get me home Saturday. Won't deliver the second p/p until Friday, so there's plenty of time to get me from the Atlanta area to SC.

It'll wind up another good week, somewhere around 2900 I'd say.

Just kinda wants to make you throw up your hands and go "OI!".

 

I have to admit I just had a positive experience too. I had a string of runs that the customers accepted before the scheduled appointments. Consequently I'm pretty sure I already have over 3K over the last 8 days. I only had 3-5 available hours for each of the next three days. It would be the ideal time to take a 34 reset but I assumed dispatch would want me to sit at various docks for hours making local deliveries that had been dropped. I asked if I could use an earned day off so I could get my 34 reset, and surprisingly they let me. I definitely won't be checking the qualcomm because I guarantee before 24 hours are up they are going to start sending pplans and "where are you?".

 

buenos suerte! Not sure if fun in trucking is relevant today. Seems you are always just dancing around all the regulations, company restrictions and the 4 wheelers (and the steering wheel holders that are really 4 wheelers with a very large machine)

 

If you dwell on the regulations and restrictions, you certainly won't have fun. It's all about attitude, and if you approach something with a bad one, you're going to hate it. That's true for everything in this world, I'm learning.

All the bad days I've had in this job have been better than many (all?) of the good days I've had in any of my other jobs, so there's that.

 

Not sure who I made mad but I've been doing a lot of sitting lately. Sat all day Sunday. In fact I got a 34 in but didn't need it. At cons already but don't unload until 0500 tomorrow

At least I have some time to find out where my breakdown pay is from the 8th....of FEBRUARY!

 

A lot of that going on. When delivery is made it will be 60 hours sitting.

 

Seems like they would have had you tcall it?

 

We are in Spokane. Not quite ready to go on the record with this one.

 

Well, I'm back...and not because of anything positive. I had been running...lots of back roads, lots of heavy loads, but running. I knew the truck was trying to kill me with exhaust leaks, but I had been surviving by not opening the windows or using fresh air on the HVAC. Lately though, the exhaust stink had gotten much worse all the time...I was going to try to hold out until after this weekend since I was on the way home. I didn't make it. Over last weekend I started getting wicked bad headaches, a sore throat, and a feeling of a cold coming on. I immediately requested I get thru either Lenoir City or Marietta because I wasn't going to be able to hold out. I think it was a cold, not carbon monoxide, but still, the stink of exhaust was unbearable...or maybe it was just the symptoms of a cold that was amplifying the exhaust. I make it to Marietta...after reminding my AMM in training several times that I had to get to the shop asap...he or she(I still haven't found out which) kept trying to route me home...cudios for that, but I won't make it. I put my truck in the shop, and had a whole page of write ups besides the EGR and I'm told that it'll most likely be Thursday before it sees the shop, but since it was Tuesday late afternoon, that wasn't so bad. Just after 2 pm today, the International tech pulls my truck in and has the EGR off, and it was truly bad. He said some of these OEM valves don't last 50,000 miles. They have a new redesigned one they are installing now that will last longer. But fortunately for me, he wasn't able to get anything else done but getting the old one off, so now I'm in a motel. I got to drive one of their Maxxfarce daycabs over here. It has been a while since I've felt a truck pull and accelerate, I hope mine runs that good once it's fixed.

Sitting in the drivers area shooting the bull, several drivers had heard that the Deland terminal may be closing...I truly hope not...I hope it's just the shop closing and not the office. We just adopted 1/2 the Tifton drivers...I can't imagine they'd close it after that. That would mean I would have to move my terminal to Marietta...and I would rather go through a vasectomy without anesthetic while having my prostrate exam done by Edward Scissorhands than be a part of the Marietta terminal.

 

Jdzr was right about those logistics bars. When I was with Arnold, we had a dedicated fleet that ran double decker loads with those. The shipper would load short pallets on the bottom, then put those logistic bars and plywood, then load short pallets on top. The pallets were light, but they couldn't be double stacked on top of each other and it was a cost savings move to put as much on the trailer as they could without damage. My son worked for a furniture store for a while, and he said most of their furniture deliveries came in like that as well...make for a lot of dunnage to haul back, even on a dedicated customer. I guess they pay for a round trip since all that stuff would be in the way of anything getting loaded...even if it was stacked up on one end.