Crete Carrier - A Year In Review - Fall 2013 Going Forward

Yea, this one is as dead as the Big G one...I think @tucker and I should get bonus pay from these companies for keeping their threads active...even though we aren't always pro-company, it brings in the members when we stir it up some.

 

Sorry to see it dry up. When it was at its best there was good information here. A little constructive criticism is a good thing.

 

Well Heck. It's been 10 weeks since Crete fired me and it was the best thing ever.

I was miserable there, I hated the short loads and dock time. If I had a long load I knew the next one would be short so I really couldn't enjoy it. (OTR you're married to the job, it has to suit you) I didn't know I hated that place that much. Now I'm happy and actually smiling, I can feel my little smile muscles tingling.

I never thought I'd end up in a day cab, I always thought I'd go to Poly.
I knew this place was here for 20 plus years but never thought about it. I guess I liked OTR, But one drunken night I sent this place an email and asked them if they were hiring and to call me if they were, A few days later they called. The 37 cents a mile seemed laughable, until I had him add it up and he told me what it paid a day with the loading and unloading pay.
And the money is good here, I'll miss the meal allowance deduction.
My cost of living has plummeted, most OTR nights I was spending 50 dollars at the bars, or I was enjoying a pint of vodka and orange juice in the sleeper, plus eating out all the time.
Now I have oatmeal for breakfast and pack a sandwich and a bagel smothered in cream cheese for the day, and I'm not drinking near as much. So I'm losing a lot of weight.

The new job is fun, my brand new Volvo is back at the dealer for a computer glitch so most days I'm driving a Mack with 586,000 miles on it, I love that truck, I'd like to keep it, but it's 2,200 pounds heavier than the Volvo, that's less sand we can haul back, but then most the drivers come back with 76,000 pounds gross. I like to get up near 80,000. We have a couple of new Freightiner daycabs, I drove one one day, it was impossible to keep on the road, it drifted everywhere. I hated it.
Most days I can run nonstop the 250 miles out there, (they let us use the restroom there) it takes about 15 minutes to load, and we get paid 12 bucks to load. I sneak in my 30 minute break out there and come back. Unloading is optional, it pays 20 bucks and takes an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how much I watch the guages. sometimes I sit in the cab too much playing on here and not watching, so it takes longer. But I usually unload, for the extra pay and to help keep the bins full of sand. the Volvos don't have a blower and the Mack does. With the Volvo I have to swing by the yard and get a Mack so I can unload. So I do that 5 days a week and every other Sunday morning I run a local run, that pays $38 a load, I have to load and unload it and it takes about an hour and a half a load, I'll run about 6 loads and be done by noon.
I'm glad I'm doing that on Sundays because we've been having a lot of good auctions on Saturdays.
Upcoming Auctions – Dixon and Dixon

We have about 10 to 12 drivers here, they're all good guys and helpful, our dispatcher is in Wisconsin so if I have a question I just call another driver. Or they'll call me and tell me about a bad wreck in front of me and how to get around it, Plus there's 2 other drivers here with my first name, that's odd
Plus we can tell on our phones what the tank levels are, they update every 10 minutes or so. This way we can tell which bin to go to.


Go Cubs, \\





Someone tell drvrtech77 that I was joking about being fired, it was just a joke.

 

Waiting for a pp that probably won’t come until morning. So far I’ve gotten up 3 times for messages containing fuel solutions for the last load I ran. I don’t think I’m cut out for the artificial intelligence era.

 

I got a few odd fuel messages myself last night, but there was a message advising that the new fuel messages were not valid.

On the plus side, apparently they got rid of the auto-reject on reefer temp setting mismatch between BOL and preplan data. Before this load, I had 3 of 5 load calls rejected on the first attempt because my reefer temp on my BOLs didn't match the data the load planners had in the system for the load.

Now, if there is a load call temp mismatch, the load call still goes through, but we get a warning to verify reefer settings.

Just in time too. I was close to asking to be moved to the Crete side until they fixed the problem that was making me re-send load calls that I had entered correctly.

The fact that they stopped bothering the crap out of us for reefer hours every time we dropped or hooked a trailer, or loaded or unloaded a hooked trailer was also a good thing.

It seems as if someone without a great deal of experience is trying to improve the Qualcomm message functionality, which, in the long run, might be a good thing. In the short term It's painful.

 

I’m back slowly been tough threads boring Crete’s different

 

My right eye gets really tired after 7 hours of driving and bothers me but it’s a lot different then before

 

Since Mr. Acklie passing...a lot of things changed..not all of them..for the better

 

Kind of figured that was gonna happen

 

I've been here 9 years, most changes have involved things that make my life easier. Like the apps for weighing the truck, Transflo, for fueling. Can't think of a major bad thing. Probably are some small ones, but can't think of offhand. Best miles ever the last 2 years. Should make 130k miles this year.