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

100% agree Tucker. OTR is an acquired taste. Took about 8 years for me to figure out that I had much better things to do with my time.

 

How about mandatory automatic transmissions when you’re driving through Wyoming in winter time? Mandatory sleep studies and corresponding sleep apnea designation that come with a 17” neck?

 

I’m pretty sure I would close to 120,000 if I was working the whole year

 

Other than the automatics, the rest of the things you listed were when Mr Acklie was still with us, because I had to do them when I started

 

Took the sleep study...because my neck is 18in...but didn't need a cpap machine

 

I have a 23 inch neck, but wasn't required to take a sleep study at first. I was at Stevens at the time. However, they were only endorsing my medical card for 3 months at a time, and watching my weight.

Since I've never had any problem sleeping, waking, or snoring, and can (and have) survived and functioned reasonably well on 2 hours sleep 6 days a week for several months when I was a cable installer, I decided to ask them to just do the test so they would leave me alone.

Big mistake. I didn't think it through. They said I would have to pay for the test if I failed it. Stevens is a self-insured company. There was no way they were ever going to let me pass it, because there was no way they would ever allow themselves to pay for it. The first test's numbers were so atrociously badly fabricated that the doctor looked embarrassed and gave me another night to test.

I recorded video of me taking the second test. The numbers were not blatantly impossible in the second test, but the data showed me sleeping on my back and side for more than half the night, and never sleeping on my left side. The video clearly showed me sleeping for half the night on my left side, and half the night on my right. I never turned to my stomach, even for a second, and was only on my back long enough to swap the side I was sleeping on.

The Stevens doctor didn't admit anything. He simply said that I either pay for the tests and $1000 for the CPAP machine, or I would get no medical card from him. At that point I had no choice.

So I've been stuck in a CPAP machine that I don't need for almost 2 years now. There's absolutely zero difference in my sleep quality or wakefulness with or without the machine. Even if I forget to turn the machine on, and have to pull air through the machine with my lungs, rather than the machine pushing air, I sleep fine.

I'm going to try to get another sleep study done soon, to try to get out of the machine, but I know that even with a new sleep study, with my neck size and weight I'll have a hard time getting off the machine.

 

I was incorrect. The load call auto-reject due to other people's bad data is still active. Roughly 75% of my loads are still being rejected on first send because the data entered into the system by the office team or the customer does not match the correct data on the BOLs.

This wastes my time. Wasting my time loses me money. Crete really needs to address this in a responsible manner. A 75% data failure rate in an automated response system absolutely cannot be justified in any way.

 

Still going good with Crete (or at least the Shaffer part of it). In Checotah, OK headed for the Des Moines area to deliver Thursday morning. Then I should be headed to Illinois for my Christmas vacation....10 well deserved days....back on 12/27.

 

Click on the link below

 

Brian Heathen Thomas