Day by day adventures of a new solo OTR driver

I forgot to add to my post yesterday that I'm headed up to Rhode Island with my salvaged auto parts load. So yeah... back to the Northeast again. I was going to try to break my mileage record (best so far is 579) and I would have done so if I hadn't hit what always comes along with the Northeast... traffic.

As soon as I started hitting the I-95 construction in VA it was like hitting a brick wall. Traffic everywhere. I decided to hop on 495 and try to route around it - nope, still traffic on there too. I still managed to get 529 miles today, but called it quits as soon as I got into Maryland.

My Qualcomm route is taking me over the GW Bridge again... to be honest I don't care to go through that again, so I'm going to try 287 and taking the Tappan Zee bridge instead. I've never done the 287 route but I've been over the Tappan Zee several times and found that at least its always moving...

 

Just the paintbrush tool in Microsoft paint

 

Ahh yes... back in the Northeast.

First I headed into Rhode Island to deliver my load of salvaged auto parts... nothing exciting on that run, I was unloaded quickly and headed back to the Pilot just on the other side of the MA border to wait for my next assignment since there was no preassignment showing up.

Several hours later the expected crap-mileage preassignment shows up, I sweep out my nice shiny new trailer I that has been with me since Florida and I head to the Sears outlet about 60 miles away.

After finally managing to find my way in to the strip mall parking lot and snaking through the parking lot full of cars to get to the rear of the buildings I saw the door that the clerk had told me in broken english that he would leave open so I could find them. After carefully backing up and making sure that the angled dock ramp wouldn't tear up the side skirts of my trailer I docked up and stepped out of the truck.

A Ford Mustang was slowly approaching as I was backing up, I figured he was just waiting for me to stop so he could get around me, but oh no, this man just watched me back up my trailer to the dock and was NOT about to be outdone and wanted to show me how it was supposed to be done.

Tires screeching, he whips the Mustang into a u-turn, shifts to neutral, blips the throttle and then throws his automatic transmission in reverse and squeals the tires as he reverses up to the small dock next to me. I'm still stepping out of my truck as this is going on, and hes watching me. He wants a reaction. He wants to be noticed. SO BAD. OH SO BAD. Convertible top down, the John Anderson with a ponytail and ball cap lookalike steps out of the car that only a man caught up deep deep inside his midlife crisis would drive. I have to put my face into my elbow and fake a cough to hide how hard I am laughing at this point.

He rushes to the clerk to get there before I do to pick up his lawnmower. No doubt a late-40s man such himself needs a brand new push mower so he can strut around his yard shirtless in an attempt to impress the 20-something college girls that live across the street. After repeatedly whining at the clerk to not scratch the paint on the top of the trunk of his pimpmobile, they set the lawnmower on top, he hops in, shifts to neutral, stomps the throttle, then slams the automatic into drive and tears out of there before the midlife crisis can catch up with him.

Yep, its just another day in the Northeast.

4 pallets later, I plow my way out of the parking lot and Providence traffic and head for Syracuse, NY. I stop at a rest stop about 40 miles outside and decide to call it a night.

The next morning I head for the next outlet mall where I'm dropping these 4 pallets off at. I made sure to look over the path carefully on Google Maps to make sure I was coming in from a truck-friendly direction, but I still didn't know where the Sears was.

I got there about an hour early as I always try to do, squeezed into the parking lot and took up a row of parking spots in hopes the lot wouldn't fill up.

I went to the nearest dock I saw, went up to the man door, rang the bell, nothing.

Walked around and saw two guys that looked like they were maintenance workers for the mall, asked them if they knew, they offered a little bit of advice but it was just confirming what I had already looked at. I went upstairs to the retail store entrance, closed till 10am.

I went back down to my truck and checked the hours on the Qualcomm... receiving should have opened at 6? Try calling the number, nothing... no one is there to pick it up. Finally, go back to the docks and bang on the door. Someone finally answers and tells me the dock for Sears is just over on the other side of the bushes. Huh?? That's not a dock....

So, I walk over there and find a door propped open with a piece of wood. I open it and its just a giant stairway. I yell out "anybody home" and a few seconds later a flustered looking girl about my age comes down and I ask her if this is the dock for Sears, she says yes, but I will have to wait until another person arrives for them to unload me, but to go ahead and back up to the "dock" before the parking lot fills up. I get to my truck, finally hit "arrived" on the workflow, it asks for a reason that I'm "late", I enter a sarcastic reason and continue on. So, I squeeze through the parking lot and back up to this "dock". This "dock" is pretty much a metal platform with a Genie-manlift style scissor lift under it with 2 concrete posts sticking out of the ground, outside, in the middle of the sidewalk. Her help finally arrives, she excitedly high-fives him when I open the doors and she sees she only has to unload 4 pallets instead of an expected 60 appliances. They unload the pallets and I quickly get out of the parking lot before I am totally boxed in by cars.

While I'm filling out my paperwork another preassignment shows up... and of course, its another crap load. And I can't pick it up for about 5 hours.

I head to the Pilot 2 miles down the road, take a shower, read a book, sweep my trailer, and finally burn up enough time that I can head out.

I arrive at the shipper only to get told they are behind schedule and that I need to leave and go wait at the truckstop for them to call. Come on. I head back out of the small town to the truckstop and wait... and wait... and wait. No call. I try calling them... keep getting voicemail. So, after waiting 30 minutes past when they said they would call, I drove back up to the office, they tell me the load is STILL not ready but at least I can dock up.

Long story short, I didn't leave there until 1745pm. I was there ready to be loaded at 1415pm. I have about 3 hours left on my clock. About 60 miles total for the day. What a freakin joke. After I finally got loaded up I headed for the Loves that was on my route to scale my load. By the time I backed into one of the crap parking spots that no one else wanted to try getting in to, got a bite to eat and picked up my scale ticket I only had about an hour and 20 minutes left on my clock. Not even worth moving.

So here I sit, with a total of about 80 miles for the day. This is why I hate the Northeast.

 

So, this morning I headed off to deliver my load. Arrived at about 11am, finally had to say goodbye to my nice new trailer that has been with me for a long time now, all the way from Florida. I was assigned a crappy empty that I reluctantly hooked up to and headed out. A preassignment arrived while I was going through the workflow at the delivery, so at least I wasn't doing a ton of sitting around.

I had about 2 hours to burn, so I stopped at the rest stop a couple miles down the road, spent an hour or so there then went ahead to the shipper arriving my usual 1-hour early. Of course, I get there, give him my pickup number, and I'm told that another Schneider driver has already used that pickup number and is getting loaded. WHAT.

So, I back up from the gate, pull off to the side, call into the Charlotte OC, sit on hold, so I sweep my trailer, wait some more, finally get through and explain what is going on. I go on hold again as customer service is contacted. Finally, Charlotte gets back with me and says that they've called the shipper and basically nobody has any clue what is going on anywhere and I just need to wait.

A long story short, the shipper blamed Schneider, Schneider blamed the shipper, but it was a screwup on the shippers paperwork that caused the issue apparently. The other driver came out the gate, we both got on the phone and our workflow got updated appropriately. He dropped his trailer with "my" load, I dropped my empty for him to pick up, and finally several hours after the start of that mess I was on my way.

I only had about 4 hours left on my clock at that point so I drove down to about an hour and a half and stopped at a rest stop before they all filled up. There was a driver with the hood up on his Peterbilt, judging by the puddle of oil on the ground something wasn't right. I got to talking with him and the worn out Cummins N14 was leaking oil from the front and rear main seals and dumping oil out the breather tube and his dipstick was showing bone dry. Me and another driver gave him what we had left from our own gallon engine oil jugs so he could hopefully make it down to the TA and get some more oil to at least let him deliver his load then get to a shop...

Overall an uneventful day. About 20 miles shy of 400 miles for the day, as is every other day in the Northeast with Schneider.

Checking my pay statements, Thursday will bring my very first paycheck from Schneider that has been over 700 dollars. The majority of that check is probably from my runs in the Southwest and Southeast, however some of that I believe was split over the previous paycheck is well.

Averaging out the paychecks since I started solo driving, the average amount actually deposited into my account each week comes to $415.

It is frustrating at times. The paychecks have been getting better, but only when I get runs that aren't in the Northeast. I asked my DBL for some hometime starting around that middle of next week, that puts me at several days over 3 weeks away from home. I like being out for 3 weeks at a time, I want to try longer but as it has worked out so far issues with my truck, be it mechanical or something simple like a license plate, have brought me home after every 3 week period of being out.

Over my hometime I am going to look more into Schneider's truck financing. I will make sure that I report back whatever I find out, as it doesn't look like much information is available about it here on this forum.