Diary of a Gainey driver

Ill update every now and then...

I just started working for them about a week ago. Orientation was one big unorganized mess, but other than that, they seem ok. I havent gotten my first paycheck yet, so time will tell how good this company is.
One strange part is...when youre assigned a truck, you will have to travel to get it, unless theres one at the terminal. I had to travel(with another driver) from Conley, GA to Mississippi to get mine. Its an 06 Columbia in pretty nice shape. Miles seem ok, dispatch seems ok, suggested routing sucks bad, directions are marginal, paid miles arent too far from actual miles, more to come.

 

My first week with Gainey has gone by, and my initial impression of the company was pretty much the opposite way I feel now. After the jumble that was orientation, I thought Id have to deal with that out on the road. Im pleasantly suprised.
My week began with some confusion as I was still getting use to how Gainey does things. It wasnt too different from my last company, so I managed with little struggle. After getting my truck, I talked with my DM about getting routed home to pick up the rest of my stuff. The recruiter said they try to route new hires to home within 10 days...so I was expecting a hassle. To my suprise, I get a load delivering about 45 minutes from my house. Thats not what impressed me though. Seconds after I hung up with my DM, the load appeared. Nice! Ive only ran about 5 loads, but have noticed they all seem to be smaller customers located in the middle of cities. One load going to Hanover, PA was the most memorable so far. My QC directions were too vauge for my liking, so I called the customer and got directions. I must have talked to a new guy in town because I later found out he had no idea where I told him I was coming from. I kept getting lost and kept calling him. I probally called 3 times. I could tell he was getting ticked off, so I said "ok" and figured out the mess by myself. Luckily, I found a Wal-Mart truck entrance and used it as a turn around. While there, I pulled up Mapquest and got directions. Funny, this guy had me running around southern PA like a delivery boy and Mapquest got me directions to the tee! After all was said and done, I spent about 1 hour touring Hanover and surrounding cities with 72 feet of vehicle. Not fun at all!
So far, Im very content working for Gainey. One thing that I like is the preplans. Of my 5 loads, 4 were preplans. On top of that, a couple times I got a preplan before I even picked up my load! Pretty impressive..
Week 1-2951 miles. That was with pretty much one full day sitting for a shipper who didnt change their appointment times.
To be continued...

 

Week 2 is at a close and I find myself taking an unnecessary 34hr reset(still have 13.5hrs left) in Alabama's rainy capital. Ive gotten my first paycheck and everything seems to be correct, but I will have to start keeping better records of everything. I wish they had a "driver payroll" section on their website to check weekly pay stubs.

This week was spent running from the northeast to mid country around Iowa and Wisconsin. Since Gainey doesnt use EZ Pass, they route you on every side road they can. Normally I wouldnt like that, but the scenery is much nicer than what you see from the I80/90 tollroad. US 20 and US 30 were traveled mainly.

The average length of haul for me so far is 813 miles which isnt terribly bad. They sometimes seem to have too much time on them though, but Ive been able to make some very early pickups and deliveries to help alleviate that. There have been many more live load/unloads that drop and hooks, but I wasnt expecting 90% d/h anyway(told us about 90% d/h in orientation-if it sounds too good to be true...). Every load has been a preplan(hey, I could get use to this!) and Im still suprised it has continued.

Of the past weeks loads, one is worth mentioning. It was a 2 stop load of office furniture originating from southern Iowa with both stops in Charleston, WV. The first stop was right smack in the heart of Charleston. It was set for 7am delivery, but I made it a point to arrive before the sun came up to avoid the clusterfark this city turns into once people get on the roads. I arrived about 5:45 and find that one driver has spent his 10hr break there...and after getting him to pull his truck forward, I was able to get on this narrow street to wait for the customer to open. 7am comes and he gets the one and only dock for his unload, which takes a couple hours. After shuffling our trucks around on the street, I have a go at hitting this dock. Now, it wasnt incredibly narrow, but there were all kinds of objects that were just waiting for a truck driver to hit, so I had to be a little creative with this one. I tried coming in as close on the d/s side as possible, then straightening the trailer up, but I just couldnt get it centered in the dock. After 2 failed attempts to get it centered, I told them "thats the best I can do" and they settled for an off-centered trailer. I didnt hit anything, so I think I did a pretty good job just to get it in there. The other guy...nailed it first try, but he makes regular deliveries, so has got it down to a science. The rest of the unload went fine and 1 hr later, I was one my way to the second stop which was about 15 minutes away.

My second stop and final delivery was at a Red Cross center. I find the street and customer, but dont see a truck entrance...just a car sized entrance and exit. I call them up to see where I need to go. "Take the 2nd entrance and come around to the back". I remind her that Im in an 18 wheeler and she says "They come in here all the time". So...I start down the entrance road and seriously came millimeters from taking out bushes, signs, fences, everything! I get to the side of the building and stop to talk with the guy in charge of unloading. He is almost as perplexed as I am and says "try to get it here". After getting the employees to move one row of cars, I start my turn around the building having to run over the concrete parking stops. After some crafty manuevers, I get the truck in the general area where he wanted it. Unloading was done by hand with nothing more than a dolly. NO dock. About 2 hours later, I was MT and left trying to figure out how to get out of this place. It was much less painful than getting in the place due to the absence of the row of cars. My only question is...if 18 wheelers come he "all the time", then why dont you make it easier for us???

Week 2-2910 miles
To be continued...

 

Week 3 is over and done with, and it was pretty un-interesting up until my last run of the week. It was a delivery at a Home Depot distrubution center in Philadelphia, PA. Of course, traffic was brainless and the streets were tight. No problem really. : / BTW, no wrong turns thanks to my triple checking of directions. : ) After leaving the dist center, I was on my way to repower another load at the Bordentown terminal. I would be headed I95 north to get on my way. Well, on the street I was on(Armagosa or something other), had only an on ramp for I95...southbound, no northbound ramp. So...I took it and figured Id just take I676W and loop back around to I95. Somewhere along the way, I had a brain fart and took I676E which brought me over two toll bridges, of which one was actually collecting a toll. Of course I was not routed this way, so I had to eat the toll. 22.50 to be exact. Finally, I got back to 676E(I was now on the west side on I95) then picked up I95 north. Whew! It was a small setback, but I wasnt in a hurry to pick up this next load.

It could have been worse like the US Express driver I talked to at HD in Philly. He made a wrong turn turn and ended up in a residential area. He made a turn to get out of there and clipped a car with his trailer. He said it was his first accident in 17 years. Yeah, the northeast can surely take that clean record away from you in a heartbeat! Another noteworthy item. Ive learned that I need to be a little more proactive in p/u and delivery times. I had a load coming out of Owensboro, KY that would have had me sitting for 3 full days(3 day holiday weekend), so I got permission to T-call it in our Sellersberg, IN lot.

Other than that, nothing else is really worth mentioning.
Week 3-2965 miles
To be continued...

 

For those with a short attention span, hit backspace because this is a fairly long post.

My fourth week is over and done with. It also marks my one month 'anniversery' with Gainey. I will honestly say that my opinion has changed about this company. Ive had one month to gather 'data' and the results are quite dissapointing. Ill explain more in the second half of this post.

The week started with repowering a load bound for southern New Hampshire. It was a driver assist tire load. I guess Ill get to sweat off 5 lbs of weight I dont need to lose. I open the doors and find out its not a full trailer. Phew! Its only stacked 5 feet from the door. Whats greater than 3/4? This was gonna be fun and labor intensive. So...after 2 hrs, I was empty and ready to get going to Van Buren, ME. For those without a map handy, that is nearly as far north in ME as one can get without crossing the border. Mark that as the closest Ive ever been to the Canadian border! I enjoy the small things in life, so to the people who say 'So What!', please dont rain on my parade.

From there, I headed down to MA off I90. The bad part about this load...I get the wonderful option(NOT!) of sitting a FULL 2 days! Sigh! I know freight is slow and whatnot, but this isnt what p1ssed me off. I get to the consignee and find out I just wasted 2 days of my and the companies time. Its a freaking DROP! Im glad I have low blood pressure, because if it were any higher, I would have popped a vessel in my head.

Anywho, I get that disasterous waste of time behind me and head for northern Vermont. A 230 dead head is not uncommon, as Ive figured out. Now, this load is good for one reason. Its getting me home...or almost. Ive still got 240 miles to go, but atleast Im in my home state(for now).
Week 4-2242 miles
My other weekly numbers are messed up. I dont know where the mis-calculation occured...


Now, Ive been keeping track of mileage and pay myself, since the company doesnt have anything set up on their website for a driver to look at their pay stubs. After seeing my first months data, I can see why they dont have anything. Rather than my mouth doing the talking, Ill let the words do the talking. That said, please note there are 4 runs where I didnt list the actual miles. I missed writing them down, or wrote them somewhere else, so I didnt get the mileage and therefore, didnt include it.

MT miles Ld Miles Total Miles Actual Miles
214.............510........... 724
217.............543............760
119.............577............696.............729
114.............975............1089
71...............760............831
108.............657............765.............817
69...............622............691.............732
75...............614............689.............759
91...............643............734.............736
105.............657............762.............816
429.............105............534.............539
125.............616............741.............636
32...............310............342.............374
381.............503............884.............906
230............1172...........1402...........1483​

Gainey pays by PC Miler or address to address. Is it just me, or is there a serious lack of compensation here? This is unacceptable to me. I love driving, but Ill tell you, I aint doing it for free! As far as Im concerned, this is stealing! I am not a thief and I dont want to work for one. Now you can see why my opinion of this company has changed. Can you blame me?

My resords arent 100% accurate, so next month, Ill have the ACTUAL numbers of MT and loaded and overall miles.

That said, there are still some things I like. Positives: Preplans, polite-ness over the QC, 68-72 mph trucks, Prepass, for example. Negatives: NO EZ Pass(have Prepass, but no EZ Pass when you run the NE most of the time? WTF?), no opti idle, ONE load offer given, .2cpm pay cut if you opt not to run into NYC(I wanted to keep my .31, so I said Ill run NYC no problem), smaller customers usually located in places trucks shouldnt go, Trip Pack(got spoiled with Trans Flo), ect...

Knowing what I know now, Id have to say that I wouldnt have chose this company...but I was in between a rock and a hard place, and Gainey took me, so Im greatful to work here in that respect. As soon as Im able to, I will be returning to my former company. Until then, Ill just tough it out here and make the best of it.

Things Gainey needs to be a pretty decent company: Get EZ pass and start paying actual or practical miles!
Total months mileage traveled-12,382
Total months paid miles-11,644
Total months uncompensated miles-738
If this trend continues, thatll be approx 8,856 or 2,745.36 a year Im not being paid. X that by XXX amount of drivers. Thats alot of free labor!