From School to Superior Carriers

Thanks and good luck to you. What terminal are you running out of?

 

One advantage to that is you will rarely get stuck there. You will be home.

 

Good luck to you. Hope they have enough business to keep everyone busy.

 

8/27-9/4

This was another busy week. I got back to my home terminal in High Point with 30 minutes left on my 70. They preloaded my trailer yesterday morning or I would not have made it home until after midnight Sunday.

I felt great after my weekend in the Hotel and ran 600+ miles Sunday. That left me a couple of hundred to go for Monday. Even though SPCR supplied no directions to this plant I found it without incident. It was an easy back, air unload with one 3 inch hose and the tank had 15,000 gallons of room in it. I figured 1.5 hours max....Wrong.

As soon as I hooked up the air i noticed the pressure release valve was leaking air. These are spring loaded valves with magnets in them. If the pressure in the tank gets too high it breaks the magnetic seal and vents air. They are set up to vent at around 30 lbs of pressure in the tank. Mine was leaking at around 2 lbs of pressure. I vented the tank and took it apart hoping to be able to fix the problem. It helped but I still wasn't getting more than a couple of pounds of pressure. It wasn't a real tall tank so I turned it loose. It started flowing but slower than normal.

About half of it was off after 3.5 hours so I grabbed a roll of duct tape and tried to hurry it up a little. I wrapped about a third of the roll around the valve slowing the leak. It worked and I was done about 1.5 hours later.

I was expecting to be sent to Paulsboro NJ and thats what happened.

I made it into Paulsboro and got my trailer dropped at the tankwash by 4 PM. They told me I would be loading Tuesday morning at 8:00 with a load going home to Greensboro. That was cool so I headed over to the truck stop 1 mile away to grab a much needed shower and some grub.

I got back to my truck to find a qualcom message saying my NC load had been canceled and I was now loading at 5:00 AM with a load going to Knoxville. That meant the second straight 3:00 AM start for the week. I also hate trying to find trailers in the dark at Paulsboro. All the lighting is on one side and the only way to see trailer numbers is to get out and walk around that particular section of the tank wash. There are probably 200 tanks dropped there. Its a pain.

I managed to find it and get to my load appointment on time. That went great and I was actually glad to be ahead of Philly traffic even though I wasn't going home.
Here is another bone I need to pick with SPCR. I hate the qualcom Pick Up/Deliver Shipment messages that simply say "pick up travel order at terminal instead of giving you directions to the plant. This load is an example of why.

After shutting down for the night I started preparing my note card with directions for the morning delivery. It was then that I realized i had no directions to the plant on my travel order. I immediately called dispatch and he said he would send me some. I did all my computer research that I do on a delivery to someplace I have never been and noticed a problem. The plant was sitting on a one way street. My GPS and MS Streets had me coming into the plant below it. By studying satellite pictures I was able to figure out how to get in there.

Since I had to get up at 3:00 AM again I went to bed expecting directions to be there in the morning to reinforce my route. Didn't happen. I rolled on into town and fortunately my guess was right. There was only one problem. I was looking for Roam & Haas and the plant has changed names to DOW. I was in front of the gate I needed to be at but thinking I was at DOW pulled back onto the one way road because the address on my bills was farther down the one way road. I realized that the address I had wasn't a chemical plant and was able to make it back around the block to the gate without issue. All this was with a hazmat load in an area restricted for hazmat.

Once I found the plant my unload went without issue. You can imagine how pissed I was to get back to my truck to find a qualcom message with directions that had arrived one hour after my delivery appointment.

The rest of my day went great. I got a preloaded trailer out of Kingsport Tn heading to Williansport Md delivering Thursday. That went without a hitch and I found myself back in Paulsboro NJ Tthursday night.

They let me sleep in and preloaded my trailer for me. This one was headed to Raeford NC and was a drop hook with the empty heading home to High Point.

I am going to hang out here until around Wednesday. I was offered a California load but I turned it down. They couldn't guarantee that I would be home for a couple of vacation days I plan to take in September.

Pretty good trip. Anytime you max out the 70 2 weeks in a row with this company you pick up some pretty good change.

 

Yes they do. One of the biggest terminals/tank washes in our system is located in Pasadena Tx.