My 4 Month Review of Schuster

Delivered in North Haven, CT yesterday morning. Delivering at Bozzuto's was a blast. Load of meat and 600 cases, so not super complex, but took 8 hours to get unloaded. Worked out though; got my night's sleep in the dock and racked up 6 hours detention pay and east coast pay (50 dollars. Not a ton, but eases the pain a bit).

Deadheaded to Dunkirk, NY to pickup this morning. Seems like the Native Pride travel center in Irving is on it's way out, sadly. Diner is closed and store is barely stocked and lots of things were marked down on clearance. Barely any trucks or four wheelers there. Sad to see.

On my way to drop this load in Le Mars ASAP and in Atkinson, IL for the night. Bout to make the half mile walk to Casey's. Going through breakfast pizza withdrawal lol

 

Not sure tbh. I've never had a pet on the truck so I just kinda zoned out during that part lol. I have seen some medium-large dogs, but idk if there's a size limit

 

Final update and then will start doing one every few months since they're getting redundant:

Still rolling pretty steady. Was able to total out my miles since I started here and sitting at 34,600 and that's almost exactly 12 weeks ago. Comes out to an average of 2883 miles/wk, which isn't bad at all for the current market. Has been long enough now that I'd say that's a pretty solid estimate on what to expect here.

Lots of TX, KS, IA, and MO the last couple weeks, but that's alright. Easy runs. Waiting on Tyson to get a trailer loaded here in Madison, NE and then headed on a two stopper to Phoenix and Vernon, CA early tomorrow morning, so that'll be a nice run.

Driver appreciation week was pretty typical, but the food was good. Had various vendors come out and grill a variety of things and then the dispatch team had to come in and grill on that Saturday. Even had Mr. Schuster himself on the grill one of those days.

Only other new updates is they're upgrading the tablets for the ELD in the truck and switching all of them over to Trucker Path as the company provided GPS. That's what I've been using since I went OTR a few years ago and it's worked pretty well, so that'll be a monthly subscription saved.

Only real recent gripes is why there's so many four wheelers doing 53mph in a 65 between Nebraska City and Holton, KS, but that has nothing to do with the company lol.

And at one of the driver's meetings that have every Friday for folks at the terminal, it was kindly hinted that chaining up might be expected of you on some loads. Keep in mind, you can opt out of running to the west coast and not every load will be that important, but it might be kindly asked of you if you do want to run out West in the winter time. Evidently, they had a 40,000 pound load of fresh meat get rejected because it ended up being a few days late last winter and the road was passable with chains.

 

One thing I forgot about is one of our customers in CA sometimes routes the far southern route to avoid the elevation changes. To protect the packaging, I assume

2750 mile run from CA to IN. 90% flat terrain, warm, and sunny next week's paycheck is calculated before the week even started lol

And I don't remember if I mentioned it already, but paid parking gets reimbursed here, so that made the Ontario Petro last night less painful. They raised their prices to 30 dollars, 50 in store, or 60 gallons

 

Super truckin'. 1 month and two month total. Also, dont worry. Theyre not sticklers about the safety scores. Unless its a bunch of egregious things popping up on Samsara, you never hear about losing a point here and there for little things. Gets a little wonky and says "heavy speeding" in some areas. Got hit with one a few weeks ago cause Samsara still thinks I-24 in Paducah is 60mph lol. The Samsara score doesn't affect bonus or anything