Newbie.... blah blah blah....yadda yadda yadda

I finally bought a pair of those seat covers.
The Coveralls. Didn’t want to. But da cat is digging her nails in her seat too much. Needed to stop any real damage.
So I went ahead and bought one for my seat to match.

 

I goofed on my first long run.
I’m coming up short 100 miles tomorrow. Running out of HOS. Have to wait till next day to deliver.
I seriously do think. If I were better. I would have made this one.

 

Looking back critically. Only way to do this run. If I somehow had run two hours more, back 8, and 9 days ago. And less 2 hours, 7, 6 days ago. Had a 34, 10 days ago. Just need to face the fact that I didn’t have the time when I started.
I had looked at this when I started. Tried to estimate if I did hit it hardest possible. Could I pull off a 34 before delivery? My answer was no.

 

I had a similar situation years ago when I was with Swift, sitting at the Laredo terminal. I was offered a load to Las Vegas with an appointment time for a live unload. I did a quick analysis and decided to turn the load down because I thought I would run out of hours just short of delivery.

After turning down the load it started eating at me. Did I make the right decision? That was a decent load!

So I broke out my computer and created a spreadsheet to analyze available hours of service. Crap! It showed I would be two hours short of making my appointment time, with the limited hours coming back each day at midnight. But I was still kicking myself, because I thought I could make up time along the way.

Then I got another load offer to drop a trailer at our terminal south of San Diego on the Mexico border. Wide open schedule, so I accepted it.

It turns out that as I came to the I-8 split off of I-10, when there was less than a day to get to Las Vegas (had I accepted that load), I was definitely about two hours short of making delivery. I chose wisely.

I used that spreadsheet a few more times on to tightly scheduled long hauls. After that I got better at eyeballing available hours. Live and learn.

 

When I was in a governed truck I did my estimates at 50 to 55mph (sometimes less) depending on where I was going. Nowadays I use 55 to 60 which most often puts me comfortably ahead of schedule. Sometimes things happen but generally it works out in my favor to where I don't have to do the "call of shame".

 

My second drop was only 4 hours late.
First was 19 hours late.
Didn’t seem to be any big deal to the receivers? But still...

 

Oh how I suffer for my company!
Got a call this morning. My 10am delivery tomorrow. It’s put off till 10am Monday.
I was 40 minutes west of Missoula when I got the call.
I’ll post pictures of my suffering tomorrow night.

 

I actually get paid for this.

 

I gotta get me a real job someday.