Post Gordon ~ Thoughts, Commentary & Reflections

Since page 20, Gordon Indy has moved from the Dividend Road site to another, I'm told near the Pilot off 465 exit 4 although I haven't swung by to see. I understand the lot is dirt and has a security system but not the easy access of, say, Pontoon where you drive up, scan your ComCard out the window from your tractor and it knows you and lets you in.

There may have been personnel changes with the move, too. If you post any changes here, do not include last names, a TTR rule.

The last I heard (and it was just talk as far as I know) there was litigation on the property Gordon bought behind the Pilot where plans were set for a Lathrop-like terminal. Lathrop has a cement pour large enough to land a pretty good-sized plane if you cleared off the trucks. It's huge and looked to me like 10 or more inches thick concrete pour.

In the next week or so I'll post a recommended reading list, including double yellow's account of starting up with Covenant. Apparently Covenant requires 6 months team driving and he went through a slew of co-drivers.

Will also juxtapose what I'm doing now and what I did before Gordon where it seems appropriate while moving forward the narrative of trips and pay details of my time with Gordon. Will shortly add trip/pay details for two more weeks to summaries. One of these two weeks grossed just $150 because my fuel stops did not have TransFlo or I was in a rush and held back almost a week of trip sheets. So no $$ until the following week.

 

Terre Haute to Nashville, TN

If I haven't done my share of night driving, I'd like to think I have and am certain I've done all I want to do. For 10 months I rolled out of Bloomington, IN (sometimes Columbus, IN) with USPS mail headed for Cincy. Took SR46 over the 18-mile or so roller coaster between Bloomington and Nashville, IN and out through Greensburg, IN then onto I-74 either to the USPS Distribution Center in Sharonville (north of Cincy) or the downtown Cincy postal facility.

Always in the dark for most of the run. While every road defect en route became a familiar, I had little idea what lay off the roadway, whether a field, a strip center, woods, farm or ?? Just. Did. Not. Know. Until once a driver failed to show for the day run, I got an afternoon start and saw some of what I otherwise never got to see. "Are you asleep?" the Cincy terminal manager asked. "What's up?" I asked. She said, "The day driver didn't show up and I just learned about it just now. Can you..."

It didn't take long, 3 hours over, a half hour to drop and hook, and 3 hours back. The contract with the post office is called a 'plate'--I don't know why. But it sets out the terms and the times so you can't sit in a coffee shop somewhere enjoying a piece of pie. You've got just enough time to get there, maybe a little less. It's tense. Pays well for trucking, $23.67/hour or so.

So anything from construction, a slow driver or a wreck can knock you off your track. Our POS and maintenance-deprived tractors could not keep up with FedEx and UPS. They had more push and always walked by me, especially on the way back. They seemed always to run a little hot. Especially FedEx.

On the way back, I'd make a right into the 24/7 service station at 135/46 (Nashville, IN) before making the left turn and up the hill for that last roller coaster piece on into Bloomington. A couple times I'd walk around the truck and trailer to see if I felt fully awake and had my feet where I needed them underneath me. Then slip into the convenience store for--anything. Any something to add a little oomph! to the last 18 wooded, twisting, hilly miles.

Deer were almost always about and that was my biggest fear. I never wanted to experience hitting a deer and so far haven't. At least one of our drivers thought it was fun. Ugh! Woods goats. Powerful and long-legged, hill-climbers, so vulnerable at the same time. Twenty thousand years from now if roads and deer still co-exist the deer will have learned to stop, look both ways and only cross when it's safe.

Natural selection will see to that. In the meantime there's highway carnage.

So I wasn't much thrilled about an all-night run from Terre Haute south to Nashville, TN on road I wasn't familiar with, including US 41 and the Pennyrile Parkway, the 70-1/3rd mile Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway.

No, not thrilled about it at all.


Written Sept 15, 2013 at home, six miles north of Spencer, IN. All rights reserved by author.

 

Posted (by me) at http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...re/225565-opinions-please-2.html#post3540355:

 

Terre Haute to Nashville, TN (Continued)

The 'plate' for the Bloomington, IN/Cincy run gave us 8.25 hrs for the night run, despite that it was 3 hours over and 3 hours back. There was some extra in addition to the run itself. At the end of my night run, I would drag an MT (empty) over to the now defunct main post office downtown Bloomington, spot it and park the truck there. In the winter we let it run all night, unlocked, on an open unfenced, downtown parking lot. Otherwise, it wouldn't start.

When the day driver bobtailed in at the end of his run, he had only the truck because he had already dropped his trailer from Cincy over at the Annex on the west side of Bloomington. At the main post office downtown Bloomington, he would back under a waiting trailer, the one I brought over empty early that morning from the Annex at the end of the night run, while I would assist cranking the landing gear up. I would drag that now-loaded trailer to the Annex, drop and hook there and head to Cincy.

The day driver had been with the company some 23 or 26 years and pulled his own trigger by calling the post office one holiday and canceled his own run. In doing so, he canceled his own job, too. Naughty, naughty. We had a little routine. I would ask, "Does the truck need anything? How's the truck?" He'd answer, "Just needs a new driver."

He was from the 'suck it up' school of trucking; it didn't matter if the truck was falling apart; he never wrote anything up and never complained. I could leave him notes to pull into the Cincy terminal to have the mechanic look at this or that and he'd ignore them. Lights, brakes, air and exhaust leaks. All in all, I wasn't too sorry when he punched his own ticket. Surprised, not too sorry.

Sometimes my outbound-to-Cincy trailer was ready at the Annex, sometimes it wasn't. It added to the pay if they weren't ready to go. Sometimes they were ready early and would let me leave early. A real treat. I got paid the same and that extra time took the pressure off the run. Way off.

So all this extra between the old downtown post office and the new, modern Annex is what turned a 6.50 hour run into an 8.25 hour 'plate'. The run paid $195.28 ($23.67 x 8.25) plus any extra for delays or breakdown time. A job I had gotten off CraigsList, by the way. And oddly, when the post office completed it's substantial equipment and physical upgrades and moved their ASV (All Service Vehicle) fleet to the Annex, we stopped going downtown yet the 'plate' remained the same: $195.28.

I still got that same $195.28 for the run despite that all I had to do in Bloomington was bump the dock with my return trailer and move the truck over to the outbound for the morning (day run) driver. That change bumped my 'effective' hourly rate up to $27.90/hour. Not too bad for trucking.

Had I been running that 244 miles for Gordon, I would have received $75.64 for the same miles and that's about it. Okay, fine. $75.64 flat vs $195.28 plus. Sure. I'll do the math and see if I can figure it out--$195.28 vs $75.64, which is better?? Eenie...

USPS finally dropped the day run, so my buddy who had the day run and I both got laid off. A driver with more seniority took over the Bloomington night run that I had. I took a year-and-half off including 5 months tooting around the country with 3 dogs in the car, interviewing trucking companies. My buddy went over to Landstar.

Shortly after, USPS halted sorting at the Annex (the just finished expensive physical plant and equipment upgrades had been to move the sort from downtown Bloomington to the Annex--and I mean very, very expensive upgrades, building addition, state of the art sort equipment, extended parking lot, landscaping, etc.), and all but local sorts went up to Indy. Go figure.

It's just money. And besides, I still haven't left Terre Haute yet for the 260 or so mile run to Nashville, TN. Let's see, that's $80.60 Gordon-wise (260 x .31) plus there would be a few more miles to the second drop and some extra for the two drops. Less than $115.00...

A run for USPS like that would pay, what, $195.28 for the first 8.25 hours plus... Oh, never mind. Who cares, right? It's not about money after all--some here will tell you OTR's a lifestyle, more akin to commission sales than hourly anything. That if you count all the hours you put in, your head's guaranteed to explode... as it should.


Written Sept 16, 2013 at home, six miles north of Spencer, IN. All rights reserved by author.

/Just got back from the vet. Left with three; came back with two. In 2007, I adopted three, including an 11-12 year-old Shih-tzu, deaf and blind. Never expected her to last a month short of 6 more years.

 

Posted at: http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...ng-to-costco-warehouse-clubs.html#post3545724