Post Gordon ~ Thoughts, Commentary & Reflections

Come visit: http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...73-otr-pay-poverty-wages-142.html#post3572514

 

Okay, deleted some msgs in mailbox. Still over @ Surfer Joe's thread, OTR Pay Poverty Wages and participating on numerous others. To be continued... not taking any further Haz loads right now. Need to winterize my place and just bought three (3) chickens, golden comets. What a hoot! Three eggs so far.

Had to tarp them off in my shower the first two nights as it was chilly (40 degrees) and did not have a coop set up yet. Last night they spent the night outside but I tarped them off inside the dog run which will be their primary scratch area. Will build a coop at the end of my long porch with access for the girls to the scratch area and easy for me to eggs and for cleaning and feeding, watering. Three (3) hens. So-o-o cool.

What, you say, does this have to do with trucking? Everything. It's about having a life and trucking, too. Thankfully I have a neighbor who takes care of my critters when I'm gone. He doesn't know about the hens, yet. But I'm sure he and his wife will enjoy fresh, brown cage-free eggs. Not quite free range, close enough.

 

Spoke to a gal I know who has a super-profitable seasonal trucking business near here about buying one of her trucks. She was so stressed for a driver I helped her out a little this summer. Kept hinting that she should sell one of her 7 trucks to me but she was too inundated with orders to hear it. The season's over. Had a nice conversation with her. She's a driver herself, turns her maintenance over to a shop and just pays whatever it costs to keep her older trucks up to snuff.

Fixes everything.

 

(Emphasis added.)

Takes some courage to do what you're doing, Blu. I like it.

It matters that you push that personal/financial balance point--again--that you're moving forward. It's tough in trucking because it's so difficult to know where you're at financially for a while, can't really predict your truck expenses, what's going to break next. As you approach your first year, hopefully you'll take stock and be gratified that you took the risk, the leap. Truck on!

I'll say one thing for each of the Gordon L/Os I met. Each seemed confident to either pay truck off or already drove a paid-off truck. Helps to have a million-mile 3-year warranty on engine, tranny and rear end. Gordon doesn't pay a whole lot per mile. And Gordon L/Os get the same dispatches as company drivers. No difference. Force dispatch. But tons of freight. Never have to wonder where that next load comes from. Comes from Gordon!

When a girlfriend and I got into a canoe below St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam (Mississippi River) in St. Paul, MN, destination New Orleans, we didn't really know what it would take. We just knew that the Mississippi eventually got there and if we stayed with her, we'd get there. It took 85 days.

We 'missed' a lot of TV, movies, news and politics, dinners out, time with other friends, home time, etc. But we didn't really miss it. We knew where we were going (New Orleans) and we had the commitment to get there by canoe. We left New Orleans in a Lotus Europa from a drive-away place through Ozarks. It went to the Topeka State Fair and we hitchhiked the rest back to Minneapolis. Nothing wrong with goal-oriented sacrifices. Just the opposite!

Don't know anything about your lease, I think you said you live in California (Salinas?), hauling produce to the Midwest. Sounds like you have that focus, though. Curious what you thought about the Gordon lease, if you considered it. Once I concluded I didn't want to be an L/O with forced dispatch, I was ready to leave Gordon.


Written Oct 10, 2013, at home, six miles north of Spencer, IN. Little Steven's Underground Garage tonight, WTTS radio, Indy. Love it. Another egg from the girls. Love it. Got the end of front porch cleared where the new coop will go. Probably not taking more runs until I get my place winterized. Lotta work to do. The Haz can wait or go without me. : 0)

 

I'm not at all sure of joseph's 'success'. Recently he touted Western Star, horrible CSA, to a driver who had a 'problem'. Rather than fix the problem (yard hostle for a year), he and others had a whole list of companies bad enough to hire him. A downward spiral, IMO. Terrible companies.

OTR has a 100% turnover rate, Blu. Gordon has to fill all 2000 seats every year. IMO, it takes driver bonuses, recruiters (that I'm now calling official mis-representatives) and paid touters here on TTR. Not saying joseph is a paid touter. I see joseph and others over in the welcome wagon section trying to reel in new drivers. What for?? I've said it reminds me of sailing ship goons roaming ports for the unwary to drag off to sea in the night.

I think your experience, CougFan's (whom we haven't heard from for a while) and mine are pretty representative of Gordon overall.