Running with JCT

I feel ya. In my orientation there were Cascadias, ProStars, and T660s available. That's probably all that they're offering now too. My plan is to pay this pig off and use it as a down payment on my real truck, whatever that may be, lol.

 

I like your local job. But, if owning your own truck is your goal. . . In a previous post I went over my numbers in some detail. For the year I'm averaging a little over $.38/mile plus 2 cents paid quarterly for a safety bonus. My truck is under warranty for most things catastrophic. For tires, oil changes, alignments, etc. there's the maintenance account. I previously stated that I'm paying $.07/mile into maintenance. That was under the old lease. Under this new lease it's $.09/mile. My apologies. My current balance in the maintenance account is $3390. This money is in escrow and is MY money. Were I to turn the truck in and cancel my lease, there are written conditions that my truck must meet. For example, tires must have at least 50% tread. But the balance would be paid to me. I know this for a fact since I've done it before, lol.

So week in and week out I don't sweat blowing out another one of these sweet, and expensive super-singles. The alignment that I'm planning on getting this week won't have any effect on my paycheck. If you drove out of Sapulpa on your first trip and blew a tire, your maintenance account would go into the negative, but you would still get what you earned.

 

The company called yesterday to say that they added another stop on this load, Miami. Cool! Now it's 3514 paid miles and a second chance this month to get a Cuban sandwich. There's enough time (first stop is Thursday in Charlotte) to get my wheel alignment and possibly some free beer and laundry at my friend's house in Troy, IL.

I got to Tyson a few hours early. You never know with these loads, sometimes they can be ready pretty early. No such luck, but I did get the trailer number that they were loading and was happy to see that it was one of our newer trailers with the SmartTruck plastic gizmo (http://smarttrucksystems.com/undertray-performance.php) that claims 5.5% fuel savings. I have been skeptical of this system, but the mileage that I achieved the last couple of weeks at near gross weight made me a believer.

While waiting, I did a thorough walk around and noticed some oil on the rear axle. The right side brake w̶a̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶v̶e̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶i̶t̶,̶ ̶i̶n̶d̶i̶c̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶l̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶s̶e̶a̶l̶. Let me rephrase that for clarity (who knows who reads these boards!): there appeared to be danger of an imminent failure of the right rear wheel seal, which, once it occurred would have put me out of service. My load was ready at 20:30 local (hmm. . . all the scales will be closed) so I headed out to Boise and the T/A. The load scaled at about 33,000 pounds with 11,500 coming off in Charlotte and 15,500 staying in Lakeland.

My maintenance account took a $563.04 hit, but I got the alignment and wheel seal done. My steers were within spec, but my rear axles weren't. For you techs, the scrub angle and thrust angles were both a quarter of a degree off which is more than triple the maximum .08 degree spec. Hopefully I'll see some mpg improvements as scrubbing rubber doesn't sound very efficient! I'm sitting at 7.5 mpg for the week right now.

Tomorrow is just miles and miles. Tailwinds to all!

 

Got a call today from the company asking if I would mind swapping to get another driver home. I'm always ready for a swap, especially if it's to help out another driver. So I'm sitting in Des Moines for my overnight to meet my load going to Oakland. Sweet. Because if there's one thing I like better than driving across Nebraska, it's doing it again the next day. Hopefully today's headwind will still be blowing for me tomorrow.

The good outweighs the bad though. This trip ends up being 1,795 paid miles with a drop and hook at the end. I'll get paid on this next week instead of two weeks from now. Oakland is 1,800 miles delivering Friday, so there's another three 600 mile days in a row. I'll probably be deadheading down to Salinas for a produce load after that. My logbook will be pretty thrashed and I have family in Monterey so maybe I can work in a restart.

I made it here from Oregon without filling up so 1,430 miles on $3.75/gal fuel and now full of $3.69/gal fuel. This week the national avg is at $3.91/gal and our FSC remains at $.44/gal. I'm averaging 7.5 mpg this week and $.495/mile fuel cost. That's less than 6 cents per mile out of pocket for fuel! I can live with that!

I appreciate the "thanks" and PMs from you all. If you have specific questions or just want to slide under the radar, shoot me a message. I wrote earlier either here or in a PM that this chronicle is for myself as much as it is for your amusement. I'm having fun playing with the numbers and seeing just where the profit comes from. As always, my number are your numbers, good and bad. JCT does offer a recruiting bonus, and I will happily take their money. But I would rather be honest than be a good recruiter. Driving for JCT is a fantastic opportunity for some people, and a lousy one for others. This thread is here to help you decide which one it is for you.

My next project will be a chart that breaks down the weekly profit by miles driven and fuel costs. It's pretty ambitious for an empty stomach so I'm off to Denny's. BTW, if you're of a "certain age" and like to cap a long day with a decent sit-down meal, check out AARP. For about $15/year you get a membership card that gives you discounts to many places including 20% off at Denny's (during dinner hours). Check them out: http://www.aarp.org/

 

LOL. And stay off my lawn!

 

DANG! Popped a super-single a few miles outside of Sidney. Three hours on the shoulder waiting. Got a shiny new Michelin. That's two of these Goodyears down in the last 8 months. I think I'd rather have the XDAs anyway, but buying them this way sucks! They're on a national account, so I don't even know how much I spent. Ah well, these things happen. That leaves me 661 miles to Wendover. More miles than I wanted to drive tomorrow but easily doable. I just don't like the late start.

 

Ran 660+ miles today and got parked in Wendover with 4 minutes left on my 11. Tomorrow is about 550 miles to find some parking between Sacramento and Fairfield. Brutal day today. Had to push through a headwind to beat HOS and managed only 6.5 mpg.

Got my settlement email today. I'm too tired to dig into it too deep but I ran 3,656 paid miles at about 7.3 mpg. Subtracting a $40 fuel adjustment I cleared $1,629 or about $.45/mile (or $.47/mile with the safety bonus . That's the power of volume. Those fixed costs are smaller with every mile you run. My truck payment was actually $120 higher than average due to the variable lease. Next week is going to be a short week with about 2,200 miles turned in (ran 2,800 or so). I'll have some stop and nuisance pay added in though so maybe it won't be too bad. OTOH, I'll have 1,800 miles down for the next week by Friday morning (deadline for trips is Thursday) so that should be a nice settlement.

I guess I'm going to have to put in for some home time. I'd like to hand this truck over to Freightliner in Las Vegas and tell them not to call me until the cruise control/jake brake issue is fixed. I had cruise every morning this week, but as soon as I turn the truck off or (heaven forbid) use the clutch too much it's done. Tomorrow is Donner Pass, 425 miles from here. You can bet I won't be shutting the truck off until I'm past there!