Superior Carriers 2013-2014

When you think about it you will always have more loaded miles than empty. Worst case would be all out and back. That would be 50%. The longer you stay out the lower the deadhead miles will be. Much of it is deadheading home.

Mine would change drastically based on what I do

 

Pulled in next to a fellow SPCR driver for my 10. He has a sweet new trailer. Must be a dedicated load since there are no hoses on it. Check out the hose rack. It's a couple of feet lower. This trailer also had vapor recovery.

 

7/19-7/21

Easy trip to N Chicago and back. I got to Brown Summit for my delivery around 13:45. I took a 12 hr break and started my day around 5 AM. I was happy to see the local guy who spots trailers sitting by the scale when I got to the plant. Normally we drop/weigh them while the plant guys pull a sample, then drop them in the drop yard and grab an empty to pull back to the tankwash/yard. This time I just dropped it on the scale, grabbed my empty and was out of there in under 15 minutes. With the $20 delivery fee figured in that is $80 per hour. It helps balance out the $10 per hour times when a plant will take exactly 2 hours to load or unload you.

I head out in the morning at 0 dark 30 with another one of these loads. Should make it back to the house by Wednesday around 15:00 in time to drive my wife to her radiation appointment.

 

7/22-7/24

Made it back to the yard around 14:30 this afternoon. They are having me relay a load heading out to California with a guy who is loading another one of these dedicated loads in N Chicago in the morning. I will meet him near Indianapolis tomorrow afternoon, swap trailers with him, and deliver the load by 14:30 Friday. This is better than a dedicated load for me because its loaded both ways.

They were scrambling around to get the California load covered. Dispatch had it on a guy who hasn't worked in over a week because his truck broke down. Nothing like a 2500 mile load to stop the bleeding. His truck didn't get ready in time so they had to take it off him. I had the same thing happen to me in early 2012. They made up for it and 2012 ended up being my best year yet.

 

7/25-8/3

It's been a crazy week. I grabbed the loaded trailer off the yard early Thursday morning. It was a bit tricky because the load I was swapping for needed to be delivered before 14:30 Friday. That made for an early start. Its a lot different pulling a loaded trailer through the mountains compared to an empty. I usually have an hour and 15 minutes or so when I get to the truck stop where I was doing my relay. I had 40 minutes left on my clock so I knew it was going to be tight going back. That was running straight from the terminal. On the return trip I had to deliver 26 miles away and then go to the terminal. Usually on these dedicated loads i am 100+ miles farther down the road before delivery.

The guy I was meeting was already there when I pulled into the truck stop. We had dinner. He was an interesting guy. Got into trucking in the 80's when the company he worked for went belly up. This guy used to design control systems for nuclear power plants. That industry died when we quit building them. Started driving a truck for Matlack and never got another job.

I headed out early the next morning and ran hard. Took my 30 minute break at the 5 hour mark and only stopped once after that for a nature break. I got to the plant with 26 minutes left on my 11. En-route I had gotten a couple of messages to pick up a trailer after dropping my load. That wasn't going to work since I was 33 minutes from the yard. I called dispatch to tell them I couldn't grab an empty, delivered the load, dropped my trailer, did a post trip, and bobtailed back to the yard on line 5.

On the way back I had gotten a call from my wife saying her father had taken a turn for the worse. She had gotten a call from the nursing home around 10 PM the night before and had been there all night with him. I went straight to the nursing home from the terminal and took her to her radiation treatment while a friend sat with her father. My wife had been up 24 hours at this point. I went home and slept until 2 am and then went back to the nursing home so she could get some rest. I was on that sleep schedule anyway and she wanted someone with her father. She went home and crashed after being up for 34 hours straight. Her father died about 2 PM the next afternoon about 30 minutes before she got back to the nursing home. It was a very peaceful death. He was in no pain. His breathes simply started getting farther apart and weaker until they just stopped. This was Saturday.

I took Mon-Wed off. We buried him Tuesday. I ran a N Chicago dedicated dry bulk load Thurs, Fri., and Saturday getting home around 8 PM. I am off Sun and Mon and will do another one Tues, Wed and Thurs.

RIP Pappy

 

8/6-8/10

Had an uneventful run up to N Chicago and back. I headed out around 9 AM Tuesday. Other than the plant in N Chicago taking 2.5 hours to get ready for my drop, spot, hook it went well. They also chose right in the middle of a 30 minute drenching thunderstorm to be ready for me. I made it home by 18:00 Thursday and am off Friday and Saturday. Got another N Chicago dry bulk that swaps out at 5 AM Monday. That adds another 600 MT miles to the check and I will probably get 2 next week.

I was pleased to see 3 days of "Funeral Pay" on my check this week for Mon Tues and Wed. I did not realize we got that and I did not fill out a form requesting it. They paid me 8 hours per day at my hourly rate. I will check to see if those out of my personal days or if its an additional benefit that I wasn't aware of. It was nice to see an extra $350 in the check that I wasn't expecting.

Right now I am breaking in The Panther Pit with a Brisket and some ribs. I built it during the time I was off out of a $12.00 55 gallon drum I found nearby.