Superior Carriers 2013-2014

1/22-1/25

In typical paint load fashion I didn't get the load until about 6 PM Wednesday. I ran it on minimum breaks and got home around 2 AM Saturday morning. It was an uneventful trip and I managed to slide in between 2 of these clipper system snow storms. There was a good amount of lake effect snow as I got close to Holland but it was all west of 131 and North of I-94. We seem to be running more of these lately. I passed a guy on I-69 as I was arriving who obviously unloaded right before me. I had called a driver when I left the plant to tell him his load would be ready in 5 hours and a 3rd guy showed up at the plant 6 hours early for his delivery appointment.

They are turning me pretty quick. I will miss a 34 hr reset by about 4 hours when I head out around 7 AM Sunday with a Plaquemine La out and back. At least I am heading south this week.

 

1/26-1/31

Famous last words.

I headed out Sunday morning and had no issues getting to Plaquemine and getting loaded. I found myself taking my 10 hour break in Evergreen Al on the way back on Monday evening 560 miles away from a Wednesday 6AM delivery. Piece of cake. I was going to run to to the terminal Tuesday and either drop it for a local driver to deliver or go home and come in Wednesday to deliver it myself.

I looked at the weather report and decided to get an early start since they were expecting a southern snow/ice storm. The weather report looked like it would start in Atlanta around 14:00. I usually sleep in a little on these loads but to beat the weather I headed out as early as I could Tuesday around 5AM. It was 35F when I left and as I drove north the temp gradually dropped. Around Montgomery Al it started raining with the temp at about 33F. By the time I got to the Ga line it was 30F and I was starting to see a little icing on my mirrors. By the time I got to the scales in Ga it was 28F and the roads were getting a little slick. I watched a pickup truck spin off into the woods and decided to shut it down at the Loves MM28. This was around 10 AM. Within 30 minutes I-85 south was shut down from a wreck and I began to hear of a couple more north of me as well.

My plan was to collect some weather delay pay and head out in the morning once the salt trucks had a chance to work. I woke up to news stories of Atlanta gridlock and could see on the Ga511 website that 85N was shut down so there was no sense in going forward. Then I saw some facebook posts from a friend who had been stuck on 285 for the last 17 hours. I considered heading out that afternoon when they opened 85N but opted to go ahead and get a restart in and headed out at 5:15 AM Thursday.

It was clear sailing around Atlanta except for 1 spot on 285 where it went from 4 lanes down to 1 just north of 675. I got the load dropped in around 13:00 and was home by 15:00.

I am currently in another holding pattern waiting for a Holland Mi paint load. Its pretty much SOP for these guys. Original load is supposed to be ready by 7 AM. Get a call last night...going to be 11. Get a call this morning.....looks like 16:00 or later but load will go today. Probably run this in 3 nights so I can watch the Super Bowl. Should be a good week money wise. 2700+ miles plus about 16 hours weather delay for sitting while Atlanta thawed out.

Just starting to pull together 2013 info for taxes. I got a lot more home time this year because the last 6 months was all dedicated. I also made about $1500 less. I think 31days off is worth $1500. Looking at the last half of 2013 It appears that running all dedicated would pay about $3000 less for the whole year but that may not be the case. We seem to be pretty busy with it at the moment.

[TABLE="class: cms_table"]
[TR]
[TD]2012[/TD]
[TD]2013[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #C5000B"]195[/TD]
[TD="bgcolor: #C5000B"]145[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #0084D1"]71[/TD]
[TD="bgcolor: #0084D1"]98[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #FFD320"]8[/TD]
[TD="bgcolor: #FFD320"]0[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #579D1C"]91[/TD]
[TD="bgcolor: #579D1C"]122[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]


Red is whole days worked that I get to take the full Per Diem deduction for.
Blue is partial day worked meaning I left home or arrived home 75% Per Diem deduction
Yellow is local work
Green are full days off
109279 miles

 

Good deal. Glad to hear you finally made it. I am on my way to Holland Mi. They want me to turn another one of these on Monday

 

Yes The standard deduction is 80% of 59 per day. You get 75% of that for days you leave or return home. It's a huge deduction. For me it was close to 12K last year and larger than my mortgage interest

 

I use open office which is free. Once I set up a spreadsheet I save it on google drive which is a free cloud service. That lets me update it from any computer. I also save a pdf file of my logs every couple of months downloaded from the qualcom site. At tax time I burn those files to a disk to keep with my tax return.

My spread sheet is pretty basic. All you really need for taxes is your break city. It's easier for me to keep up with it as I go. Color coding the cells makes it real easy to total up at year end and only takes a few minutes each week to do.