Swift - Starting the New Year training with Swift 1/7/13 - A long read...

Great advice. I've thought about doing the braking for a few minutes before I am going to stop for the night. That makes sense completely. I kind of do that on my motorcycle in wet weather for the same type of reason.

I've also thought about bringing along a little torch. Every year I think about it and then I forget. I guess it could also be used for a frozen lock on the trailer as well. I do need to look into that.

I probably need to get a heavier hammer as well. Mine is a standard Carpenter Bob on a budget one. I was doing the forward and reverse quite bit as well as banging and it must have freed something up a little because at the time I thought that the wheels were all freed enough to start driving. It was so icy though that the forward and reversing wasn't doing as much, it was just sliding the tandem wheels across the ice.

 

Ah, ok. I wouldn't have thought that.

 

I'm going to have to check on that once I get back out to my truck.

I was actually through there twice. Once on the way out to SLC and then I picked up in SLC and went back across I80 a day or two later. Then up 287 but going north.

Sounds like you hit a lot of the snowy states on that trip. I know what you mean about the new load reseting it all. But not always...seems that sometimes one late load messes up everything behind it completely.

 

I'm at some McDonalds with the free wifi at a Pilot in Kentucky, just north of the Tennessee state line off I-24. I'm just doing a load of laundry and waiting on a load to start taking me out west for a scheduled hometime this coming Sunday up at the Sumner terminal.

I'm really just heading up there to pick up a Rutgers magnet that had been washed off the side of my truck at a Blue Beacon. They mailed it to my DM in Sumner and I need to pick it up. And I want to get up there to start my bike since I don't know when I'll be returning.


Hometime in Sumner this Sunday...

As usual, when I'm getting planned out of Memphis, they jack up my hometime. I don't know about anyone else but literally for me, it's almost every single time I have a home time coming up and I'm within the radius of the Memphis terminal this happens. I have home time in 4 days from now. Today is Wednesday (afternoon) and my hometime is set for this Sunday. Miles to Sumner? 2400 or so. So what does Memphis do? They start sending me loads that make no sense or at least they make only a little sense. So here I wait. I think once my laundry is done I'm going to move locations to somewhere that is not a truckstop as I am not a fan of these places.

After this hometime in Sumner I'm going to turn around, as soon as they system will allow me, and put an actual time off request in for Virginia. I need to do my taxes, take a ride, visit my parents and get my face beat around a little at some dojo if time allows it. I've already beat my old record of 8 weeks out on the road. I've currently been out since I returned to Swift on 12/27 without a break. I don't count shop time or mechanical breakdowns as time off. Time off for me is when I choose the place and time where I'm going to relax. So currently I'm about 10 weeks OTR straight. Not feeling burned out or overly cranky either.


SLC...

I was pretty happy this last time with the SLC terminal. I had to put my truck into the shop for a chipped and cracked windshield, courtesy of that leg through Wyoming. The shop was reasonably quick compared to what I'm used to. The prequal line took a while but once the truck was inside it was only a couple of hours before I had my truck back.

FYI...if you miss the café there at the SLC terminal during its business hours, you might be lucky enough to catch this lady in a burrito truck. She pulls out front of the driver's lounge. Had a fantastic burrito. A little spendy at about $6 bucks but it was huge. Worth every cent.

That night I was waiting on a tcall I was supposed to pick up at the SLC terminal. I was to take it up to N. Dakota, somewhere south of Fargo, but it hadn't arrived from CAlifornia yet. It was supposed to be there at 1600 but it still hadn't arrived by the time I went to sleep. The next morning I ran it.

That trip was pretty uneventful other than some miles on 287 northbound in Wyoming. Although it wasn't snowing, the snow was blowing across 287 north and it was freezing. Resulted in that section of 287 being a sheet of ice. I was relieved when I finally made it out of that area. S. Dakota and N. Dakota were pretty mild for this time of year.

Delivered that load and immediately got another load out of Wisconsin heading down to Mississippi. The drive to western Wisconsin was a little different as I have never been through the twin cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Something different for me.

I delivered that load to Mississippi to an Ashley Furniture DC. I had another load from there, the one I delivered today, coming out of there up here to Tennessee.



Second Class citizens. At least it feels that way with some of these shippers...

So I had this furniture load coming down from Wisconsin and dropping in Ecru, Mississippi. All went well and they backed me with another load picking up there delivering up near here in Clarksville, TN. The drop was fine and when I went into the shipping office the woman said my load wasn't ready yet.

My load was supposed to be ready for the "drop and hook" by 1300. I got there at 1500 and I was in the office inquiring about the pickup at 1525. So they were behind. It happens. She said when the trailer was ready one of the yard jockeys would knock on my door, let me know and I would come inside to pick up the paperwork and seal. Hours went by. I checked in with the office every 1.5-2 hours and I told it was not ready each time.

Some time around the 9th hour of detention, when I was going to max out detention pay, I went inside again. "We still have 13 more pieces to load".

With a little time left on my 14 I ran 4 miles down the road to Walmart to get some milk and food and came back to the shipper. Trailer was still not ready so I went to bed. When I woke up in the morning the trailer was no longer within sight backed into the door it had been in the night before.

I walked in the office and asked about the trailer. It was ready sometime the night before, while I was sleeping obviously, and they moved it across the street to another yard. The girl behind the desk stated that the trailer wasn't scheduled to be ready until 1300 that day and that I was lucky I was getting it early! The part that killed me was this same woman was here the day before and was present every time I came into the office. Maybe she didn't remember me. Either way, I advised her that the load was actually scheduled to be ready for pickup at 1300 the previous day, that I had arrived and was ready for pickup at 1525 yesterday so I was not in fact lucky. I had been waiting at this point close to 24 hours on a load that was supposed to be a drop and hook.

I mentioned to her, as I was irate at the unapologetic tone of this woman, that I needed her to sign my detention hours on my BOL's. I had a feeling that this wasn't going to happen before I asked but I figured I would bring it up anyway for S&G's. I'm not sure if Swift understands that when a shipper or receiver messes up they really don't want to own up to it by signing paperwork indicating how long us drivers actually sit and wait for them. At least this has been my experience when I have comments in my plan asking for a signature by the shipper/consignee and that same shipper/consignee has made me wait an extremely long time due to their own fault. So she says she isn't signing anything but gives me her name. I advised her that I'm just going to write "refused to sign" on the BOL's. Again, her attitude is that she can care less. You know, an apology or at least the feeling that you give a #### goes a long way in this world. This girl couldn't be more apathetic and that's what gets me. And her insisting that my trailer was scheduled that day when it was the day prior was insulting.

What gets me is how people just don't seem to care or understand that our time is valuable as well. That us drivers are not paid by the hour and that we have things to do, places to go and people to see. I think it would be interesting for some of these same people whom seem to never care about what we drivers go through to come into work one day, be asked to stay for 8 extra hours and then be told at the end of that very long shift that they wouldn't be getting paid anything extra. How would it feel? Would it change their attitude?

Of course my DM/DL was awesome. She completely understood and said that she would get me the maximum 9 hours plus something extra if should could pull it. She is fantastic as always.

 

Ok back in the truck with my calendar.

2/1 - OK to KS - overnight at Goodland, KS Walmart
2/2 - KS to CO to WY - hit that storm and overnight at Elk Mountain Sunoco gravel lot
2/3 - WY to WY - I-80 shut down again. Overnight at Walmart Rock Springs, WY.
2/4 - WY to UT - Overnight at SLC terminal.

That's when I came through there. Hit that storm evening of 2/2.

 

Is the JV terminal the same as Mira Loma?

 

That's what I was thinking Lepton. They just changed the name. I was there when they had just build the new drivers lounge. Not everything was up and running but it was a huge improvement over whatever it was they had before.