The 'Gainey' Expierence

I've been in NJ about 11 times since coming here, usually its always the same place secacus. or however it is spelled.

This is however the FIRST company I have EVER gone into NY state with, once, briefly. Ran 2 PA loads in our time here. Most of our loads have been in the midwest, in fact I lost count of the number of Kansas City to GA and GA to KC loads we have done. Alot of out Louisville KY, or to it. Mostly been running alot of south east, though as of late we've been seeing WAY to much of CA for my taste (though hubby seems to love being out there... trying to get one of them biggie tickets I guess)

 

Yes, but its not currently working as they reformed under a new DOT # when they reformed the corp and its going to be a few months before they start getting a safer score built up again.

And don't be nervous, I've not had one missing paycheck, missing load on a paycheck that I was expecting, or not been reimbursed for something. Just remember that you won't see a paycheck for 2 weeks, as they work on a 2 week system, aka what I get dropped today won't be paid until 22nd. The plus side is that it almost ensures you get every load for a week on that weeks check, makes it easier to inventory, haven't had a load bumped from one check to another yet, no 'missing' trip paks which happened a bunch at werner.

 

Also, most of Gainey is Kenworths T-660s and T-2000, generally solo gets T-660 though I've seen some in 2000s. There are a few centuries still, and I've seen one or two volvos or internationals I can never tell. They have about a handful of W900s and 379s, but they are for older drivers.

 

We almost had a 7000 mile week, ALMOST so close we even had the last load for the week all ready to go yesterday but the #### blinkers went out and the location of another #### part was a game of find and seek.

We finally got it fixed today, but alas, as cut off is Saturday we won't be getting our 7000 mile week this week. So close! Still 5100 for the week isn't too bad. We've averaged about 4500 a week every week, counting all the weeks. Finally got our insurance all setup, expensive, but way better then SNI.

We have our next load, which picks up tommorrow, and are currently hooked to idleaire playing on the net! Ah life is so hard these days.

Did I mention I am building myself a new computer? Well I plan to, but I am not sure if the inverter would be capable of running it so we shall see. I am considering upgrading to a 1500 watt inverter. We've noticed the battery on the truck seems to run down easy these days. Not sure why, my laptop draws about 90 watts or something like that. And I can only have it plugged in with the truck off for about 4 hours before it starts screaming low battery. We bought a little bunk heater because our apu is busted, it works alright, but it drains the battery in a matter of an hour or so. So waste of $ there.

I love it here. When I first joined Gainey I will not lie, I think I even mentioned it somewhere, I was sure I'd hate it, and wanted to just get my 90 day refresher in so I could apply to another company/reapply at Werner...

Its been 90 days, and werner even sent me a recruiting card. Screw Werner. The could call me back with a dedicated run and promise me the nicest 2 million miler specced pete 379 they have and I wouldn't leave GTS for them.

I am about as happy here as I have ever been anywhere I worked. Even on the days when everything goes wrong the awesome people we work with (most of them anyway) make me feel like this company was the best choice. And to think I wasn't seriously considering them at the time I was looking for a job, I just filled out the app because I was filling out all apps at the time.

From day one I was treated like a person, sure they're lunch sucked, and the dinners were limited. (Though the hotel was like god of hotels mygosh that was a nice hotel I still have dreams about that bed... mmm bed...). But they are good peoples. I like them. And I don't usually like people.

And I look forward to getting my own awesome looking w900 if I get 15 years exp here, cause I am staying here till it goes out of business or I find something else to do.

 

Well its tax time again, and once again I failed to do as planned and save all receipts to claim actual OTR expenses... ###### I suck at this lol.

OCTOBER: $2877

NOV: $6996

DEC: $7214

2009 GTS: 17,087

These are the 3 months total pay per month since we began # GTS. We average about 1200 a week, considering that we took 2 of those weeks off thats not bad. Also of note, we made MORE at GTS in 3 months then my husband did working for SNI for 9 months with 2 breaks of 2 days in those 9 months.

We are going home for 5 days this coming week, a well deserved break. In our 3 month almost 4 month stint here we have: gotten the mortgage caught up, paid off 3 bills, invested in 2 long term business ventures, and discovered we are a #### good team when not given impossible loads.

I realize now that our issue at Werner was not so much we sucked as a team, me and my husband, but my dispatcher sucked as a part of the team. Handing us loads that were already late, and pegging us with the lateness when we couldn't save them was bad enough. But handing us a load with plenty of time, then halfway through the load, when we had already planned for the trip as it was sent to us, changing the time to an earlier delivery and once again pegging us with a late load is not fair in the least.

We've run 7000 miles here, and one 8000 mile week and were never as exhausted and worn down as Werner ran us. We've not had near the stress, and our loads are on time as much as possible, we cannot claim 100% we've had tight loads that ran on time until someone snarled traffic with a dumb accident, or weather has come in and ruined us, or in the case of our last late load, HOS bite us in the ###. Yet still having a 2 hour loss in start time on a laready tight load we STILL delivered within 10 minutes of schedule... of course we ran out of fuel to do it... but hey you live you learn.

And we fixed that fuel issue without any cost to the company... just 34.00 out of our pockets for being dumb.

 

Home time sure the hell flies by fast! But I got my sweet new rig built in that time. Meet Vyger VII, planned for about a month and a half, a trip with my debit card to Frys and a few special orders off the net got me all the parts and I squeezed them in quite easily. See researching stuff before you do it is a good idea!

Spent about 500 from newegg getting the motherboard, case, and the front lcd.

Spent 1200 at Frys for everything else (after talking my husband out of the 400.00 steam washer they had on sale). Now all I need is a UPS (no not the brown guys), and she will be coming on the truck with me to replace the #### laptop that pisses me off on a regular basis. I will post pictures in the electronic section.

Got a call from dispatch they want us go be ready for a load at 1300 which is a bit earlier then the 1500 I was planning on. But thats fine, we have the truck clean like the day we got her again, took all weekend to do it. We took EVERYTHING out of it, and now we plan to put ONLY what we need back in. We took WAY too much stuff last time.