TimeSink....i mean Simplot

Bud Antle Coolers anywhere used to be black holes you threw trucks into for days at a time. Meat packers too. Lakeside in Brooks Ab, 2 or 3 days waiting for a dock to load boxed meat was normal. Don’t even start me on places like Safeway warehouses. Was all that time sitting here there and everywhere made me sell my chillies and buy decks.

 

Safeway in Tracy was the last straw for us in the dry van and refer business. It started out bad and never got any better. We were hauling frozen fish and fish on ice in there. You'd think they'd want to get that stuff off the trailers. Nope. They'd hold us long enough that we couldn't get our back haul and get back up north for more fish. The fish took priority so we'd bounce north almost every time.
No more dry vans, no more refers and I've never been sorry.

 

New driver in training?

 

Step deck OK?

 

Step deck OK?

 

Since ‘86 I’ve mostly hauled LTL on B-Trains. I’ve got 4 sets of 26’-32’ trains, two 35ton double drops and a 50ton low bed. I hate step decks. The only one in the yard belongs to a lease-op. People towing those things around are what beat all the rates out of oversize. Hard to get a decent rate for anything you can move on a step. I found a decent paying little niche for the double drops that works for me. They’re married to the customers, and all their stuff I can move on an annual permit. The 50ton is more or less for two local customers, one of which usually pulls it with their own tractor. What I spend my time on are the trains. Why mess with permits and all the foolishness goes with it when I can pile $5/mi or more worth of LTL on a train pretty easy and send it up the road legal dimension. Some loads are just stupid money. In Dec I sent one west had 2 pieces of 10’ wide plate out of the Sault on it for base freight, 3 p/u’s in the Moronto area on top of it. 1 drop in Winapig, a drop and pick in Regina and then to the beach. I billed over $14k for that, and the truck never had more than 70,000lbs on it at any time. Then I brought him east chubbed right up with a 1 pick 4 drops through On/Qc load left him back in Montreal for $8k. Neither one of us gave a flying one about the 600 empty miles to get him home for Christmas. They don’t all work that way but I get a few a year.

 

The last half of the 80’s when everybody got rid of their warehouses was the beginning of the end. JIT programs were what drove everything sideways. Went from being able to service an account with a 1:1 or 2:1 trailer pool to 3:1 or more. Trailer manufacturers are the only ones benefitting from it imo. Seems to suck for everyone else, shippers and carriers.

 

The last Safeway stuff I hauled was 6 skids of charcoal from Kingsford Or to Safeway Distribution in Oakland. Was there a day and a half. I was wild by the time I got out of there, but it worked out for the best. I got that as a trip-lease from P.I.E. just to move the truck. I never submitted it for settlement and ran on those P.I.E. trip placards for a year. I think I came out ahead on that one.