Working For Central Ref.

They have a terminal in Fontana CA. You will get to that area I am sure.
And you can take home time anywhere. When you put in a request you have to tell them where you want it to be. They do not assume that it is at your home area.
You will probably have more chances to see her if they do not know she is in that area lol.

 

cool...i take it they dont ask why i am taking hometime in a different state....that can work for me though

 

They could care less. Your best bet for seeing her is getting work done on your truck when you happen to be at the Fontana yard. It is right outside LA.
Or when you just happen to be bringing a load into the area. Then you can request time later if it looks like you are not seeing enough of her.

 

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cool.... I just hope they dont expect you to burn up in a hot truck if you are in california and no where near a terminal...that would suck. Cause i sholl dont have a problem letting that truck idle..lol

 

You would have an issue with it when you get a few of those tickets. They get expensive fast.
The trucks all have a system that will start and stop the engine to keep a set temp range while parked, but this causes the engine to run more than 5 min. So you could still get a ticket.
The newer trucks are all California Idle compliant, so you should be able to idle them. But that only counts for Cali and PA. No other state accepts the California clean idle engine to allow it to get around the idle rule.
So no idle in many states. And some City's have there own rules, like Boston, NYC, Detroit, Dallas.

I think all states need to change the idle rules so that the company has to pay the ticket. This way they will have more incentive to put APU's or something on there to allow for drivers to sleep. Because another rule says you must have a method of keeping the cab cool or hot. The engine with the AC and Heater have always covered this, but nobody has said anything about it when you cannot use the engine.
People are dieing every summer and winter due to idle laws. And it is sad to say that hundreds more will die before anything will happen.

 

thats cool....i would think if they ran california alot that they would put APU's on the company trucks....but whatver...lol...

 

They do run to Cali, but it can be hit or miss. Freight's changed a lot in the last year, and so there's a lot more short runs and not as many to Cali. Keep in mind everyone and their dog hauls freight in Cali, so the rates are cheap. As long as i've worked for Central, they've been candid about the fact it's tough to get a lot of west coast freight because of the rates.

To answer your other post about going to Cali, you can take your hometime just about anywhere in the continental United States. So, if you want to go to Cali for your home time, all you do is fill out the home time request for the location in Cali. Now, you might have to leave your truck at the Fontana terminal, and have her pick you up, but that's not a big deal. When you put in the home time request, it asks reason, I usually put "I want out of the truck" because they don't much care. For all they know, your dentist and doctor are out there, and you need go to.

There's a Kraft dedicated out in California, but it's Stockton north to Seattle. However, there is now a Western regional division, and you could get on there. I've met a dozen or so of those drivers, they run decent milage. The catch is you run western 11, so you might be in cali a lot, then not in cali for months on end.

As to idling, you may not have a problem letting it idle, but Central will. trucks are equipped with an idle shut down, they only idle so long before they shut off. You can bypass it, but the Qualcomm records the amount of engine idle time. If you go over their set amount (30% in winter, 25% in summer) you get charged. It amounts to #of hours over idle X .6 gallons per hours X national average of fuel for the last 2 weeks. It might be the monthly average of fuel, I'm, not sure, I haven't see the paperwork in ages.

There's an opti idle on every truck we have. They're annoying, but if you set it, and set the thermostat in back, your truck can usually run for longer than the anti idle laws allow, because it's a system managing it. It still chances you going over Central's idle policy, but if you're using it, it's also a good way to argue with safety that you used it so you could get a good night's sleep, and shouldn't be charged for wanting to be safe.

As to anti-idle laws, the opti idle is Central's way of getting around those. Unlike chat Chromedome said, you will be left alone in most states if you're using an opti-idle of some sorts, and underneath all of our "Electronic logbook" stickers are now small "vehicle equipped with opti-idle technology" or something similar. So, our trucks all state they're equipped with it, so we get left alone. I had an 08 Volvo that wasn't Cali compliant, and I was sitting at a truck stop with the opti idle set, while the guys were going around handing out tickets that first summer it came out. They left my truck alone.

 

opti idles, like the ICON and TAS also qualify under most state's anti idle laws. So, more companies will just install those, which are cheaper, less reliable, and more annoying, than to go to APUs.

 

Last I heard, Kraft's now $0.35 cents a mile, or thereabouts. The best person to ask would be 1Bad, since he was on the Kraft fleet as recently as February. I do know they cut the pay down quite a bit, and a bunch of the older drivers dropped off the Kraft fleet.

We get detention pay still, it's never gone away for the OTR fleet. Same rules as always. We lost stop pay and guaranteed home time pay, which now means they get you home when they think about it.

Central won't let you get repairs done at a truck stop anymore. All A and B service, inspections, etc, must be done at a terminal. If a light goes out, a tire goes bad, or your pick up a trailer with problems, you can hit up a truck stop, but no regular services. They've also cut it so you need to be within 500 miles of a service milage before they'll do it. used to be within 3000 miles, and they don't do that anymore.