Working Line Haul for a Food Company

So today was a good example of working line haul for a food company. I've been on a little bit of a different job, but same idea and family. We are in a trailer shortage so an edict came down run all available empty trailers that are sitting at the yards during the day, So I've been shuttling trailers during the day. I officially go on nights January 16. Anyhow, we had like 7 converter dollies in our yard today, because they want everyone hauling doubles back to the warehouse. Anyhow, I got to work at 7am today and I ran over to one of our grocery stores, there was a power outage at the store over night and they called for a 50ft trailer, they didn't use it, but needed it just in case. Anyhow I ran out to the store in the morning and picked the trailer up and had to wait or 1/2 an hour for a Reinhardt Foods truck to get out of my way sigh. Anyhow Once that truck moved, I took off and spent most of the morning taking the 50ft trailer to the warehouse, dropped that trailer and then headed back to the yard in Cleveland. Once I got back to Cleveland a good portion of the routes were back and coming back in. They had a set pretty much all lined up so since I was bob tailing back from the warehouse I hooked up to the empty set all lined up and hooked it all together and got it ready to go and headed out again. Got to the warehouse with my empty set of doubles around 3:30pm and dropped that set and headed out to Cleveland bob tailed back as it was pretty much the end of my day at that point. I got back to the yard and there was a converter gear in front of an empty trailer, but no lead trailer so I saw an empty sitting on the end, I hooked to that trailer and built another set of doubles, so that way when night shift comes in they will see a set of doubles already made and they can hook to it and do there inspection and go. So that's line haul for a food company 2 trips from Cleveland to Pittsburgh moved a total of 3 trailers today and made 2 sets of doubles. You do a lot of yard work when you run doubles for a food company.

 

So, big snow day today, PA shut down the roads and the warehouse couldn't get anything in or out and took the day off. But I wasn't off I was snow blowing all day it was pretty tiring busy day though.

 

Sorry for the short report, so what happened was our line haul got shut down. We had a few trucks make it out as singles, but not very many. Our warehouse was totally, totally snowed in 2ft of snow nothing could get in or out. We had a couple runs make it back early one guy who does an overnight run left at 11:00pm and after midnight he was reporting at snow falling at more then 1" per hour. I think it was closer to 2" per hour at least that's what I heard on the TV news. Anyhow he actually got his route out and when he got back in the yard was a mess I mean over 2ft of snow at least and just a mess upon mess. Most of us were told to stand down, and as I'm in transition right now I didn't have a route so I was just going to be shuttling trailers anyhow.

So I went out at about 4:45am and fired up the snow blower I have 2 I used them both, one's a 2003 Toro 826 the other is a 2018-2019? Something like that Toro 721. I was supposed to have my first official night as a line driver last night ha-ha, but that didn't happen. Due to scheduling reasons. Anyhow, I got up cleaned up my driveway and took my wife to work she has a little 1997 Toyota Cellica and wasn't going to make it in this snow. So I drove her to work and then all day the phone kept going off with people asking for snow help. I did 10 driveways today. Work told me no go today they cut all of Tuesday and are running Monday tomorrow and then who knows what else. It was a big mess.

Our yard where the trucks are parked is totally snowed in they took my truck out with a set of doubles today, first set to leave there in a day. Trucks buried in took them 40minutes to get that set of doubles out of the yard. Then this morning an Amazon Freight contractors truck got stuck in our yard. Our driver who runs the over night route was back from his route and hooked up his old Chevy Silverado to this guys Volvo semi tractor and helped him get going.

Me I was out snow blowing driveways all day made $317.00 bucks doing driveways today, which not much different then going to work really lol.

 

So I didn't have much time to snap to many pictures yesterday. I was off of work again today I think we only ran 4 routes today. I'll be back at work rest of the week though. Anyhow I had a call today and I went out to go do a driveway. Here's what I've been up to the past couple of days. Had a guy walk up to me today another house flipper guy who wanted to know if I could work for him the next time a big storm rolled through, problem is I'm kind of full already so I had to decline. But I tell you what snow work is pretty much feast or famine it's nothing nothing nothing and then a huge snow dump like Sunday night comes and if you have a plow truck or are even just 1 guy with a couple snow blowers the work just comes to you. $357 dollars is the new 2 day total. A storm like yesterday people literally just come out of there houses and hail you off the street. Like I said even today someone just approached me. If I was retired and was just looking to work as a retired guy I would have taken his job.

 

I had 2 other drive ways come in this afternoon so that put the total of snow work to over $400 in two days. Not a bad little windfall for working outside of work.

 

So tomorrow is my last day running routes. Sunday night is my first night on transit shuttle. Excited for my new job to start.