Working Line Haul for a Food Company

Thanks getting ready to head out soon in a couple of hours. 2 runs tonight.

 

Every time I came down off the ramp I would make an OFFFF noise.

 

This was me set off on my maiden voyage.
I’ll see you all out there!

 

Hi guys, so yesterday was a pretty good day. I had an out and back run, but I went with another driver to one of our outlying yards about an hour from the warehouse to see the sights. So far so good, not a bad job I'm really liking it. I have a decent 2018 truck that runs pretty good and works well. I found a gallon jug of washer fluid at the shed at the yard I am based out of and I took that with me and then when I get to the fuel island at the warehouse I refill the jug with washer fluid the warehouse has a big old tank of washer fluid. I get home and still dark and I actually got some decent sleep this morning.Got up about 11:30am which is pretty good that's a few decent hours. I usually have a cup of coffee before I go into work and I'm alright.

I'm at the farthest yard from our warehouse as far as our drop yard network goes, so I have the longest drive in. Takes almost 3 hours to get from the yard to the warehouse. Then usually they send me to another yard that's about an hour away. Tonight I have to take a single trailer to West Virginia. Usually what I do is get to the yard at 6:30-8:00 at night. Usually I have to hook a set of doubles up which sometime can be a challenge and check everything before I go out pre-trip and I write down my time and trailer numbers and converter gear number in my note book and log on with the e-log and then head out to the turn pike and from there I am motoring. It's winter now and yesterday on the way in and on the way back we hit some weather. Although the Ohio Turnpike is very good about snow plowing and keeping the roads clean. We've had some winter weather and the Ohio Turnpike Commission constantly has their snow plow trucks patrolling and on standby I see them parked on the side of the road with there lights on and everything I see them patrolling at night time. ODOT does the same thing too, they have there trucks parked on stand by and out patrolling and running drills.

Pennsylvania turnpike which we use to they are okay, but you have to watch on the 2 lane roads the high speed lane they could do a better job of clearing, I don't always like the job they do, I mean they are okay, but Ohio seems to be better at it, but Ohio is one of those states that takes transport spending and stuff very serious, I mean I know during a snow storm things can get dicy, but over all I must say the Ohio Turnpike Commission by and large the past couple days has pretty much been on it, I mean all night long around the clock they have had there plows out on the road either pre treating or actively plowing or salting or edging they have been out there a lot.

Anyhow my filthy truck and trailers reached the warehouse a little before 10:00pm last night and it was warm enough to where the automatic wash bay was open, we have this giant drive through truck wash you can pull an entire set of doubles of doubles through there no problem. We also have a manual wash bay I want to use soon. The manual wash is inside a big garage you can pull the tractor inside no problem and it's heated in there and everything and wash away. If it's to cold they shut down the auto wash anyhow I drove through the truck wash and that made a huge difference knocked all the dirt and road grime off the truck cleaned the windows and everything, it was really nice. My truck was beyond filthy with road salt and spray and grime from the cold and the snow storms. I mean I couldn't see out of the windows really well and the mirrors and everything were covered in salt. But after it came out of the wash bay it was a night and day difference.

So anyhow after the wash bay I dropped my trailers off on the inbound line and the yard switchers then go and take it from there. They are always jockeying and moving things around. Last night I saw 2 switchers going, but I think on busy nights sometimes they have even more then 2 guys going. When you get to the warehouse you have to be careful it's real busy route trucks, volume trucks, other night transit trucks, yard switchers all scurrying around. I see the guys with the 36' trailers leaving and I see the guys with the 50' trailers leaving.

Anyhow, I got my paper work at 1:30am and headed out to my trailers all on the ready to go line. I check my trailer numbers and check the load make sure the route number is correct check both my trailers and check the weights and all that stuff and then get all hooked up. Last night my lead trailer was 17,000 lbs and my back trailer was 13000 lbs so a little on the heavy side, especially going up over the mountain in PA, but I got all hooked up although my rear trailer was dropped a little high and I had to crank it down some, but no biggie. One by one as I was hooking up at 2:00am the trucks in the lanes next to me were pulling out.

I was the first one out of the warehouse in my group. There are 3 of us at the yard I work out of. The second guy left maybe 10 minutes behind me and the 3rd guy was maybe 5 ten minutes behind him. The route that I was pulling as my lead trailer is a big route and I've ran it before so I was trying to get back to the yard in the best time that I could, because I knew the route driver would need every ounce of time that he could get. Anyhow, I got to the yard at 10minutes to 5 there were 2 guys there waiting we got the set broken down and the guys hooked up and out of the yard by the time the second set was pulling in. The third set was maybe 10 minutes from arrival so first wave, second wave and then 3rd wave was on the way, but I got out of there pretty quick and was home by 5:30am this morning not a bad day last night really.

 

Hi guys quick one today, so in April we have our 1 year anniversary my spouse and I and we wanted to renew our vows at the church. We were not married in a church, but we decided that we were going to get the churches blessing. Well, you have to meet with the priest a couple times, which is understandable but, the problem is the timing of this one meeting couldn't have been worse and I didn't want to reschedule because we had already done that once. So we had a 7:00pm meeting which is kind of late already, considering my trailer on my second run released at 11:00pm. Well our meeting ended up going till almost 8:30pm which put me in a bind. So I had to scurry to the yard and hook up my set and run down to the warehouse. Well I got to the warehouse about an hour late and another driver from my yard was already at the warehouse and his second run was cut they decided his second run was going to be ran out of the warehouse and since I was an hour late they gave him my second run and I had that was pretty much that.

I got my paper work for my return trip. Of course the lead trailer I had the pintle hook was stuck in the down position, and I screwed with it for a good 10 minutes and finally had to walk over to the shop and get a mechanic to help me out. He heated the pintle hook with a torch and cleaned some crap out of it and sprayed it with PBR blaster really good, he must have worked on it for a good 10 minutes before the pintle hook was free and I was able to hook up the converter dolly. After that it was pretty much all academic. I got to the yard pretty early on 3:30am and moved my trailers around and got them all set up and parked the tractor and headed home. On my way home in my car I saw the other driver with his set of doubles coming into the yard, he was just getting off the highway and heading into the yard.

I think tomorrow night is going to be the same thing just a single run. The boss said to me, so your late and I said yes I am sorry it won't happen again we had a meeting with he church for our wedding anniversary and the timing wasn't good, but I didn't want to reschedule and so I thought it might be a little late, but I'll try my hardest to get here, but anyhow it was a one time thing and it won't happen again I am terrible sorry. That's what I told the boss that's all I could tell him.

 

Look at those rims, pretty fancy for a food service route truck! Look at all those Ford L8000 the company went from the Ford 8000 to the Aeromax L9000 before eventually mixing in the white GMC's in like 1992 and then more Volvos with a mix of Sterlings and Internationals as the years went. Now we have a mix of Freightliner and Volvo. Look at those old trailers in the back ground.

 

My dad drove a Ford Aeromax for RPS back in 94', he said that compared to the cab over trucks of that same era the Aeromax was like driving a Cadillac. Our senior guys who worked through that era said that the Aeromax was a pretty decent truck GFS also had a lot of L9000 Fords and I guess those were good too.