Working Line Haul for a Food Company

@Banker
Hello, nights are fine actually it's not to terrible. I start work anywhere from 3pm-7pm in the evening and then I finish up between 3am-5am in the morning. I usually go to sleep an hour or less after getting home and then I sleep until 10:30-11:15am in the morning something like that and go about my business during the day. Sometimes I go to exercise and other times I do a few things around the house nothing to to major. I work Sunday night through Friday morning.

Then usually I get up Friday morningish and go do whatever yesterday I cut the grass at my house and sprayed the weeds and other vegetation and did a bunch of yard stuff around my house and then Callie came home and we had some minor running around to do nothing super major and then we went to dinner at Red Lobster that wasn't very good I haven't been to Red Lobster in a long time, but it wasn't the best, won't be going back anytime soon.

Our Akron terminal is on a light industrial road will say I guess looks like a street that someone would model in an HO scale train set, but anyhow it's near a major highway, but has some houses we cut through the residential road all the time, it's near a fuel depot too, so tanker trucks I've also seen them cut through the side street to get to the fuel depot. The city of Akron doesn't have any no truck sings so all night long periodically our doubles and the occasional tanker truck comes through. Our trucks all come at once though the tanker trucks kind of trickle in during the night the fuel depot isn't to to busy at night though the occasional tanker truck in and out, but pretty slow during the night. One time I had a 1/2hour break and I took a walk from our Akron terminal down the street to see the fuel depot at 10:00pm at night it wasn't super busy.

 

Hi guys, how are all of you?
Busy hanging, and working it's Wheeling week this week as I've been going to Wheeling a lot this week, which is fine. Over all pretty routine around here at least for me, maybe tomorrow they will send me to Akron or something will see. That's about all.

 

So I was right they did send me to Akron this week, I was a day off in my guess, but it happened. Yesterday I slept in a little later, because I knew I would have a big night. So I got up around noonish, ran on the treadmill for 40 minutes or so I gain I think like 10-20 pounds in the 2-3 months I've done this, it's kind of hard to say, but I'm working on getting my weight down, by 10-20 pounds. My problem is it was lent, and I was eating a lot of carbs and potatoes and that's not good. I've cut way back on carbs and sugars and I've started eating more meats, cheeses and leafy greens and cut back on potatoes and starches and stuff like that and trying to pull back on sugar and started on the treadmill again and I will say this, my cloths fit a little bit better now at the end of the week then they did at the start of the week. Anyhow did 500 miles last night. I got to the yard cleaned my trucks windows and mirrors and oiled up the linkage on the 5th wheel with WD40 even added some oil to the motor it wasn't super duper low, technically it was okay, but a little glug out of the jug wouldn't hurt and checked my coolant which was fine, I added a little bit a month or so ago, not a big deal and away I went. Actually made the entire night without getting tired or anything it was really nice. I think proper diet, exercise and rest can really help not that we haven't heard any of that before lol.

 

Thanks I go to Title boxing club 2-3 times a week. Good luck at Core Mark they have a place here in Solon, Ohio.

Today we went out for dinner I had buffalo chicken salad no bread and some water to drink I did eat the few corn chips they gave me, I’m trying to stay away from pop, bread and potatoes. I do like crispy chicken so I’m not going to give that up but I don’t eat enough of it either it’s not the problem. Nuts I have to give up or cut back on a little bit because I know they are fatty. Fruit is kind of a gray area but I don’t eat enough fruit for it to be a problem.

I don’t have a huge sweet tooth, but I like salty I guess. Exercise alone isn’t enough. It helps but it’s not enough. At least I don’t think.

 

Carbs, like potoato chips, bread, pasta and pizza are how I ended up in this mess ha-ha. I know a lot of truckers like chips. When ever there are close dated Chips that they pull from stock the chips go awful quickly. Anyhow, last week I hit the treadmill hard and have really been hitting it hard everyday. I usually do it while I'm doing something else like I throw the laundry in and use the treadmill while the washing machine is going and I think it's working I also pretty much eat fruit but not a ton of fruit, meat, cheese and veggies usually chicken or steak salad. Stuff that's high protein and low in carbs and sugar. Plus running on the treadmill is helping and I feel better I've still got a ways to go, but I fell better and when I do warm ups at the boxing club I noticed that I had an easier time doing them.

Also and I wanted to write about this, I think doing physical activity and moving the body does lead to better rest and especially for night work and driving proper rest is so important and being able to get good quality sleep is key I think makes for a much easier night. Nothing is worse then not having proper rest and killing your self to stay awake all night. I had a big weekend, I had a hard night last night, did get much rest, late second run release time to a hard yard to get too. Then because my home yard is the farthest run we have I have almost a 3 hour drive back to town and it was a rough night.

Now, tonight wasn't as bad earlier start, earlier release. Now the problem was when I got back to my yard, there were 2 flat bed trucks that were going to the business next to us, they parked right where we pull our doubles through and parked perpendicular they were sleeping and I couldn't maneuver so I had to break apart my sets and hook 3 trailers and move a bunch of trucks and trailers around added an extra almost 60 minutes to the day. Made for a big obstacle.

Any how I was able to sleep better did 5.25 miles on the treadmill on Monday during the day and went to the boxing club and had a small work out before work and then went to work and it was good, did my 9.5 hours at work and then came home walked around the block really quickly and had a bite to eat just some chicken and a hamburger and now I'm going to call it a day.

 

So hi guys,
Busy past couple weeks hauling my doubles and the occasional 36ft trailer down the turnpike to drop yards here and there. So tonight I had a single 28' trailer to take down to West Virginia, but...I was also told to take a converter dolly with me, but well you see the problem was, the convert dolly pile was empty which is pretty typical for as many doubles as we run out of our warehouse, which is a lot, they don't have a bunch of spare dollies sitting around, I don't know how many they have my guess 20-30 somewhere around there 30 sounds like to many. Anyhow, they were out of converter dollies none in the pile, and they spotters had already lined up a bunch of dollies on the outbound line and I guess technically I could have pulled a lined up convert dolly off of the ready line, but that screws up the warehouse switchers and I can just seeing the warehouse having a melt down about that.
So I went over to the shop and they had 2 converter dollies hanging in the out of service line and I talked to the shop and the one mechanic said well the one dolly is only here because it needs a new wheel put on it. The tire on it was out of balance and needed to be sent back to the vendor that does the tires and remounted, however our shop has racks of truck and trailer tires already balanced and mounted on rims ready to go. So they said if you have a few minutes we can drag that dolly over here and switch out the tire. So that's what they did. They jacked up the dolly and put a new wheel on it, it was beautiful. Maybe took a 1/2 hour I think it only took them 10-15 minutes to get everything altogether.

I changed my windshield wipers my self last week, the boys gave me some new windshield wipers and I was in the manual truck wash bay and I switched the wipers out my self when I was done washing the truck that I'm assigned to drive.

I try to take as much care of the truck that I have. I try to wash it manually at least once a week and keep the cab swept out. I check the oil and coolant and make sure it's filled with washer fluid and I spray W-40 on the fifth wheel linkage. Obviously if it has a major issue the fleet shop has to get involved, but the little easy stuff I do. I guess while they got off to a rough start the 2018 Volvos that GFS has ended up being okay, mine's pretty good, wish they were still buying Volvo's. They probably will again, but it's going to be a minute. Gordons is going through a Freightliner phase first one ever here in the US, but I think that'll be short lived, the Freightliners aren't really well liked and the fuel milage on them isn't great and the stupid collision avoidance crap is all fried and not working correct, (gee who could have saw that coming) and they have had trouble with them. Plus they are just ugly trucks. But I heard that our warehouse is supposed to be getting three new Kenworths. We had 2 Kenworth samplers and for transit or Volume they weren't bad trucks. As a transit truck they weren't bad I drove one for a week and it pulled better then the Volvos and was okay so because Freightliner cut their order and whatever other games Freightliner played GFS bought 3 Kenworths which is also a first. They also at another warehouse bought some Penske leaser Volvos they needed some tractors and Penske said well you can have these leaser Volvos that are coming off of a lease and buy them second had kind of sort of from us. I think Gordons was leasing them and the lease was over and they bought them out at the end of the lease.

So that's what's going on. Going on vacation next week so no action to report next week.

 

Oh nuts!