It's a long story (for another time), but I rescinded my notice and I'll be staying with my current company indefinitely. In the three weeks since I gave notice, I've been routed to Indiana four times. So there IS freight going there.
I'm gong to add a photo section to the blog. I think it's going to be called "Truckers Were Here" and just show photos of all the random crap that gets bumped/tilted/flattened or otherwise damaged by big trucks. I was at a shipper the other day and the exit gates looked like a T-Rex had rampaged out of them. I wish I'd been able to take a picture of it because it was glorious.
I haven't been updating much lately because it's been hard to find truckstops with working wifi or with wifi that isn't so bogged down that it take five minutes to load a page. Very frustrating. When I upgrade my phone, I'm going to have to figure out that tethering thing where you can use your phone's data as a wifi signal for you computer. I do not have techno-joy, I have techno-fear. I hope my brother-in-law can show me how to do it because I'll never figure that out on my own. Electronic gadgets and I are NOT friends.
04 April 2013
18 March 2013
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
I had a load out of North Carolina going to Indiana. It was a full load of furniture and I knew I had to help unload every single piece. I'd been to the consignee before and the last time it took us nearly four hours to unload the entire trailer. This time, it was only two. I was out of hours (as far as my fourteen hour window was concerned), so I drove to a nearby truckstop when we were finished and I did my best to get some sleep. The load had required me to drive all night to make my 7am appointment and it's really hard to shift your sleep schedule that much so suddenly. Impossible, actually.
My next load picked up at 11pm about an hour away. It's a distribution center I hate picking up at because something always seems to go horribly wrong and I'm there forever. The first time I picked up there, it was New Year's Eve and my trailer was supposed to be pre-loaded, so it was just going to a drop and hook. Easy, right? Except they overloaded the trailer and my Gross Vehicle Weight was nearly 83,000 pounds (legal limit is 80,000). Because of the holiday, I had to wait until the morning of January 2nd (which is when the warehouse staff came back to work) for them to take freight off the trailer and modify the bills of lading. Two days of sitting. (after having had to wait from Sunday night to Monday night, doing nothing until the load was ready). So, more than two days of waiting actually.
The second time I picked up there, the load put me within 100 pounds of the maximum GVW and could not get the weight distributed correctly. They ended up taking two pallets off (they had to take them out of the middle of the trailer, so it took them half an hour to put the rest of the pallets back on). What should have been a drop and hook had been a live load (two hours) and then the weight distribution/tandem adjusting problems meant I was there for about four hours.
This last time, I was about 2000 pounds under the legal GVW and I could not get the tandem pins to release. It took me about two hours to finally get the tandems in the right place. Again, should have only taken me half an hour to do a drop and hook. Oi! This trip had an addtional annoyance in that the last driver had damaged the trailer (dented rim, bent cross-member and a gouged tire) and I wasn't sure what to do since it was almost midnight. Luckily, someone answered the phone in the shop at the main terminal and he told me where to go for the repair. It took two repair stops (and several hours delay), but we got it all fixed. The repair stops made the load late, which wasn't fun. The load was due by midnight (a drop and hook at a distribution center in North Carolina) and I let the dispatcher know a day ahead of time that it was going to be late. I told her my revised ETA was 5pm the day after. She started calling me and sending me multiple QualComm messages at 10am (while I was sleeping) asking me if the load had been delivered. How could anyone misinterpret 5pm as being "before 10am"??? Sometimes I think you just have to be a passive-aggressive shithead to work as a dispatcher. At least in this company.
I responded to her messages, reminder her that it would be late afternoon before I was ready for my next load. She wasn't the dispatcher for my next load anyway, but she was sending me info about it. I also had another dispatcher doing the same. This company would work so much more smoothly if the dispatchers ever bothered to talk to each other. With few exceptions, they all sit in the same room in the main office, but if you ask one a question, they just tell you that you need to talk to X dispatcher (but they can't be bothered to turn their head and ask X dispatcher directly. They make you call back and ask the switchboard for the other person. What the hell!?) It's like that poor guy in Office Space who forgets to put the cover on his TPS report and he has eight bosses who tell him how he screwed up. How is that efficient?
Frustration with dispatch is one of the many reasons I am leaving the company I work for. I know that some (if not most) of my issues with the company may very well exist at any company I end up driving for.... but if I work for a company that will actually let me take hometime once or twice per month (instead of pretending they have no freight going to my home state whenever I inquire about hometime, even if I ask a month or more in advance), I think the other frustrations would be tolerable. I've been home twice since October. That's too long. I'm not saying I need to go home every week, but once or twice per month would be nice. The last time I took hometime, I had broken a molar and was in excruciating pain and my company STILL gave me shit about having no loads going to my state. They wanted to send me on a five day trip to Georgia first. No. Just no. I remember one guy asking "Well, how much does it actually hurt?" Kinda made me wish I could invent a way to stab someone in the face over the phone. They had me sit at a rest stop for hours before they finally thought to look for a brokered load. They basically implied that I was inventing the broken tooth as an excuse to go home. The thing is, I had more than enough hometime banked that I could have gone home anyway. They just like to make you feel like the world's worst employee if you ever want to go home. It's ridiculous.
Anyway, I've given a month's notice and I'll be looking for another company to drive for. Stay tuned.
My next load picked up at 11pm about an hour away. It's a distribution center I hate picking up at because something always seems to go horribly wrong and I'm there forever. The first time I picked up there, it was New Year's Eve and my trailer was supposed to be pre-loaded, so it was just going to a drop and hook. Easy, right? Except they overloaded the trailer and my Gross Vehicle Weight was nearly 83,000 pounds (legal limit is 80,000). Because of the holiday, I had to wait until the morning of January 2nd (which is when the warehouse staff came back to work) for them to take freight off the trailer and modify the bills of lading. Two days of sitting. (after having had to wait from Sunday night to Monday night, doing nothing until the load was ready). So, more than two days of waiting actually.
The second time I picked up there, the load put me within 100 pounds of the maximum GVW and could not get the weight distributed correctly. They ended up taking two pallets off (they had to take them out of the middle of the trailer, so it took them half an hour to put the rest of the pallets back on). What should have been a drop and hook had been a live load (two hours) and then the weight distribution/tandem adjusting problems meant I was there for about four hours.
This last time, I was about 2000 pounds under the legal GVW and I could not get the tandem pins to release. It took me about two hours to finally get the tandems in the right place. Again, should have only taken me half an hour to do a drop and hook. Oi! This trip had an addtional annoyance in that the last driver had damaged the trailer (dented rim, bent cross-member and a gouged tire) and I wasn't sure what to do since it was almost midnight. Luckily, someone answered the phone in the shop at the main terminal and he told me where to go for the repair. It took two repair stops (and several hours delay), but we got it all fixed. The repair stops made the load late, which wasn't fun. The load was due by midnight (a drop and hook at a distribution center in North Carolina) and I let the dispatcher know a day ahead of time that it was going to be late. I told her my revised ETA was 5pm the day after. She started calling me and sending me multiple QualComm messages at 10am (while I was sleeping) asking me if the load had been delivered. How could anyone misinterpret 5pm as being "before 10am"??? Sometimes I think you just have to be a passive-aggressive shithead to work as a dispatcher. At least in this company.
I responded to her messages, reminder her that it would be late afternoon before I was ready for my next load. She wasn't the dispatcher for my next load anyway, but she was sending me info about it. I also had another dispatcher doing the same. This company would work so much more smoothly if the dispatchers ever bothered to talk to each other. With few exceptions, they all sit in the same room in the main office, but if you ask one a question, they just tell you that you need to talk to X dispatcher (but they can't be bothered to turn their head and ask X dispatcher directly. They make you call back and ask the switchboard for the other person. What the hell!?) It's like that poor guy in Office Space who forgets to put the cover on his TPS report and he has eight bosses who tell him how he screwed up. How is that efficient?
Frustration with dispatch is one of the many reasons I am leaving the company I work for. I know that some (if not most) of my issues with the company may very well exist at any company I end up driving for.... but if I work for a company that will actually let me take hometime once or twice per month (instead of pretending they have no freight going to my home state whenever I inquire about hometime, even if I ask a month or more in advance), I think the other frustrations would be tolerable. I've been home twice since October. That's too long. I'm not saying I need to go home every week, but once or twice per month would be nice. The last time I took hometime, I had broken a molar and was in excruciating pain and my company STILL gave me shit about having no loads going to my state. They wanted to send me on a five day trip to Georgia first. No. Just no. I remember one guy asking "Well, how much does it actually hurt?" Kinda made me wish I could invent a way to stab someone in the face over the phone. They had me sit at a rest stop for hours before they finally thought to look for a brokered load. They basically implied that I was inventing the broken tooth as an excuse to go home. The thing is, I had more than enough hometime banked that I could have gone home anyway. They just like to make you feel like the world's worst employee if you ever want to go home. It's ridiculous.
Anyway, I've given a month's notice and I'll be looking for another company to drive for. Stay tuned.
11 March 2013
Disastrous Trip Out of California
I typed this entry a few days ago, but it got sucked down some internet
rabbit hole.... and I haven't felt like retyping it until now.
My trip out of California was a complete disaster. It was just one of those trips where everything seems to go wrong (short of a wreck or having another "safety incident).
I did a reset while I was having my windshield replaced, so I wasn't available for a new load until Friday night. Dispatch sent me a load that was a pre-loaded trailer and all I had to do was drop and hook anytime between 10pm Friday and 10am Saturday. It was about twenty minutes from the terminal and I got there a little before 11pm. Dispatch had said they'd advise me of the pick-up number, but never did. And no one answers the phone on Friday night. I told the desk clerk at the shipper which company I drove for and where I the load was going, hoping that would be enough information. She said that no loads for my company would be ready until 6am. There wasn't anywhere legal to park a 70' vehicle in the industrial park, so I asked if I could go ahead and give them my empty, which they took. I wasn't happy about having to wait seven hours for my load, but there wasn't anything I could do. I squeezed bobtail into the only bit of legal parking space left and tried to get some sleep.
At 6am, I went back to the office and there was a new person at the desk. He didn't seem to have any idea what the process was (and I'd never been to this shipper before). Other drivers from my company had told me that the drop/hook process would happen in the middle of the street and I had to be quick about hooking up and getting out of there so that I didn't get a ticket. Apparently, the yard is too small for sleeper cab trucks to maneuver in, so they have you drop your trailer by the curb (on the No Parking EVER side of the street) and you unhook (but don't pull out from under yet) and wait for the yard guy to bring out your loaded trailer. As soon as he drops the loaded trailer in the "center turn only" lane (I'm not kidding), you pull out from under your empty and then hook as soon as possible. Whole thing seems kind of sketch to me. I was nervous doing it at 6am on a Saturday and couldn't imagine trying to do it on a weekday when there would be lots of traffic on that road.
Anyway, the desk guy handed me the envelope of paperwork and told me to find the trailer. I explained to him that he was supposed to call the yard guy and that the guy would bring the trailer out to me. I explained the dropping/hooking in the street and he thought I was kidding.
The trailer number was a letter and three digits. The trailer didn't have my company's logo on it, but since it didn't have any company's logo on it, I figured it was a rental trailer. I did the fastest trailer pre-trip in the history of Ever, sent my #3 QualComm message, and then got back on the road. I got as far as Las Vegas before I ran out of hours for the day.
I got a QualComm message from the weekend dispatcher asking if I had X number trailer. I said no, I have the number trailer that I said in the QualComm message. She said that wasn't the right trailer number according to her computer screen. We QualCommed back and forth a bit (I would have just called her, but it was a dead zone for my phone) and agreed that neither of us had any idea what was going on. She said that I should keep heading east (the load was going to West Virginia) and call on Monday to talk to the person who had originally dispatched the load. A little while later, she sent me another message telling me I had to drive all the way back to the shipper (in west L.A.) and switch trailers because they'd given me the wrong load and paperwork. It took an entire day of driving to get from Vegas back to the shipper, switch loads and get back to the same truck stop I'd started the day at. Very frustrating. I have no idea why the original dispatcher hadn't told me the specific trailer number since they clearly knew which trailer I was supposed to be getting.
Started driving very early in the morning and it started raining a few hours later, just before dawn. And my wipers stopped working. More specifically, the driver's side wiper stopped working and the passenger side wiper was fine. I pulled into a truck stop and parked at the fuel island so that I could have some light. I repositioned the wiper on the windshield and tightened the nut, hoping that would fix the problem and it did. An old car of mine used to have that problem. Glad it was an easy fix.
Made it to Colorado that night. There had been all sorts of signs on the way up the mountain that "All CMVs" were required to chain up at a certain mile marker (just west of Vail). I kept trying to pull off at rest areas only to find that most of the rest areas in that stretch of interstate didn't allow vehicles over 35' in length, but didn't tell you that until after you were on the exit ramp. And the exit ramps were all roundabouts. That's a fun surprise, especially when cars don't seem to understand that they can't pull in next to you in a roundabout.
About forty miles west of that chain-up mile marker, DOT officers were forcing all CMVs to exit and park in this giant emergency truck parking lot. No explanation. After we'd been sitting there for an hour (there were DOT guys on the ramps, but no one in the parking area to ask what was going on), my 14-hour window closed and I was going to be stuck there for the night. I climbed into my bunk, figuring that if someone wanted to talk to me, they'd bang on my window. I got up a few times to see if anything was happening. There was one car with flashing lights going up and down the row of trucks and seemingly picking a truck out at random, talking to the driver and then that driver would leave. The whole process was taking forever. I assumed that they were probably checking to see if everyone was carrying chains, but I never found out. No one ever banged on my window and when I got up the next morning, there were three other trucks parked for the night and no sign of any DOT people.
One nice thing about when I took my break was that the chain-up requirement had changed from "All CMVs" to "All Single-Axle CMVs" so I didn't have to chain up. I stopped at the Love's in Bennette (east of Denver) to get fuel and groceries. There's a supermarket right next to the truck stop and it was nice to get real food, especially fruit. The fruit in most truck stops (if it's there at all) is awful.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. I had one stop in Kentucky and then the final stop in West Virginia. I made the stop in Kentucky on Thursday morning and then got to the final stop that night. I had called and talked to them. My appointment was at 6am, but they told me I was welcome to park there overnight and the guard would take the paperwork and tell me which bay to pull into. It was a really nice, quiet place to spend the night.
I got a load out the next morning from the same town. It was a brokered load (shredded paper bales) and it was going to North Carolina. The paperwork said the cargo weighed 42,000. When I scaled it, my Gross Vehicle Weight was 79,740... which seems weird. I've hauled 44,000 before without being over the legal limit of 80,000.
[GVW is 80,000 pounds and if your vehicle weighs more than that, you have to have a special permit. You can get a ticket if you cross a roadside Department of Transportation scale and you are either over the GVW or any of your axle sets are over. For a semi-truck, that means that you can have 34,000 on your tandems (trailer axles) and 34,000 on your drive axles (rear of the truck itself), which leaves 12,000 for your steering axle (very front of vehicle). You can have a little more on your steering axle (depending on the tires and the rating of the axle, something like 13,000 or 13,500... as long as it doesn't put your GVW over 80,000]
I was overweight on my drive axles and my tandems. I slid the tandems and balanced out the weight as best I could, but both were still over 34k. I made sure there was more weight on the drives than tandems and I slid the fifth wheel forward. I only move my fifth wheel if I have to because sometimes it's hard to get the pins to lock back out. They wouldn't lock. I had another driver help me for an hour (letting me know when the pins were lined up) and we couldn't get them to go. I called the shop in Missoula and they had me call a mobile service (the truck stop didn't have a shop) and they came out. It took the guy about twenty minutes, but he finally go the pins to lock back out. He said the problem was that the pins on one side would be lined up, but the other side would be misaligned, so the pins wouldn't lock out. Glad he got them to go.
I scaled again and was still heavy on the drives. I called the shop again and asked what to do. He asked me where my chains were and I laughed at myself because I remembered then that one of the trainers in orientation had told us that moving the chains was good if you needed to reposition a few hundred pounds of ballast. I put some garbage bags down in my passenger-side floorboard and then piled the chains in there. I finally got it legal (six scales in all) and told the clerk that my chains were excited because they'd never gotten to ride up front before. There was a DOT scale about 2 miles away, which is why I wanted to make sure it was legal before I left because I wouldn't have time to burn off any fuel.
I was almost out of hours for the week, so I'd asked dispatch for a load I could reset under over the weekend. This trip was only about 500 miles, so I had plenty of time to reset and get there on Monday morning (today). It took four hours to get unloaded at the shipper. The road in and out of the yard (between the shipping yard itself and the staging area where the scale was) was ridiculously steep. I barely made it up the incline when I was empty and couldn't imagine how the trucks that were being loaded there did it. When I'd arrived that morning, there was a tanker truck stuck on the curvy incline at the back gate and they were waiting for a wrecker to come tow him up the hill.
After I was done, I sent my empty and available message to the dispatcher and drove about three miles to a truck stop to have lunch and wait. I waited a few hours and then was told to drive to the North Carolina terminal. I got to the terminal, dropped my empty and then went to get some fuel (I was really low because I hadn't fueled on this trip because the Gross Vehicle Weight was so close to the limit), which I had just enough time to do before my 14-hour window closed.
So, I'm in still in North Carolina and hopefully I'll get a load out of here sometime tomorrow.
My trip out of California was a complete disaster. It was just one of those trips where everything seems to go wrong (short of a wreck or having another "safety incident).
I did a reset while I was having my windshield replaced, so I wasn't available for a new load until Friday night. Dispatch sent me a load that was a pre-loaded trailer and all I had to do was drop and hook anytime between 10pm Friday and 10am Saturday. It was about twenty minutes from the terminal and I got there a little before 11pm. Dispatch had said they'd advise me of the pick-up number, but never did. And no one answers the phone on Friday night. I told the desk clerk at the shipper which company I drove for and where I the load was going, hoping that would be enough information. She said that no loads for my company would be ready until 6am. There wasn't anywhere legal to park a 70' vehicle in the industrial park, so I asked if I could go ahead and give them my empty, which they took. I wasn't happy about having to wait seven hours for my load, but there wasn't anything I could do. I squeezed bobtail into the only bit of legal parking space left and tried to get some sleep.
At 6am, I went back to the office and there was a new person at the desk. He didn't seem to have any idea what the process was (and I'd never been to this shipper before). Other drivers from my company had told me that the drop/hook process would happen in the middle of the street and I had to be quick about hooking up and getting out of there so that I didn't get a ticket. Apparently, the yard is too small for sleeper cab trucks to maneuver in, so they have you drop your trailer by the curb (on the No Parking EVER side of the street) and you unhook (but don't pull out from under yet) and wait for the yard guy to bring out your loaded trailer. As soon as he drops the loaded trailer in the "center turn only" lane (I'm not kidding), you pull out from under your empty and then hook as soon as possible. Whole thing seems kind of sketch to me. I was nervous doing it at 6am on a Saturday and couldn't imagine trying to do it on a weekday when there would be lots of traffic on that road.
Anyway, the desk guy handed me the envelope of paperwork and told me to find the trailer. I explained to him that he was supposed to call the yard guy and that the guy would bring the trailer out to me. I explained the dropping/hooking in the street and he thought I was kidding.
The trailer number was a letter and three digits. The trailer didn't have my company's logo on it, but since it didn't have any company's logo on it, I figured it was a rental trailer. I did the fastest trailer pre-trip in the history of Ever, sent my #3 QualComm message, and then got back on the road. I got as far as Las Vegas before I ran out of hours for the day.
I got a QualComm message from the weekend dispatcher asking if I had X number trailer. I said no, I have the number trailer that I said in the QualComm message. She said that wasn't the right trailer number according to her computer screen. We QualCommed back and forth a bit (I would have just called her, but it was a dead zone for my phone) and agreed that neither of us had any idea what was going on. She said that I should keep heading east (the load was going to West Virginia) and call on Monday to talk to the person who had originally dispatched the load. A little while later, she sent me another message telling me I had to drive all the way back to the shipper (in west L.A.) and switch trailers because they'd given me the wrong load and paperwork. It took an entire day of driving to get from Vegas back to the shipper, switch loads and get back to the same truck stop I'd started the day at. Very frustrating. I have no idea why the original dispatcher hadn't told me the specific trailer number since they clearly knew which trailer I was supposed to be getting.
Started driving very early in the morning and it started raining a few hours later, just before dawn. And my wipers stopped working. More specifically, the driver's side wiper stopped working and the passenger side wiper was fine. I pulled into a truck stop and parked at the fuel island so that I could have some light. I repositioned the wiper on the windshield and tightened the nut, hoping that would fix the problem and it did. An old car of mine used to have that problem. Glad it was an easy fix.
Made it to Colorado that night. There had been all sorts of signs on the way up the mountain that "All CMVs" were required to chain up at a certain mile marker (just west of Vail). I kept trying to pull off at rest areas only to find that most of the rest areas in that stretch of interstate didn't allow vehicles over 35' in length, but didn't tell you that until after you were on the exit ramp. And the exit ramps were all roundabouts. That's a fun surprise, especially when cars don't seem to understand that they can't pull in next to you in a roundabout.
About forty miles west of that chain-up mile marker, DOT officers were forcing all CMVs to exit and park in this giant emergency truck parking lot. No explanation. After we'd been sitting there for an hour (there were DOT guys on the ramps, but no one in the parking area to ask what was going on), my 14-hour window closed and I was going to be stuck there for the night. I climbed into my bunk, figuring that if someone wanted to talk to me, they'd bang on my window. I got up a few times to see if anything was happening. There was one car with flashing lights going up and down the row of trucks and seemingly picking a truck out at random, talking to the driver and then that driver would leave. The whole process was taking forever. I assumed that they were probably checking to see if everyone was carrying chains, but I never found out. No one ever banged on my window and when I got up the next morning, there were three other trucks parked for the night and no sign of any DOT people.
One nice thing about when I took my break was that the chain-up requirement had changed from "All CMVs" to "All Single-Axle CMVs" so I didn't have to chain up. I stopped at the Love's in Bennette (east of Denver) to get fuel and groceries. There's a supermarket right next to the truck stop and it was nice to get real food, especially fruit. The fruit in most truck stops (if it's there at all) is awful.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. I had one stop in Kentucky and then the final stop in West Virginia. I made the stop in Kentucky on Thursday morning and then got to the final stop that night. I had called and talked to them. My appointment was at 6am, but they told me I was welcome to park there overnight and the guard would take the paperwork and tell me which bay to pull into. It was a really nice, quiet place to spend the night.
I got a load out the next morning from the same town. It was a brokered load (shredded paper bales) and it was going to North Carolina. The paperwork said the cargo weighed 42,000. When I scaled it, my Gross Vehicle Weight was 79,740... which seems weird. I've hauled 44,000 before without being over the legal limit of 80,000.
[GVW is 80,000 pounds and if your vehicle weighs more than that, you have to have a special permit. You can get a ticket if you cross a roadside Department of Transportation scale and you are either over the GVW or any of your axle sets are over. For a semi-truck, that means that you can have 34,000 on your tandems (trailer axles) and 34,000 on your drive axles (rear of the truck itself), which leaves 12,000 for your steering axle (very front of vehicle). You can have a little more on your steering axle (depending on the tires and the rating of the axle, something like 13,000 or 13,500... as long as it doesn't put your GVW over 80,000]
I was overweight on my drive axles and my tandems. I slid the tandems and balanced out the weight as best I could, but both were still over 34k. I made sure there was more weight on the drives than tandems and I slid the fifth wheel forward. I only move my fifth wheel if I have to because sometimes it's hard to get the pins to lock back out. They wouldn't lock. I had another driver help me for an hour (letting me know when the pins were lined up) and we couldn't get them to go. I called the shop in Missoula and they had me call a mobile service (the truck stop didn't have a shop) and they came out. It took the guy about twenty minutes, but he finally go the pins to lock back out. He said the problem was that the pins on one side would be lined up, but the other side would be misaligned, so the pins wouldn't lock out. Glad he got them to go.
I scaled again and was still heavy on the drives. I called the shop again and asked what to do. He asked me where my chains were and I laughed at myself because I remembered then that one of the trainers in orientation had told us that moving the chains was good if you needed to reposition a few hundred pounds of ballast. I put some garbage bags down in my passenger-side floorboard and then piled the chains in there. I finally got it legal (six scales in all) and told the clerk that my chains were excited because they'd never gotten to ride up front before. There was a DOT scale about 2 miles away, which is why I wanted to make sure it was legal before I left because I wouldn't have time to burn off any fuel.
I was almost out of hours for the week, so I'd asked dispatch for a load I could reset under over the weekend. This trip was only about 500 miles, so I had plenty of time to reset and get there on Monday morning (today). It took four hours to get unloaded at the shipper. The road in and out of the yard (between the shipping yard itself and the staging area where the scale was) was ridiculously steep. I barely made it up the incline when I was empty and couldn't imagine how the trucks that were being loaded there did it. When I'd arrived that morning, there was a tanker truck stuck on the curvy incline at the back gate and they were waiting for a wrecker to come tow him up the hill.
After I was done, I sent my empty and available message to the dispatcher and drove about three miles to a truck stop to have lunch and wait. I waited a few hours and then was told to drive to the North Carolina terminal. I got to the terminal, dropped my empty and then went to get some fuel (I was really low because I hadn't fueled on this trip because the Gross Vehicle Weight was so close to the limit), which I had just enough time to do before my 14-hour window closed.
So, I'm in still in North Carolina and hopefully I'll get a load out of here sometime tomorrow.
28 February 2013
Crack
Spent most of Friday doing local work out of the Mississippi terminal (always wary about doing local work, because sometimes the company doesn't pay you like they promised: the hourly wage for local work instead of your per mile pay) and then I got a
load going to Colorado and Utah. Kansas, Colorado and Utah were the
only states west of the Mississippi River that I hadn't been dispatched
through yet. It was nice to go somewhere different. There was a bad
snow storm coming across Colorado and through Kansas. I made it to just
outside of Denver on Sunday afternoon (the roads were bad, lots of snow
and very windy), so I just hung out at a truck stop and managed to miss
driving in the worst part of the storm (which was moving east). The
interstate going into Denver was really slick.... not very well-plowed
and lots of icy patches underneath the snow. The terminal yard hadn't
been plowed and I very nearly had to chain up just to get out of there.
They had me drop my trailer (they had a fully-chained up yard truck
that they were using to move things around so that drivers wouldn't get
stuck). After they finished unloading their freight, I rehooked and
headed north so that I could catch I-80 across southern Wyoming. My
next/last stop was Salt Lake City. I ran out of hours when I was about
an hour away, so I pulled into a rest area for the night.
I got up early and drove to Salt Lake City (stopping for a quick and much-needed shower). At first, they had me pull into a bay to unload freight (assuming I'd be taking my empty trailer for my next trip). Before they were finished unloading, I got my next assignment. It was an LTL furniture load and the trailer was at the terminal and pre-loaded. I hooked and did my pre-trip and headed out. There were five stops in Utah and Nevada and then the rest of the freight went to the L.A. terminal. I ran out of hours (again!) about two hours from the L.A. terminal, so I stopped in Barstow for the night and then got up at 4am so that I could make it to the terminal and miss rush-hour traffic. I did not manage to miss traffic.
I dropped my trailer and turned the paperwork in at the terminal and headed over to the shop. My windshield had started to crack when I was in that storm in Denver. The crack was small until this morning. On my trip from Barstow to L.A., it went from being about ten inches to being several feet (thanks to being jarred by the poorly maintained roads in California) I had called the main office when the crack first started and they'd told me to keep an eye on it and have it looked at when I got to a shop. Apparently once it's longer than 15 inches, it's a DOT violation. So I'm sitting at the shop/driver's lounge at the L.A. terminal. They replaced my windshield this afternoon and also replaced the cruise control lever (my cruise control stopped working about a week ago and trying to stay around 55mph in California is a pain in the ass without it). I'm going to be here until tomorrow because I clearly need to do a reset.
Hoping to get a load going back east, but we'll see.
I got a call from the Safety Department this week telling me that they'd done a DOT audit of my logbooks for January and I had zero violations, so that's something. Nice to know at least I'm doing something right. Strange that I'm now being commended for ignoring the advice of all the people in the company (other drivers, terminal managers, people in the main office) who have been telling me to falsify my logbook to get more driving hours. Honesty prevails!
I got up early and drove to Salt Lake City (stopping for a quick and much-needed shower). At first, they had me pull into a bay to unload freight (assuming I'd be taking my empty trailer for my next trip). Before they were finished unloading, I got my next assignment. It was an LTL furniture load and the trailer was at the terminal and pre-loaded. I hooked and did my pre-trip and headed out. There were five stops in Utah and Nevada and then the rest of the freight went to the L.A. terminal. I ran out of hours (again!) about two hours from the L.A. terminal, so I stopped in Barstow for the night and then got up at 4am so that I could make it to the terminal and miss rush-hour traffic. I did not manage to miss traffic.
I dropped my trailer and turned the paperwork in at the terminal and headed over to the shop. My windshield had started to crack when I was in that storm in Denver. The crack was small until this morning. On my trip from Barstow to L.A., it went from being about ten inches to being several feet (thanks to being jarred by the poorly maintained roads in California) I had called the main office when the crack first started and they'd told me to keep an eye on it and have it looked at when I got to a shop. Apparently once it's longer than 15 inches, it's a DOT violation. So I'm sitting at the shop/driver's lounge at the L.A. terminal. They replaced my windshield this afternoon and also replaced the cruise control lever (my cruise control stopped working about a week ago and trying to stay around 55mph in California is a pain in the ass without it). I'm going to be here until tomorrow because I clearly need to do a reset.
Hoping to get a load going back east, but we'll see.
I got a call from the Safety Department this week telling me that they'd done a DOT audit of my logbooks for January and I had zero violations, so that's something. Nice to know at least I'm doing something right. Strange that I'm now being commended for ignoring the advice of all the people in the company (other drivers, terminal managers, people in the main office) who have been telling me to falsify my logbook to get more driving hours. Honesty prevails!
21 February 2013
Tupelo
I had a week of hometime scheduled in March, but I'm going to cancel it
to make up for the week I had to spend at home earlier this month (I broke a molar and had to have several dentist visits and lots of pain meds so I couldn't drive that whole week). Which stinks because
the week I would have been home in March was when my sister had spring
break. I didn't get to see her much when I was home this time.
I got a load out of Indiana on Monday morning and it delivered on Tuesday in South Carolina. Picked up another load bound for southern Mississippi and I delivered there last night. It was supposed to be a live unload at 5:30am the next morning, but they very nicely changed it to a drop/hook (I didn't even know they did live unloads there. Every other load I've taken to that distribution enter has been a drop and hook) so that I didn't have to wait until the next day. Both were uneventful trips, which is nice. Dispatch told me to drive up to the terminal in northern Mississippi when I was done. I got there late this morning. I dropped my trailer and then went into the office to talk to the dispatcher. They didn't have any loads out because there's some kind of massive local thing going on in the next day or two where they have to move a bunch of loads from a few different shippers in a short time-frame. Not enough local drivers to do it, so a few OTR people are sticking around to help out. I rehooked to my empty and drove to Tupelo. I have a live load here first thing in the morning and then heading straight back to the terminal.
Hoping to get a load going to the southwest after this local thing is done.
I got a load out of Indiana on Monday morning and it delivered on Tuesday in South Carolina. Picked up another load bound for southern Mississippi and I delivered there last night. It was supposed to be a live unload at 5:30am the next morning, but they very nicely changed it to a drop/hook (I didn't even know they did live unloads there. Every other load I've taken to that distribution enter has been a drop and hook) so that I didn't have to wait until the next day. Both were uneventful trips, which is nice. Dispatch told me to drive up to the terminal in northern Mississippi when I was done. I got there late this morning. I dropped my trailer and then went into the office to talk to the dispatcher. They didn't have any loads out because there's some kind of massive local thing going on in the next day or two where they have to move a bunch of loads from a few different shippers in a short time-frame. Not enough local drivers to do it, so a few OTR people are sticking around to help out. I rehooked to my empty and drove to Tupelo. I have a live load here first thing in the morning and then heading straight back to the terminal.
Hoping to get a load going to the southwest after this local thing is done.
03 February 2013
Fun With Redneck Teenagers
I'm in southern Tennessee for the moment, delivering in Alabama tomorrow
morning. My last two trips have been such that I have more than enough
time to get there and squeeze in a reset because of how the delivery
schedule falls. So I'm starting tomorrow morning with a fresh 70 hours.
Nothing much to report. Something funny did happen yesterday. I was in Illinois and walking from the truck stop to a nearby restaurant... when I got catcalled by a group of teenage boys wearing cowboy hats (and driving around in a Chevy sedan). When I got to the restaurant, they walked in just ahead of me.... and were mortified that I just stood right in front of them. I stared right at them (or the tops of their heads.... I was at least six inches taller than any of them and they were all very intently staring at their boots).
Nothing much to report. Something funny did happen yesterday. I was in Illinois and walking from the truck stop to a nearby restaurant... when I got catcalled by a group of teenage boys wearing cowboy hats (and driving around in a Chevy sedan). When I got to the restaurant, they walked in just ahead of me.... and were mortified that I just stood right in front of them. I stared right at them (or the tops of their heads.... I was at least six inches taller than any of them and they were all very intently staring at their boots).
24 January 2013
Lots of down-time = clean laundry
So after I'd waited at that truck stop for 24 hours, I drove to the Georgia terminal.
I have been told by many people (including two dispatchers) that if I'm
empty and waiting on a load, and if I'm within an hour of a terminal,
that I should drive to the terminal because the vast majority of the
time, that's where my load will originate. So I did.
And that was apparently the wrong thing to do. In the last fifteen minutes of the drive to the terminal, I received the three qualcomm messages about my new load, a message asking me why I was driving to the terminal, a voicemail and then multiple qualcomm messages telling me I'd been taken off the load and it had been given to another driver.
I have been dispatched for several hundred miles of deadhead before, so driving 40 miles to a terminal wasn't so farfetched. The dispatcher told me that she'd try to find me another load, but that I might be sitting at the Georgia terminal until Sunday night (it was mid-day on Friday at this point). She did find me a brokered load that picked up in Chattanooga at 9pm and delivered in North Carolina the next day. I called a head to the dispatcher at the North Carolina terminal and asked if he had any loads out for Saturday. He told me to call him back in an hour and he'd try to find something. He did. I'd have a load waiting for me.
The delivery point of my load from Chattanooga was hard to find. My phone gps wasn't working in the mountains/hilly western part of North Carolina, so I'd asked the broker for directions. They hadn't given me a number for the delivery facility, so I couldn't just call and ask the people who were waiting for me. The broker had me driving in the wrong direction off the interstate, through a small town and on roads that I'm pretty sure weren't weighted for a truck. I spent an hour driving around that small town until I finally just went back to the interstate and took the crossroad off to the west. I made it exactly at my scheduled time, so I wasn't late. It took them less than half an hour to unload me and then I headed to the terminal, which was a few hours away.
The lot at North Carolina terminal was as full as I'd ever seen it. There was almost no place to drop an empty trailer. I dropped off my trip envelopes, found my new trailer and hooked to it, did a pre-trip and got out my maps and did some trip planning. It was Saturday afternoon and I couldn't make my first stop until 9am on Monday in southern Indiana. I had lots of time. I drove to the middle of Kentucky and then pulled into a truck stop for the night. The next day, I drove to a Love's about 45 minutes from my first stop (there weren't any truck stops of rest areas closer than that because it was a small town about 30 miles off the interstate).
I got up early and was at my first stop about 10 minutes before they opened. It was only one piece of freight, so it didn't take long and I was on my way. My second stop was the Indianapolis terminal. I called ahead, so they'd be expecting me and was able to unload there right away. My third stop was on the north side of Indianapolis. I got there right after they began their hour lunch break, so I had to wait. Due to the layout of their docking area, I had to wait for a driver who was there before me to finish unloading before I could pull into a bay to be unloaded. This was my biggest stop, as far as how much freight was being taken off the truck. It took foreeeeever.
My next two stops were in Kokomo, Indiana. They were scheduled for Tuesday, but since I'd made good time, I'd be able to make it to both before they closed. I called ahead and asked if they'd receive it that day (Monday). I've never finished a trip an entire day ahead of schedule before. I sent a message to the dispatcher letting her know that I"d be empty and available that afternoon.
My next load didn't pick up until 6pm on Wednesday, west of Indianapolis. I drove down there and parked at a rest stop a few miles away. It was the same facility I tried to pick up at on New Year's Eve, but had to wait two days (because of the holiday) for them to take freight off because my GVW was over 80k. I tried to call ahead to see if my load was ready early (it was supposed to be a drop and hook), but no one could give me an answer. I got there a little before 6pm and was told that they'd be doing a live load. I moved my tandems and pulled into the assigned door. It took them over an hour to load me. I went to the scale and I was about 150 pounds under 80k, but I couldn't get the weight distributed legally. I pulled back into my door and they had to take pallets off until they could remove a 500 lb one that was in the middle of the trailer. It took about eight weighs, but I did eventually get legal, but only after sliding my fifth wheel as far back as it would go to take weight off my steer tires. I was at the shipper for almost four hours. Another driver from my company had arrived after me, was in a bay a few lanes over and got out of there pretty efficiently. Luck of the draw, I suppose. I'm not looking forward to the next time I have to pick up from there.
The load went to a distribution center in southern Mississippi, same as last time. Same route. I liked the familiarity of it. Knowing the procedure of the delivery, no trouble finding the place, not getting lost, etc. I hope more loads get to be comfortable like that for me.
I sent a qualcomm message to let dispatch know that I'd be empty and available late Wednesday night, but after I'd delivered, I still hadn't heard anything from them (other than being told I'd be dispatched by someone at the Mississippi terminal), so I pulled into a rest area about 10 miles north of the town where I'd delivered. This morning, I was told to drive to the Mississippi terminal. I got there, but loads out weren't ready (and wouldn't be until the next day), so I dropped my empty and bobtailed to a truck stop to do some much-needed laundry. They said that a load out for me would be ready sometime on tomorrow.
And that was apparently the wrong thing to do. In the last fifteen minutes of the drive to the terminal, I received the three qualcomm messages about my new load, a message asking me why I was driving to the terminal, a voicemail and then multiple qualcomm messages telling me I'd been taken off the load and it had been given to another driver.
I have been dispatched for several hundred miles of deadhead before, so driving 40 miles to a terminal wasn't so farfetched. The dispatcher told me that she'd try to find me another load, but that I might be sitting at the Georgia terminal until Sunday night (it was mid-day on Friday at this point). She did find me a brokered load that picked up in Chattanooga at 9pm and delivered in North Carolina the next day. I called a head to the dispatcher at the North Carolina terminal and asked if he had any loads out for Saturday. He told me to call him back in an hour and he'd try to find something. He did. I'd have a load waiting for me.
The delivery point of my load from Chattanooga was hard to find. My phone gps wasn't working in the mountains/hilly western part of North Carolina, so I'd asked the broker for directions. They hadn't given me a number for the delivery facility, so I couldn't just call and ask the people who were waiting for me. The broker had me driving in the wrong direction off the interstate, through a small town and on roads that I'm pretty sure weren't weighted for a truck. I spent an hour driving around that small town until I finally just went back to the interstate and took the crossroad off to the west. I made it exactly at my scheduled time, so I wasn't late. It took them less than half an hour to unload me and then I headed to the terminal, which was a few hours away.
The lot at North Carolina terminal was as full as I'd ever seen it. There was almost no place to drop an empty trailer. I dropped off my trip envelopes, found my new trailer and hooked to it, did a pre-trip and got out my maps and did some trip planning. It was Saturday afternoon and I couldn't make my first stop until 9am on Monday in southern Indiana. I had lots of time. I drove to the middle of Kentucky and then pulled into a truck stop for the night. The next day, I drove to a Love's about 45 minutes from my first stop (there weren't any truck stops of rest areas closer than that because it was a small town about 30 miles off the interstate).
I got up early and was at my first stop about 10 minutes before they opened. It was only one piece of freight, so it didn't take long and I was on my way. My second stop was the Indianapolis terminal. I called ahead, so they'd be expecting me and was able to unload there right away. My third stop was on the north side of Indianapolis. I got there right after they began their hour lunch break, so I had to wait. Due to the layout of their docking area, I had to wait for a driver who was there before me to finish unloading before I could pull into a bay to be unloaded. This was my biggest stop, as far as how much freight was being taken off the truck. It took foreeeeever.
My next two stops were in Kokomo, Indiana. They were scheduled for Tuesday, but since I'd made good time, I'd be able to make it to both before they closed. I called ahead and asked if they'd receive it that day (Monday). I've never finished a trip an entire day ahead of schedule before. I sent a message to the dispatcher letting her know that I"d be empty and available that afternoon.
My next load didn't pick up until 6pm on Wednesday, west of Indianapolis. I drove down there and parked at a rest stop a few miles away. It was the same facility I tried to pick up at on New Year's Eve, but had to wait two days (because of the holiday) for them to take freight off because my GVW was over 80k. I tried to call ahead to see if my load was ready early (it was supposed to be a drop and hook), but no one could give me an answer. I got there a little before 6pm and was told that they'd be doing a live load. I moved my tandems and pulled into the assigned door. It took them over an hour to load me. I went to the scale and I was about 150 pounds under 80k, but I couldn't get the weight distributed legally. I pulled back into my door and they had to take pallets off until they could remove a 500 lb one that was in the middle of the trailer. It took about eight weighs, but I did eventually get legal, but only after sliding my fifth wheel as far back as it would go to take weight off my steer tires. I was at the shipper for almost four hours. Another driver from my company had arrived after me, was in a bay a few lanes over and got out of there pretty efficiently. Luck of the draw, I suppose. I'm not looking forward to the next time I have to pick up from there.
The load went to a distribution center in southern Mississippi, same as last time. Same route. I liked the familiarity of it. Knowing the procedure of the delivery, no trouble finding the place, not getting lost, etc. I hope more loads get to be comfortable like that for me.
I sent a qualcomm message to let dispatch know that I'd be empty and available late Wednesday night, but after I'd delivered, I still hadn't heard anything from them (other than being told I'd be dispatched by someone at the Mississippi terminal), so I pulled into a rest area about 10 miles north of the town where I'd delivered. This morning, I was told to drive to the Mississippi terminal. I got there, but loads out weren't ready (and wouldn't be until the next day), so I dropped my empty and bobtailed to a truck stop to do some much-needed laundry. They said that a load out for me would be ready sometime on tomorrow.
18 January 2013
Frustrated
So I got a phonecall from the manager of the Georgia terminal letting me know they had a
load out for me and wanting to know if I'd be there Tuesday night or
Wednesday sometime. He had pretty much expected me to be at the Georgia terminal by
Monday night (my delivery was originally scheduled for Monday morning). My company had put my truck number on a list of available trucks in the area
and had neglected to mention that I was in the area, but broken down in
Kentucky. I told him I'd call him and give them an ETA after I was up
and running.
Tuesday afternoon, they asked me to pull the trailer (just down to the next exit and back, so about seven miles) to test it out and make sure everything was okay. Everything seemed fine. I broke down a little before 5pm on Saturday, so the truck being ready around 2pm on Tuesday means I'm three hours shy of getting paid for three days of breakdown. Which stinks. When I was getting in the truck to do the test drive, I noticed that the fuel primer pump (which I'd gotten from the mechanic at Detroit and for which the truck had already seen two mechanics before the breakdown) was still in its box. I asked why they hadn't fixed it and they said that my company specifically told them not to. So my truck was going to have to go to the Georgia terminal's shop before I could get another load. Great. I don't understand why they did that. The shop I was broken down at was the shop that does all the repair for our Kentucky terminal anyway. If the truck only spends part of a day in the shop, I don't get paid anything. So almost three days in the shop in Kentucky (two days of breakdown pay) and three partial days (North Carolina, Detroit and soon Georgia) for which I don't get paid anything. That's a lot of wasted time. My time.
I sent QualComm messages to dispatch letting them know that the repair was done. I called the broker and asked whether they preferred for me to deliver it late Tuesday night or early Wednesday. They opted for Wednesday. I let Dalton know I'd be there sometime Wednesday afternoon. I drove until I was a little over an hour for the delivery and pulled over at a rest stop. It was getting late enough in the day that I was afraid if I tried to get closer to the delivery, I wouldn't be able to find anywhere to park. Even knowing I was going to be dealing with Atlanta traffic in the morning.
I ended up taking some small state highways in order to avoid some backups on the interstate. I hate driving in Atlanta. The backups aren't even usually caused by a wreck, but just by the interchanges being really poorly designed for the volume of traffic. Delivered and received my next trip info over the QualComm. I reminded the dispatcher that I was going to the Georgia terminal for them to finish the repair on the truck and that I wouldn't confirm my next trip until the truck was ready.
When they send the load and fuel routing for your next trip before you've finished the one you're on, the fuel stops are wrong. I didn't have any fuel stops for my trip out of Georgia, despite the fact that I was almost out of fuel. In orientation, we were told to call and get a fuel stop from the guy in the main office in charge of fuel so that we wouldn't get in trouble for out-of-route fuel stops. I was doing that every time for the first two months, only to find out that it doesn't matter whether you call and talk to him and have him tell you where to fuel. It still goes on your file/record as an out-of-route fuel stop. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It makes no sense.
At the end of the trip, when you send the "empty and available" QualComm message, it asks you how much fuel you have from 0 to 8. So basically, how many eighths of a tank. You can't put any less than three, because it messes the computer up somehow (as the fuel guy explained in orientation), so even if you have less than that, you have to put at least three. I have about a sixteenth of a tank, so I'm going to have to put fuel in the truck before I head up to the Georgia terminal.
It took the Georgia terminal's shop a few hours to fix the truck. They loaned me the terminal car in the meantime and I went to Walmart and stocked up on food and water.
My load wasn't going to be ready until almost midnight, so I tried to get some sleep. It's pretty much impossible to shift your sleep schedule that much in one day (I'm used to starting my day at 5 or 6am), so I got hardly any. I was supposed to take a load from the Georgia terminal and drop/hook in Kentucky (some dirt lot just off an interstate exit) and essentially switch loads with another driver. I had no idea what QualComm messages to send for that, so I just kept sending qc61 and explaining where I was in the process. I had been told (by the other driver) that after I switched loads, I'd need a new trip number, but multiple messages to dispatch asking for it got no response. I didn't get the trip number, fuel routing or load routing until I had already finished the trip the next day around noon.
Whenever I have a question, I end up having to ask about eight different people before I get an answer. Dispatch will ignore direct questions for hours or days, but if I don't respond immediately to a message from them (usually because I'm driving), I get harassed with multiple phonecalls and QualComm messages unless/until I respond. And if it were something that needed an immediate answer, that would make sense. Usually it's something that wasn't time-sensitive at all and absolutely could have waited until the next time I pulled over.
When I mess something up, I have eight people calling me or QualComming me to tell me about it. I feel like that guy in Office Space who forgot to put the cover on his TPS report and has eight different bosses stopping by his cubicle to tell him he screwed up.
The trailer I picked up was a load to Atlanta. I hate driving in Atlanta. The delivery was pretty open, which was nice. I got really tired about half-way through Tennessee, so I pulled over and took an hour-long nap. It helped. Because of traffic, I got to the delivery around 10am. It took them about two hours to unload me and I had an hour left on my 14-hour clock, which was just enough time to get to a truck stop. Took a hot shower and then very happily crawled into my bunk. Dispatch told me that my next load wouldn't be ready until tomorrow, so I wasn't going to have to get up in ten hours. I slept hard.
I'm still at the truck stop waiting for my next load. If it's out of Dalton, which it probably will be, it won't be ready until late tonight. I took another shower this morning and now I'm sitting in McDonald's having coffee and free wifi. Kinda glad I wasn't on the road last night. Rain and sub-freezing temperatures (coupled with Atlanta's general lack of snowplows and salt trucks) meant there was black ice everywhere and tons of wrecks and traffic backups. I happily slept through all of that.
I was looking at pay stubs from some of my earlier trips and noticed that I wasn't getting paid $20 for each of the LTL furniture stops. They just put "load/unload $30" once for the whole trip. I'm going to have to go though all of my pay stubs (which I should have been doing anyway) to make sure that this was just a mistake on one trip and that they haven't been doing it on all of them. And before you ask, I know I entered the stops correctly on my trip envelope for that trip because I called payroll to ask whether one of them counted as a driver unload since I had to get in and move the freight to end of the truck, but then they took it off with a forklift. It didn't, in case you were wondering. All the other stops on that trip should have been $20 each though.
I am really frustrated with this company. Communication among the various departments is terrible (despite the fact that they all work in the same small two-story building). I do a lot of sitting and the miles are really inconsistent. I am also encourage almost daily by terminal managers and other company drivers to falsify my logbook in order to get more hours and make more money. I refuse to do that. If that's the only way to "make good money" at this company, then I've clearly chosen the wrong place to work.
Tuesday afternoon, they asked me to pull the trailer (just down to the next exit and back, so about seven miles) to test it out and make sure everything was okay. Everything seemed fine. I broke down a little before 5pm on Saturday, so the truck being ready around 2pm on Tuesday means I'm three hours shy of getting paid for three days of breakdown. Which stinks. When I was getting in the truck to do the test drive, I noticed that the fuel primer pump (which I'd gotten from the mechanic at Detroit and for which the truck had already seen two mechanics before the breakdown) was still in its box. I asked why they hadn't fixed it and they said that my company specifically told them not to. So my truck was going to have to go to the Georgia terminal's shop before I could get another load. Great. I don't understand why they did that. The shop I was broken down at was the shop that does all the repair for our Kentucky terminal anyway. If the truck only spends part of a day in the shop, I don't get paid anything. So almost three days in the shop in Kentucky (two days of breakdown pay) and three partial days (North Carolina, Detroit and soon Georgia) for which I don't get paid anything. That's a lot of wasted time. My time.
I sent QualComm messages to dispatch letting them know that the repair was done. I called the broker and asked whether they preferred for me to deliver it late Tuesday night or early Wednesday. They opted for Wednesday. I let Dalton know I'd be there sometime Wednesday afternoon. I drove until I was a little over an hour for the delivery and pulled over at a rest stop. It was getting late enough in the day that I was afraid if I tried to get closer to the delivery, I wouldn't be able to find anywhere to park. Even knowing I was going to be dealing with Atlanta traffic in the morning.
I ended up taking some small state highways in order to avoid some backups on the interstate. I hate driving in Atlanta. The backups aren't even usually caused by a wreck, but just by the interchanges being really poorly designed for the volume of traffic. Delivered and received my next trip info over the QualComm. I reminded the dispatcher that I was going to the Georgia terminal for them to finish the repair on the truck and that I wouldn't confirm my next trip until the truck was ready.
When they send the load and fuel routing for your next trip before you've finished the one you're on, the fuel stops are wrong. I didn't have any fuel stops for my trip out of Georgia, despite the fact that I was almost out of fuel. In orientation, we were told to call and get a fuel stop from the guy in the main office in charge of fuel so that we wouldn't get in trouble for out-of-route fuel stops. I was doing that every time for the first two months, only to find out that it doesn't matter whether you call and talk to him and have him tell you where to fuel. It still goes on your file/record as an out-of-route fuel stop. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It makes no sense.
At the end of the trip, when you send the "empty and available" QualComm message, it asks you how much fuel you have from 0 to 8. So basically, how many eighths of a tank. You can't put any less than three, because it messes the computer up somehow (as the fuel guy explained in orientation), so even if you have less than that, you have to put at least three. I have about a sixteenth of a tank, so I'm going to have to put fuel in the truck before I head up to the Georgia terminal.
It took the Georgia terminal's shop a few hours to fix the truck. They loaned me the terminal car in the meantime and I went to Walmart and stocked up on food and water.
My load wasn't going to be ready until almost midnight, so I tried to get some sleep. It's pretty much impossible to shift your sleep schedule that much in one day (I'm used to starting my day at 5 or 6am), so I got hardly any. I was supposed to take a load from the Georgia terminal and drop/hook in Kentucky (some dirt lot just off an interstate exit) and essentially switch loads with another driver. I had no idea what QualComm messages to send for that, so I just kept sending qc61 and explaining where I was in the process. I had been told (by the other driver) that after I switched loads, I'd need a new trip number, but multiple messages to dispatch asking for it got no response. I didn't get the trip number, fuel routing or load routing until I had already finished the trip the next day around noon.
Whenever I have a question, I end up having to ask about eight different people before I get an answer. Dispatch will ignore direct questions for hours or days, but if I don't respond immediately to a message from them (usually because I'm driving), I get harassed with multiple phonecalls and QualComm messages unless/until I respond. And if it were something that needed an immediate answer, that would make sense. Usually it's something that wasn't time-sensitive at all and absolutely could have waited until the next time I pulled over.
When I mess something up, I have eight people calling me or QualComming me to tell me about it. I feel like that guy in Office Space who forgot to put the cover on his TPS report and has eight different bosses stopping by his cubicle to tell him he screwed up.
The trailer I picked up was a load to Atlanta. I hate driving in Atlanta. The delivery was pretty open, which was nice. I got really tired about half-way through Tennessee, so I pulled over and took an hour-long nap. It helped. Because of traffic, I got to the delivery around 10am. It took them about two hours to unload me and I had an hour left on my 14-hour clock, which was just enough time to get to a truck stop. Took a hot shower and then very happily crawled into my bunk. Dispatch told me that my next load wouldn't be ready until tomorrow, so I wasn't going to have to get up in ten hours. I slept hard.
I'm still at the truck stop waiting for my next load. If it's out of Dalton, which it probably will be, it won't be ready until late tonight. I took another shower this morning and now I'm sitting in McDonald's having coffee and free wifi. Kinda glad I wasn't on the road last night. Rain and sub-freezing temperatures (coupled with Atlanta's general lack of snowplows and salt trucks) meant there was black ice everywhere and tons of wrecks and traffic backups. I happily slept through all of that.
I was looking at pay stubs from some of my earlier trips and noticed that I wasn't getting paid $20 for each of the LTL furniture stops. They just put "load/unload $30" once for the whole trip. I'm going to have to go though all of my pay stubs (which I should have been doing anyway) to make sure that this was just a mistake on one trip and that they haven't been doing it on all of them. And before you ask, I know I entered the stops correctly on my trip envelope for that trip because I called payroll to ask whether one of them counted as a driver unload since I had to get in and move the freight to end of the truck, but then they took it off with a forklift. It didn't, in case you were wondering. All the other stops on that trip should have been $20 each though.
I am really frustrated with this company. Communication among the various departments is terrible (despite the fact that they all work in the same small two-story building). I do a lot of sitting and the miles are really inconsistent. I am also encourage almost daily by terminal managers and other company drivers to falsify my logbook in order to get more hours and make more money. I refuse to do that. If that's the only way to "make good money" at this company, then I've clearly chosen the wrong place to work.
15 January 2013
Still Waiting . . .
They didn't finish my truck yesterday, but they were going to have someone in overnight to work on it in the shop. I had my company put me up in a nearby hotel. (It was oh so lovely to have a real bath!)
I got a call from the manage of our Georgia terminal. He wanted to know if I was available for a load out of there at midnight. My dispatcher had apparently put my truck number on a list of available trucks for dispatch.... no one told him that I had broken down over the weekend. I told him I'd let him know as soon as I was back on the road so that he would have an idea of when I'd be empty.
I called the shop this morning for an update. Apparently, Volvo sent the wrong parts and they were waiting on the right ones to arrive. I entertained myself until checkout time, then I walked down to the truckstop. I was hoping to stash my giant bag of clean laundry in the truck, but someone was out test-driving it. So I'm sitting in the truck stop's cafe with all of my crap in the opposite booth seat. I just hope I'm not here long enough that all the cigarette smoke seeps into my clean clothes.
Still waiting on it to be finished, but if they're to the test-driving stage, there is a glimmer of hope that I could get out of here today.
I got a call from the manage of our Georgia terminal. He wanted to know if I was available for a load out of there at midnight. My dispatcher had apparently put my truck number on a list of available trucks for dispatch.... no one told him that I had broken down over the weekend. I told him I'd let him know as soon as I was back on the road so that he would have an idea of when I'd be empty.
I called the shop this morning for an update. Apparently, Volvo sent the wrong parts and they were waiting on the right ones to arrive. I entertained myself until checkout time, then I walked down to the truckstop. I was hoping to stash my giant bag of clean laundry in the truck, but someone was out test-driving it. So I'm sitting in the truck stop's cafe with all of my crap in the opposite booth seat. I just hope I'm not here long enough that all the cigarette smoke seeps into my clean clothes.
Still waiting on it to be finished, but if they're to the test-driving stage, there is a glimmer of hope that I could get out of here today.
14 January 2013
Monday, Monday
It's about 9am local time. They haven't gotten around to looking at my truck yet. I went in when they opened and gave the key to a mechanic, explained about the fuel primer pump (I left the new one in a box in the driver-side floorboard) and that I had no idea what had caused the truck to break down on the highway.
This is the shop that does all the work for our Kentucky terminal, so at least there won't be weird approval things when its time to pay for the work. My company has an account with them.
When I first called the breakdown number, they explained that the usual way things were done is that the driver would just pay for their own hotel room and then the company reimburses. I didn't have the money to do that, so I was told to just sleep in the truck that night (the mechanic's shop is next to a truck stop, so that wasn't much of a hardship) and then call another person at the company tomorrow who had the ability to approve/pay for a hotel room. Yesterday, it was pouring down rain and I didn't want to walk to the hotel carrying all my stuff (and it wasn't very cold in the daytime) so I just stayed in the truck again.
Last night was really cold and my bunk heater wouldn't kick on. If I'm here another night, I will be definitely getting a hotel room. If I hadn't doubled up on my CDL school loan payment, I'd have had the money to just get a room for a few days and be reimbursed later.
I got a pay advance this morning (yay!) so at least I will be able to eat while I'm here. I'm down to just peanut butter in the truck.
This is the shop that does all the work for our Kentucky terminal, so at least there won't be weird approval things when its time to pay for the work. My company has an account with them.
When I first called the breakdown number, they explained that the usual way things were done is that the driver would just pay for their own hotel room and then the company reimburses. I didn't have the money to do that, so I was told to just sleep in the truck that night (the mechanic's shop is next to a truck stop, so that wasn't much of a hardship) and then call another person at the company tomorrow who had the ability to approve/pay for a hotel room. Yesterday, it was pouring down rain and I didn't want to walk to the hotel carrying all my stuff (and it wasn't very cold in the daytime) so I just stayed in the truck again.
Last night was really cold and my bunk heater wouldn't kick on. If I'm here another night, I will be definitely getting a hotel room. If I hadn't doubled up on my CDL school loan payment, I'd have had the money to just get a room for a few days and be reimbursed later.
I got a pay advance this morning (yay!) so at least I will be able to eat while I'm here. I'm down to just peanut butter in the truck.
13 January 2013
First Breakdown
Well, first truck breakdown at least.
I got a load out of North Carolina within an hour of my last post. I drove back to the terminal, picked up my paperwork and hooked up to my trailer. I did my pre-trip inspection and was ready to go.... but my truck wouldn't start.
The driver parked next to me came over and he said it sounded like the fuel pump wasn't kicking in. I had no idea what was wrong, but the starting sounds didn't sound right. I walked to the other side of the lot to find one of the shop guys and asked him to come take a look at it. I went in to tell the dispatcher what was going on and why I hadn't left yet and he told me to keep him posted.
The error message just said "Check: Engine Fault" which could be any number of things. Another mechanic from the shop had to come out and bring the computer thing they use to diagnose stuff. They sprayed starter fluid in the air intake, which allowed them to start the engine (and let the main pump take over... something like that). They didn't have the part they needed to fix it and it would have taken at least a day or two to get it if they ordered it. They asked where I was headed and I said Detroit. They told me to call ahead to the Detroit terminal and ask them to order the part (and arrange to have it repaired there. A lady at the Detroit terminal handled all of that, including getting permission from the main office to get the repair done there. That terminal doesn't have its own shop, there's a mobile mechanic service they use for all their work). They gave me a can of starter fluid so that I would be able to start the truck if it wouldn't fire up.
I went in and talked to the dispatcher, sent the necessary QualComm messages and away I went. I didn't have to use the starter fluid to start the truck any of the times I stopped. I got to my delivery around 4am and had the amazing fun of trying to park when it's raining so hard that you can't see anything in your mirrors. What should have been maybe a two minute parking job took about half an hour. They unloaded me and I pulled into their gravel side-lot to take my ten hour break. I drove to the terminal early in the afternoon. The mechanic was scheduled to come out around 3 (which is when I'd guesstimated that I'd be there). I had time to take a shower and finish my trip envelope.
I explained the problem, left him with a key and went to the driver's lounge. Some guy from the main office was supposed to call me and explain various benefits that I'm eligible for now that my probationary period is ending. He called at four. Didn't finish with all we needed to, so he arranged to call me again on Monday afternoon to finish up.
I went out to check on the truck and the mechanic was gone. He'd left his little trolley (that you use to work under the truck), but his truck was gone. I went back to the driver's lounge to wait. As it turns out, the problem was that the bolts that hold the fuel primer pump (or the piece in the way of it, not sure) were stripped. The mechanic thought it was a problem with his sockets, so he went to buy a new set. The bolts were too stripped for him to get off.
He had talked to the terminal manger and the main office in Montana. They decided that he should leave the part with me and they would find me a load going to Georgia. The idea being that I would deliver the load and then drive to the Georgia terminal and have the shop there complete the repair.
I drove to Cleveland early Saturday morning for a live load. Everything was fine until I was driving through Kentucky and the truck suddenly stopped accelerating. I wasn't going to make it up the hill I was on, so I pulled off onto the shoulder. I got as far to the edge as I could, but it only left about a foot of space between my truck and the closest lane of traffic. And it was pouring down rain, so visibility was poor. I put my flashers on and ran to put out my triangles.
I called the 24-hr breakdown number and he gave me the numbers of two local shops. The first one I called, the mechanic was able to head out straightaway, which was good. He came out in a pick-up truck and took a look. His shop was at the next exit, about four miles further south. We tried to drive the truck there (staying on the shoulder until I got up to speed was the plan) but it wouldn't rev above 1200 rpm, so I couldn't go any higher than fifth gear. I stopped on the shoulder and put out my triangles again while he drove back to the shop to get his wrecker.
He came back out and they got it all hooked up. Got back to the shop (which is right next to this little mom and pop truckstop) and he unhooked it and told me where to park it. For some reason, the truck was now idling at 1000 rpm. It was a little weird trying to park when the rpm wouldn't go any lower than 1000. Like parking in high reverse, essentially.
I got the truck parked and called the breakdown number again and let them know where I was and that the shop couldn't look at the truck until Monday. So I will be spending the weekend in a small town in southeast Kentucky. I asked the weekend dispatcher if there was another driver who could deliver the load (delivers just west of Atlanta, Georgia on Monday. It's a drop and hook and it has to be there before noon). She said she'd see if there was a driver available in the area. I'm waiting to hear back from her so that I can call the broker and let them know what's going on.
While I was sitting at the Detroit terminal, I called to make a payment for my CDL school loan. They had some special going this month where they will match any payment you make this month that's at least $500. Instead of paying the usual $250, I sent in $500. That, in addition to some other bill payments, pretty much cleaned out my bank account (a little short this month since I took 6 days off at Christmas). I figured I'd just be broke for a week. Really glad I stocked up on groceries when I was in North Carolina because otherwise I'd be screwed.
That payment matching thing was just too good to pass up. Going to make another payment at the end of them month for as much as I can.
This is a cute little truckstop. They have free wifi, which is nice. I don't get a strong enough signal in my truck, but the cafe said they didn't mind if I sat in here with my laptop.
I got a load out of North Carolina within an hour of my last post. I drove back to the terminal, picked up my paperwork and hooked up to my trailer. I did my pre-trip inspection and was ready to go.... but my truck wouldn't start.
The driver parked next to me came over and he said it sounded like the fuel pump wasn't kicking in. I had no idea what was wrong, but the starting sounds didn't sound right. I walked to the other side of the lot to find one of the shop guys and asked him to come take a look at it. I went in to tell the dispatcher what was going on and why I hadn't left yet and he told me to keep him posted.
The error message just said "Check: Engine Fault" which could be any number of things. Another mechanic from the shop had to come out and bring the computer thing they use to diagnose stuff. They sprayed starter fluid in the air intake, which allowed them to start the engine (and let the main pump take over... something like that). They didn't have the part they needed to fix it and it would have taken at least a day or two to get it if they ordered it. They asked where I was headed and I said Detroit. They told me to call ahead to the Detroit terminal and ask them to order the part (and arrange to have it repaired there. A lady at the Detroit terminal handled all of that, including getting permission from the main office to get the repair done there. That terminal doesn't have its own shop, there's a mobile mechanic service they use for all their work). They gave me a can of starter fluid so that I would be able to start the truck if it wouldn't fire up.
I went in and talked to the dispatcher, sent the necessary QualComm messages and away I went. I didn't have to use the starter fluid to start the truck any of the times I stopped. I got to my delivery around 4am and had the amazing fun of trying to park when it's raining so hard that you can't see anything in your mirrors. What should have been maybe a two minute parking job took about half an hour. They unloaded me and I pulled into their gravel side-lot to take my ten hour break. I drove to the terminal early in the afternoon. The mechanic was scheduled to come out around 3 (which is when I'd guesstimated that I'd be there). I had time to take a shower and finish my trip envelope.
I explained the problem, left him with a key and went to the driver's lounge. Some guy from the main office was supposed to call me and explain various benefits that I'm eligible for now that my probationary period is ending. He called at four. Didn't finish with all we needed to, so he arranged to call me again on Monday afternoon to finish up.
I went out to check on the truck and the mechanic was gone. He'd left his little trolley (that you use to work under the truck), but his truck was gone. I went back to the driver's lounge to wait. As it turns out, the problem was that the bolts that hold the fuel primer pump (or the piece in the way of it, not sure) were stripped. The mechanic thought it was a problem with his sockets, so he went to buy a new set. The bolts were too stripped for him to get off.
He had talked to the terminal manger and the main office in Montana. They decided that he should leave the part with me and they would find me a load going to Georgia. The idea being that I would deliver the load and then drive to the Georgia terminal and have the shop there complete the repair.
I drove to Cleveland early Saturday morning for a live load. Everything was fine until I was driving through Kentucky and the truck suddenly stopped accelerating. I wasn't going to make it up the hill I was on, so I pulled off onto the shoulder. I got as far to the edge as I could, but it only left about a foot of space between my truck and the closest lane of traffic. And it was pouring down rain, so visibility was poor. I put my flashers on and ran to put out my triangles.
I called the 24-hr breakdown number and he gave me the numbers of two local shops. The first one I called, the mechanic was able to head out straightaway, which was good. He came out in a pick-up truck and took a look. His shop was at the next exit, about four miles further south. We tried to drive the truck there (staying on the shoulder until I got up to speed was the plan) but it wouldn't rev above 1200 rpm, so I couldn't go any higher than fifth gear. I stopped on the shoulder and put out my triangles again while he drove back to the shop to get his wrecker.
He came back out and they got it all hooked up. Got back to the shop (which is right next to this little mom and pop truckstop) and he unhooked it and told me where to park it. For some reason, the truck was now idling at 1000 rpm. It was a little weird trying to park when the rpm wouldn't go any lower than 1000. Like parking in high reverse, essentially.
I got the truck parked and called the breakdown number again and let them know where I was and that the shop couldn't look at the truck until Monday. So I will be spending the weekend in a small town in southeast Kentucky. I asked the weekend dispatcher if there was another driver who could deliver the load (delivers just west of Atlanta, Georgia on Monday. It's a drop and hook and it has to be there before noon). She said she'd see if there was a driver available in the area. I'm waiting to hear back from her so that I can call the broker and let them know what's going on.
While I was sitting at the Detroit terminal, I called to make a payment for my CDL school loan. They had some special going this month where they will match any payment you make this month that's at least $500. Instead of paying the usual $250, I sent in $500. That, in addition to some other bill payments, pretty much cleaned out my bank account (a little short this month since I took 6 days off at Christmas). I figured I'd just be broke for a week. Really glad I stocked up on groceries when I was in North Carolina because otherwise I'd be screwed.
That payment matching thing was just too good to pass up. Going to make another payment at the end of them month for as much as I can.
This is a cute little truckstop. They have free wifi, which is nice. I don't get a strong enough signal in my truck, but the cafe said they didn't mind if I sat in here with my laptop.
10 January 2013
Dodgy Headlight Again
I didn't end up doing a reset. I was waiting for my laundry to dry and
re-added my work hours. I'd just messed up the math. I called the
Columbus manager (this is Monday morning) and told him I'd be there in
about half an hour. I drove there, they unloaded me right away and I
drove straight up to our terminal in Detroit. I delivered there (and my headlight was
intermittently going out again) and figured I had about another hour of
daylight, so I drove south again. I had a fuel stop in Ohio at the
Love's off of I-280 (east of Toledo) which was right before I got off
interstates and took smaller highways most of the way to our terminal in northeast Ohio. I
drove to that truck stop for the night.
And then I remembered something they had told us in orientation. How you could split up a fuel stop (like doing half of it the night before and the rest the next morning). For some reason, I'd completely forgotten about it. I put 50 gallons in that night (and had a very hot shower) and then filled the rest of the tank in the morning.
You'd think somebody as prissy as I am (and as fond of hot showers) would have remember that little trick long before now.
I delivered at our terminal in northeast Ohio on Tuesday morning. I turned in my trip envelope and hit the road. I had another load already, this one going from Massillon, Ohio to Winchester, Virginia. It took about an hour and a half to get to the shipper. I dropped and hooked and was ready to go. I'm so glad I'm getting more efficient at some things. My phone's gps wasn't working in northeast Ohio for some reason, so I called the shipper and got very good directions from the highway to the facility.
My routing took me southeast at a diagonal on small highways (to eventually hit I-70 and take that east). I got lost and probably wasted about an hour trying to figure it out (no shoulder or anywhere to pull off and check the map, I just had to keep driving and hope I eventually found I-70, which I did. It just wasn't where I was expecting it to be).
My headlight was being dodgy again and when it started to get dark, I was in Maryland. My initial plan was to drive as far as I could (as long as there was daylight) to make the most of my 14-hour window and then find a truck stop and replace the headlight (because I hadn't bought bulbs the last time my light was acting weird). I forgot that there are pretty much no truck stops in Maryland. And very few rest areas.
I was taking I-68 east and didn't have enough hours left on my clock (and no daylight left) to make it to my delivery, so when I got to the junction of I68 and I-70 (which is right on the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland), I took I-70 west (north) and two miles down the road, there was rest area/welcome center. Yay! Lots of open parking at that point in the evening.
I parked there for the night and then got up early in the morning, figuring that if my headlight was working, I'd drive to the shipper then. If not, I'd wait until dawn. (I just didn't want to get a ticket for having a headlight out). The headlight was cooperating, so I drove an hour south to Virginia and did my drop and hook.
Then, I drove straight to a Flying J five miles north of there and bought two headlight bulbs.
I had been looking in truck stops for an H-11(which is what another driver from my company told me to I would need) and couldn't find any headlight bulbs that corresponded to that letter/number. When I got to the truck stop, I just took the bulb out and figured I'd go find a bulb that looked the most like that one. Then I found the H-11 bulbs at the Flying J this time. Yay! I guess they just didn't sell that brand at the places I'd been looking, but so glad to have found them, so yeah.... I bought two.
I replaced the bulb and it lit up just fine.... until I closed the hood of the truck. Then it when out. I opened hood back up and checked to make sure the bulb was hooked securely to the plug and that I'd put it in correctly. It looked fine. The bulb wouldn't come back on though (and yes, I made sure not to touch the glass part because it is a halogen bulb). Grrrr! I called the shop in at our main terminal and asked if it could be a problem with the wiring. They said yes and I'd have to have a shop look at it.
I sent some qualcomm messages to my dispatcher explaining the headlight problem and asking if I could deadhead to the North Carolina terminal. I was in northern Virginia, so it was going to be quite a ways. No response. I called him twice and left a voicemail the second time. I then called someone else I knew who worked at the terminal and asked what to do. He told me to keep trying to contact the dispatcher and the NC fleet manager and if I didn't get a response after a while, to just sent a qualcomm message telling them I was deadheading to the North Carolina terminal. That's what I ended up doing. By this time, it was more than two hours since I'd replaced the bulb.
So I spent most of yesterday driving to the terminal. I got there a little after 5pm. One of the shop guys look at the headlight. The headlight hadn't come back on since that morning, but of course, it came on just fine when I turned my lights on for him to see what was wrong. What gives!? He looked at the wiring and he said that I'd put the bulb in correctly, but he didn't see anything wrong. I told him I'd let him know if it went out again while before I left on my next load. I also had him look at my wiper fluid hoses. The passenger side wiper had stopped spraying about a week ago (I had pretty much convinced myself there must be a separate reservoir for wiper fluid for that side and I just couldn't find it). The bracket holding the end of the hose to the wiper arm had slipped about six inches. He moved it back and it works fine now.
And so now I'm in North Carolina waiting on a load. I stocked up on food at Walmart, which is good. I was getting so sick of having peanut butter for dinner every night.
On the bright side (pun intended), I now know how to change a headlight bulb and I have a spare one in the truck for next time.
And then I remembered something they had told us in orientation. How you could split up a fuel stop (like doing half of it the night before and the rest the next morning). For some reason, I'd completely forgotten about it. I put 50 gallons in that night (and had a very hot shower) and then filled the rest of the tank in the morning.
You'd think somebody as prissy as I am (and as fond of hot showers) would have remember that little trick long before now.
I delivered at our terminal in northeast Ohio on Tuesday morning. I turned in my trip envelope and hit the road. I had another load already, this one going from Massillon, Ohio to Winchester, Virginia. It took about an hour and a half to get to the shipper. I dropped and hooked and was ready to go. I'm so glad I'm getting more efficient at some things. My phone's gps wasn't working in northeast Ohio for some reason, so I called the shipper and got very good directions from the highway to the facility.
My routing took me southeast at a diagonal on small highways (to eventually hit I-70 and take that east). I got lost and probably wasted about an hour trying to figure it out (no shoulder or anywhere to pull off and check the map, I just had to keep driving and hope I eventually found I-70, which I did. It just wasn't where I was expecting it to be).
My headlight was being dodgy again and when it started to get dark, I was in Maryland. My initial plan was to drive as far as I could (as long as there was daylight) to make the most of my 14-hour window and then find a truck stop and replace the headlight (because I hadn't bought bulbs the last time my light was acting weird). I forgot that there are pretty much no truck stops in Maryland. And very few rest areas.
I was taking I-68 east and didn't have enough hours left on my clock (and no daylight left) to make it to my delivery, so when I got to the junction of I68 and I-70 (which is right on the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland), I took I-70 west (north) and two miles down the road, there was rest area/welcome center. Yay! Lots of open parking at that point in the evening.
I parked there for the night and then got up early in the morning, figuring that if my headlight was working, I'd drive to the shipper then. If not, I'd wait until dawn. (I just didn't want to get a ticket for having a headlight out). The headlight was cooperating, so I drove an hour south to Virginia and did my drop and hook.
Then, I drove straight to a Flying J five miles north of there and bought two headlight bulbs.
I had been looking in truck stops for an H-11(which is what another driver from my company told me to I would need) and couldn't find any headlight bulbs that corresponded to that letter/number. When I got to the truck stop, I just took the bulb out and figured I'd go find a bulb that looked the most like that one. Then I found the H-11 bulbs at the Flying J this time. Yay! I guess they just didn't sell that brand at the places I'd been looking, but so glad to have found them, so yeah.... I bought two.
I replaced the bulb and it lit up just fine.... until I closed the hood of the truck. Then it when out. I opened hood back up and checked to make sure the bulb was hooked securely to the plug and that I'd put it in correctly. It looked fine. The bulb wouldn't come back on though (and yes, I made sure not to touch the glass part because it is a halogen bulb). Grrrr! I called the shop in at our main terminal and asked if it could be a problem with the wiring. They said yes and I'd have to have a shop look at it.
I sent some qualcomm messages to my dispatcher explaining the headlight problem and asking if I could deadhead to the North Carolina terminal. I was in northern Virginia, so it was going to be quite a ways. No response. I called him twice and left a voicemail the second time. I then called someone else I knew who worked at the terminal and asked what to do. He told me to keep trying to contact the dispatcher and the NC fleet manager and if I didn't get a response after a while, to just sent a qualcomm message telling them I was deadheading to the North Carolina terminal. That's what I ended up doing. By this time, it was more than two hours since I'd replaced the bulb.
So I spent most of yesterday driving to the terminal. I got there a little after 5pm. One of the shop guys look at the headlight. The headlight hadn't come back on since that morning, but of course, it came on just fine when I turned my lights on for him to see what was wrong. What gives!? He looked at the wiring and he said that I'd put the bulb in correctly, but he didn't see anything wrong. I told him I'd let him know if it went out again while before I left on my next load. I also had him look at my wiper fluid hoses. The passenger side wiper had stopped spraying about a week ago (I had pretty much convinced myself there must be a separate reservoir for wiper fluid for that side and I just couldn't find it). The bracket holding the end of the hose to the wiper arm had slipped about six inches. He moved it back and it works fine now.
And so now I'm in North Carolina waiting on a load. I stocked up on food at Walmart, which is good. I was getting so sick of having peanut butter for dinner every night.
On the bright side (pun intended), I now know how to change a headlight bulb and I have a spare one in the truck for next time.
06 January 2013
Back to the Midwest
So I was finally able to pick up that load on the morning of January
third. It wasn't ready yet when I got there, so I had to sit for almost
an hour. It weighed in at 77-something thousand pounds. Much better.
I will get $50 "detention" pay for having to wait more than 24 hours
for that load to be redone. It sucks though, because I had to wait in
Indianapolis all day Monday for the load to be ready in the evening and
couldn't take it until Wednesday morning because it was way too heavy.
Two days of waiting. $50. Not cool.
A driver friend of mine texted me and reminded me to go through my permit book and see what expired on January 1st. I'm glad she told me because I wouldn't have thought to do it. I called the main office and had them FedEx my new permits (and IFTA stickers) to the Mississippi terminal because I'd be going straight there after I delivered.
I arrived at the delivery point in southern Mississippi at noon on Thursday. Only twelve hours past the original delivery window (we arranged a later delivery with them because of the delay in picking up the load). I'd delivered there before, so it was much easier this time around because I knew where things were. Took me less than ten minutes to drop and hook.... and the better part of an hour to move my tandems. I finally had to use my belt and a hammer for leverage to get the handle to pull all the way out.
I drove up to our Mississippi terminal (where I'd been told my new load was ready and that my permits/stickers had arrived and they'd put them in my trip envelope in the mailbox). I dropped and hooked and drove about 30 more miles to a truck stop for the night. I didn't have enough hours left on my clock to get all the way through Memphis (and I knew that the rest area just across the border from Tennessee was closed) so I figured that's the best I could do. It'd been a long day.
I have five stops on my current load, all of them terminals. Richmond, Kentucky was the first. I delivered there on Friday night, spent the night at a truck stop just north of there. I drove to Indianapolis early the next morning.... to discover that there isn't anyone at the Indianapolis terminal on Saturdays. In retrospect, it explains why no one answered the phone any of the times I called that morning trying to get ahold of someone to give the my ETA. I drove to a truck stop five miles away and sent a qualcomm to the weekend dispatcher. She replied that they did have Sunday morning hours, so I was able to deliver there this morning.
My next stop was our Columbus, Ohio terminal. I didn't even know we had one there. It isn't on our phone-list card or in our list of terminals in the red binder that we are given in orientation. I sent another qualcomm message to the weekend dispatcher asking for the phone number and address of the Columbus terminal before I left Indy. She replied with the information when I was almost to Columbus. I pulled into a truck stop and called the number several times. No answer. Since I'm going to have to wait until Monday morning (24 hours) to deliver there, I'm turning it into a reset since I've pretty much used all of my 70 hours and wouldn't get any back until Wednesday. I was hoping to deliver in Columbus this morning and then drive north until I ran out of hours and do a reset then.
So I'll deliver in Columbus on Tuesday morning and then head north.
A driver friend of mine texted me and reminded me to go through my permit book and see what expired on January 1st. I'm glad she told me because I wouldn't have thought to do it. I called the main office and had them FedEx my new permits (and IFTA stickers) to the Mississippi terminal because I'd be going straight there after I delivered.
I arrived at the delivery point in southern Mississippi at noon on Thursday. Only twelve hours past the original delivery window (we arranged a later delivery with them because of the delay in picking up the load). I'd delivered there before, so it was much easier this time around because I knew where things were. Took me less than ten minutes to drop and hook.... and the better part of an hour to move my tandems. I finally had to use my belt and a hammer for leverage to get the handle to pull all the way out.
I drove up to our Mississippi terminal (where I'd been told my new load was ready and that my permits/stickers had arrived and they'd put them in my trip envelope in the mailbox). I dropped and hooked and drove about 30 more miles to a truck stop for the night. I didn't have enough hours left on my clock to get all the way through Memphis (and I knew that the rest area just across the border from Tennessee was closed) so I figured that's the best I could do. It'd been a long day.
I have five stops on my current load, all of them terminals. Richmond, Kentucky was the first. I delivered there on Friday night, spent the night at a truck stop just north of there. I drove to Indianapolis early the next morning.... to discover that there isn't anyone at the Indianapolis terminal on Saturdays. In retrospect, it explains why no one answered the phone any of the times I called that morning trying to get ahold of someone to give the my ETA. I drove to a truck stop five miles away and sent a qualcomm to the weekend dispatcher. She replied that they did have Sunday morning hours, so I was able to deliver there this morning.
My next stop was our Columbus, Ohio terminal. I didn't even know we had one there. It isn't on our phone-list card or in our list of terminals in the red binder that we are given in orientation. I sent another qualcomm message to the weekend dispatcher asking for the phone number and address of the Columbus terminal before I left Indy. She replied with the information when I was almost to Columbus. I pulled into a truck stop and called the number several times. No answer. Since I'm going to have to wait until Monday morning (24 hours) to deliver there, I'm turning it into a reset since I've pretty much used all of my 70 hours and wouldn't get any back until Wednesday. I was hoping to deliver in Columbus this morning and then drive north until I ran out of hours and do a reset then.
So I'll deliver in Columbus on Tuesday morning and then head north.
01 January 2013
Total Waste of a New Year's Eve
My sister and her boyfriend drove me back to the terminal Sunday night.
I'd told my company hat I'd be back on-duty at 8am Monday
morning. I'd talked to the dispatcher twice over my hometime because
she kept wanting to confirm that I would, in fact, be back when I said
I'd be.
The load didn't pick up until 6pm, so I didn't have much to do for the day. I rehooked to the same empty trailer I'd brought in. Then I drove to a truck stop that was about half an hour from the pick up and waited there for most of the afternoon. I got to the shipper about an hour before my load was supposed to be ready (I'd called earlier in the day hoping it would be done early, but no one answered the phone or returned the voicemails I'd left). It was ready. It was just supposed to be a drop and hook, then I was supposed to scale the load and adjust the tandems before checking out with the guard at the exit gate.
For once, I didn't have any trouble with my tandems.... both the tandems on my empty and the ones on my loaded trailer slid without any problem. There was another driver from my company picking up the trailer right next to me and we had a horrible time getting his tandems to slide. We spent more than an hour at it. Even after we finally got the pins to retract, the tandems still wouldn't slide. He did eventually get them to move, but the amount of time we spent doing it was ridiculous.
The scale they had weighed each group of axles. I drove across the scale and my load weighed in at over 81,000 pounds. I pulled off to the side and went to talk to the guy at the guard shack. He just mumbled something about how I must have scaled it wrong and told me to do it again.
Now, I could understand how the weight would be wrong if I didn't have my tires all the way on the platform or something. In that case, the load would scale less than it actually weighed. How on earth would I make it weight more? Witchcraft?
I scaled it three more times. The last time, I had the other driver from my company stand next to the platform to tell me when my tires were exactly centered. I then returned to the guardshack with my four scale tickets, each showing a weight greater than 81,000 pounds. I told him that I couldn't take the load as it was and that I'd probably need to rehook to my empty.
I called the on-call dispatch number and left a voicemail asking what to do. I also sent them a QualComm message. When I did manage to connect with them, it took a few minutes to explain that I wasn't overweight on my steer axles, but that the entire truck, regardless of weight distribution, weighed too much. I did get it as balanced as possible on my last scale. I had 12+k on my steers and 34+k each on my drives and tandems.
By this time, it was after 7pm on New Year's Eve. There wasn't any warehouse staff there to take freight off. Nor would there be anyone there tomorrow because it was a holiday. Dispatch told me to take the empty and to qc the area dispatcher to let her know what happened. So I slid the tandems and put the loaded trailer into the bay they asked me to (along with the seal, paperwork and the scale tickets), rehooked to my empty, checked out with the guard and drove to a rest stop about ten miles away. And that was my day. An hour and a half of driving and a few hours at the shipper.
And this afternoon, for a lovely change of pace, I drove five miles to a Love's so I could have hot coffee and wifi.
What will probably end up happening is that by tomorrow morning, they will have taken some freight off the truck and I'll just be taking the same load I came in for. But with two days of wasted time in between.
The load didn't pick up until 6pm, so I didn't have much to do for the day. I rehooked to the same empty trailer I'd brought in. Then I drove to a truck stop that was about half an hour from the pick up and waited there for most of the afternoon. I got to the shipper about an hour before my load was supposed to be ready (I'd called earlier in the day hoping it would be done early, but no one answered the phone or returned the voicemails I'd left). It was ready. It was just supposed to be a drop and hook, then I was supposed to scale the load and adjust the tandems before checking out with the guard at the exit gate.
For once, I didn't have any trouble with my tandems.... both the tandems on my empty and the ones on my loaded trailer slid without any problem. There was another driver from my company picking up the trailer right next to me and we had a horrible time getting his tandems to slide. We spent more than an hour at it. Even after we finally got the pins to retract, the tandems still wouldn't slide. He did eventually get them to move, but the amount of time we spent doing it was ridiculous.
The scale they had weighed each group of axles. I drove across the scale and my load weighed in at over 81,000 pounds. I pulled off to the side and went to talk to the guy at the guard shack. He just mumbled something about how I must have scaled it wrong and told me to do it again.
Now, I could understand how the weight would be wrong if I didn't have my tires all the way on the platform or something. In that case, the load would scale less than it actually weighed. How on earth would I make it weight more? Witchcraft?
I scaled it three more times. The last time, I had the other driver from my company stand next to the platform to tell me when my tires were exactly centered. I then returned to the guardshack with my four scale tickets, each showing a weight greater than 81,000 pounds. I told him that I couldn't take the load as it was and that I'd probably need to rehook to my empty.
I called the on-call dispatch number and left a voicemail asking what to do. I also sent them a QualComm message. When I did manage to connect with them, it took a few minutes to explain that I wasn't overweight on my steer axles, but that the entire truck, regardless of weight distribution, weighed too much. I did get it as balanced as possible on my last scale. I had 12+k on my steers and 34+k each on my drives and tandems.
By this time, it was after 7pm on New Year's Eve. There wasn't any warehouse staff there to take freight off. Nor would there be anyone there tomorrow because it was a holiday. Dispatch told me to take the empty and to qc the area dispatcher to let her know what happened. So I slid the tandems and put the loaded trailer into the bay they asked me to (along with the seal, paperwork and the scale tickets), rehooked to my empty, checked out with the guard and drove to a rest stop about ten miles away. And that was my day. An hour and a half of driving and a few hours at the shipper.
And this afternoon, for a lovely change of pace, I drove five miles to a Love's so I could have hot coffee and wifi.
What will probably end up happening is that by tomorrow morning, they will have taken some freight off the truck and I'll just be taking the same load I came in for. But with two days of wasted time in between.
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