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!

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.

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).

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.

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.

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. 

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.