7/18/07

Pretty smooth day today, so that's always nice. I started off around 9am and headed over to my pick-up. I had to make a stop at a rest area along the way when it occurred to me that I hadn't swept out my trailer since picking it up yesterday. Whenever we drop an empty at Procter & Gamble, we have to make sure it's clean and dry. No big deal, only took a few minutes.

When I got the bills from the security guard, I took a look at the weight of the load I would be picking up. I knew I would be running some hills in Missouri, so a light load would have been nice. 7,800 pounds. Groovy. Then, when I hooked to my trailer, it sure didn't feel like 7,800 pounds. I took a second look and realized that there were two bills. Combined, their weight was 44,000 pounds. Damn.

The weight can make the hills tedious, but the governors that companies put on these trucks only make it worse. Coming through the area south of St. Louis I found myself behind a Schneider driver and a JB Hunt driver. Both of those companies govern their trucks at 65mph. The JB Hunt truck was apparently lighter than the Schneider, so he tried to pass going up a hill. The problem was that he wasn't much lighter so he couldn't get past the Schneider on the way up. Then, coming down, the Schneider would pull back ahead. Instead of one or the other just realizing that they were both going the same speed and falling back in line, these two played cat and mouse up and down the hills for ten miles. Freaking obnoxious.

My truck is governed at 70mph, so if one of them would have just let the other pull ahead I could have gone around. My company has asked us to cruise at 65mph in order to conserve fuel, but in some cases I take a little liberty with the extra horsepower. Hauling 44,000 pounds up and down hills is one of those cases. Since the speed limit in Missouri is 70mph, I was trying to maintain that speed so my momentum could carry me further up the hills before I would have to downshift. When you are losing speed due to an incline, it's not exactly a straight-line equation. You might hit a hill at 70mph and, by the time you crest the hill, you're going 55mph and have downshifted one gear. If you hit the same hill at 65mph, you may very well end up going over the top at 42mph and have dropped three gears. These jagoff drivers left me shifting up and shifting down and flooring the gas and riding the brakes and just not enjoying the ride a whole lot. C'est la vie.

I caught a conference call with my company's CEO on the way through Missouri. He mostly re-stated some of the things he's already been saying about our upcoming merger, but he did address one interesting additional topic. On the subject of cross-border trucking, CFI has consistently been opposed to plans to allow Mexican trucks on American highways. I had speculated that, once we join the larger ConWay firm, CFI's interests may shift to the point that cross-border trucking becomes more of a positive. Mr. Schmidt told us that, after some conversation, ConWay has changed its stance and adopted CFI's position of opposition to the program. Very interesting. Essentially our CEO has placed the well-being and security of his drivers above the potential for greater returns to his new shareholders. That's a rarity in today's world. I'm not entirely sure it's the correct business approach, but it was interesting nonetheless.

I got into Mississippi tonight and I'm currently about 65 miles from tomorrow's drop. I had time to make it all the way, but the customer won't unload me early and they don't allow overnight parking. I'm running some US highways that I've never seen before and I couldn't find any nearby truckstops in my directory. When I saw a gas station with some available parking I decided to call it a night rather than roll further down the road and find that I had nowhere to rest.

Lately the radio has been devoid of interesting conversation, so tonight was fairly refreshing. Rusty Humphries was really on his game. The dominant topic was a recent appearance by Michelle Obama before a group of women. The sound clips were absolutely hilarious when you considered their context, and Rusty was giving it a pretty good dose of his own humor. Apparently Mrs. Obama was lamenting the fact that women in America have an absolutely awful life and we need her husband to make the government take care of everything. I'm not a political preacher, so I don't intend to get into the substance of the topic, but the episode was quite entertaining.

Another day, another trucking recruiter. When I acquired my NASD Series 7 license to become a stockbroker, I became a sought-after commodity in the financial world. I regularly received unsolicited job offers from people who knew nothing about me. They knew I had the license and that put me into a select group. Apparently a CDL license has a similar effect. I have contacted a few companies for information over the course of time. More than anything I like to satisfy my curiosity about what is out there, but if another company had the ideal package to offer me I would consider making a move from my current job. If I could earn a nice living and be able to play baseball in the summer, I might like that better than what I'm doing now. The thing is that I haven't contacted many people and the ones that I have contacted have consistently reinforced the fact that my current job is better than most of what is out there. I now get calls and e-mails from companies in which I have never expressed an interest. Schneider sent me an e-mail today. I have no desire to speak with them, but maybe I should reply and tell them to educate their drivers about running a truck governed below the speed limit.