11/17/07

On a run with my trainer last summer, we were dispatched from Laredo to California and given a ton of time to get there. I wanted to run hard, try to get rid of it early, and grab another load. My trainer decided we would go a few hundred miles a day and take it easy. I was less than thrilled, but it was his truck so that was just life.

This run is a drop/hook at ConWay, so I probably could be getting on the board with an empty right about now. But I'm not. Not even close actually. So what's the difference? I don't know. I was making 26 cents a mile as a trainee. My bank account was running low, having taken a month off to go to CDL school. The whole thing was new and exciting. I was eager to run. Fast forward a year and a half...

I woke up around 2:30 this morning and just wasn't in the mood to drive, so I hung out and played on my computer for a while. Then, I still didn't feel like driving, so I went in and had some breakfast. Eventually I got going around 7am. I was rolling across I-80 and trying to think of a spot in Pennsylvania where I would have fast enough internet access to watch football. Nothing came to mind, so I stopped in at the Sapp Brothers in Clearfield. The Sapp truck stops out west have free fast wi-fi service, so I was hoping to find the same here. And I did, so I stayed and watched football. It was my intention to drive for at least six or seven hours today, but I drove about half that.

Apparently I got hoodwinked this week, as Texas had a bye. Yeah, fool me once... Not to be deterred, I turned my sights south. Good old Seminole football didn't let me down

So, after seeing my beloved 'Noles bring home a victory, I decided to go ahead and root for Navy's strength of schedule. That team from Indiana came through with a decent performance, so good for the Middies.

Now here I sit. I'm around 440 miles from where I need to make this drop. I guess I'll just work for eight hours tomorrow and get rid of it. I have some movies that I've been meaning to watch and I need to get some software issues worked out, so I'll stay here tonight and take advantage of the fast connection. Here's where I don't think I'm officially a truck driver yet. I was dispatched to arrive by 5am Monday, but it was well within my ability to be there by Saturday night. My own laziness and failure to prioritize will have me arriving Sunday evening. The correct thing to do, when I officially become a truck driver, is apparently to bitch about the slow dispatch and the fact that I didn't make much money this weekend. That's just not the way I see it though. Oh well, maybe I'll get to that point someday... Who cares really?

11/16/07

Yep, I slept for a good twenty minutes or so before my alarm went off this morning. Once I got my load and headed east, I was cool for a few hours and then decided to pull off for a little break. That little break has apparently turned into a big break, so I'll hang out here for a while I guess. Looking over my route, I can push hard tomorrow and probably get to the ConWay in Rhode Island. Or I can take it easy tomorrow and finish off the run Sunday morning. I don't know how I'll be feeling tomorrow, so I guess having the flexibility is a good thing.

So... old CFI rolled out a new pay package yesterday. Mass hysteria ensued, predictably. Have you ever seen those football mid-season pages in the sports section, breaking down each element of a team and assigning a grade? Well, the New York Times approached me (I'm completely making this up.) and asked me to do one of those breakdowns on CFI's new pay package. I said no way. I told them I have a juggernaut of a weblog, getting literally dozens of hits a day. I'm in more households than A Diary of seed germination. I owe it to the loyal masses of readers to provide a breakdown here. Enjoy:

Pay Scale: C
The pay for drivers with pets will be unchanged, while drivers without pets will get a penny raise. Those with pets can earn what is being called a raise, but I see as more of a fuel bonus, by maintaining a set mpg standard on a three-month rolling basis. In addition, we'll continue to be paid at the time of dispatch, but will be paid weekly instead of semi-monthly.
My Take: Whatever. The pay scale was so-so before, and it will be so-so after. Plenty of companies pay more cpm than CFI. We get practical miles, which accounts for some of the difference, and we get pretty consistent miles month-to-month, which accounts for some more of the difference. If I earn a decent living now, I'm not going to join the masses who are crying about the fact that they'll be earning another hundred bucks or so every month. The reason I graded this relatively low is that CFI had an opportunity to create a point of distinction from the larger carriers here by implementing an aggressive pay scale. They failed miserably. The explanations reek of bullshit, as far as I'm concerned. We're being told that drivers overwhelmingly preferred bigger sleepers in lieu of higher pay. In my opinion, that's a lie. The news for prospective new drivers is much better though, as the bulk of wage increases are being directed to new CDL holders who go through the training process. The first-year pay scale has been hiked up significantly from its current schedule.

Ancillary Pay: C-
Layover pay - unchanged. Stop pay - a flat $35 in place of the graduating scale (starting with $22.50) that we currently receive. New York pay - still $50 for delivering in the five boroughs, but nothing for picking up in the five boroughs. Holiday pay - unchanged. Border pay - unchanged. Driver unload/assist pay - unchanged. Detention - $12 per hour after three consecutive hours, replacing the mysterious "you get a quarter of what we collect" plan. Northeast pay - unchanged. Hazmat pay - unchanged. (Priority teams get a reimbursement for the cost of the hazmat endorsement, while others get 1/2 reimbursement.) Safety bonus - unchanged. Fuel bonus - gone.
My take: Where's the beef? We've been told, on a consistent basis, that we would be getting "the best of both worlds" when it came to this "blended" pay package. The stuff that was good at ConWay would be adopted, while the stuff that was better at CFI would be maintained. It looks to me like a few of CFI's scales have been tweaked, and the ConWay pay structure was discarded completely. Our layover pay is a pathetic program. Big swing and a miss on that one. ConWay's was perhaps a little too generous, but this was an opportunity to update the scale and find some middle ground. Big failure there. Our stop pay, based on my own experience, will be an improvement over the current system. Most multi-stop loads only have one or two extra stops, so the pay will be higher on those. New York pay is something that I've never received, so I have no idea how often it's paid. On the face of it though, this policy is asinine. If it's a pain in the ass to take a load into NYC, and thus worthy of extra compensation, why in the hell would going in to pick up a load be any different? Dumb. Holidays, border pay, unload pay - whatever. They're good enough I guess. Detention is one that I'll have to wait and see about. I'm not sure if that means that three hours at a dock is worth $36 or it's just $12 after the third hour and the first three are free. Further to that, the current system would occasionally pay a bunch of money for no particular reason, while often paying nothing for the longest delays. If it is actually a matter of just getting paid, without jumping through hoops, I think that will be an improvement. The half reimbursement for hazmat came with another dumbass explanation, so again I say whatever. Maybe we only have to haul the loads halfway, then someone else will finish the run for us. Dumb. The safety bonus is fine. The fuel bonus was a joke, and they have confirmed as much by eliminating it. They missed the boat in a huge way by failing to adopt an aggressive program here. Fuel costs are rising and, if they would step up to the plate and split cost savings with the drivers, the drivers would be a lot more inclined to cut back fuel consumption aggressively. This shit is learned in freshman business classes or the first year or two of actually running a business in the real world. I wonder what these guys are thinking sometimes. Much like the pay scale, this stuff is all well enough as far as I'm concerned, but it represents another missed opportunity to stand out as a great place for drivers to work.

Benefits: Incomplete
I've heard that a flex spending plan is being implemented, and that we'll be moving to T. Rowe Price, ConWay's 401(k) administrator. Vacation is the same, hometime is the same, and the rider policy is the same. I don't know enough about the differing health plans to really delve much deeper.
My Take: That stuff is 100% irrelevant to me. I happen to be bulletproof. As such, I have no need to put aside money for doctor's visits or stuff like that. I won't be surprised at all if my premiums go up again, so I can provide healthcare for someone's kid or an overweight smoker with heart problems. In terms of retirement, I invest on my own since it seems unlikely I would ever be around long enough to see any benefit from the company's 401(k) plan. Even if I were in CFI's plan, the name on the mutual fund is just a name. Pick three large cap funds out of a hat and get back to me in twenty years. As long as their expense ratios are in the same ballpark, they'll be worth roughly the same amount, regardless of the company that sold them. About the only thing that certainly sounds good here is that we can still bank our hometime indefinitely. It is my understanding that ConWay Truckload did not allow this practice. I enjoy knowing that, if I chose to do so, I could go home tomorrow for a month and nobody would have a thing to say about it.

Operational Changes: D+
Trucks governed at 65mph. Freightliner Cascadias, Kenworth T-660's, and Kenworth T-2000's, all with condo sleepers.
My Take: People will be quick to spout a bunch of bullshit numbers regarding how much pay we'll lose by driving slower trucks. They are way off base with the fantastical claims they make. In reality, we will occasionally lose a few bucks here and there. On long stretches of highway where the speed limit is between 65mph and 70mph, it might take us an extra few hours to reach a destination. That doesn't mean you lose a certain percentage of your pay every day, regardless of what the Chicken Littles would have you believe. It means that, eight days later, you might have five hours left on your 70 hour clock when it could have been eight or nine hours. Again though, there can't be a supposition that you automatically lose money. Perhaps you miss out on a 450 mile load because you don't have the hours, and you've lost money as a result of the slower truck. Or perhaps the only load available is 200 miles and you're not affected at all. Nobody can really say for sure, even if they did figure out how to work a calculator this week. The real problem is much like the problems with every other part of this analysis - CFI is slowly but surely eliminating any reason for people to think they're any different from any other company out there. It's a competitive market and being just another face in the crowd can be a problem. Apparently they've cast their lot with the new student program (which is quite good for people interested in getting started), so maybe they don't care whether or not the more experienced (read: expensive) drivers start leaving. The bigger sleeper apparently means that fat people will be happy. I climb in the bunk to sleep. I have no idea what other people are doing back there, but the fact that this is even given as an excuse for the small pay raise is annoying to me. Furthermore, the trucks will be heavier and fuel mileage will suffer, so any hope of seeing the 65mph thing go by the wayside is probably gone.

Overall: D
Since this merger was announced, we've been told that "a great driving job just got better." We have seen exactly zero improvements in operational efficiency as we go about our daily lives, so many of us looked forward to this new pay package (with its "best of both worlds" promises) as the first sign of how our jobs would be improved. A penny a mile, with a slower truck, might mean another thousand bucks a year or so. That's fine, but nobody will be doing any cartwheels over it. A few stops here and there, with some detention pay here and there, could mean another few hundred bucks a year. That's fine too. For that, we're being relegated to 65mph roadblock status, with no extra horsepower for hills and merging and traffic jams and all the rest of it. I'll personally give it some time and see how my life is affected, but it sounds like many of my colleagues don't intend to wait and see.

So I guess I'll try to get some rest and then get cracking after midnight. That way, even if I do somehow feel motivated to drive all the way through, I'll be done before the football games get into full swing. So, it looks like Greg wins this week's fan poll by a whopping 1-0 margin. I did my due diligence and searched for a couple of corroborating reasons to root for Texas this week. Looks like I found them:

HOOK 'EM HORNS!

So who do we play this week, anyway? I should warn you fellow Texas fans though, I'm bad luck as a fan this year.

11/15/07

Dude. No, seriously. Dude. I feel like I had a football game last night. The morning's damage assessment only showed one visible bruise on my lower back and another on my left elbow, but I'm pretty sore all over. I even got my shoulders a good workout lifting the people who wanted to do a little surfing. I guess I just need to do a better job of staying in shape.

I called in this morning to report for duty and have them put me on the ready board. The dispatcher in Taylor told me that he would put me on the board, but the computers were down. So I went back to bed for a while.

I headed up to the yard around 10am and got situated in my truck. Around 11:30, the CFI website finally let me log in and I saw that I was #1 on the board. That was welcome news, as it meant there would be a good chance I would get out of town without one of those late pickups and overnight runs. At 12:30, a guy came out to my truck and handed me printed directions to three different places. Apparently I was to make three pickups and then my drop, all today. The first pickup was scheduled for, let's see... 9am. Nice. The phrase "haul ass" came up in our brief chat, so I grabbed an empty and took off for stop #1.

Halfway there, I got a message indicating that stop #1 had no freight for me, so I was to head for stop #2. At that point I had only gone a mile off the direct route to stop#2, so it wasn't a big deal in that sense. Of more concern to me was the fact that I get paid an extra $52.50 for a 4-stop load, but only $22.50 for a 3-stop load. Given the pay situation this month, I wasn't too thrilled about losing the other $30. When I logged in to my account later though, I saw that I got paid for all of the miles and stops, including the stop that I didn't make. Excellent.

On the way down I-69 to my drop, I got a pre-plan for a load picking up in Fremont, Indiana tomorrow morning. Fremont usually means ConWay, but this one said it was going to a ConWay terminal in Pennsylvania... 534 miles away... for Monday morning. Bogus.

Since my route would be straight across the turnpikes, and I would have three days to drive one day's miles, I was going to have some time to kill. I could stop outside Toledo tomorrow and do whatever I wanted to do, so I decided to call up a friend of mine and see if he wanted to head to the football game this weekend. I'm officially retired as a Notre Dame fan for the rest of the season, but I could be a Navy fan and root for Notre Dame to help Navy's strength of schedule, right? Work with me here.

Anyhow, I got a message a short time later indicating that I would be going to Providence, Rhode Island instead of Pennsylvania. That run will be a little over 800 miles, so I guess I'll just take it easy heading east for a few days and skip the stopoff in Toledo. I could still have pulled it off, but that would mean some hard driving from Saturday night to Monday morning. My first few days back on the road, it's usually better to take it a little easy until I get settled back into my driving routine. So, no football game for me. Rhode Island will be state #48 on this little joyride of mine though, so that's pretty cool.

I'll have trouble sleeping tonight, having been on my juvenile schedule for the past several days. The good news is that I can stop and rest, pretty much whenever I feel like it, for the next few days.

The miles I got today, combined with the stop pay, should be enough to get my gross pay over $1,100 for the paycheck (depending on how many NE miles I had). That's pretty lousy but, considering how much time I wound up spending at home and the way things were going until that point, it's better than I thought it would be.

11/14/07

I don't know if adrenaline actually has a smell, but if it did I'm pretty sure it would be equal parts sweat, cheap perfume, whiskey, and beer. The boys from Boston put on a hell of a performance for the local hooligans. The crowd was a lot more diverse than usual this time around, most likely on acount of the exposure the band got by appearing on the soundtrack for The Departed. I managed to hang in for the entire show, but my buddy (who is two years younger than I am) had to take a few breaks. There was a 400-pounder down in the pit and, when he decided we were moving right or left, we all moved right or left. Then a bunch of skinheads with anger management issues moved in about halfway through the show, definitely dialing up the aggression level. In any event, the concert was a blast and well worth the trip home. I lost a shoe as I climbed up on the stage for the finale, but I managed to get it back after the show. Beauty.

So, I have to report for duty by 7:30am tomorrow. Maybe I can net one more nice run before the pay period closes out. It would be good to ease some of the sting from this pitiful pay period, but I guess I'll have to wait and see.

11/13/07

The day started off pretty slowly... and it never really picked up from there. I should have done this, I should have done that, but what did I really do? Not much, actually.

I had lunch with an old friend, exchanged some gifts since I won't be around for Christmas, and then took a nap. Then I got up, watched a movie, and took another nap. Out tonight, the beers were cheap and plentiful but the women weren't on my wavelength. Bummer man. Additionally, the Pistons and Red Wings lost. Damn it. That's just the way it goes, I guess.

Here's where things got far better than expected. Did I study for the hazmat test? Of course not. Did I respond to the best job offers I've heard lately? Hell no. Did I, in point of fact, do anything that I should have done tonight? Get serious. I wound up at Screwy Louie's with a friend of mine and, after concluding that the hot bartender was a lesbian, settled in on the DirecTV screensaver. After fifteen minutes of futility our patience was rewarded. The icon hit squarely in the corner of the screen, not once but twice. For those of you who don't know, this is akin to a real photo of the Yeti. You're Goddamned right, I saw the icon hit the corner squarely twice tonight. A thousand times it might hit within a half inch of the corner, but two seperate times tonight it hit squarely on the button.

Now I'm pretty drunk and Smokey and the Bandit is on TV, so I'm perfectly content with life. Pathetic, I know.

11/12/07

Whole lotta boredom today. My phone is apparently dead, so I ordered a new one. Here's hoping the replacement arrives before I have to leave town again. I'm aiming to get out early Thursday, jamming one last dispatch onto this paycheck, as long as I'm not too worn out from Wednesday night's festivities.

11/11/07

I got over to Mom's house and wrapped the Christmas presents. That's pretty cool. Just realized my phone has been off for three days. I really hadn't noticed, so I guess that's pretty cool. When I tried to charge my phone, I got no response. So now I'm debating whether or not to buy a new one. This model has been discontinued, but it's the best phone I've ever had. I guess I'll try to get it fixed. Life at home is full of this mundane yet complicated bullshit. It's pretty boring on the road, but at least I'm moving and accomplishing something.