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.

7/17/07

Pretty uneventful day really. I made it just south of Fort Wayne before I got tired and needed a nap. After a quick rest, I finished off the run into Southern Illinois. About halfway down I got a pre-plan for my next load. I like pre-plans, so I was feeling pretty good until I realized that it's a load picking up tomorrow, fifty miles away from today's delivery. I wasn't scheduled to get down here until 11pm tonight, so I suppose that makes sense. The funny thing is that, without a pre-plan, I probably would have gotten something sooner since I arrived seven hours early, but that's life I guess. I'm not about to start complaining about pre-plans.

The conversations surrounding my company's upcoming sale are getting to be pretty comical. Most of us just go about our business and let the suits do what suits do, but a few people are absolutely convinced that they're getting screwed. They can't really say why, but they're sure of it.

I got a call from a local outfit close to home today, but I couldn't really nail them down regarding pay. As much as people like to think local and LTL drivers have it made, in reality most of them earn less money than I do and deal with more hassles in the process. The criticisms of OTR jobs are widely known, but the fact that we march to our own beat and nobody really bothers us tends to be grossly underrated. Sure we don't get paid for waiting at a dock, but I usually watch a DVD or whatever while I'm there. I'm pretty sure most jobs don't pay you for watching movies, so I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

The political conversation today is bordering on the absurd. "If you don't give us what we want, we'll make everybody stay at the Capitol all night!" Hilarious. It would be amazing if the elected politicians actually tried to accomplish something once in a while.

Now I guess it's time to grab some grub and listen to the Tigers. Tomorrow looks to be a pretty long day, so I'll try to get a decent night's sleep after the game.

7/16/07

Well, as expected, the truck was ready first thing this morning when I called the dealership. I picked it up and called the Taylor terminal to have them put me on the ready board. I was told that there were four trucks ahead of me, so I let the dispatcher know that I was going to come by my apartment and grab some laundry and things. I told them to give me a call when my turn came up. When I got home, I signed in to the web portal and found that I was actually #10 on the board. I'm not sure where the other five trucks came from, but whatever. In reality I was hoping my truck wasn't ready yet because I have been pretty tired all day. Being a little further down the list gave me more time to rest.

I got to choose from a few loads when my turn came up, so I took one picking up right down the street from our terminal late tonight and then delivering in Nashville, Illinois tomorrow night. It's a drop/hook delivery, so I can arrive early and get rid of the load without waiting if I want to. Whenever I've been home for a while, I tend to get tired after only a few hours on the road. The fact that my scheduled arrival isn't until tomorrow night means I can pull over and sleep if necessary. That flexibility was the main reason I chose this run. Plus the 512 miles for my first day back on the job is a pretty solid day's work.

When I read my e-mail this morning, there was an announcement that many would consider a bombshell, although it sounds to me like it shouldn't have been a huge surprise. According to a press release CFI is going to be acquired by ConWay this fall. ConWay is another trucking company that focuses less on long-haul truckload operations and more on shorter less-than-truckload operations. They have a small, rather unprofitable, truckload division that will now be folded into CFI's outfit. In exchange, the entire CFI operation will fall under the ConWay umbrella.

What does this mean for OTR drivers like me? Nothing really. That's the humorous part about the hysteria surrounding this type of announcement. We perform an unskilled job. We pick up freight at point A and drop it off at point B. As long as the companies involved continue to move freight from A to B, we'll continue to pull it. "Will we lose the family atmosphere?" Who gives a damn? "What will the logo on the trucks be?" Who gives a damn? "Will we have to change the way we run in bad weather?" Who gives a damn? "Will we get more days off / higher pay / better benefits?" Who gives a damn? "Will we have to wear uniforms?" Who gives a damn? If I were ever that concerned about any of these things, I would leave my employer and go in search of a company that offered what I was seeking. Freedom is a beautiful thing.

I listened to the conference call held for the investment bankers. I was struck at just how unprepared the people hosting the call appeared to be. Several questions were met with contradictory answers. Several others were swept aside. The only answers that made any sense were not really the types that investment bankers want to hear. The financial guys were noticeably unimpressed, as they should have been. Leaving the financial end aside, some potential positives, as far as the driving job goes, seemed to make a lot of sense to me:

1. We'll have access to several hundred of ConWay's locations across the country. The extra real estate is a huge help to OTR drivers. We'll never be far from a place to rest, a place to fuel, a place to shower, a place to drop off or pick up a load, a place to scale a load, or a place to eat.
2. We'll have priority status with respect to another ConWay division, Menlo Logistics. When Menlo has a customer in need of service from point to point, that service can be provided by CFI trucks first if they are available. More pre-planning and less sitting are always good things.
3. The nature of ConWay's terminal network is such that several new dedicated lanes are likely to be established. On a given day there is quite a bit of freight being shipped from one ConWay terminal, past other Conway terminals, and on to a final ConWay terminal. ConWay typically farms out most of this kind of work since they don't have many truckload drivers. CFI has been the largest provider of these services. It doesn't seem to be a huge leap that some CFI drivers will soon be able to take the same runs every day or every other day, relaying them at outlying terminals and ending up back at a terminal near their homes.
4. Many OTR drivers, after acquiring the necessary experience, like to move into LTL or local positions. One of the most reputable companies providing these positions has been ConWay Freight. Now, a CFI driver hoping to gain one of these positions will not be an outsider, but rather an inside hire. This seems like a benefit to me.
5. Insurance is an issue for a lot of drivers. It really doesn't matter to me because I am bulletproof, but some people like to whine about 'benefits' even though they have no clue what they're whining about. Because CFI is a relatively small company, the benefit options are limited and CHEAP. The cheap part is what I like because, as I said, I'm bulletproof. Guys like me pay our insurance premiums so the sickly people of the world can save money on healthcare. The population at large is mostly ignorant about how insurance works, but they sure love to bitch about it when things don't go their way. As part of a larger company, the insurance options should spread the risk more thinly and keep premium costs down for those of us who don't care whether or not we can bilk $2 million from our plan.

There are some negatives that will certainly crop up, but those are likely to affect office personnel and maintenance personnel more than drivers. The two companies are holding onto the spin that any redundancies will be offset by growth opportunities but that's just stupid. You don't merge two companies without streamlining the combined company in the process. To do so would be irresponsible to shareholders. The fact that the execs were unprepared for some pretty simple questions during today's conference call tells me that they are really not as prepared for a $750 million transaction as they should be.

One of my pet theories that I have been developing over the past several weeks and months is related to the open border issue. I have listened to our CEO, Herb Schmidt, as he's done radio interviews professing that CFI is against an open border. I assumed that the reason was CFI's smaller size in the truckload marketplace and their fear of being undercut by the bigger carriers. The real story became more clear to me today. What follows is an unsubstantiated hypothesis formed solely in my own mind. It has not received feedback nor input from anyone at my company or any other company for that matter. I'll say what I have to say, but I don't want to give the impression that I have any information other than what I have observed.

• The NAFTA treaty was formed to provide North America with open-bordered trade in various forms. It is opposed by unions who know their members in the U.S. are overpaid. It is opposed by small businesses who are not positioned to take advantage of open borders the way that big businesses are. It is supported by the bigger businesses that stand to become much more profitable through the movement of jobs to cheaper markets.
• The recently debated pilot program to allow 150 Mexican trucks on our roads is much ado about nothing. If people really thought the trucks would be deemed unsafe by our standards, they would welcome a small number and then shout from the rooftops after those trucks had been inspected. Instead the opponents of the plan want to decry the lack of safety before the Mexican firms have even had a chance. 150 trucks added to America's highways, when the industry points to a shortage of several thousand trucks a year, would do little more than slightly alleviate a growing problem. The issue is a selfish one, just like every other issue pitting one industry against a growing nation's interests.
• Investment analysts have long pointed to two companies as the best plays in the trucking industry for those looking to seize upon the adoption of NAFTA - Celadon and... that's right, CFI. Until today I didn't know just how deeply entrenched CFI had become in Mexican freight, but during the conference call it was learned that 40% of CFI's revenue is derived from freight either going to Mexico or coming from Mexico. So, if Mexican companies no longer had to dump their northbound freight at the border and pick up their southbound freight at the border, who stands to lose the most? A company doing very little international business or a company doing a lot of international business? Hmm...
• ConWay owns Menlo Logistics, a company with a strong base in the worldwide logistics business. Their job is to, in their own words, "optimize the distribution of freight and freight-flow information from manufacturer to consumer." As manufacturers become more prevalent in Mexico, the process of getting their goods to the service-based American consumer will be very lucrative. With CFI's hooks in the border locations and Menlo's worldwide reach, the new ConWay Truckload will be positioned to employ Mexican drivers to pick up the slack and keep the megacarriers and smaller Mexican carriers from taking too big a bite out of CFI's international freight. CFI, on its own, wasn't big enough to leverage Mexican shippers if cheaper alternatives presented themselves. The only way to prevent cheaper alternatives from presenting themselves was to keep the border under wraps. I suspect that CFI, while not actively promoting the open border, won't be taking as hard a line against it as they had to before.

Well kids, I guess that's enough of Godfather's Black Helicopter Corporate Theatre for today. I think I'll head out for some dinner and take a nap before it's time to hit the road.

7/15/07

Well, the laundry is done, the bills are paid, the phone calls and e-mails have been handled, so I should be ready to roll tomorrow morning. Still, there's always that sneaking suspicion that I've overlooked something.

Mom called this afternoon to say she was cooking Mexican food. That sounded good to me, so I headed over and watched the Tigers put a hurting on Seattle while we enjoyed a nice meal. Now I'll polish off the last of my liquid sandwiches before I head back to work.

I'll have to call the KW dealer in the morning to make sure the truck is ready, but they're usually pretty good about getting me on my way. So, one more night to kill...

Slainte!