Basically the only issue to address today was the routing/permit situation with respect to Vermont. Since I would be the one to get a ticket, I wasn't too excited about taking someone's word for it, so I did some more searching and came up with an answer. If you're an OTR driver, you might want to take a second and download this PDF from the State of Vermont. It could come in handy some time in the future. That map is a hell of a lot more concise than their published rules that I saw before. I'm taking red routes tomorrow, so I'm all good. That trip that I took last year was in fact quite illegal, but it ain't a crime if you don't get caught.
Today took me up and out of Ohio, then across and onto the New York Thruway. By the time I got to the service area by Syracuse, I was ready for dinner. At that point I had covered well over half the miles to my final destination, so I'm calling this place home for the night.
I'll head up to Saint Alban's tomorrow and get unloaded at 11pm, then hope like hell that there's a parking spot for me at the local truck stop. Considering the way the parking lots have looked all weekend, I think I'll be okay.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
7/4/08
Yes. Yes. Yes! The perfect storm. Actually, it wasn't much of a storm at all, but it was a little rainy and a lot cloudy. This kept the sun from heating up my truck and allowed me to sleep all morning long. Damn, I needed that.
I hung around the yard all day and waited for my relay to arrive. The other driver rolled in around 8pm, so I did get a little bit of a head start on my trip. I rolled up to the T/A in Seville (~120 miles), so I'll have a couple of easy days this weekend. As always on a holiday, the truck stop had plenty of parking for me and the traffic was really light. I'll bet that the cops in Ohio get double time on holidays though, because the freeway was crawling with them.
I received a message as I was rolling that has me a little perplexed. It says that I don't need a Vermont permit to deliver to my consignee, but that I should stay on the interstates as long as possible. What exactly does that mean? The customer is right off the interstate, so it's theoretically possible for me to take interstates all the way. Of course, this would add 200 miles to my trip. I'll drive it that way if I need to, but then they'll have to pay me accordingly. I took a look at some Vermont website last night and I thought my intended route was fine. Now I don't know. I guess I'll call tomorrow and see what I can find out. Saturday on a holiday weekend... probably not much.
I had a few snarky words ready to write today, for some of the folks who now find it fashionable to talk down our country every time they get a chance. That really would miss the point of today though, so I'm just going to wish everyone a happy Independence Day and wish the country that I love a happy birthday. I know that I wouldn't trade my life in this country for anything. I would hate to imagine a world in which the United States, imperfect as we may be, had never come to exist.
I hung around the yard all day and waited for my relay to arrive. The other driver rolled in around 8pm, so I did get a little bit of a head start on my trip. I rolled up to the T/A in Seville (~120 miles), so I'll have a couple of easy days this weekend. As always on a holiday, the truck stop had plenty of parking for me and the traffic was really light. I'll bet that the cops in Ohio get double time on holidays though, because the freeway was crawling with them.
I received a message as I was rolling that has me a little perplexed. It says that I don't need a Vermont permit to deliver to my consignee, but that I should stay on the interstates as long as possible. What exactly does that mean? The customer is right off the interstate, so it's theoretically possible for me to take interstates all the way. Of course, this would add 200 miles to my trip. I'll drive it that way if I need to, but then they'll have to pay me accordingly. I took a look at some Vermont website last night and I thought my intended route was fine. Now I don't know. I guess I'll call tomorrow and see what I can find out. Saturday on a holiday weekend... probably not much.
I had a few snarky words ready to write today, for some of the folks who now find it fashionable to talk down our country every time they get a chance. That really would miss the point of today though, so I'm just going to wish everyone a happy Independence Day and wish the country that I love a happy birthday. I know that I wouldn't trade my life in this country for anything. I would hate to imagine a world in which the United States, imperfect as we may be, had never come to exist.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
7/3/08
Well that was a rather long and somewhat eventful day.
4am delivery... grocery warehouse... lumpers... blah. That generally sucks and I can't say that this morning was much of an exception. The last time I had to pay a lumper at the end of a pay period, they held over the Comcheck charge until the next pay period, when the reimbursement hit. If that happens again, I guess that would be nice. Sixty bucks is sixty bucks.
From the grocery warehouse, I headed north to Romeoville for my next pickup. I checked in and started chatting with another CTL driver who got there ahead of me. It was the usual small talk about where we had been and where we were headed. I was headed to Magnolia, Texas. The guy told me, "That's where I live," and rolled his eyes. I assumed that he meant that he was from the Houston area. Next he pulled out his driver's license and I had to chuckle - Magnolia, Texas. No shit.
So, seeing as the load delivers on Tuesday and I was going to be sitting in a truck stop for two or three days, I told him that he could call his fleet manager and see if he could get my load, if he wanted to do that. I didn't know where he was headed at that point, but why not give the guy a chance to visit with the family for a couple days on the holiday weekend? He told me that he had a 300-something mile run and that I probably didn't want that. Oh hell, why not? Maybe some day someone may do the same for me. He called his fleet manager, who told him that I would have to run it by my fleet manager before they could change our assignments. Since I would be the one essentially losing 700 miles of pay, she couldn't make the switch unilaterally. I called and gave my fleet manager the rundown. I don't know exactly how all of that load assigning works, but he took care of it and I wound up with a load dropping at our yard in Columbus, Ohio.
We spent the whole morning and the better part of the afternoon waiting to get loaded. At one point I hadn't felt my trailer shake for a while, so I headed inside. The lady told me that they had one more pallet to load. I hung around inside for a while and never heard anything. About a half hour later, I asked her again what was my status. She repeated the line about one more pallet. I told her that I was going out to my truck and that they could come and get me when I was ready to roll. Outside, there were about twenty hispanic lads playing soccer in the parking lot. Obviously it was lunch time at the warehouse. In what I'm sure is just a coincidence, as soon as their lunch/soccer break was over I got my last pallet.
I wasn't quite sure how the decision to give up a 1,055 mile run was going to play out. Generally speaking, it's probably not smart to give up miles on a holiday weekend. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time though. Once I headed east, and my last fifteen miles on I-80 took over an hour, I was vehemently cursing the entire population of Magnolia, Texas. Then, as I say from time to time, things took a turn...
The traffic cleared up, I finally found some good music on the radio, and the planners in Joplin kept their batting average for this week at a cool 1.000 . I received a pre-plan for a load leaving Columbus tomorrow and going to Saint Albans, Vermont. That more than makes up the 700 miles that I gave up, plus adds some northeast pay to the mix. Better still, the delivery in Vermont is Sunday night, as opposed to Tuesday morning in Texas. That gets me another potential day of work on Monday. I also won't have to spend day after day idling my truck to stay cool over the weekend, since things have been rather pleasant in the evenings up north lately. So I guess the moral is that doing the right thing can work out for the best sometimes. See there, I'm a role model! Haha, funny, I know.
The drive across to Columbus was pretty good once I got clear of that mess in northern Indiana. The biggest challenge was the fact that I was getting tired, and fast. I thought about calling to see if I could just drop in Columbus tomorrow morning, but after a pit stop and a bite to eat I caught a second wind and finished off the run with no problem.
My Vermont run is supposed to be here tomorrow by 9pm. If it shows up early, I guess I'll head out for a few hours tomorrow. Hell, I might drive for a while even if it's here at 9pm. The way my sleep has been going lately, I may very well be wide awake for a while after that.
I just spent more time planning this route than I think I've spent on any ten routes combined. Getting to Saint Albans is sort of a pain in the ass. I punched the route into three different programs and each one talked about taking a ferry into Vermont. For starters, I don't intend to take a ferry. I'm sure that it's no big deal, but it sounds like just one more hassle that I can do without. Then there's the mileage. My paid 'practical' miles are something like 730. Truckmiles.com says 726 miles, but that involves about 200 different roads (plus the ferry). No thanks. Rand McNally (not truck specific) says 782 miles and the route looks reasonable, but it includes a jaunt into Canada. Not an option. PC Miler says 762, but again the ferry issue comes up. Once you start tweaking the route to stay on dry land and bridges, it starts either to get really convoluted or really lengthy.
After a while I came up with something workable. I'm pretty sure I found a route that should be fairly easy, and somewhere around 740 miles, but it will involve a little bit of skinny road driving through some rough terrain. Hopefully it's a light load. I had started to plot out a route that I took through the Adirondacks once before, but I'm not sure that my route in Vermont on that occasion was completely legal. In any event, the route I'll be taking this time shouldn't be too much longer than my paid miles.
I got towatch hear somebody's fireworks tonight after I dropped my trailer. I'm facing right toward the part of the sky that was lighting up, and I could hear some explosions, but there's a big ass warehouse where the horizon should be. Oh well, at least the Tigers are kicking some ass.
4am delivery... grocery warehouse... lumpers... blah. That generally sucks and I can't say that this morning was much of an exception. The last time I had to pay a lumper at the end of a pay period, they held over the Comcheck charge until the next pay period, when the reimbursement hit. If that happens again, I guess that would be nice. Sixty bucks is sixty bucks.
From the grocery warehouse, I headed north to Romeoville for my next pickup. I checked in and started chatting with another CTL driver who got there ahead of me. It was the usual small talk about where we had been and where we were headed. I was headed to Magnolia, Texas. The guy told me, "That's where I live," and rolled his eyes. I assumed that he meant that he was from the Houston area. Next he pulled out his driver's license and I had to chuckle - Magnolia, Texas. No shit.
So, seeing as the load delivers on Tuesday and I was going to be sitting in a truck stop for two or three days, I told him that he could call his fleet manager and see if he could get my load, if he wanted to do that. I didn't know where he was headed at that point, but why not give the guy a chance to visit with the family for a couple days on the holiday weekend? He told me that he had a 300-something mile run and that I probably didn't want that. Oh hell, why not? Maybe some day someone may do the same for me. He called his fleet manager, who told him that I would have to run it by my fleet manager before they could change our assignments. Since I would be the one essentially losing 700 miles of pay, she couldn't make the switch unilaterally. I called and gave my fleet manager the rundown. I don't know exactly how all of that load assigning works, but he took care of it and I wound up with a load dropping at our yard in Columbus, Ohio.
We spent the whole morning and the better part of the afternoon waiting to get loaded. At one point I hadn't felt my trailer shake for a while, so I headed inside. The lady told me that they had one more pallet to load. I hung around inside for a while and never heard anything. About a half hour later, I asked her again what was my status. She repeated the line about one more pallet. I told her that I was going out to my truck and that they could come and get me when I was ready to roll. Outside, there were about twenty hispanic lads playing soccer in the parking lot. Obviously it was lunch time at the warehouse. In what I'm sure is just a coincidence, as soon as their lunch/soccer break was over I got my last pallet.
I wasn't quite sure how the decision to give up a 1,055 mile run was going to play out. Generally speaking, it's probably not smart to give up miles on a holiday weekend. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time though. Once I headed east, and my last fifteen miles on I-80 took over an hour, I was vehemently cursing the entire population of Magnolia, Texas. Then, as I say from time to time, things took a turn...
The traffic cleared up, I finally found some good music on the radio, and the planners in Joplin kept their batting average for this week at a cool 1.000 . I received a pre-plan for a load leaving Columbus tomorrow and going to Saint Albans, Vermont. That more than makes up the 700 miles that I gave up, plus adds some northeast pay to the mix. Better still, the delivery in Vermont is Sunday night, as opposed to Tuesday morning in Texas. That gets me another potential day of work on Monday. I also won't have to spend day after day idling my truck to stay cool over the weekend, since things have been rather pleasant in the evenings up north lately. So I guess the moral is that doing the right thing can work out for the best sometimes. See there, I'm a role model! Haha, funny, I know.
The drive across to Columbus was pretty good once I got clear of that mess in northern Indiana. The biggest challenge was the fact that I was getting tired, and fast. I thought about calling to see if I could just drop in Columbus tomorrow morning, but after a pit stop and a bite to eat I caught a second wind and finished off the run with no problem.
My Vermont run is supposed to be here tomorrow by 9pm. If it shows up early, I guess I'll head out for a few hours tomorrow. Hell, I might drive for a while even if it's here at 9pm. The way my sleep has been going lately, I may very well be wide awake for a while after that.
I just spent more time planning this route than I think I've spent on any ten routes combined. Getting to Saint Albans is sort of a pain in the ass. I punched the route into three different programs and each one talked about taking a ferry into Vermont. For starters, I don't intend to take a ferry. I'm sure that it's no big deal, but it sounds like just one more hassle that I can do without. Then there's the mileage. My paid 'practical' miles are something like 730. Truckmiles.com says 726 miles, but that involves about 200 different roads (plus the ferry). No thanks. Rand McNally (not truck specific) says 782 miles and the route looks reasonable, but it includes a jaunt into Canada. Not an option. PC Miler says 762, but again the ferry issue comes up. Once you start tweaking the route to stay on dry land and bridges, it starts either to get really convoluted or really lengthy.
After a while I came up with something workable. I'm pretty sure I found a route that should be fairly easy, and somewhere around 740 miles, but it will involve a little bit of skinny road driving through some rough terrain. Hopefully it's a light load. I had started to plot out a route that I took through the Adirondacks once before, but I'm not sure that my route in Vermont on that occasion was completely legal. In any event, the route I'll be taking this time shouldn't be too much longer than my paid miles.
I got to
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
7/2/08
Well, I think I managed to sleep for a few hours last night, so I guess that's a start. I still don't see why we can't have a few beers before bedtime out here. If I'm shut down and the law says that I can't move for ten hours, who in the hell would I be hurting? I would sleep a lot better at night. I can tell you that much.
The morning's drive was pretty ho-hum. After crossing western Wisconsin for the third time in as many days, I suddenly feel the urge to eat curds of cheese as I stay at a gigantic lodge with an indoor water park, or something like that. Illinois was good and shitty for a while until I broke free of the construction, but overall not too terrible.
It got to be somewhere around 5pm as I approached Bloomington when the planner people chalked up another victory. Three trips since I left home and three pre-plans. This one was especially useful, since I'll be empty in the morning and there really doesn't appear to be a place to park near my customer. Now that I know where I'll be picking up next, I can head straight there once I get unloaded. Beauty. I have to cruise up to the southwestern suburbs of Chicago and grab a load headed for Texas. That will knock this week over 3,000 miles, plus holiday pay. So yeah, pretty decent week.
The only bad thing that the holiday appears to have done is kick back my delivery date in Texas to Tuesday morning. That means I'll have tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to cover something around 1,250 miles (including the deadhead). I guess I'll have some layover pay coming, but that's a pretty slow weekend in any case. The load looks like the type that would have been delivered on Monday, but whenever businesses close for a day they tend to get behind for a while. I don't know. Whatever. I'll be empty on Tuesday morning, so next week shouldn't be hurt too badly.
I called my bank this morning, expecting my safety bonus for the second quarter to have posted within the last couple of days. Nope. Just one more thing that CFI did better than ConWay I guess. It seems that anything involving money going from them to me takes longer than it used to. For example, the bonus period in question ended on May 31st. It used to be that the money would hit my bank account on the 28th of the following month (June in this case). Then, for the first period this year, it was the 30th of the following month (March in that case). Now it's July 2nd and the money is still not in my account.
So I guess this is how I would summarize things under the ConWay umbrella... Base pay - always right, always on time. Reimbursements - timing may vary, but usually pretty reasonable. Stop off pay - occasionally requires a reminder message, but usually paid immediately. UPS pay - no, they aren't able to handle that one at all. Detention - maybe, if you're lucky. Layover - sooner or later, but keep track and send a few reminders just in case. (And now) Safety bonus - I guess they'll get to it eventually.
Anyway, I have something like thirty miles to run before 4am local time, then it's off to pick up the Texas load. Depending on how much sleep I get tonight, tomorrow may or may not involve much driving after that.
UPDATE: I have to edit to add that I'm a dummy, as if we didn't already know that. Apparently my safety bonus was added into last week's paycheck. Amid all of the festivities at home, I never bothered to check my stub on the ConWay website. Safety bonuses had always been a seperate pay event, but not this time. So ignore that part about the safety bonus being late. Okay then, as you were...
The morning's drive was pretty ho-hum. After crossing western Wisconsin for the third time in as many days, I suddenly feel the urge to eat curds of cheese as I stay at a gigantic lodge with an indoor water park, or something like that. Illinois was good and shitty for a while until I broke free of the construction, but overall not too terrible.
It got to be somewhere around 5pm as I approached Bloomington when the planner people chalked up another victory. Three trips since I left home and three pre-plans. This one was especially useful, since I'll be empty in the morning and there really doesn't appear to be a place to park near my customer. Now that I know where I'll be picking up next, I can head straight there once I get unloaded. Beauty. I have to cruise up to the southwestern suburbs of Chicago and grab a load headed for Texas. That will knock this week over 3,000 miles, plus holiday pay. So yeah, pretty decent week.
The only bad thing that the holiday appears to have done is kick back my delivery date in Texas to Tuesday morning. That means I'll have tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to cover something around 1,250 miles (including the deadhead). I guess I'll have some layover pay coming, but that's a pretty slow weekend in any case. The load looks like the type that would have been delivered on Monday, but whenever businesses close for a day they tend to get behind for a while. I don't know. Whatever. I'll be empty on Tuesday morning, so next week shouldn't be hurt too badly.
I called my bank this morning, expecting my safety bonus for the second quarter to have posted within the last couple of days. Nope. Just one more thing that CFI did better than ConWay I guess. It seems that anything involving money going from them to me takes longer than it used to. For example, the bonus period in question ended on May 31st. It used to be that the money would hit my bank account on the 28th of the following month (June in this case). Then, for the first period this year, it was the 30th of the following month (March in that case). Now it's July 2nd and the money is still not in my account.
So I guess this is how I would summarize things under the ConWay umbrella... Base pay - always right, always on time. Reimbursements - timing may vary, but usually pretty reasonable. Stop off pay - occasionally requires a reminder message, but usually paid immediately. UPS pay - no, they aren't able to handle that one at all. Detention - maybe, if you're lucky. Layover - sooner or later, but keep track and send a few reminders just in case. (And now) Safety bonus - I guess they'll get to it eventually.
Anyway, I have something like thirty miles to run before 4am local time, then it's off to pick up the Texas load. Depending on how much sleep I get tonight, tomorrow may or may not involve much driving after that.
UPDATE: I have to edit to add that I'm a dummy, as if we didn't already know that. Apparently my safety bonus was added into last week's paycheck. Amid all of the festivities at home, I never bothered to check my stub on the ConWay website. Safety bonuses had always been a seperate pay event, but not this time. So ignore that part about the safety bonus being late. Okay then, as you were...
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