This driving all day stuff gets pretty tiring, doesn't it? Given recent months' business levels, I had started to forget. I got rolling early this morning and jammed out a full eleven-hour shift. My audiobook of Ender's Game lasted all the way to Quartzsite. Incidentally, my eleven hours also lasted all the way to Quartzsite. Beauty. I burned a few more books onto CD's while I was home, in preparation for some long days here and there. Getting into a good story seems to pass the time a little better than the usual radio fare does.
The weather forecast looks about like I expected it to look for this weekend. I'm now fondly remembering the days of 'SUV's are keeping California from getting the rain and snow that it needs.' The guy on the weather channel radio in the truck stop said that the snow will get down to the level of the passes outside L.A. Good times in store for me this weekend, I'm sure.
Visits to this here blog dohickie.
Joe,just a question if you don't mind.
ReplyDeleteThese fuel bonuses how much do they amount to and do you take advantage of them?
I thought whenever I make the big jump if it'll be worth it to buy a small generator to collect the fuel bonus.
They had a fuel bonus when I started. You had to get 6.2mpg to qualify. I got 6.8mpg in my first year and got something like a hundred bucks (for July through November). I concluded that it was a joke and stopped paying attention.
ReplyDeleteThey got rid of the fuel bonus at the start of '08. Not in the same words of course, they essentially acknowledged that it was a joke and it wasn't working. We were told that they would be implementing a new program once they established a baseline with the 65mph trucks. Any improvement in fleetwide mpg year-over-year would be split 50/50 with the drivers, excluding those at the bottom in terms of performance. I guess this year would be when it would begin. (Thanks for the reminder.) I haven't heard anything about it recently though.
Just for kicks, the people at Fenian Godfather Consulting came up with a plan of their own on January 11th of last year... http://vitocorleone99.blogspot.com/2008/01/11108.html
It sounds like the CTL people went about halfway in the same direction, but those FGC people are a bunch of uneducated nonprofit hacks anyway. I hear they're all Notre Dame fans too.
I don't know much about buying generators and that kind of stuff. Our new trucks are being spec'd with APU's, so once the older trucks trade out we should have that going for us. I do know that much. What I also know is that more than half of new drivers wash out in less than a year. In that light, I wouldn't be spending money on things that I might not need if I hated the job after a few months.