In case we needed any reminder that my life is severely lacking in excitement, today brought more evidence. I actually spent the whole morning looking forward to having a PB&J sandwich for lunch. First though, I had to head south to Winfield and pick up my load. That drive took a little over an hour, after which the shipper had me loaded and rolling fairly quickly. Then it was back up I-135 toward Salina. I was planning to stop at the Bosselman's truck stop to top off my fuel tanks and grab a bite. Since I was able to get my hands on one of those delicious sandwiches at a Bosselman's in Nebraska not too long ago, I had my fingers crossed in hopes that the one in Salina wouldn't let me down today. Ahh yes, they had the good stuff. And a bowl of fresh strawberries too. Beauty.
The work day was nice and easy today. There was just enough rain to keep the bugs from overwhelming my windshield but not enough to affect the flow of traffic. I stopped off at the T/A in Oakley for the night, leaving another nice easy day for tomorrow. I imagine I'll be able to hit the truck stop in Aurora within four hours or so of leaving here. Probably no PB&J tomorrow though. But that Flying J pizza is pretty solid. Yeah, I could definitely use a little more excitement in my life.
Those damned 'Skins were determined to ignore my plea and trade up for a quarterback, weren't they? I'd like to be the first to thank the Jets for saving Mr. Snyder from himself. Good lookin' out, my brothers.
The week will wrap up with 1,623 miles. I guess we can look at it in one of two ways. I left home on Thursday, so $616 isn't a bad paycheck for working a few days. I did call in and report for work on Tuesday morning though, so $616 doesn't sound so hot in that context. As tends to be the case in this line of work though, next week is a blank page. A few thousand miles could balance out this week in a hurry. Hopefully I can get rolling out of Denver nice and quickly once I'm empty on Monday.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
4/24/09
An open letter to the Washington Redskins: I beseech you; Do not mortgage what little is left of your future to move up and take a quarterback whose college experience consists of one (somewhat inconsistent) season as a starter. Please. Pretty please?
So the strategy today was to get up early, beat the traffic through St. Louis, and haul ass for Kansas in hopes of forcing the issue and getting another assignment before the weekend. When the alarm went off bright and early, this strategy sounded horrible. Going back to bed was clearly a better option. I bucked up though and headed west, making it out into the middle of Missouri before the traffic started to get heavy. Beauty.
I wasn't in the mood to deal with any tolls today so I angled down out of Kansas City and then caught U.S. 50 to the west toward McPherson. Gotta love those 65mph two-lanes in Kansas. I got to the consignee sooner that I had expected, even as I had to fight through some pretty hefty gusts between the amber waves of grain. My nice light 10,000 pound load was a bonus in Missouri's hills but probably more of a liability once I got into the wind.
I checked in at the consignee and crossed my fingers. The paperwork said that the delivery was scheduled for April 27th and my dispatch was for midnight at the end of the 26th. They told me to drop my trailer and grab an empty. Beauty. Then the empty was nowhere to be found and I had to go back over and have them assign another. No biggie there, I suppose.
That second empty was on the lot, but someone had been kind enough to leave me with a bad amber turn signal light on the left side of the trailer. I happened to have one of those on hand from a previous situation. On the previous go-around, the new light didn't do the trick (so I kept it). Today, the new light was just what the doctor ordered. By the time I got everything else checked over, I had received my next assignment. Gotta love it when a rare show of initiative pays off for me.
The next pickup will be tomorrow morning in Winfield and then I'll head to Denver for a Monday morning delivery. Given the bizarre directions to the consignee, I dialed up the address on Google Earth. Yeah, this one will be a treat. It's one of those old buildings in the middle of a residential neighborhood. I'm supposed to park on the street and then "go find someone." From that point, who knows? I don't see any kind of dock area. Should be pretty entertaining at 7am on a Monday. I think I'll be able to get off the road pretty early tomorrow and watch Messrs. Cerrato and Snyder gut my favorite NFL team one more time. At least I have my Wings.
So the strategy today was to get up early, beat the traffic through St. Louis, and haul ass for Kansas in hopes of forcing the issue and getting another assignment before the weekend. When the alarm went off bright and early, this strategy sounded horrible. Going back to bed was clearly a better option. I bucked up though and headed west, making it out into the middle of Missouri before the traffic started to get heavy. Beauty.
I wasn't in the mood to deal with any tolls today so I angled down out of Kansas City and then caught U.S. 50 to the west toward McPherson. Gotta love those 65mph two-lanes in Kansas. I got to the consignee sooner that I had expected, even as I had to fight through some pretty hefty gusts between the amber waves of grain. My nice light 10,000 pound load was a bonus in Missouri's hills but probably more of a liability once I got into the wind.
I checked in at the consignee and crossed my fingers. The paperwork said that the delivery was scheduled for April 27th and my dispatch was for midnight at the end of the 26th. They told me to drop my trailer and grab an empty. Beauty. Then the empty was nowhere to be found and I had to go back over and have them assign another. No biggie there, I suppose.
That second empty was on the lot, but someone had been kind enough to leave me with a bad amber turn signal light on the left side of the trailer. I happened to have one of those on hand from a previous situation. On the previous go-around, the new light didn't do the trick (so I kept it). Today, the new light was just what the doctor ordered. By the time I got everything else checked over, I had received my next assignment. Gotta love it when a rare show of initiative pays off for me.
The next pickup will be tomorrow morning in Winfield and then I'll head to Denver for a Monday morning delivery. Given the bizarre directions to the consignee, I dialed up the address on Google Earth. Yeah, this one will be a treat. It's one of those old buildings in the middle of a residential neighborhood. I'm supposed to park on the street and then "go find someone." From that point, who knows? I don't see any kind of dock area. Should be pretty entertaining at 7am on a Monday. I think I'll be able to get off the road pretty early tomorrow and watch Messrs. Cerrato and Snyder gut my favorite NFL team one more time. At least I have my Wings.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
4/23/09
After two weeks, several hundred dollars spent, several thousand calories consumed, and several dozen beer bottles emptied, I am out of Michigan. Beauty.
I stayed home last night and set my alarm for early this morning, figuring that I wouldn't get any assignment much earlier than 6am. I got up at 5:30am and found myself still at #2. Got back up at 6am and checked again. #0. That means a load is assigned. Beauty. I called the dispatcher to see what was what and got some good news. I had to go about a hundred miles to make my pickup and I could get it any time between 8am and 2pm. Sweet.
After going back to bed until a more reasonable hour, I headed up to work and hooked to my empty trailer. My truck fired right up after sitting for a few days so I guess we can assume that my new batteries are functional. It was a nice easy trip down to Defiance, Ohio and it felt pretty good to be out driving again for a change. My drop/hook was a pretty basic affair, but my backing skills were a little rusty and the drop lot was pretty tight. It took a little while, but I got 'er done. From Ohio, it was west to Fort Wayne, south to Indy, and then west toward St. Louis. I stopped at our yard in Pocahontas for the night, having covered nearly 500 miles. Not bad for the first day out after a long layoff.
My dispatch indicates that this load is due in McPherson, Kansas by Sunday night at midnight. It's a drop/hook and I take the Sunday night ETA to mean that it can get there any time this weekend. We'll see. I intend to drive the mofo all the way through and try to dump it tomorrow evening. I may end up with a 950 mile pay week here, but I'm going to do my best to put myself in a position to get one more load before Saturday night. Kansas doesn't seem to be a hotbed of manufacturing activity though. All I can do is get there and then let the rest take care of itself.
The Q1 earnings continue to roll in and it continues to be impossible to make any sense of it all. There's American Express, where earnings tumbled but beat estimates. They say that defaults are on the rise but they're downsizing to help profitability. And they expect defaults to level off at some point this year. I'm not sure how you square these statements with their decision to cancel my accounts, when I spend as much in a month as their average customer spends in a quarter and I've never been late in ten years. Weird. Banks are stupid.
Then there's Con-way, where the first quarter loss appeared to be a robust $154 million but the bulk of the loss was a writedown of the value of my employer, Con-way Truckload. So we, as a truckload unit, lost $132.7 million. And $134.8 million was a writedown. So we actually made $2.1 million. Got all that? You've just read a nutshell explanation of the banking crisis, illustrated by a non-banking corporation. Freight volumes are down so CTL is "worth" less than it was a few months ago. Same assets, same liabilities, just a lesser "goodwill" value. Presto, change-o, a hundred million bucks disappear on paper, and Con-way's balance sheet gets rewritten. If Con-way were a bank, it would have less equity against which to raise capital and would thus be less able to lend money. Since it's a trucking company and not a bank, it just sticks the paper loss in its back pocket so its return on equity can look awesome once the economy rebounds. Accounting rules are stupid.
There were a few others that I heard on the radio today, but I don't remember what they were and I don't feel like looking them up. Good enough. I think I should try and get some sleep now so I can scoot past St. Louis before rush hour tomorrow.
I stayed home last night and set my alarm for early this morning, figuring that I wouldn't get any assignment much earlier than 6am. I got up at 5:30am and found myself still at #2. Got back up at 6am and checked again. #0. That means a load is assigned. Beauty. I called the dispatcher to see what was what and got some good news. I had to go about a hundred miles to make my pickup and I could get it any time between 8am and 2pm. Sweet.
After going back to bed until a more reasonable hour, I headed up to work and hooked to my empty trailer. My truck fired right up after sitting for a few days so I guess we can assume that my new batteries are functional. It was a nice easy trip down to Defiance, Ohio and it felt pretty good to be out driving again for a change. My drop/hook was a pretty basic affair, but my backing skills were a little rusty and the drop lot was pretty tight. It took a little while, but I got 'er done. From Ohio, it was west to Fort Wayne, south to Indy, and then west toward St. Louis. I stopped at our yard in Pocahontas for the night, having covered nearly 500 miles. Not bad for the first day out after a long layoff.
My dispatch indicates that this load is due in McPherson, Kansas by Sunday night at midnight. It's a drop/hook and I take the Sunday night ETA to mean that it can get there any time this weekend. We'll see. I intend to drive the mofo all the way through and try to dump it tomorrow evening. I may end up with a 950 mile pay week here, but I'm going to do my best to put myself in a position to get one more load before Saturday night. Kansas doesn't seem to be a hotbed of manufacturing activity though. All I can do is get there and then let the rest take care of itself.
The Q1 earnings continue to roll in and it continues to be impossible to make any sense of it all. There's American Express, where earnings tumbled but beat estimates. They say that defaults are on the rise but they're downsizing to help profitability. And they expect defaults to level off at some point this year. I'm not sure how you square these statements with their decision to cancel my accounts, when I spend as much in a month as their average customer spends in a quarter and I've never been late in ten years. Weird. Banks are stupid.
Then there's Con-way, where the first quarter loss appeared to be a robust $154 million but the bulk of the loss was a writedown of the value of my employer, Con-way Truckload. So we, as a truckload unit, lost $132.7 million. And $134.8 million was a writedown. So we actually made $2.1 million. Got all that? You've just read a nutshell explanation of the banking crisis, illustrated by a non-banking corporation. Freight volumes are down so CTL is "worth" less than it was a few months ago. Same assets, same liabilities, just a lesser "goodwill" value. Presto, change-o, a hundred million bucks disappear on paper, and Con-way's balance sheet gets rewritten. If Con-way were a bank, it would have less equity against which to raise capital and would thus be less able to lend money. Since it's a trucking company and not a bank, it just sticks the paper loss in its back pocket so its return on equity can look awesome once the economy rebounds. Accounting rules are stupid.
There were a few others that I heard on the radio today, but I don't remember what they were and I don't feel like looking them up. Good enough. I think I should try and get some sleep now so I can scoot past St. Louis before rush hour tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
4/22/09
So... I enjoyed playing the role of laid off local driver so much yesterday that I decided to give it another go today. Yeah, that's the ticket. Or... maybe my turn just never came up. Nah, that narrative sucks. I chose to sit around all day with my thumb up my ass. Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
I did come across a group of lovely ladies as I was out and about, doing a little grocery shopping. I was feeling pretty manly and decided to make a move and see what might happen. The results were about as we would expect.
Oh well, at least I'm up to #2 on the board now. I probably shouldn't stay up and listen to the rest of the baseball game, even though Granderson just gave the good guys the lead. I'm just about done with a marathon book burning session. (Audio book on CD, not censorship.) I think I should probably head up to the yard and sleep in my squeaky clean Kenworth tonight. They moved a couple of trucks before I woke this morning. A poor struggling driver can hope for something similar tomorrow. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday... I don't know... maybe we can scrape together something like a decent paycheck.
I did come across a group of lovely ladies as I was out and about, doing a little grocery shopping. I was feeling pretty manly and decided to make a move and see what might happen. The results were about as we would expect.
Oh well, at least I'm up to #2 on the board now. I probably shouldn't stay up and listen to the rest of the baseball game, even though Granderson just gave the good guys the lead. I'm just about done with a marathon book burning session. (Audio book on CD, not censorship.) I think I should probably head up to the yard and sleep in my squeaky clean Kenworth tonight. They moved a couple of trucks before I woke this morning. A poor struggling driver can hope for something similar tomorrow. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday... I don't know... maybe we can scrape together something like a decent paycheck.
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