Taking a break

Well I'm here in the Big D. Dallas, TX for those of you who aren't sure where that is. It's some decent weather outside. The sun is shining, not very many clouds in the sky.  My only complaint would be the fact that it's a bit chilly still. Yes TX gets cold.  As a matter of fact it snows in the Dallas area.  Look at the Super Bowl last year, it was almost fubar because of the ice/snow storm.

I have had a very rough week.  From weather delays in Wyoming to equipment problems in California I almost thought I might not make it to Dallas on time.  Thankfully, I'm a professional at what I do and I got the load here safely and on time.  It was a rough go getting it here, specially considering the personal problems I've been dealing with, but I got it here.

Let's start with how things went in California.  I made it up and over Donner's Pass without any issues, which was good.  I had heard that they might have Chain Control in effect.  This driver has chains on his truck because the law requires him to but that jewelry is for display purposes only.  I don't put chains on my equipment to get onto a slick or icy mountain.  If I get surprised while I'm already on it, I'll chain it up to get off the mountain but if Chain Control is in effect my rig stops at the closest truck stop at the base.

When I got to my delivery, I had just enough time to pull into a K-mart parking lot outside my customers gate.  I had found, however, a bad marker light during my post-trip walk around.   I called to have Schneider Emergency Maintenance fix it but they wanted me to wait until daylight hours to drive it 60 miles to the French Camp terminal or at least wait until regular business hours to fix the light so they didn't get charged the after-hours.  In a rare form, I figured I'd be o.k. with waiting until business hours.  Turns out there was a vendor about 5 miles down the street, so I took it down there.  They initially wanted me to drive it to their terminal in the morning but I explained to them that I don't roll with bad equipment, especially not passed a DOT scale.  That's like walking into the lion's den with raw meat strapped to your chest.

So I headed over to the vendor to get my lights fixed, and this is where my shitty day started.  It took them three hours or more to replace two marker lights.  I'd have done it myself but they were top rail lights.  One had corroded the plug off and the other was about to do the same.  Apparently after the Tech came out and told them what was wrong with it, they never bothered to call SEM to get approval to fix it.  I think tried to save SEM some money and offered to fix them myself, because the vendor was telling me it was going to take another hour before the tech would even start the repairs.  Turns out, SEM doesn't want you climbing up to the top of the trailer to make repairs on their equipment and would rather spend the $143 for one hour's labor.  Thankfully the vendor had the tech repair it immediately. Then it was off to Stockton, CA to pickup my load, that by my trip-plan was supposed to have been picked up in the morning, not the afternoon.

I pull into my customer in Stockton and the guard there is a jokester.  He was nice but he was all about joking around and cutting up.  He got the point after about the third time of telling me to smile that I was not interested in his shenanigans and I was there for business.  Unfortunately for me, he was still more interested in being a comedian and failed to realize that my paperwork was sitting in his little shack.  He told me my load wasn't ready and directed me over to the bobtail holding area after telling me where to park my empty. Well anticipating that I was going to have to drive much later than I intended I figured I'd grab a nap which didn't work out too well because of the fighting I was doing in my personal life. Which is a whole separate blog that I'm not even sure will ever get written and if it does not sure it'll ever be published.  Well about two hours later the new guard comes up to my truck after shift change and confirms my pickup information.  Walks back over to his shack and comes back and apologizes to me because my load had, in fact, actually been ready the entire time I was sitting there waiting.  Awesome, I get screwed over because someone isn't professional enough to know when to work and when to joke. So there's another two hours wasted, totaling five hours of lost time on the day. While I was doing my pre-trip on the trailer I was picking up I found that the tire was extremely low on tread and would not pass a DOT inspection.  Thanks to which ever driver doesn't know how to check tread depth or that you're required to get it changed at a certain level. Thankfully for me, so I thought, our French Camp yard was about 5-8 miles away.  I typically will only drive defective equipment no more than 15 miles unless there is a DOT scale. So I head over to the terminal, stopping first to scale the load at the truck stop on the way.  When I get there I'm told it'll be about an hour or so wait before they get me in the shop.  Really? The express bays at all of our terminals are usually capable of cranking out tires and express repairs in minutes.  At least every time I've ever been to one.  It's never taken me more than 30 minutes to get into the shop and a tire almost always only takes 10-15 minutes.

I sat for nearly an hour before getting pulled into the bay.  That wasn't as horrible because I decided to make the best of the wait and get some paperwork scanned in, walked Gizmo for a good a little while. Walked around and snapped a few pictures of a few trucks that had some major whoopsies. They're attached. But back to the shop.  While I was in the shop, I'm doing a little bit of trip planning and start to realize it's been awhile since I've been released from the shop so I look in my mirror and much to my surprise the there are three tech at the rear of my trailer, none of which are working on the trailer but are sure having a good ole time cutting it up.  Well I sit there for another twenty minutes or so and finally get tired of the fact that they still have not completed my work.  I walk around and confront them and get told that I just need to wait and if I don't like it don't come there.  Well I blew up at notion and kinda went off.  Thankfully I caught myself walking back towards the trailer and instead turned around but made sure to tell the supervisor who was standing there just letting his tech speak to me disrespectfully that it was uncalled for. Got all their names and the number to the main supervisor of the shop.  That conversation was reassuring that this was not their standard operating procedure and I was assured the problem would be rectified.  I'll see when I go back.

Well with all these delays I had during the day, plus the nearly non-stop personal arguments during my down times I was spent.  I left the yard hoping to get the two hours further down the road that were left on my log but I was still steaming from the utter disrespect and lack of urgency on getting me rolling again that I was noticing my thought processes were becoming very unsafe to be on the road. So I pulled into the next truck stop I found, it had Popeyes, and called it quits after circling the lot about four times to find a spot. Incase you haven't gathered from my other blogs, Popeyes is this fat kids favorite place on the road to eat and always puts him in a better mood. I will often times plan my trips around where I can find a Popeyes. 

The next morning was fairly stress free, my personal stuff was not as prevalent of an issue and I hammered out a good days worth of driving. This brings us up to yesterday, which was also a pretty stress free day and much to my surprise I actually made my delivery on time.  I decided to make the executive decision that I was not going to book a load, nor grab an empty trailer and instead was going to line 5 (driving off-duty, which is not logged) down here to the OC and take a break.

I got up this morning, found a load to start my week after my break and then cleaned and greased my truck.  I found a small oil leak at the bell housing but it seems to not be anything to stress about at the moment.  I'll get it looked at when I'm home or have more downtime. I grabbed some food and a shower and as I'm typing this up I'm completing my laundry.  Then I'll be off to do some business bookkeeping and check on a load out of Denver, hopefully that'll be ready for me to pull back down here to Dallas. If I can make that work it's back up to Denver then to MO, that'll be a nice damned pay period if I can make it work. 

Well my laundry needs folded and I need thawed out because they've got the AC crankin in this laundry room. That catches up on the life of being on the road.  This country is beautiful in the western states so that's helped keep me calm. The stresses of life on the road can be overpowering as is evidenced by the fact that Schneider had one of our drivers go off the deep end and drive his truck into the shop at our Edwardsville terminal, then try setting fire to the building and eventually shooting himself. Sounds like he had quite a bit on his plate from the various different news articles I've read on the subject and I can say I've had some very stressful days myself.  Hopefully we can find out what drove him to these actions.  It might help us identify stresses in our own lives that we might not realize could effect us.  My thoughts go out to his family. 

Drivers are some of the most under-respected people on the planet. A lot of people fail to realize how absolutely vital to the survival of the world truckers are.  Without out us, no one would have the items and materials they need.  We would all be homeless, naked and hungry. 

Think about this the next time you are about to interact with us.  Think about the stresses that we deal with all while having to often times meet impossible delivery schedules and struggle to balance our lives with our work all while constantly on a time schedule.  Everything we do is on a time-schedule and we do not get near the amount of time away from this stress as most professions do from their work. Even when we do have time off, for a lot of us there is still no rest because things at home have gone unattended in our absence. I often times find my time at home with my three kids is more hectic than it is out on the road. I however, would not have it any other way.  I find my hectic home life to oddly be a stress relief.  I love the time I spend with my kids and am thankful that I made it home alive to see them.  Thankfully for me, I find relaxation in some of the simplest tasks in life and do not require much to relieve stress. 

Those of you on the road, keep it rubber side down and shiny side up! Take a day for yourself to relax and let some stress go, make it home alive! Nothing we haul is worth our health or life.

Shutdown

Well, I made it a whopping 85 miles before I shutdown. The road conditions in WY were crap this morning. The road iced over real quick as we drove over blowing snow, melting it so the winds could freeze it.

Now DOT has the road closed because of an accident. Ive heard though that they're getting better, so I'll give it a few hours and check . I'm thinking it'll be an all day event here.

We shall see.

GRRRRR!! Stupid trailer

Well the picture below should clue ya in to the title of my blog. I got up, did my pretrip, kicked all the snow off my rig that I could and found a bad tail light and leaking trailer brakes.

So, once again my clock has started but I haven't. Yesterday I lost 4 hours because of the shipper and probably an hour worth of driving because of how crappy the roads were.

Now, I have 1961 miles and three days to complete them. Possible? Yes. In time for payroll? Not so sure.

Positive note is, I'll have approximately 20+ hours to get the load down to TX out of CA. I also have time to take a restart on the load. So, I'll make it to CA, roll out the rest of my hours and sit for a day in a warmer locale. Then roll into TX with almost an entire week's worth of hours left and hopefully a good portion of the pay period left.

I'm going to beat mother nature and I will make it to CA. It's been awhile since I've fought her up here on 80 heading West in the winter but I still remember my tricks. Those of you who are reading this that are concerned I'll try pushin on when I shouldn't need not worry. I have a family to make it home to and the powdered cheese in this trailer is FAR less important than seein them again.

Ive also attached a few other pictures, none of which were taken while driving.

I think winter finally woke up.

Well I do believe it is official, winter finally woke up. My toes are freezing from the steel toes in my boots, my bunk heater has trouble keepin up and my horribly sealed Freightliner lets air sneak in the cab from all over. On top of that, winter weather advisories are going off all over my phone and bad road conditions pierce the crackling static of my CB.

It's time for the radio to be on WX, the squelch to be set lower on my CB and the music to be played at barely audible levels. It's mother nature against my rig and I. Music on the radio disturbs my ability to listen for sudden spikes in RPM and makes it hard to hear any CB chatter thats buried in the white noise. I kinda of enjoy this time of year. It makes driving a challenge, keeps you on your game and there is never a dull moment. Just sucks that it's so cold.

However, this brings up a topic thats been on my mind. The difference between a steering wheel holder and a trucker. One big difference is whether or not a driver has a CB. Even more importantly, do they use it correctly? When I first started six years ago, I noticed a decline in the behavior and mindset of drivers. I was a student and could tell the difference. More and more it seems drivers are coming out of schools as steering wheel holders. I know the CB has a lot of garbage on it and there are more and more CB Rambo's so I can see why a lot of drivers don't bother with one but damn is it frustrating. You can never get a traffic or weather report and people just want to play music or argue. To the DJCB's out there, here's a clue... If I wanted to listen to music, I'd turn the radio up in my truck. If you want to play DJ, go do it at home.

Once in awhile though, you will find one of us truckers out there. We always have our CB's turned on, with the volume set so we can just barely hear mumblings. Most of us have trained ourselves to listen for keywords such as "bear", "yard sticker", "backup", our direction of travel and our company name. We also us the CB to let other driver's know they can manuever around us and if their equipment needs attention. Steering wheel holders are lucky to have a radio, let alone have it on.  That's one difference, I'll cover the others later.

Now that I've ranted, lets get back on topic. I have to be in NorCal by Monday night. I have about half my day today left, all of the weekend and a good portion of the day Mon. I need to be there by 1800 eastern to get it on payroll. If I'm successful, I'll make a killing on the check. If not, we've covered our expenses for the next two weeks. I've got a load comin back East and it moves south enough I might get into a tinge of warmth. I'll have the hours and make it to Dallas area with plenty of time for another good haul for the weekend.

Hopefully it all works out. Leaving the house kills me. My two year old son dies when I leave. He cries up a storm and has to be held back usually otherwise he tries following me out the door. It kills mre everytime I leave to say bye to everyone, specially him cause of how upset he gets. But my family is my motivation for working so hard when I'm out here. The great thing is his level of excitement when he sees me. He jumps and screams and cheers when he hears then sees my truck pulling into the house. I can't wait for the day I can bring him with me. It'll make it a little more tolerable being gone.

Well I think they're about to finally load me, time to go freeze on the dock while they load me. I really need to find some good water-proof composite toe shoes. Toe protection thats about equal to steel, at least for what I do, but doesn't freeze your toes in the winter.

First Blog

Well this my first blog in a long while. Years ago I used to host and administer my own website that was a blog and photosharing site. I kind of miss that, but I no longer have time to handle the server side part of things. So, a free hosted blog it is.

Well I'm sitting here at the TA in Hurricane, WV waiting for their typically slow servers to come take my order. Don't ask me why, but I'm going to see if they can whip up an order of three scrambled egg whites, wheat toast w peanut butter and a bowl of fresh fruit. Not on the menu but it struck me as sounding good. Its a change from my usual dietary choice for breakfast, Cornedbeef hash, eggs, hashbrowns and butter lathered toast.

I've been doing a lot of thinking here lately and I'm not happy with a few things in my life. My weight and my finances being the primary concerns. The latter of the two cause my other problem, not being able to see my family as often as I want. A radio show host I listen to a lot, Kevin Rutherford, always says to people "If you want different results, you gotta change ho you do things." I believ Dave Ramsey says the same. Probably a lot more people do to but it's absolutely true.

First step is this morning with breakfast. Next step is to adjust my load planning and hometime frequency. It's going to suck because I'm going to have to be away from what matters most to me and thats my kids and girlfriend. However, I just hope they understand that I feel like I'm failing them because I'm not running my business in a manner that allows me the kind of hometime I want nor the financial stability I need. There is a lot of money on the table I leave because I go home. It's awesome to go home but it sucks cause when I'm there, we have no money to do the things I want to do with them and my mind is constantly on whether or not we will be able to pay for the things we need.

I need to change the way I do things to make the changes my family needs to be in a better position. We have a lot of goals for this year, all of which will fail if I don't straighten our finances out. I can easily make $8,000+ after all business expenses are paid for over the next six weeks. That will put me making it home for a good amount of time for Monkey's (Ayden, my two year old) birthday. I'll have to stay out for Valentine's day unless it just happens to pan out I'm home, as much as I really hate the idea. I need to miss a few things like that this year so I can get my ship floating right and then be able to take the time off at the end of the year I want. Eventually, I want to take a bunch more time off, which is a part of why I became a business owner. But, I have to buckle down for the first quarter and get myself right. I wasted that chance last year with a lot of bad decisions, this year will be different. So will the years after.

After I get that going, it's time for me to focus on my weight but first my family needs me to man up and take control of things.

Wel breakfast is here, sans fresh fruit. They didn't have any, imagine that. No wonder we can't eat healthy out here.