Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Good-bye US Xpress

Well....it's been quite a few interesting past weeks here.

We left Chicago 5-29 on a load and headed to Renton, WA and arrived on Thursday 5-31 at 1 am. After dropping the trailer at the customer we hooked to a dry-box, since that was all the customer had, and sent in our appropriate macros to end the trip. We had a pre-assign to MA, but were told we needed to find a reefer unit for this next load. To make a long story short we ended up spending Jeff's entire 14-hour day searching 5 different locations for a reefer trailer in WA, then ended up in the Portland yard, which surprise, surprise, no reefer trailers there either. We were to be in MA by Monday, the 4th, before the huge DOT push which started on Tuesday, 6-5...not a problem, except for the fact we had a 3000 mile load and no trailer to put the freight in. Our pick up was in Yakima and we were being pushed into telling the customer that we would be there by 5:30. Neither one of us were going to commit to anything until we had a reefer trailer attached to our tractor. Needless to say, that never happened. We decided that we couldn't pick up our load in a timely fashion and get to MA before Tuesday, so we had to call breakdown and get the truck in the shop. Our brakes were making funny noises coming down Snowqualmie pass. We called breakdown and got the authorization and then were accused of dodging the MA load. This became an ugly mess which lead to giving our notice that we no longer wanted to be in the reefer division for USX and wanted off that board and we would just start pulling dry-box loads. We came out on the winning end of the stick and after our truck was repaired we started on a dry-box load.

Our next load was picking up from the Oregon Coast and heading to Nampa, ID. Not exactly a Team run but miles are miles. We picked up our load at Georgia Pacific in Toledo, OR. What a beautiful drive down the 101 Oregon Coast. This was something that we had never gotten the chance to drive before and always wanted to. It was breathtaking. This is definitely a place that Jeff and I will return to without a truck and explore further. I couldn't live in this part of the country, but what a awesome place to take a few days off and explore. We were 112 miles away from our delivery in Nampa when we got a call requesting that we repower a load from Boise to Denver...yup Denver...hometown. Heck yeah we were going to do that! The load was due the next day by noon (6-6)

We immediately got on the Drivertech and asked if we could take a few days of home-time after dropping off the load and were approved until Saturday, 6-9 @ 14:00. Aaahhh a few days home of rest, relaxation, pool time and visiting family. It was awesome. Our grandbaby has grown so much since being home in March. I got to float in the pool and catch up on my tan and daughter-in-law time, as well as we cooked some yummy dinners and I finally got my new glasses...bifocals :o (

So....it only took 36 hours to find an empty trailer in Denver, what a joke! We headed to Fort Worth and dropped our load, then went immediately to Irving terminal. To make a REALLY long story short we turned our truck in and quit USX. We spent and hour and a half with the terminal manager and he agreed that this company has lost its driver focus. It is pretty sad. I hope things turn around, but I don't see it happening too soon in the near future.

We have spent the last few days in orientation at our new gig...which was conveniently only 12 miles aways from the Irving terminal. We are working for Waggoners Trucking. They put us up in a hotel and we have been in orientation since this past Monday. We will be done tomorrow and head to Denver, most likely, to pick up our truck. This is an opportunity we have been waiting for ever since we started in this industry. We will now be running flatbed on a dedicated run from Denver to OK City and possibly Odessa, TX. It is for a dedicated customer so we will get to know who we are dealing with on a daily basis and have a relationship with our client, something we are much more familiar with. We will have a dedicated trailer again and the strapping and tarping will be done inside a warehouse on each end, so we don't have to fight any elements, which is awesome. We will be running 4 weeks on and one week off. All of our downtime will be spent at home in Denver. The client will call us when the truck is loaded, so we don't even have to wait around in our truck anymore either, the customer is 10 minutes away from the house in Commerce City. But the best part about this job is it isn't about running miles anymore to make our paycheck bigger. We are on salary, and lets just say both of us are almost back to making six figures again, without having to sell our souls or run our asses off. Its the best of both worlds. We are both excited to start our new gig and London is anxious to get back into a truck and get running. He has no idea how much time he is going to get out of the truck, be home and have some fun with his pal Diesel at home. We get to see our kids and grandson more often and get back in touch with what it is like to be home every weekend and once in the middle of the week. It almost sounds too good to be true, but like I said orientation is almost over and everything they have promised us, and more, has come true. It is so nice to work for a company again that doesn't treat us like we are five years old and have no idea what we are doing. Its like we have joined a family again, like Watkins used to be. I think we have finally found nirvana in the trucking industry.






Sunday, June 10, 2012

Reality Check

So...last week while in Portland, Jeff and I had a chance to do some thinking...about what we were doing out here and how frustrating our job has been lately. Don't get me wrong we love doing what we do, but trucking is a strange beast. You would think if you had two hard working people in a truck that truly drive as a Team (which we were trained to drive 11 hours a day,standard in this industry) and drive hard 7 days a week, most trucking companies would chomp at the bit for the opportunity to employ us. Instead, this industry has shown us that mediocre, sometimes even lazy, not honest, and downright grumpy people abound in this industry.

Drivers talk a big game about miles they drive, which I know for a fact, that anyone who announces their miles on a weekly basis are just plain liars. People that truly run great miles on a weekly basis don't need to brag about it. They know where their bread and butter comes from and don't feel the need to shout it out to the world, which by the way, there are only 7 days in a week, so any Team telling you that they run 7500 to 8000 miles in a week in a company truck are just liars. Do the math...unless you have a truck that runs 75 mph 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, running those kind of miles legally is not possible. Plus even if you drive out your 70 hours of drive time per person per week and you average 65 mph, which doesn't include, stopping to go to the bathroom, eating or putting fuel in your truck, any type of construction in your path, shift changes, laundry, grocery shopping, loading and unloading, taking a shower or waiting on dispatch to give you your next load, which anyone who drives a truck knows all of these things must happen to make it possible to do your job, can drive a maximum of 9100. But reality is you average your trips at 50 mph. So on average company trucks are governed at 65 mph, but factoring in all of the things above you must do to keep your truck rolling and the people driving it fairly happy, you use the 50 mph rule. So, let's do the math...50 mph x 140 driving hours (70 hours each) is a MAXIMUM of 7000 miles. This also relies on your company dispatching you the 7000 miles in those 7 days, and the moon being aligned with the stars correctly, which in the last 2 1/2 years we have done this job, has never happened. We have run a maximum in a week of 6742 miles in a company truck governed at 65 mph.

All trucking companies are full of fluff. They tell you what you want to hear to get you to sign up with their company, claiming their company is better than all the rest. Reality check, all trucking companies are the same, you just have to choose the level of stuff your handed on a daily basis that you can deal with.

Do I sound bitter? No, just frustrated. I'm tired of lip service and inconsistent miles. I understand that the amount of freight changes on a weekly basis, but give the miles to people that continously perform. Let the sitters sit or the people that just don't want to run that hard on a weekly basis. We are consistent in our miles and communication to our company and Team Adventure expects the same out of any company we work for.

Thanks for letting me vent.  My next post will be in a 'happy place'....