The Long Run

When I last left you I was delivering to Seattle WA. I know its been a few days since then but, sometimes a driver gets in drive, sleep, mode to hurry a load along at its fastest pace. I have been in such a mode starting on last Friday.

I made my 2 delivery's in Seattle on Friday morning. Directly after I finished I was dispatched on a load going from Portland OR to Concord NC. a run that is 2757 miles long. These are what we call gravy runs because its just a flat out long run for a lot of miles fast.

Most long haul drivers get paid by the mile and for extra stops but not for the first or last stop. So, every time we pick up a load or drop it off we lose time on the 70 hours we can work per week and don't make money for that time, only the miles. The 70 hours we are allowed to work per week is one of the many hourly rules set by the government regulating how much a driver can be worked. Out of that 70 hours we must log working time not paid for things like our daily truck inspections before we start each day (15 minuets every day). We must also fuel the truck and refrigerated unit (also called a reefer) for 15 minuets. so that takes an average of 3.5 hours a week unpaid out of the time we can make money. On top of that, every time we load we have to log a minimum of 30 minuets and also, every time we unload. So for example, lets say I get a load that has 2 delivers on it, like the one I did in Seattle. I picked it up for free and delivered it for free but the 2ND stop was extra. So I was paid $25 for that one stop. Most company's figure what they are paying us in miles includes payment for pick up and 1 delivery and they also, set a minimum of 100 miles on a load or pay us what is called a shag fee for a run that is under that 100 miles. My company pays $45 for a shag. So its not as if they are taking advantage of us on that end. We also have to log a minimum of 15 minuets for every time we pick up or drop a trailer or swap trailers. As you can see we can lose a lot of time on the 70 hour clock and not make a dime.

With a long run like this one tho I will make the most money for my time. That is where the sleep, run, mode comes in. I can driver 11 hours for every 10 hour sleeping break i take. As long as the 11 hours of driving is done within a 14 hour period. The government figures that if you have been working for 14 hours your too tired to drive any more with out a 10 sleeping break. Normally, I would say they were right but, the 14 hour clock never stops ticking once it has started. One exception is the 8 hour rule, but that will have to wait for another blog post.

Let me try to explain the 14 hour work and 10 sleep rules. Say for example I start my day at 6am, I do my truck inspection for 15 min and my 14 hour clock starts ticking (tic toc). I start driving at 6:15 and drive until 9:00 then arrive to deliver the load. At that point my driving time stops. I go into the delivery warehouse and let them know I'm there. They give me a door to back into where they are going to unload the trailer. I get set in the door and then i wait for them to finish unloading. This can take from 30 min for them to do up to 5 or 6 hours depending on the place. I have sat for up to 8.5 hours at a dock before. The only time I have to log for this process is the time I spend on the dock or moving the truck into position as long as i am in the sleeper birth of the truck the rest of the time or i walk off to get a meal but, I have to log a minimum of 30 min for the entire process. So lets say it takes them until 1 PM to unload the load. I then pull out of the dock close the trailer and find a safe spot to wait for the next load. Remember this whole time that 14 hour clock is still ticking (tic toc). I get a new load to go pick up and drive from 1:45 till 4:00 to get to the new load. When I arrive they tell me I have to wait for a door to open. I wait until 5:00 for a door and then get into that door. I wait for them to load me and this takes until 9 PM once I get loaded I log the 30 min loading time and set off but now its 9 PM and I only have one hour left on that 14 hour clock that started at 6 AM that morning. I find a safe place to park and sleep (normally a truck stop or rest area) at 10 PM and I start my 10 hour sleep break.

OK lets break down what happened in that day. I worked non paid for 1 hour and 15 min. and got paid for driving for 5 hours at an average of 50 miles per hour = 250 miles and sat for 7.75 hours and then I am out of hours to work until I take a 10 hour sleeping break. Now I can hear some of you thinking that you only need 8 hours of sleep to be ready to go but in the sleeping break we also fit in eating and showers and maybe catch up on some e-mail or in my case a blog.

A lot can be also done in that 7.75 hour I sat around but it has to be in the sleeper or away from the truck. Not in the drivers compartment or on the dock because all of that time has to be counted as working and that takes away from the 70 weekly clock.

You might also think 70 hours a week is a lot to work but for drivers we can run that amount of time out before the week is done, easy when the loads line up right.

In a load like this one, remember it is 2757 miles long, I don't have to clock any extra time, except for inspections and fuel, because all I'm doing is driving. So I get to drive 11 hours that averages about 550 to 660 miles and then a 10 hour break. I will repeat this process until the end of the run. That means I log 11 driving 30 min fuel and inspection and 30 lunch in 12 hours and then log 10 hours sleeping and restart witch means I get 2 more hours of driving in that day and that means more miles at an average of 650 to 770 per day depending on the states speed limit I am in. More miles means more money thus gravy run, no load or unload time, all miles.

Back to the 70 hour per week rule. I have run mine out. I only had 10 hours left on mine for today so I drove 9.25 hours + my inspection and fuel made for 9.75 hours and when I stopped I have .25 hours on my 70 hour clock. Last Monday i worked for 6 hours total so at midnight tonight i get 6 hours added back on to my 70 hour clock witch means I can run 6.25 hours tomorrow before I have to stop and wait until midnight again to get more hours back. This is important to know so I can calculate weather or not I can make my delivery on time, 4 Am Thursday morning in Concord NC. I have done my calculations and have figured in major city traffic and a few other factors and figure I can make it with around 2 hours on my 70 hour clock to spare. At that point I will ask for a 34 hour reset of my hours.

A 34 hour reset is just that I will sit in sleeper or out getting meals, doing laundry, shopping, go to the movies or what ever as long as I don't work on the truck or move it. After 34 hours all my clocks reset to 0 and I have all my time back.

I bet your wondering where I am if I left Seattle on Friday. I am about 1 hour west of Saint Louis MO and hope to make the KY TN border tomorrow.
I crossed over the Missouri river from Nebraska to Iowa this morning and took this picture .

I was kind of long winded today but really needed to get out the hours of service (HOS) explanation for future post's so you may understand what I will be referring to.

Until next time, be safe.

Late Night

It was a late night last night. I left Salinas CA around 7 PM headed to Seattle WA and because it is a produce run I am short on time so I run into the small hours of the morning. I stopped around 4 AM when i reached OR. The pod casts i listen to help keep me going so its not too bad.

When i woke up this afternoon this is the view that greeted me.
Ashland OR
Ah what a beautiful day here.

I was trying to get a good picture of Mt. Shasta last night but the moon was not full enough. When the moon is full the mountains with snow on then stand out like it is daytime and are really grand mystical to see.

Well got to get rolling, more later.

I had a great weekend off at my parents house up in Grass Valley CA. I saw a few new movies and mom cooked up some great food.

I got that new camera and played with it around the house. It works great.

I did a small coastal run today from Salinas CA to Guadalupe CA and back. It was a very pretty run down U.S. 101 in the coastal mountains to the ocean and along the beach.

I will have to wait till tomorrow to see what is next.

Seattle nights

So the second half of the Veggie shuffle. Off to Seattle I go with 2 stops at grocery warehouses. It is best to have the delivers be in the middle of the night around here because the traffic during the day can be very bad. OK it down right sucks! I have a 2 AM and a 4 AM. I am at the 2 AM now.

I like to have a bit of time in Seattle because the wireless card connection for my laptop is very good here and I can download all the new pod casts I need to catch up on, and I am still working on the PvP gear in WoW. That is going to take me about 3 weeks at my present slow rate. I only get about 1 hour a day to play right now and that's not much.

I love pod casts the are great at passing away all the driving hours. I listen to Buzz Out Loud, This week in Tech, and The Instance just to name a few. I also download audio books to my Ipod. I get a lot of books read that way. Kinda like cheating but i would never have the time otherwise.

I have the camera coming in the mail to my fathers house so i should be posting pic's next week. I am due for my home time at his house this time around this Friday. I am looking forward to it.

Till next time, be safe.
Seattle WA

Veggie shuffle

Yesterday I finished up that heavy load and started the California Veggie Shuffle. Vegetables are grown all over California and are mainly processed in Salinas California.

This is a major movement of vegetables by a ton of trucks. Once they arrive in Salinas they get processed down to consumer packages as in ready made salads and precut packages or into the boxes of vegetables you see at your local store.

The process has to be done in a very short time because vegetables dont have a very long shelf life. Basically they go from the field to your store in 2 to 7 days, depending on how far to your store.

It is a very interesting process to watch go down. Field trucks roll thru the field and are loaded up. From there they come to the central plant where they are loaded into large bin that fit 2 high and side by side in to a refer truck just right. Us refrigerated trucks come to the central plant get washed out, then get a empty weight of the truck, then get loaded up as heavy as is legal and then go get a loaded weight so they know how much of the product we have.

The plant I went to today is out in Huron CA and was packed with trucks both Field and Refer. The time between coming in empty and leaving loaded can some times be very long. Today only took me 4.5 hours.

The main processing plant in Salinas is much faster because they don't really store the product in warehouses. They bring it in the back door, process it and send it out the front door to go out to the stores. Come tomorrow morning I'll do the next part by taking the finished product out to a grocery warehouse and they will ship from there to their own store by way of their own trucks.

So while I wait for tomorrows load I will hit the showers and then I might play some World of Warcraft. I'm working on my PvP gear right now and its a bit of a grind. I will also use the laptop overnight to download all of the podcasts I like to listen to.

I'm saving up for a good digital camera so I can place some pictures into this blog. I do have a razor phone but I don't think the pictures it takes are going to be good enough for the web. Some of the places i see are very awesome and I think the quality of a good camera will be well worth it.

Hitting the showers at the local truck stop. night all.
Salinas CA

Snow Days

Yesterday I was exhausted when i finished driving so I didn't write much. Snow driving is bad on it's own but, when the wind comes with it, things go very bad very fast. After I left Denver yesterday and just started into Cheyenne WY the wind kicked up to 50+ MPH and brought with it the snow. Think of a truck that is 70 feet long and 13.6 feet high as a giant sail boat.

Under normal sunny 70 degree dry conditions a truck driver has to constantly make minor corrections to keep the truck going straight down the road and should be scanning the mirrors road ahead and all around in a continuous motion.

When the snow or rain or anything wet starts hitting the road the whole proses speeds up and to help this a driver normally slows down to compensate for what the driver might miss. Then factor in the wind trying its best to blow the truck into its lowest profile (on its side). That's when things get mentally frenzied. the only good point is that the heaver your truck and load are the harder it is for the wind to blow you off the road. Don't get me wrong it can still do it or blow you over but is not near as bad if the trailer was empty.

On my way through Wyoming yesterday I seen 3 trucks blown over between Cheyenne and Wamsutter. I also Watched the trucks lighter get blown all over the road. some were bad enough that I could read the name on the side of the trailer when I was following behind them. Some of them would suddenly change lanes (not on their own free will).

After a bit of time driving out in the open you can kinda judge what the wind is doing and make some sort of compensation for it but then after compensating for a while you come up to a bridge and because of the way bridges are built its like a wind break, you hit that wind break and the compensation you were doing for the wind makes you take a sudden turn in opposite direction and at 60 to 65 miles per hours your past that wind breaking bridge really fast, then the wind hits you again it the other direction. If you don't realize this is going to happen you can get in big trouble in a matter of 2 to 4 seconds. First your truck makes I violent turn right to the shoulder of the road and your natural reaction is to turn away from that, then the wind comes back while you are correcting and blows you in the direction your turning, basically helping you make a u-turn on the freeway. Trucks don't make u-turns at speeds more then 5 to 10 MPH they just roll over or jack-knife. Jack-knife is a term for when you get to see the rear half of your trailer through your windshield.

Throw a bunch of tall mountains and the Continental divide into the mix and by the end of a 11 hour day you are the mental equivalent of a eggplant and your body is exhausted from sawing on the steering wheel and your butt grabbing on to the seat when things get a bit sideways.

so now you know why i mispelled Wendover NV when i was done yesterday.

Today was a nice cruse through Nevada till i got to the California border. that's when the snow started back up. wasn't too bad tho. Not much stuck to the road and the wind wasn't blowing much although going over Donner Pass is an experience all on its own. I will go into that one another time when i haven't been as long winded as i was today.

Tonight i am in Auburn CA. I stopped here to go have dinner with my mom and dad who live about 25 minutes away. We had a nice dinner. Now I'm going to bed.

sleep

Too tired. wait till morning.

Windover NV

Truck life in the slow lane

Well what a day today was. First my next load to Sacramento was taken away and they gave me one to pick up at 6 pm going to Kansas city.

My eldest son also drives a cross country truck for another company. So he happen to be passing Thu Denver and we met up for lunch sense my load didn't pick up till later, that was the nice part of the day.

After lunch I headed over to Fort Morgan CO to get my load. it only took them an hour to load. (that is kinda fast for the truck world) As soon as i was loaded they sent me a swap ( a swap is when you swap your loaded trailer with another truck, and they are normally done to help someone get home or to make the load get to its destination on time.). well the swap was only 10 miles down the road.

I scaled my load at the place I loaded at and all the axle weights came out good. you can get a very costly ticket for being over weight on 1 axle or for the combination of all 5 witch is called gross weight, also in some states they only let you have the rear wheels of your trailer a certain distance from the king pin (king pin is what connects the trailer to the tractor) I.E. California only allows 40 feet from king pin to center of rear axle. It can be difficult with 44,000 pound loads to achieve a good weight on all axles and roll into California.

When I got to the swap and met up with the other driver it turned out he had my Sacramento load I had the day before. When we swapped the paperwork on our load we also swapped scale tickets. Because we have the same type trucks we could tell what we were going to weigh. His scale ticket stated that the rear axel on his truck weighed 35,100 pounds, your only allowed 34,000 on the rear set and the driver set of axles and 12,00 on the steer. I asked him if he adjusted the rear axle after he weighed the load and he said he slid them back 2 holes to the California limit.

This is not good every hole you side the rear axle's back only moves about 230 to 250 pounds depending on how the cargo is set inside the trailer.

After we swapped trailers I went to the nearest scale to reweigh and see it what he did helped any. it didn't the rear still weighed 35,100 pounds so I had to let night dispatch know. They told me i had 2 choices. 1st take the load back to Golden Co where it came from and have the cargo reworked or, 2ND make the other driver come back and take the load himself. I opted to take it back and have it reworked myself because the other driver was headed home.

On my way back to Golden i was stopped at a state scale house, not a good thing. The weight on my rear axle on their scale read 35,160 pounds. they made me park and bring in all my paperwork (a ton of paperwork with trucks). when i got in the office the officer asked me for my registration, i handed it over. I then noticed i forgot the most important paperwork, my licence and medical card in the truck. I asked if i could go get it and the officer said I wouldn't need it. Strange if I was getting a Ticket I would think he would need it. After standing there for 10 minuets while he typed away on his computer he said i could go. Stunned I left as fast as I could without running.

My lucky day!

When i got to Golden I presented my problem and they told me to drop the trailer in the lot and call back for it tomorrow. I asked what would take so long to rework the load and they said it came from the factory over loaded and had to go back there, not the warehouse. Great a ton of waisted time because the other driver never bothered to make it right.

So I headed to the local truck stop and hit the showers. Maybe I'll get to pick it up tomorrow and run with it to CA.

Some days are just a pain.

4-8-07 Easter Sunday

OK this is my first post and my first attempt at a blog. I am currently backed into a dock for a major food chain in Denver CO. It is 5 AM local time, but because the company i work for is located in the central time zone i work on that time. In other words it is always CST in my truck.
It is very cold out today, about 24 degrees and it snowed over night. I've been out of the house for about 2 weeks so far this time but, I'm not sure yet when my next home time will be. My wife is currently in Phoenix AZ with our son and our brand new grandson. I am trying to time when my next home time will be with her getting home or the chance i can pick her up in Phoenix and bring her home. I started this blog to keep track of where i go and what i do and also to give some light on the profession of truck driving.

I have 3 deliveries to make today in the Denver area. I might have another load to pick up here that will be going to Sacramento California. But i never know for sure until i actually get the load information on the computer in my truck.
I think they are almost done unloading my truck, get back to you with more later.