Tsumar

Extended time off

2008-11-17T20:34:00.000-08:00

As I am sure all have noticed I have been gone a long time. Well I took my vacation but even before that started on my last week of work I managed to injure myself. Go figure. That in turn extended my time off for 3 months. After I was cleared to go back to work the company I was working for underwent a management change and all new rules went into effect that made working for that company no longer something I wanted to do so, I hit the want ad's.

I started out looking for a local truck job but they are very few and hard to come by these days with the economy sucking as bad as it is. I even applied for one job 3 days before it was posted in the papers and my app got shuffled under 100 more drivers who applied for the same job.
So I went back to what I know best, hauling food all over the country.

I would still like to work a local job and be able to be home every night but until things get better I will stick to what makes me the cash I need to support my family. That is the reason most OTR (over the road) Drivers are out here.

I am running for a much smaller company then I am used to now and it seems to be a bit better and by smaller I mean about 300 trucks in the fleet.

I have been in company's with thousands and to them you are just a number they push around their computer screens. I didn't mind being a number tho because if you didn't call attention to your self they would leave you alone. Of course you would have to learn how to play the big company games. With big company's came the big list of rules because nothing was on a personal level and the rules had to fit every possible situation they could think of.

First, you learn the rules and who has control of who. With most big truck company's the safety department has control over everyone else, and this is a plus for the driver if they know how to use it.

Second, you make sure you have a perfect "on-time" record. This is a bit tricky depending on how close the company wants to cut the time you have to run their loads and how much control they give away to the customers they haul for. Some company's give way too much control to their customers and naturally they want the load delivered yesterday even if it is 2500 miles away. Most of the big company's have computers in their trucks and when you get a load the first thing you do is calculate the time it will take you to get it picked up and delivered.( There are several ways and formulas to do this by. I will try and explain them at a later date but for now lets stick to just saying that's what you do.). If the load is too close you send a computer message stating that you can not deliver this load on time safely and legally. Once it is in a company computer message it is permanent record and cant be disputed that you warned them and by most big company rules you are no longer responsible for the load being late. It does take a good bit of time in the trucking industry to get this bit of knowledge down to a working system but it is what it is and it works.

The third Part comes after they notice your record for "on-time" and safety and legal log keeping. There will come the phone call where they ask for a "favor" and it wont be from your normal dispatcher, it will be from his boss or a load planer. This phone call will be about a HOT load they need done and can't find any one to run it or it could be a rescue load from a broke down or a driver who got into trouble. Jump on this chance to help. EVERY company keeps a file on each driver and things like this are kept in there believe it or not it counts for or against you depending on how you answer this call. So if you can in any way run this load for them legally DO IT. They will state "they owe you one" and that means they put it in your file with their name on it and having the bosses name with a good remark or a I.O.U. goes a LONG way in getting you what you want in the way of runs or time off not to mention if your make a load planner happy you tend to get some real gravy runs out of them.

I am not saying this all works every time but for me it has been a great way to run in a large company.

So now I have to see if I can run in this smaller company the same way or maybe I might have to make a few changes. I am not too worried tho I do know the basics that you need for every job, Cover Your Ass at all times. Its hard to sit and drive with no ass.

Til next time, keep safe.

Tsu

Trucker Poets

2008-03-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

I found a link to a few Trucker Poet winners in Land Line a OOIDA (owner operator independent drivers assn. ) i thought some were very good and wanted to share them with you just follow the link.

http://www.landlinemag.com/Archives/2007/Nov2007/Features/poetry.html

I also found a great one that i will have to type in by hand. Look for it soon.

Unitl next time stay safe.

Winter

2008-02-17T18:29:00.000-08:00

I am at home right now and enjoying my time off with the wife and family. I am playing a lot of Warcraft and a little Sims Golf, tons of fun.

Winters are a bit harder on truck drivers because of all the changing weather. Unexpected delays
cause time management to become critical and that changes the hours we would normaly sleep to change. To sum it up we never seem to sleep at the same time every day. We could be sleeping at night and then have to change it to sleeping during the day all depending on when the load delivers and what the roads are like.

The weather effects other things like the fuel in the trucks when its 10 degrees or less. The fuel will gel and stop the truck from running. To stop that, we put anti gel in the tanks and some tanks have fuel heaters too. When it is under 0 degrees we have to run the trucks to keep them from freezing up. In places like Wyoming where the wind is also blowing on top of the -0 degree weather you have to consider what direction to park your truck so the snow is not blown in the engine or again it may freeze up.

When the temperature drops below 0 all things change into a life or death situation when it comes to keeping your truck running. The truck becomes your life line. If it runs you can get warm, if it stops, you can freeze to death before any help can come to help you. There are many places in the country where you can be 60 to 100 miles from any help and -0 temps will not take long to freeze you. That brings us to the things you can do not to freeze if the truck breaks down. First thermal underwear and a good winter coat that goes below the waist. I also carry thermal padded coveralls that keep me very warm. In the bunk I have a 0 degree rated sleeping bag I can crawl into and you can get heaters that will run as long as the batteries in the truck last. They also make blankets that plug into the lighter socket.

Going outside when the temp drops below 0 is also a challenge. You have to cover up every part of exposed skin, this includes face and hands. We have to go out in the weather for a few things several times a day like fueling the truck and bathroom breaks. also, when you get to a shipper or receiver you have to go in to make contact, then open doors on the trailer and chock tires when going to a dock. When the temp is under 0 breathing also changes, you shouldn't take in huge amounts of the super cold air it will make you cough. I have been in temps as low as -45 and at that temp you don't want to go out at all.

I spent a few days this last trip out stuck waiting for mountain passes to reopen that were closed due to snow.

The west coast seems to be the worst when it comes to road closers in the winter. I would guess it is because the snow is warmer and more slippery on the roads and the west has a lot of mountains that are very steep and full of curves to wreck you.

Almost all of the western states have chain laws to follow. Installing chains on a truck is no easy feat. For a truck and trailer with 5 axles in the state of California you have to put on 8 chains, 6 on the drive tires and 2 on the trailer tires. this can take lots of time and still does not ensure that you are any safer on the highway. My company gives our drivers a choice to put chains on or not to. I elect not to because if I have to put chains on I consider the road no longer safe to drive on, and its not because I can't drive on it, but because the other drivers out there in cars become more unsafe.

Trucks can run on snow differently depending on the weight of the truck. A fully loaded truck will push through the snow and make contact with the road helping us have more control. A empty trailer is out right unsafe in snow and ice. There is nothing helping us stick to the road and the trailer will always want to go another direction, it will often try to pass you. Being alert at all times when behind the wheel is a must in winter driving. Ice effects trucks even more then cars because we have more weight pushing us forward, so turns and stops become more of a challenge. You have to do all changes in small amounts to keep control of the combination truck and trailer. This includes accelerating as well as slowing down. Acceleration can break traction just as easy as breaking can and recovering from a power jackknife is hard to do. Actually any jackknife is difficult to recover from but it can be done. I was taught to never give up trying no matter how impossible the situation looks.

It's time to go back to enjoying my little amount of time at home, until next time, be safe out there.

Coming soon

2007-11-16T20:20:00.000-08:00

No I haven't forgotten to blog, just been very busy. I do have a few topic's in mind and will get them in very soon. My wife has been out with me for the past 4 weeks and it has been a ton of fun. We are working our way home now for Thanksgiving and all of ours kids are going to be there this year. It should be a great holiday.

More soon.

Tsumar

2007-09-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of important tools in the trucking industry like a map, extra bulbs, fuses, gloves, hammer and a good tool box, just to name a few. That's just a starting list and no where near all of it, but I would have to say very close to the top of the list is a good C.B..

The C.B. Radio(Citizens Band Radio) has many different functions in a truckers life. Before cell phones the C.B. was the only form of communication in a truck to the outside world. You might even say it was a life line for the trucker. For instance, if something should happen to you on the road in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and your truck broke (witch they do all the time no matter how new they are) and you didn't have a phone near by, you could call for help from a passing truck on the C.B.. That truck would then stop at the nearest phone and call for the help you needed. Also most state patrol (and or highway patrol depending on the state you are in) monitor the C.B. for stranded motorists and accident reports.

With cell phones so easy to get nowadays almost every truck driver has one but, we still call out to trucks broke down on the side of the road just to make sure they are in cell phone range and see if they might need a hand or a call made.

C.B.s are also very useful in helping know what is coming up on the road you might want to watch out for. We report accidents that are coming up and witch lane is best to be in to get around it, if you can get around at all. If the road is blocked we give and get directions on how to get around the blocked road, so we don't get stuck in the back up. When there is construction we let the other trucks coming up to it know what lane is blocked off so we can prepare ahead of time. You might take notice next time your in a big back up due to construction or a accident witch lane the trucks are all in and you will know where to go. If you see all the trucks dive off the highway at the same place you might know why.

The C.B. also has some nefarious uses. One such use is the tracking and reporting of where the "bears" are. Bears being the police. They have many names depending on who and what they are. A few examples are...
Full grown bear = State Patrol with a light bar on top.
Polar bear = a white patrol car no lights on top (normally in California they are D.O.T. Officers). D.O.T. bear = Department Of Transportation Officer(they are assigned to patrol trucks, better mind your P's and Q's).
County Mounty = a sheriff or county police officer.
Local Yocal = The city police.
Care bear = police officer assigned to watch over a construction site.
Bear in the woods = a officer hidden from view to catch speeders.
Evil Kanevil = motorcycle officer.
Bear with a capture = Officer with someone pulled over (like "a bear with a captured big truck" is a trucker being pulled over).
A plain (insert color here) wrapper (i.e. a plane brown wrapper)= a solid color police car with no markings (you might wonder how we know its a police officer, they have to pass one of us and we all look down to see in the cars going by (yes we have nothing better to do with our time)).
There are a few other names but they escape me at the moment.

The way the tracking works is rather simple and very efficient. Most all trucks keep their C.B. on channel 19 unless you are driving on I-5 in California North of the grapevine all the way to the Canadian border, then it is channel 17. For the grapevine it's self (the grapevine is a section of I-5 from Valencia to Grapevine California over the Tejon Pass) they use channel 15. I have never figured out why the use of different channels on the west coast but, that is what it is. I will have to research that and see if i can find a reason. So now with all the trucks on the same channel, we form a line of communication. Every bear report is located by a mile marker.

Mile markers are little signs you see along the road and start from 0 in the south and go up till the road ends or leaves the state or they start at 0 on the west side and the highest number is in the east. All states work this way with one or two exceptions in New York and California. The Federal government has made this a standard by telling the states they have to mark interstates this way and list exit's with a number that matches the interstate mile marker or they do not receive Federal funding for their roads. The reason California is different is because they refused to mark their highways until forced to do so and now they are slowly doing so. New York has a giant toll road that is I-90 and its paid for with tolls so they haven't bothered to do so.

So you might hear over the C.B. "there is a polar bear in the center divide looking at the west bound at the 42". That means if your west bound around 44 you might want to make sure you are doing the speed limit and not in the "hammer lane" (hammer lane is the left most lane you use for passing, in most states if there are 3 or more lanes per side, trucks cant use the left most lane. Hammer is another word for the accelerator and when you push it all the way to the floor you are hammering it down).

Another use for the C.B. is the truckers favorite pass time, Whining. They love to whine about everything from the bears to the government to the way other truckers drive. You have to have a special license that lets you drive two trucks at once to be able to tell another trucker how to drive and get away with it (in other words you never get away with it) but, they all try. There is a never ending supply of advice out there and you have to pick and choose what you want to respond to. Four Wheelers (Four Wheelers is what we call cars for the obvious reason they only have 4 wheels) are most often clueless to all that is being communicated around them by the trucks on the C.B. and i would say most time that is a good thing but, at other times they are missing out.

My favorite joke related to this subject is "what is the difference between a truck driver and a puppy?

Eventually the puppy stops whining.

I have heard a lot of things on the C.B. from great political debates to an awesome rendition of the national anthem sung by a driver while driving across the Western side of Nebraska as the sun was coming up over the bluffs.

Just another interesting part in the life of a trucker in America.

Until next time, be safe.

Chicago

2007-08-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

The big windy.

Chicago is different then most big city's in the United States when it comes to the trucking industry. The only other city comparable to it is Los Angles. New York only lets trucks into one part of the city and the rest of its merchandising is done out of the city and brought in by smaller trucks. Atlanta does not allow big trucks into the city, it has the smaller trucks do all the work, same with Baltimore, Washington D.C. . Most other big city's do business with trucks during both day and night shifts. Chicago and L.A. on the other, hand have a very busy night time hustle.

The trucks come in during the day to points outside the city, like Gary, IN and Portage, IN or south of the city in Chicagoland or Joilet, IL and in the north its Beloit, WI. They wait like racers waiting for the starting gun to go off. At around 7 PM a silent bell rings and they are off. By that time, traffic has died down enough that movement in the city is not impossible. The way in witch Chicago is different is the factories and warehouses are mixed into the very heart of the city and the city is very old, so the streets are small. To combat this most of the truck unloading and loading is done at night when the regular workers go home. This does not mean the traffic is gone, quite the opposite happens by doing it this way they created a double commute. Day workers are going home and a line of trucks as far as you can see are headed into the city along with the night warehouse workers.

I would take pictures of the lines of trucks headed into the city but my camera doesn't do all that well at night with pictures taken from inside the truck.

When you work for a big company that services the Chicago area you get sucked into the area for a few days. Most big truck company's have a trailer yard or terminal in the area where they stack loads to be delivered into the city. So you get a load coming into Chicago and do your delivery, then take the empty either back to your company terminal, or another warehouse to be loaded. Then you grab another load going back into the city. These types of loads are called shags. Since they don't have many miles connected to them company's pay an extra shag fee on top of the miles to make it worth your time. So you do two or three shag's and then ( hopefully!) you get the load out of the Chicago area.

Some company's have local trucks that do a big portion of the shag's in and out of the city but they never seem to be able to get them all, and most O.T.R. (over the road) drivers will not put up with doing shag's for more then 2 days before they start to whine. So in a way the system has been perfected down to this for most of the big city's; deliver to big city, shag 2 loads, get load out of big city area.

Another difference in Chicago is that the citywide freeway system is not a citywide freeway system. It's all toll roads. So you stop every 5 miles or so to pay tolls unless you have a toll transponder in your truck. They automatically pays the tolls as you go past the toll booths.

If you ever find your self in Chicago with nothing to do around midnight go to one of the bridges over the toll roads and watch as nothing but a endless line of trucks passes by in both directions moving the goods of Chicago.

Until next time, be safe.

Running I5

2007-07-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

Running interstate 5 from California to Washington is a common run for trucks. Its also a very scenic route. the normal starting points from the south on this run are San Francisco / Sacramento in northern California or Los Angles / San Diego in Southern California. The other end in the north is Portland Oregon, Seattle Washington and Vancouver British Colombia Canada. My run took me from L.A. to Seattle this time, but i have traveled the entire route. Coming out of L.A. going north the first obstacle you hit is Tejon Pass at a little over 4100 feet high it is a steep climb for trucks and an even steeper decline on the Grapevine side where you drop down into the Great San Joaquin valley.

The valley is a flat and some what straight run for a little over 400 miles and not much to see except farms. At the other end is Red Bluff and the start to climbing the Cascade range.

The Cascade Mountains will run all the way to Canada. The Cascade's are full of volcanoes, Starting with Mount Shasta.
Although Mt. Shasta isn't really the First volcano, it is the first you can get a good picture of. Mt. Lassen is very hard to photograph from I5 but on a clear day you can see it way off in the east.

Next to Shasta in Black Butte.
There are several more to be seen in Oregon and Washington like Mt. Hood, Mt. Washington, Mt. Adams and Mt. Saint Helen's but if i showed pictures of them all it would take forever to upload this page. So the last one you see when you get to Seattle is the highest Mountain in the Continental United States, Mount Rainier at over 14,000 feet you would think the mountain would be easy to see but, unless it is a clear day , Rainier can hide behind clouds created by its height. Rainier makes her own weather and can be ringed in clouds when every thing else is clear. As you can see in this picture if you click on it, there is a ring of clouds at the base of the mountain.

Be safe.

The Road Less Traveled

2007-06-23T07:34:00.001-07:00

NO, I haven't driven off the face of the map, but almost. I've been out for the last month with my wife. We really enjoy the alone time we get on the road and have a ton of fun. So, I forget to update the Blog in those times.

Now I'm back out on my own for the next 4 weeks and today I find my self on one of the lonely roads. These roads are normally U.S. highways in the parts of the country where there are not any big city's or towns. U.S. 287 from Fort Worth to Amarillo to Limon CO on I70 is a major truck route because of the lack of a interstate to Denver from the Dallas area. 287 also crosses some very empty stretches of the country.
This is Campo CO on the Colorado, Oklahoma border and as you can see there is not much out here.

It is amazing how if you mention Colorado people think Rocky mountains but they don't realize that half of Colorado is flat high range lands.

These roads are, in my opinion very interesting to cross. They take you to parts of the country seldom see by anyone who does not live out here. The people are very friendly and would talk to you all day if given the chance. They are very proud of their way of life out here and would not generally trade for anything different.

Although you don't see it in this picture, the trucks are thick on this highway some times traveling in packs of 10 or more.

Out here you run across some interesting sights, like Boise OK in the pan handle of Oklahoma. In Boise 3 highways come together at the county court house and you have to circle the court house to get to the highway you want to go to.
It's kinda like trucks on a merry go round. You can only go one direction as you can see from the sign.

until next time, be safe.

Reset Finished

2007-05-04T08:08:00.000-07:00

This was the I40 river gorge from Tennessee to North Carolina I drove through Wednesday. It is a very pretty drive with tons of trees a few tunnels and a river at the bottom.

I delivered on Wednesday and started a reset of my hours due to the fact that I only had .25 on my 70 hour clock when I was done with the load. So I found a good place to hold up for the 34 hours, a truck stop north of Charlotte. I have good TV reception and good Internet so I was all set. All I did was play on the computer, watch TV, take showers and lots of sleeping.

Today I am going to start my driver westward in hopes of making it back home by next Friday. After 7 days out i pick a home time and send it in by computer 9 days before i want to be home. I did on Monday and made it next Friday. It could take all week to get home. So normally the first thing the planners shoot for is the west coast and then narrow it down from there.

Wish me luck and be safe.

Blue grass or just very green

2007-05-01T15:33:00.000-07:00

I drove through St. Louis in the dark this morning so no picture of the arch but I have seen it enough times I am sure I'll get one soon. From there i took a turn south in Illinois to Kentucky across the Ohio and Tennessee rivers.

This was the sunrise in the Illinois farm lands.

This is the Ohio river where I crossed into Kentucky from Illinois.

This morning before I left Foristell MO I went into the truck stop restaurant for the drivers social hour. It is something that seems to happen in almost every truck stop diner at around 4 to 5 am and also happens at night too. In the morning as drivers wake up to start their days they wander into the restaurant to get breakfast and sit at the long horseshoe shaped counters. I am sure most truck stops that have this counter, set it up to formulate social interaction for the drivers. The conversation flows pretty fast depending on how many drivers are at the counter and the topics change faster then the waitress can pour a cup of coffee. Trust me the waitresses join in the social hour too.

The drivers talk about everything from their homes to life on the road and always about their family's. The hot topics include politics and the state of the industry we are all in, trucking. It gives a great sense of family when you join in these social conversations with drivers from all over the nation and some from Canada too. It can also give you insight into what people from other parts of the country think of current day government, politics, social issues and even Paris Hilton.

Did i mention the jokes? Oh yes lots of jokes as they all try to top one another. Then the waitress comes out with one and the place starts slapping the counter and laughing very loud. I think the waitresses have the best jokes because they must hear them all.

The waitress has a very important roll in this social gathering other then keeping the coffee flowing. She is sort of the facilitator of making the drivers feel at home. Normal waitresses in the very Early morning hours have been doing the job for many years and have this shift because they have grown to love it. The waitress this morning said she started the job when she was 18 and we didn't ask but she looked to be around 65. So you can imagine what she has seen in her time on the job. She ran around taking orders and pouring coffee. She had a very mom like attitude, wherein she would call you dear and hon, of course, and just make you feel like you were at your own kitchen table at home.

I think its one of the better times for life on the road and definitely keeps the drivers of America going on down the road.

Until next time, be safe.

The Long Run

2007-04-30T18:00:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-26T12:02:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-16T02:13:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-13T17:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-10T22:45:00.000-07:00

Too tired. wait till morning.

Windover NV

Truck life in the slow lane

2007-04-09T22:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-08T04:06:00.000-07:00

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.