I've dropped Sarah off at the house now, and I want you to know that we were so busy having such a nice time together, that I didn't take the time to keep this thread updated. Shame on me!
Let me take a stab at catching y'all up.
After spending the night at Blacksburg, SC we delivered our load of lumber the following morning in Rocky Mount VA. I want to tell you about this day because it is a good example of how you have to be willing and able to adjust your plans and schedule on a daily basis in this career if you are going to be able to stay sane and still keep making a decent paycheck each week. It's not usually the problems of moving a big rig down the highway that cause people to throw in the towel in this business, but rather it's succumbing to the frustrations and not knowing how to deal with the unexpected curve-balls that are constantly challenging your ability to cope with ever changing goals and targets. Here's how things went for us and what we did to deal with it.
We gave ourselves a three hour cushion in our plans for the day so that we could make our 2:00 loading appointment at Steel Dynamics in Roanoke. Well, the folks who were unloading us in the morning let us sit and sit for a little more than three and a half hours before they managed to get us unloaded. Very frustrating because now it makes us late for our pick-up schedule, so I had to call and get it rescheduled. The next available time was about three hours later than my original appointment so I took it and we rolled on in about an hour ahead of our appointment time and waited. About six hours after our rescheduled appointment we were finally loaded and ready to roll. I would have only had two hours of legal driving time at that point, and I had studied all this while we were waiting, running out different scenarios in my head trying to figure out how to still make my scheduled appointment even though they loaded me much later than originally planned. If I went a head and drove for that two hours and then took a ten hour break as required by the regulations I would be late and probably have to reschedule for the next day. Can you say "Not Happening"? Here's what we did to "beat the system" and keep outsmarting the folks driving themselves nuts struggling every week trying to figure out how to make this frustrating career work for them. After being at this shipper for about twenty minutes I went ahead and got myself on the sleeper berth line. Now if you are following all this, and keeping up with the math, you'll quickly realize that after I was loaded and ready to go I only needed about four more hours on the sleeper berth before I could turn those wheels again. Now I've got to get to a place to sleep for a little while without starting my electronic logs - that's a challenge because there is no truck stop nearby. Of course the driver who is constantly trying to stay on his game pays attention to all this as he's rolling in to his shipper, and because of that I had already spotted a grocery store nearby with a large parking lot. We pulled in as they were closing the store and slept until 1:00 am and then started rolling again. I let Sarah sleep as I drove those early morning hours since she isn't accustomed to my erratic sleeping patterns. But there you have it - one way you can keep those wheels turning even if your shippers and receivers do everything in their power to mess you up. We were still on schedule and we didn't take a hit on our paycheck. Most important though is that we didn't cuss and scream and send nasty messages to our DM griping and complaining about the way we're being treated and saying that we're too tired to get this load delivered now. Personally as far as I'm concerned they can keep all that miserable layover pay in the company bank account - I want to get paid for delivering my load and start heading to the next load, and that's how you do it.
Once the sun came up, we enjoyed the beautiful weather and scenes along the way on our journey - it's beginning to be a very beautiful spring.
Your elogs kick in at a specific m.p.h. or distance traveled?
ReplyDeleteThe various trucking companies have some liberty to set their own parameters on how the e-logs works. Currently mine will kick into the drive mode after you have driven about a mile and a half. The reason this is done is because often times you will need to move around a bit while at a shipper or receiver, and you don't need that thing tripping over to the drive line every time you just move a little bit.
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