My Third Post with Abigail

Anytime you can get something done a day early like this you are just setting yourself up to be ready for another load. I speak a lot in here about how the pay on this job is performance based. I'm trying to share with you my methods and the reasons behind them so that you can understand how a truck driver finds his way to success in this career. Staying ahead of the game, and having a dispatcher that understands that you are going to do what it takes to stay ahead will definitely help you stay at the top of the food chain. So many truck drivers concern themselves overly with whether their company can "give them enough miles" - you should just just get out there and consistently prove to them that you will do what ever it takes to keep things moving along faster than the average drivers and you will have all the work you can possibly handle.

Here's a peek at Abigail standing by my truck sporting her pink hard hat and her pink work gloves. She's learning a few things from me about load securement, and I'm learning from here about things like Snap-Chat, and Instagram!

We picked up a two stop back haul load in Yankton, South Dakota. If you remember, we were going to try and get our second stop on the last load delivered a day early. Well, we managed to get our third stop delivered early also. Here's a tip: Keep good communications going with your customers. Once I realized that I was going to make good time in getting to my second stop on that load I called my third stop to tell them that I could be there by 3:30, that is the cut-off time for receiving at that location. I told them how many bundles I had for them and they said if I could get there by 3:30 they would unload me. I really believe in communicating with my customers. Because I run for a dedicated account, many of my customers end up seeing me repeatedly, and some of them kind of get to know me. I've even had them request me for a load. One time when my dispatcher had me on a very time sensitive load, he later informed me that the anxious customer called him in an effort to verify that the driver was going to make it on time. When he told them it was me at the wheel they were relieved and said they would quit bothering him now because they knew that I always got there when I said I would. I was proud when my dispatcher told me about that experience, but he was even more so - you could hear the satisfaction in his voice when he said "I wish all my drivers would call ahead to their customers like you do, and keep them in the loop of what's going on, it saves me a lot of headache and extra work." I'm sorry, I'm getting side-tracked - I pulled in at that third stop at 3:28 and they had me unloaded by 3:45! We then rolled on to within about 25 miles of our final destination in Yankton, South Dakota and stopped for the night at the Coffee Cup truck stop.

I almost forgot to share with you this picture of Abigail having her morning cup of "Joe" - I don't drink coffee, so I'm blissfully ignorant about that mysterious black liquid. I would call her drink "a cup of it cost a latte", but it probably has a much more sophisticated name like "double truffle super snuffle Viente creamy espresso, or something along those lines. What ever... she's my guest this week so I'll gladly indulge her tastes - I'm really enjoying having her along.

Abigail has been quite amazed at how much corn we produce in this country while driving through Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and South Dakota. She also discovered that rather unpleasant odor put out by a feed lot that is trying to produce some nicely marbled corn fed beef! She's been having a great time, and I even caught her "horsing around" with the big green "Sinclair" dinosaur at a truck stop near Pocahontas, Iowa.