Problem Solving

Being a successful truck driver requires some good problem solving skills.  Sometimes we are under pressure to make things work that might seem impossible.  Being able to keep a good level head and work out solutions, in a sometimes stressful environment with critical timelines, is crucial to success out here on the road.  We have so many variables thrown at us at different times, weather, road construction, unexpected delays, scheduling snafus, break downs, and a host of other things that can just go wrong when constantly being on the move.

This week I went to our terminal in Gulfport, MS to have my "B" service done on my truck.  The "B" service is when they change all your filters, and your oil, grease everything, and just do a really thorough going over of everything so that they can keep your truck in tip top shape.  At Knight we do this every forty thousand miles.  For me that is going to happen about four times in the year.  I was there a day longer than I expected to be.  They did several extra things for me, one of which was putting all new tires on my truck!

This was the critical service that I was instructed to go past my mileage limit so that we could get a critical load delivered.  It seems that everything is "critical" in this business, which is why I am posting about the importance of good problem solving skills.

Before I made it over to the terminal, my dispatcher and I had a conversation about when I would be ready for my next load.  My appointment for my service was set for Monday morning, and he wanted to know if I thought they would have me ready by Tuesday.  He wanted me available for Tuesday due to the fact that each day he has got to make a commitment to SAPA as to how many drivers he will have available.  I told him that I couldn't be sure, because you just never know how long they will take with you, but I felt reasonably sure I could be back to Delhi on Tuesday.  I also wanted to be available for Tuesday, as that is one of the days that the better loads go out on.  After some discussion we both decided to put me down as available for Tuesday, knowing full well that it takes about four and a half hours for me to get there from Gulfport.

Now, at some point Tuesday morning I got a call from my dispatcher letting me know that the terminal manager wanted him to send a brand new driver, who was just starting his first day with us on this dedicated account, to Gulfport with an available truck that was parked at our yard in Delhi.  Then he wanted me to take the new driver back with me to Delhi.  It was just a logistics problem he was trying to solve to get that truck in his yard because he had a bunch of new drivers getting ready to go solo and he didn't have enough trucks available for all of them.  Sometimes you can solve one problem and then cause several more with your solution!  That is what was happening here.  I had a load waiting that required me to get back to Delhi as soon as possible, and this new driver had his first load waiting on him in Delhi.  It turns out that if he takes the nine plus hours to come to Gulfport and then ride back with me he will be late getting his load delivered, and depending on when he can leave, it may jeopardize my ability to get mine done on time also.  Add to this equation the fact that we still aren't even sure when they are going to be finished with my truck.

Jason (my dispatcher) is not pleased with this whole scheme and tells me that he is sending Wayne (the terminal manager) an email saying that he can't do that because it will mess up too many things.  About an hour later I get a call from Jason letting me know that Wayne insisted that he do it this way and that was an end to the discussion - get it done, that's what we are paying you for!

Here's where it gets tricky...  It turns out the new driver had been on duty while doing some training with one of the other drivers here, and it was going to be about five hours before he would have enough hours to leave from Delhi and start the drive to Gulfport.  That means it will be close to ten hours before I even see him!  Wayne was unmoved by that scenario - he was laser focused on his particular problem and really didn't want to hear how his solution was messing up our situations.

Problem solving time!

I went right into the shop manager to inquire when they could project that my truck would be finished. Two hours max they told me.  I contacted Jason, and told him my scenario and then suggested we grab one of the many drivers who are in the lounge waiting on their trucks in the shop and I take them with me to Delhi.  They can then drive that truck from our yard back to the terminal and all our problems would be solved.  New guy can leave on time with his load, I can get back to Delhi and get started on my load going to Miami, which was already perilously close to being late, and we get the available truck to Gulfport, where it is needed badly.  "Wow," says Jason.  That is such a simple solution.  I want you to go tell Wayne.  I would email him that as a suggestion, but I want him to see that the idea came from you.

When Wayne heard my solution he was dumbfounded.  "That is so simple, I can't believe I didn't think of it.  I was so focused in one direction, that I didn't see the best way to handle this."

We found a driver who was glad to earn a little extra money while waiting on his truck, and we solved this whole problem.  Of course, I later found out from Jason that it was revealed in some further emails that Wayne took all the credit for the idea!  No big deal to me.  Jason, even suggested to me that maybe they should move me into an office job if I was able to come up with such simple solutions.  I told him that I was much more content behind the steering wheel - I don't care to play those inner office games that go on in that office.

Now, here's another problem that stemmed from all of this...

When my truck was completed, I had two more hours remaining to be able to get a 34 hour reset done.  It only seemed prudent to go ahead and wait it out so that I would be running with a full clock. So I did just that, and even got a nice truck wash at the terminal so that not only would I be running wild and free with all kinds of hours available to me, but I would also be shiny and clean at the same time!

Okay, my load to Miami had two additional stops on it up around the Tampa Bay area.  As I was driving that first leg of the journey, I was running calculations in my head as to how this was all going to work out, and I was quickly coming to the conclusion that it was not going to work at all.  That additional two hours that I waited to reset my seventy hour clock was going to bite me in the back-side!  Without boring you with all the minutia of the details I'll just explain it this way... My  first stop does receiving until five P.M.  My second stop quits receiving at eleven A.M.  My hours will allow me to get to the first stop legally, but I will be extremely close to being out of hours when I get there.  Although I would have time available on my fourteen hour clock, I will have used up my eleven hours of driving time already, which means that I cannot drive the sixty miles or so to the second stop legally without taking a ten hour break!  Ohhh, frustration with regulation!!!

I guess I am boring you with the details, but it helps to understand the solution by understanding the problems I'm facing.  I am going to get there early before they are even open, so I will be waiting on them to get there for a few hours anyway.  Here's what I came up with...

I decided to swap my stops and go to the second stop first.  This does a couple of advantageous things for me.  They start early (which is why they quit at eleven in the morning), and I can get myself unloaded there while I am technically on the sleeper berth line.  Then I can still get my ten hours break on the sleeper berth line on my e-logs so that I have hours to drive available to me in time to get me over to what should have been my first stop in time for them to unload me before five P.M.  The reason this will work out is that there is a small truck stop right around the corner from this location that I can roll over to and sleep with out kicking my electronic logs over to the drive line.  This is one of the advantages of driving a dedicated account where you are often times familiar with the locations that you are delivering to.  I got there at about five in the morning, was unloaded by seven, stayed on the sleeper berth line until three in the afternoon, giving me plenty of rest. I was then able to drive the sixty miles to the next stop and get there around four fifteen in the afternoon, forty five minutes before they quit receiving!

Now, this solution added a little bit of miles (roughly about twenty) to my driving over what I am getting paid to do, but it also satisfies the needs of my customers, which is foremost in my thinking.  I figured twenty miles is no big deal, after all the load was paying over fifteen hundred miles.  I did put into the notes on my departure message from my first stop that I had switched the order of the stops so that it could all be done on time, and the very next morning I noticed that my dispatcher saw the notes on what I had done and he re-routed my load into the order that I did it which gave me those miles as paid after all!

Those are just some examples of the type of dilemmas you face every day as an Over The Road truck driver.

Here's another dilemma that needs a solution at times: Eating healthy while on the road.  I do what I can to take good care of myself, and since I have such a wonderful wife who has labored all these years to keep me on the straight and narrow, I often try to incorporate the things that she would recommend that I do to stay healthy.  Things like eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.  I have a little favorite diner just down the street from that first place I stopped on this load.  It is in Nokomis, Florida called Chaz 51.  It is owned and operated by a gentleman named Charles Amherst and his wife Andrea.  He was a former executive chef at Ruths Chris.  They serve up a delicious butter nut squash bisque, and a simple, but always tasty, menu of other items.  The bisque has excellent flavor and texture, the two things I consider important in a bisque. I chose a cup of the bisque and a  "French Dip" sandwich on this particular visit.  Still feeling a bit hungry after my meal, and hearing my wife's voice in my head to "make sure and eat your vegetables," I decided to follow up my meal with this nice slice of carrot cake - problem solved!

Okay, one more solution I want to discuss here before I totally bore you to death.  I stopped for another meal in Florida on I-95 at the 273 mile marker.  You can park at the Love's truck stop at this intersection with Hwy 1 and walk to several different good eating establishments.  I chose the Daytona Pig Stand Barbecue restaurant for lunch on this particular day.  And just in case my wife is reading this, I want her to know that I did order two side orders of vegetables with my Saint Louis style rib plate. But, the problem solving I want to talk about now is one that the owner of this restaurant came up with when he was faced with the dilemma of catering to a large crowd when cooking up a barbecue feast.  Having a pit large enough to cook enough meat for a large crowd apparently was an issue for him.  Now I am only assuming, but I think he must have been a former truck driver, because his solution was to purchase a tanker truck and convert the tank into a giant barbecue pit!

Would you like that brisket unleaded, or premium?  Or perhaps you would prefer it to be marinated in our high octane racing fuel?