Team Adventure: Back to Pottsville, PA

Friday, January 13, 2012

Back to Pottsville, PA

Another good week running the miles. We left Colton, CA on Saturday, after being loaded, at 7 pm and headed to Wally World in Pottsville, PA. The weather was good on the way. We learned a valuable lesson about this load. This particular Walmart will only accept loads inbetween 3 am - 6 am....we were looking at arriving at 8 am on Tuesday the 10th, but ended up having to wait until Wednesday morning to deliver. So we got to stop for a night. We decided to stop at the Iowa 80, the Worlds largest Truckstop. Had a good nights sleep without the truck moving. I got up early to take London for a walk and found the automated dog wash. Yes, an automated dog wash. It is SO cool. He howled through the entire thing as if he was being tortured...which took a total of 9 minutes, including the drying. What an awesome invention...I need one of these at the house.

We had some poblamo and cerrano peppers that were refused so we drove to the food bank to donate them. The guy at the food bank thought they were green beans. This explains why you can't get good Mexican food in the east...now it all makes sense. However it did make us pass the Steak Shack, with truck parking, and we stopped and had a yummy mushroom cheese steak in PA. We then dropped our reefer trailer in Shippenberg, PA and got to bobtail 175 miles into Pittsburgh to pick up a dry box preloaded trailer and head to San Leandro, CA. We ran into nasty weather starting in Chicago all the way through IA. Blizzard conditions. Saw many flipped big trucks and 4 wheelers and at one stretch crossing the Mississippi from IL to IA they had I80 eastbound completey closed.

We are now almost to Salt Lake City and have a preassign to head back down to Colton, CA then its back to Pottsville, PA heading out on Sunday. Loving the miles. This switching companies has been an AWESOME choice for us. We are loving it.

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ABOUT TEAM LINN and OUR ADVENTURE

We started our adventure 4 years ago. Our first trucking job was with Watkins Shepard out of Missoula, MT. Great company to start with. Gave us fantastic training in their 10-day orientation on top of our CDL training we already had. We stayed with them for a year and half and decided we wanted a change.

We went to work for Diversified Transfer and Storage out of Billings, MT. This was no longer a truckload, it was LTL, less than a truckload. We ran reefer and had a terminal in Denver, so we ran 4 weeks and had a week off. That part was great, but the company was not a good fit for us. Loved the LTL, couldn't deal with working for an owner who was a piece of crap. I wont even go into further detail....

Next...we wanted to go back to full truckload reefer so we decided to go with US Xpress. We were very happy with them for the first 5 months. We ran consistent miles from the east to west coast and loved it. Our Fleet Manager Mike Gibbs was the best Fleet Manager we have ever encountered in this business. We became one of the top Teams on the reefer board with US Xpress. We were called by the Fleet Owner, the VP of the Reefer division and the COO of US Xpress to tell us what a great job we were doing and how much they appreciated our service. But then it all fell apart and our miles started to drop and our awesome FM was thinking about transferring out of the division. Jeff and I saw the writing on the wall and we decided we wanted out of this company before things got even worse. I still speak with many Teams that run with US Xpress and they are having horrible issues. This was a driver friendly company, but since Pat Quinan passed away in January of 2012, things changed dramatically. Pat was the compassionate one that knew the company was about the Driver. Unfortunately after his passing things quickly changed to being about numbers on a spreadsheet, our FM moved on and we turned our truck in at the Irving Terminal and never looked back at our decision.

We then wet to The Waggoner's Trucking out of Billings, MT. Yep, can't seem to get away from Montana based companies. We now ran a dedicated run from Denver to Oklahoma City three times a week. We ran a flatbed, split axle trailer...which is only 48' now, instead of the 53" we were used to. We were met in Oklahoma City by the owner of the company David Waggoner to give us our new truck. We were no longer a number, but we were The Linn's again. We pulled into the OKC terminal and everybody knew our name and we knew theirs. We were part of a family again and it was so nice to be back in the surroundings we have missed from working at Watkins Shepard. We were in a Kenworth W900 Long Nose truck. We were home every other day in Denver and have Sunday and Monday off every week to enjoy our house in Denver again. We really debated on a dedicated run, since we love traveling the 48 states, but after almost 3 years, we have been to every state and it was time to get back to some connection to our kids, grandchild and our awesome house in Denver. It was so nice to be home more often. But on the flip side:

We ran this route for a year, yes dedicated was great, home time seemed to turn into one of us sleeping...even though it was in our own bed....however, we both got tired of running the same route and we only ran our route at night. Although the company was great, working 7 days a week was tiring and we decided we wanted to go back to enjoying why we started doing this in the first place...to see the country and meet awesome people so...this brings us to our next job change.

We now are working for Gemini Motor Transport, which is the trucking company that Loves Travel Stops owns and services their truck stops. We are working in the SW Region, which includes, CA, AZ, NM. Plus CO and WY when we come back home. We are hauling a tanker truck now, which is only 42' long...getting shorter, I'm liking that, and we haul DEF (Deisel Exhaust Fluid) only. We are the first husband and wife Team that Love's has ever hired. I am also proud to say that I am the only woman that works in the SW region that drives a truck. We are responsible for 33 stores and growing, along with one other solo driver in the region. Our job is to make sure that no stores ever run out of product in our region. Since teaming is new for Love's we will be sent to other regions as well, as needed, possibly the NW too. Our first week we serviced 11 stores in Southern California (all the way up to Corning), plus New Mexico and Arizona. It has been a big change, but once again, we are up for the challenge. I know I have never been so glad to run on a different road and see new things. There are good things about running a dedicated run, but I am so glad we made this transition and I think we picked a great company. We get a reset every week and we only work 6 day a week now. Plus we are paid by the day, not by the mile. We will also be home for every holiday...paid. This company is hard to get into and I am so glad they picked us. The Vice President of the SW region flew in to DIA twice to meet with us before we decided to take the position. He is our direct boss and an awesome one at that. We could not have made a better decision making the move when we did. The dedicated account would have been much more difficult to do with the new Hours of Service that changed in July 2013. So once again, we made the jump before it took anything away from our adventure.

We are happy to answer any questions you may have about trucking in general, teaming or any of the above companies we have worked for. We had to start out just like you and had so many questions, but not a lot of people to answer them. Shoot us an email @ hobotruckers@gmail.com we would love to hear your questions or comments. Thanks for following along in our adventures.

Team Adventure

Friday, January 13, 2012

Back to Pottsville, PA

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