Loving the New Gig & Home Time

So it has been a month now since moving over to Waggoner's and we couldn't be happier. We have finally gotten our new rythym down and are really liking our time in Oklahoma City as well as our quality time we now have in Denver and our home. We are running about 4,000 miles a week, sometimes less, if we take the backroads, and we are making more money. This job isn't about running your butt off for miles. We are paid by the leg....well paid. We can take any route we want, which is nice because we can break up the drive depending on our timeframe and mood. We no longer fuel at truckstops, we fuel at the terminal in Oklahoma City and that has been a nice change as well.

Our time in Oklahoma City is spent dropping our load in the am and then we don't reload our truck until 6 pm the same day. We have a place called home away from home that we go to where we can get out of our truck for the day. This is a house located on one of Waggoner's properties that is set up for drivers like us to enjoy. It has a kitchen, showers, bathroom and laundry facilities as well as 6 rooms for drivers to stay while they are away from their homes. We have our own room, which we have our TV and laundry and all of our belongings that make it a home away from home. It is nice to be able to kick back and be out of the truck and London loves the fact that he gets this time every other day. He meets other drivers and has made new friends. There are times when we show up that there is absolutely nobody there and we have a complete house all to ourselves for the day. Its quiet and nice and cool. This is such an awesome benefit to us in this job. We no longer have to go sit and camp out at a truckstop waiting for the beep to go off on our qualcomm for our next load. We know our schedule and can plan accordingly. Jeff usually leaves me at home away from home to get more sleep while he picks up the load at 6 pm. After he is loaded he comes back to get London and I, which I have made our pot of coffee and filled our thermos and we are ready to head back to Denver.

We also discovered that Oklahoma City is a place where so many of our driver friends from the past pass through. We have been able to connect with a bunch of people that we haven't been able to see in forever and have had time to sit and chat and talk about each others lives and spend some quality time. Recently we had a chance to meet Don who was passing through and was done for the evening. We haven't been able to sit down and talk with him since the old Wakins Shepard days in Helena, MT. It was awesome to catch up on our lives as well as his and London just loves him. Don is somebody we connected with immediately in our first driving job. He is from South Carolina and a true southern gentleman. He is a good soul and we both enjoyed our time we had with him. I love the fact that we know what our schedule is and that we control it. No more waiting for other people to control our destiny. We know what our job is and we get it done.

I have to say that the best part of our job is we no longer have a dispatcher. We receive our trip number via text message from the terminal manager in Denver and other than that, we hear NOTHING from this company. Our qualcomm has had 3 messages on it in a month, all about safety, and that is it! We are truly on our own to make our own destiny. Finally we are treated like adults and are left to just do our job and enjoy our time out on the road without any BS....so refreshing.