Monday, March 25, 2013

Welcome to Waggoner's Trucking

I would like to welcome Pal & Jo to Waggoner's. We met them through friends that read this blog, Robert & Regina Lopez, who worked with us at another trucking company. Big shout out to them for hooking us up. Both Pal & Jo only had a year's experience driving, but after many lengthy phone conversations they decided that they wanted to give flat-bedding a try and chose to go with Waggoner's. Normally Waggoner's requires two years of experience before they will even consider talking to you. However, Pal is very persuasive and they turned in their truck in Irving, TX on a Friday and drove across town and started orientation with our company the following Monday. After orientation they headed to OKC and we helped train them on how to load the deck and how to strap the loads for the entire week we ran to OKC. They also rode with our city drivers in OKC for a week to get even more experience. I am proud to say that they took their first run to Canada last week and did an awesome job. They will now be running with us on our dedicated account from Denver to OKC.  They are now flatbedders! Both are great people and we are so proud to have them on our Team.

Secondly, we would like to welcome old friends of ours, Ken & Deb Olsen. They have come from our first company that we ever worked for, Watkins and Shepard. They are both million miler drivers...score! They completed their orientation in OKC where we got to have dinner with them one night while we were in town. It was brief, but always good to catch up with them and share grandbaby pics. They are also expecting a new addition to their grandbaby clan and are very excited for the new arrival. Ken & Deb live in Boulder, MT. They will be running from Houston to Canada on a weekly basis. What a great addition to Waggoner's. I know they will make us proud. The bonus is now we will get to see them more often.

Why...you ask? We will now be running strictly from Denver to Midland, TX for the same dedicated customer that we have been going to OKC with for the last 9 months. We tried the rotation of the runs, but with our HOS (hours of service) aka logbooks, it just didn't work and we started running out of hours for the driving week. We got to pick our run and chose
Midland, just for the change of scenery. We will miss going to OKC and home away from home and all of the new friends we have made, but this should give us a lot more home time in Denver on this run.

I believe that all things happen for a reason and we are looking forward to our new route and routine.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

You Wanna do What?

So, you want to give us a brand new truck AND pay us more money? Not sure about the truck, having a love affair with mine still, but we will always take more money!

Call me crazy, but our 2006 Kenworth is awesome. It has a big red 550 hp motor, aka a Cummins, and 13 speeds, with a bigger sleeper than the new truck. It also has a 286" wheel-base which makes it ride like a lead sled in the wind and wintry conditions. We had to trade our Oklahoma plates for Montana ones so we could be grand-fathered in to Canada, our truck is normally too big to run Canada. But one of the best features is it doesn't take DEF (Diesel Exhaust Fluid). DEF is a lovely additive (not!) that the government made mandatory on trucks after 2007. It burns off excessive diesel fuel particles and is supposed to make your exhaust run cleaner...kind of an oxi moron. Unfortunately if ur truck runs DEF, you have to pay for it every time u fuel ur truck, plus there are so many other complications with filters that get clogged and what-not that it just makes things more expensive and more break-down issues. So after 2014, we can't go into the state of California, so what? We don't run there anyway and by then she (Ethel) will have over a million miles on her anyway and it will be time to let her go. I do miss going to Cali, so eventually we will end up with a new truck, but in the mean time, we are going to enjoy every minute in this beast that the company pays for fuel.

We have been running our new rotation going to OKC, Midland and Calgary, which had been fantastic! Nice to see different stretches of road. But after running Denver to OKC for the last eight months, it was so fun to come back to OKC and all of our regular haunts. Calgary is going to be great. Could not have picked a better time of year to pick up that run!

We have been running every single day of the week for the past month and are now being off-loaded in Denver and looking forward to a few days off. The truck needs some TLC and we need some time away from her as well. All in all, life is awesome and getting home every other day is truly something we never thought possible. The Calgary run is Wednesday through Saturday, so we have even more time inbetween runs and it pays even more than we were making before. Life is fantastic right now. Finally a balance between work and home has been established, could not be happier.

Stay tuned as we train a new team we brought aboard from USX that will be running with us.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Birthdays Rock

So...this year for Jeff's birthday I wanted to do something special. Ever since we started this trucking job his birthdays have pretty much sucked. One year we had to put our dog down on his birthday, the following year we were so busy we couldn't even take the time to celebrate his special day. This year was much different.

I booked a suite in Blackhawk, CO for the weekend at Ameristar Casino. No children, grandchildren or dogs were present...just the two of us in a jacuzzi suite, with fireplace and a wet bar. We checked in on Friday night and stayed for two nights. Everyone wanted to know how we did at the tables and what we ended up doing for the weekend....needless to say, we only left our room one time to visit the most awesome rooftop pool and hot tubs ever...other than that, all I can say is my husband arrived back home on Sunday afternoon with a huge smile on his face and told me it wad the best birthday that he has ever had...I did GOOD!

It was a great getaway and would definitely stay at this hotel again.