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.

New Truck...New Job

We are back in business. We finished our first week of our new job and I have to say, I love it! We are now working for Waggoners Trucking on a dedicated route from Denver to Oklahoma City three times a week. We are running oil field equipment, mostly pipe, drills and big tool boxes. We now have a beautiful Kenworth W900 L long nose heavy haul truck with a 450 HP Cummins ISX with dual cams, and back to our 13 speeds (yaay)! This truck was used for hauling wind machine blades, you know those big huge things you see going down the highway? They took off the third axle in the back and walla. I still can't get over just how big this truck really is. I learned to drive a truck in a Kenworth and was not a big fan, as well as it was the first truck Jeff and I actually sat in at the dealership before we even starting driving a truck. It is much smaller up front than the Peterbilt or Freightliner and the floor space is much less, however the aerodyne sleeper with windows all the way around is the most spacious and comfortable sleeper we have ever experienced. We even have a pantry cupboard now!  The storage is great because we hardly carry anything other than food and clothes...no need, we are home every other day now and every weekend.

We also have a dedicated trailer again. No more wasting our time looking for trailers that don't exist. It is a flatbed, only 48', which is sweet for backing up and just easier to manuever. It also has fixed rear split axle tandems which has been a great thing in setting our loads up weight wise. Our heaviest load has only been 61,000 lbs. But the best part is that it is actually a curtain trailer. Once opened, it is exactly like a flatbed, functional for loading,and strapping, but once you close the curtain, which means absolutely NO TARPING, it looks like a soft-sided trailer. It also has a door at the nose of the trailer so you can step up on the catwalk and walk directly into the trailer to check your load, as well as a groovy light that lights up the entire trailer at night. We have some great storage boxes on it as well for holding all of our straps, chains and Cheater bar.

The back of the tractor has an awesome headache rack, which holds a multitude of tools and our tire chains. It isn't even halfway full with every tool known to mankind back there. Plus all of the boxes and headache wrack have locks, so no need to worry about anything getting stolen.

Next post I will talk about our groovy situation in Oklahoma City called home away from home. London is adapting to the new schedule, king of his domain already, and couldn't be more happy with his hometime.

Good-bye US Xpress

Well....it's been quite a few interesting past weeks here.

We left Chicago 5-29 on a load and headed to Renton, WA and arrived on Thursday 5-31 at 1 am. After dropping the trailer at the customer we hooked to a dry-box, since that was all the customer had, and sent in our appropriate macros to end the trip. We had a pre-assign to MA, but were told we needed to find a reefer unit for this next load. To make a long story short we ended up spending Jeff's entire 14-hour day searching 5 different locations for a reefer trailer in WA, then ended up in the Portland yard, which surprise, surprise, no reefer trailers there either. We were to be in MA by Monday, the 4th, before the huge DOT push which started on Tuesday, 6-5...not a problem, except for the fact we had a 3000 mile load and no trailer to put the freight in. Our pick up was in Yakima and we were being pushed into telling the customer that we would be there by 5:30. Neither one of us were going to commit to anything until we had a reefer trailer attached to our tractor. Needless to say, that never happened. We decided that we couldn't pick up our load in a timely fashion and get to MA before Tuesday, so we had to call breakdown and get the truck in the shop. Our brakes were making funny noises coming down Snowqualmie pass. We called breakdown and got the authorization and then were accused of dodging the MA load. This became an ugly mess which lead to giving our notice that we no longer wanted to be in the reefer division for USX and wanted off that board and we would just start pulling dry-box loads. We came out on the winning end of the stick and after our truck was repaired we started on a dry-box load.

Our next load was picking up from the Oregon Coast and heading to Nampa, ID. Not exactly a Team run but miles are miles. We picked up our load at Georgia Pacific in Toledo, OR. What a beautiful drive down the 101 Oregon Coast. This was something that we had never gotten the chance to drive before and always wanted to. It was breathtaking. This is definitely a place that Jeff and I will return to without a truck and explore further. I couldn't live in this part of the country, but what a awesome place to take a few days off and explore. We were 112 miles away from our delivery in Nampa when we got a call requesting that we repower a load from Boise to Denver...yup Denver...hometown. Heck yeah we were going to do that! The load was due the next day by noon (6-6)

We immediately got on the Drivertech and asked if we could take a few days of home-time after dropping off the load and were approved until Saturday, 6-9 @ 14:00. Aaahhh a few days home of rest, relaxation, pool time and visiting family. It was awesome. Our grandbaby has grown so much since being home in March. I got to float in the pool and catch up on my tan and daughter-in-law time, as well as we cooked some yummy dinners and I finally got my new glasses...bifocals :o (

So....it only took 36 hours to find an empty trailer in Denver, what a joke! We headed to Fort Worth and dropped our load, then went immediately to Irving terminal. To make a REALLY long story short we turned our truck in and quit USX. We spent and hour and a half with the terminal manager and he agreed that this company has lost its driver focus. It is pretty sad. I hope things turn around, but I don't see it happening too soon in the near future.

We have spent the last few days in orientation at our new gig...which was conveniently only 12 miles aways from the Irving terminal. We are working for Waggoners Trucking. They put us up in a hotel and we have been in orientation since this past Monday. We will be done tomorrow and head to Denver, most likely, to pick up our truck. This is an opportunity we have been waiting for ever since we started in this industry. We will now be running flatbed on a dedicated run from Denver to OK City and possibly Odessa, TX. It is for a dedicated customer so we will get to know who we are dealing with on a daily basis and have a relationship with our client, something we are much more familiar with. We will have a dedicated trailer again and the strapping and tarping will be done inside a warehouse on each end, so we don't have to fight any elements, which is awesome. We will be running 4 weeks on and one week off. All of our downtime will be spent at home in Denver. The client will call us when the truck is loaded, so we don't even have to wait around in our truck anymore either, the customer is 10 minutes away from the house in Commerce City. But the best part about this job is it isn't about running miles anymore to make our paycheck bigger. We are on salary, and lets just say both of us are almost back to making six figures again, without having to sell our souls or run our asses off. Its the best of both worlds. We are both excited to start our new gig and London is anxious to get back into a truck and get running. He has no idea how much time he is going to get out of the truck, be home and have some fun with his pal Diesel at home. We get to see our kids and grandson more often and get back in touch with what it is like to be home every weekend and once in the middle of the week. It almost sounds too good to be true, but like I said orientation is almost over and everything they have promised us, and more, has come true. It is so nice to work for a company again that doesn't treat us like we are five years old and have no idea what we are doing. Its like we have joined a family again, like Watkins used to be. I think we have finally found nirvana in the trucking industry.

Reality Check

So...last week while in Portland, Jeff and I had a chance to do some thinking...about what we were doing out here and how frustrating our job has been lately. Don't get me wrong we love doing what we do, but trucking is a strange beast. You would think if you had two hard working people in a truck that truly drive as a Team (which we were trained to drive 11 hours a day,standard in this industry) and drive hard 7 days a week, most trucking companies would chomp at the bit for the opportunity to employ us. Instead, this industry has shown us that mediocre, sometimes even lazy, not honest, and downright grumpy people abound in this industry.

Drivers talk a big game about miles they drive, which I know for a fact, that anyone who announces their miles on a weekly basis are just plain liars. People that truly run great miles on a weekly basis don't need to brag about it. They know where their bread and butter comes from and don't feel the need to shout it out to the world, which by the way, there are only 7 days in a week, so any Team telling you that they run 7500 to 8000 miles in a week in a company truck are just liars. Do the math...unless you have a truck that runs 75 mph 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, running those kind of miles legally is not possible. Plus even if you drive out your 70 hours of drive time per person per week and you average 65 mph, which doesn't include, stopping to go to the bathroom, eating or putting fuel in your truck, any type of construction in your path, shift changes, laundry, grocery shopping, loading and unloading, taking a shower or waiting on dispatch to give you your next load, which anyone who drives a truck knows all of these things must happen to make it possible to do your job, can drive a maximum of 9100. But reality is you average your trips at 50 mph. So on average company trucks are governed at 65 mph, but factoring in all of the things above you must do to keep your truck rolling and the people driving it fairly happy, you use the 50 mph rule. So, let's do the math...50 mph x 140 driving hours (70 hours each) is a MAXIMUM of 7000 miles. This also relies on your company dispatching you the 7000 miles in those 7 days, and the moon being aligned with the stars correctly, which in the last 2 1/2 years we have done this job, has never happened. We have run a maximum in a week of 6742 miles in a company truck governed at 65 mph.

All trucking companies are full of fluff. They tell you what you want to hear to get you to sign up with their company, claiming their company is better than all the rest. Reality check, all trucking companies are the same, you just have to choose the level of stuff your handed on a daily basis that you can deal with.

Do I sound bitter? No, just frustrated. I'm tired of lip service and inconsistent miles. I understand that the amount of freight changes on a weekly basis, but give the miles to people that continously perform. Let the sitters sit or the people that just don't want to run that hard on a weekly basis. We are consistent in our miles and communication to our company and Team Adventure expects the same out of any company we work for.

Thanks for letting me vent.  My next post will be in a 'happy place'....

Awesome Birthday Week

So excited when we got the load going back to Santa Maria to pick up strawberries...even though it was Strawberry Festival weekend in Camarillo Valley, crazy traffic, but once we got past Oxnard it was all good. The truck was spotless and the trailer was washed out and we actually left Fontana by noon. We picked up at a different place this time and they only had 4 dock doors and 6 parking spots. It was first come, first serve, and with our strawberry history and arriving at 3:30, we didn't think we would be loaded on Friday. When I checked in, the guy surprisingly said, "You have two trucks ahead of you and then you guys will be loaded". Sweeet.

I finally had the opportunity to connect with my Dad and his wife Marilyn, I dislike the word stepmom. They live in Cambria, which is about 65 miles north of our pick up. They just happened to be leaving San Luis Obispo, which is only 35 miles away! They met us at the shipper and got to see the truck and meet London. It was an awesome visit, time went quickly and before we knew it, it was almost 7 pm. They had had a long day, and so did we, so we said our goodbyes and went on our way. We promised we would have to do this more often....and we will.

We had plenty of time to make our delivery so we stopped and had a yummy dinner and went to bed. Yep, we went to bed under a load, guess there is a first time for everything. Jeff got up early on Sunday and surprised me with awakening parked right on the PCH highway next to the beach. The sun was just starting to come up and it was beautiful. We got London out and took a 3 hour long walk on the beach where we got to see several pods of dolphins hanging out in the waves right from the beach. We have never seen this before and it was breathtaking. They were jumping up in the water and bodysurfing the waves into the shore. It was magical, like they were performing just for my birthday. London actually enjoyed it too...he hates water and getting even the slightest bit wet, but he met a couple of other dogs and got to play and it was all good.

My phone rang off the hook and I lost track of how many people on Facebook wished me a happy birthday. It was truly a fantastic weekend and I will always remember it. This job is hard because you work everyday and it can sometimes be so draining, but last weekend I cherished what we do and remember why we do it...and then it was all worth it.

Now we need to schedule some time in Denver to see that grandbaby Logan. Oh yeah, and our awesome children too. The pool should be up and running soon, so I can't wait to sit on our deck and enjoy some Colorado sunshine.

Nice Down Time

We arrived in Ohio with our flowers for Mother's Day and lettuce, but we had to stop at the Springfield terminal to get a new seat installed in the truck. The back of the seat broke and the only thing holding it up was the cabinet behind it. Plus we needed to get our clutch adjusted.

Since starting with USX in December we have taken 4 days of home-time...I know, most people would say, you could go anywhere to take a break, why would you want to do it in Springfield, OH? Well...$35/ night for a hotel with London and an indoor pool and hot tub, not too shabby. We ended up staying for a week. Had some good food and met some really nice folks. I finally got to see a doctor, it had been 3 years and we just got to relax. It was really nice. We received 3 phone calls from USX while on our hometime...the first one wanted to know if we would repower a load, the second one wanted to know if we,would help them recover trucks...from people abandoning them and quitting, and the third one wanting to know if we would help them road test all their new students...we declined each and every one, which is the complete opposite of our usual answer of..."sure, whatever you need"...but it was our downtime and we weren't going to get sucked back in.

We were told our truck was ready on Friday and we were scheduled to head out on Tuesday. Decided to spend Sunday night back in the truck to get it all cleaned and straightened back up again. It is amazing when you are running hard how things just get out of place and it just gets dirty. We were bobtailing over to get something to eat and realized our engine break wasn't working. We had already been assigned a 2700 mile run back to Cali that was due in our usual 2-day turn on Thursday, but without an engine break as well as our shop isn't known for moving at the speed of lightning, we let our FM know that he should re-assign the load to make sure USX didn't receive a service failure for a late pick up. To make a long story short, they downloaded the new idle software and it wiped out our cruise control and engine break...well that took some guy from Volvo..figure that one out cause we drive a Freightliner, to go line by line on the software to find the mistake. It took a couple of hours, but we got that issue resolved.

Then the next issue...finding a reefer trailer. The one we brought in for service, that we wrote up to be fixed over a week ago now, was still sitting in the same spot we left it in. The guard said there was one other reefer on the lot, but after perusing around it was nowhere to be found. So we parked again and got in touch with our FM. While sitting and waiting a reefer trailer appeared through the gate and backed into a spot, then somebody else jumped out of the truck, pulled out of the spot and re-parked the trailer. It turns out they were using the only reefer trailer in Springfield to do road testing...brilliance at its finest! I ran over and got the trailer number and our FM, Mike, who completely ROCKS by the way, quickly assigned us the trailer. We got under it as soon as they dropped it and we were finally ready to roll...whew.

We are now picking up at Nestle and deliver in Commerce, CA on Friday. Sometimes this job is never easy. Every little thing is a chore. Both Jeff and I are glad to be back on the road again and when London got out to potty this morning he had a little pep in his step too. I think he enjoys it as much as we do!

Attacked by Pitbull

I really debated on posting this, but I have a lot of friends that have dogs on their truck and want them to be aware. My baby got jumped two days ago in Santa Maria, CA at a truck stop by a Pitbull. He luckily, is fine, but it was a terrifying experience.

We were taking our morning walk, and yes he was on a leash. We started to head to the back of all of the trucks, not much vegetation of choice for pottying at this location, when we came around the corner and I saw her...not on a leash. I figured...that's where I made my mistake, that nobody in their right mind would let an unsafe dog just wonder without a leash...I was wrong. As soon as the two dogs made eye contact she made a beeline for London and immediately attacked him. I freaked out. The owner screamed at me to pick up my dog, but it all happened so fast. I know from experience when we had two St. bernards and two goldens, picking up your dog is the last thing you want to do because then you become part of the game too. I couldn't pick him up and she had him on his side and was ready to clamp down before I knew it. The owners got on top of her and she ended up biting him, which if you ask me is perfect karma, but not before Londons collar was broken and he luckily got away. He immediately took off running...not something you want to happen at a truck stop, but he ran straight back to our truck. I opened the door and he flew up the steps. I quickly checked him to make sure he wasn't bleeding and when I saw fur missing, but no puncture marks, I slammed the truck door and took off back to kick some ass. I was livid. The owner had quickly returned to his truck. I hunted him down and by that time I could hardly breath I was so angry. All he kept saying was I'm so sorry, she has never done that before. For the record, I don't believe a word of it. I didn't call the police because we were on private property and nothing would have been done. The owner was from Alabama and he wasn't a company driver so there wasn't much I could do. He had the nerve to tell me my dog wasn't on a leash. I knew at that point that my breath was wasted. I took pics of his truck in case London had any issues and asked to see the dogs proof of a rabies shot and I let it go.

The last couple days have been slow ones for London. He is swollen under his left leg, but it is getting better. Thank God it is just bruised...I know it could have been ten-fold worse. He is in better spirits today, so I know he is on the mend.

I now carry a tire thumper that Jeff bought for us, which looks like a bat, with me every time we walk. It has changed my opinion on pitbulls....I know, its the owner, but I also know the breed is unpredictable. Scary stuff.