Go west and some monster numbers

It was still windy this morning when I left Minnesota, headed back over to North Dakota (visit #2!) then straight down I-29 to Omaha, Nebraska. The load of pork rinds in the trailer was the lightest load I've ever hauled: all 211 pounds spread across 63 boxes. Of course, the one time you really hanker for a heavy load is when it is windy out so that didn't work my way.

Despite the light weight and slow speed I selected, I still only managed around 6.4 MPG according to the truck computer. With no winds it would have been something closer to 8.0 and I wouldn't have stopped off in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to put on an extra 30 gallons of fuel. Our trip planning software is a bit screwy with the fueling instructions... it tried telling me it was better filling up in Sioux Falls at $3.94 a gallon instead of just getting enough to get back to the yard in Omaha where it was $3.80 a gallon. Naturally, I chose the solution of my own design.

I asked my dispatcher to remember that I gave up going to GATS this week/weekend to do these runs for him so if anything out to California fell out of the sky I would be all over it. Before I arrived in Omaha to drop off all 211 pounds of pork rinds, a preplan showed up. I'll take a pre-loaded trailer from nearby Schuyler, Nebraska out to Tracy, California tomorrow morning.

When I checked my email I got more good news. Each Friday, owner/operators and lease-purchase operators get emailed the settlement that covers the previous week and is paid the following Tuesday. I mentioned in a post from a few days ago that there were some accounting issues with two loads I had run earlier and the accounting folks had added that pay (and FSC as well, nice catch) to this week's settlement.

The dollar amount itself was large but that wasn't really what grabbed my attention. Since I had paid for the fuel used to make those runs over the course of other settlements, my adjusted fuel cost (that is, my cost minus the FSC paid) was artificially high. Now that I've double checked everything it turns out that my adjusted fuel cost per mile to date is 10.45 cents. To say I'm thrilled is an understatement -- this is a MONSTER number!

Over my first eleven weeks with my own truck I've purchased a total of $18,725 in fuel. The trips that I have run with that fuel have paid out an aggregate of $15,786 in FSC, leaving a difference of $2,939 I've paid for all my fuel. That is about $267 a week that covers an average of 2,557 miles, for right around ten-and-a-half cents per mile.

Heck, that even covers the two or three weeks I was without my APU and idling all night.

Anyway, once I have a full quarter (13 weeks) of settlements I will put everything together and let everyone at it.