A boring trip to Omaha and Robert DeNiro

It really did take until the next day to get my unloaded at that Kraft warehouse in Huntington, West Virginia. It also took a tight blindside back to get into the smallish parking lot and oriented towards their docks but that is par for the course sometimes.

On the way out of town I had a retarded guy steering a large tricycle (complete with basket on back) almost commit Suicide by Trucker by jumping out from behind a parked panel truck right into the lane I was using. Screeching to a halt, I was more than a little amused to see that this guy bore an incredible resemblance to the actor Robert DeNiro.

I boogied west to Louisville, Kentucky to pick up a load of Appliances from GE heading to Omaha then spent the night at a rest area in Indiana. Yesterday I drove the rest of the way up to Omaha only to find that Nebraska Furniture Mart didn't want those appliances until the very end of the delivery window, 0500 this morning. So mote it be.

Sometimes it is hard to know what to think

The folks at the Kraft DC in Morris, Illinois couldn't get my trailer loaded in less than five hours so by the time they were done and I was rolling it wasn't possible to finish the trip out to Huntington, West Virginia without a break. This meant the original 0900 delivery time went out the window and I notified dispatch that I would be arriving about 1500 instead.

My next calculation was to figure how far I would drive last tonight and how far I would drive today. Since I was taking the most direct route and there were more than 100 miles of narrow state highways to run from Cincinnati, Ohio to Huntington I pulled in the horns at Greensburg, Indiana and called it a night (at the last semi-legit parking spot at the Petro there).

This morning I arose to find yet another preplan, and it was a bit vexing: after I deliver my load in West Virginia, head back over to Trenton, Ohio and pick up a suspiciously light (11,000 pound) load of beer from the Miller plant there and take it to Joplin, Missouri for a Friday morning delivery. The better part of three days for roughly 800 miles. Bletch.

I'm not really looking forward to that when I roll into Huntington this afternoon and find the Kraft warehouse. As I'm parking the rig to use my satellite unit to tell HQ I'm there, a warehouse guy comes out and purposefully strides to my door. "Great," I think. He's going to get me in right away.

Um, nope. "You can't unload today. We closed at 3 PM." (some five minutes before my arrival). Oh, and: "I have an appointment at 0800 and 1200 tomorrow and you're late so you'll be a work-in. Don't know when you'll get a dock." Greatttttt.

On top of all of this my preplan was changed to a different one, now going to the GE hub in Louisville to pick up a load of appliances headed to Omaha, Nebraska. PLUS, a separate message telling me the trailer has to be clean and dry before I go to pick up the load.

To which I naturally reply: "I guess the pagan goat sacrifice / goat sashimi trailer ritual is out then?"

More news as it becomes available.

Lord of the Flies

Ten freaking hours wasted at the Cargil plant in Nebraska City, Nebraska. There were another handful of Hill Bros drivers being loaded delayed while I was waiting and no one was too happy about it. One driver was halfway through being loaded when the plant had him leave the dock, close up the trailer and park off to the side while they prepared the rest of his load. And here I thought Swift meat plants were bad.

Meanwhile my truck was assaulted by a crack battalion of flies. I literally could not open the door without some of them slipping inside, much to the delight of Snowie.

I finally left around 1830 hours for the seven hour trip out to Sterling, Illinois. The delivery time was scheduled at 0503 hours this morning and ordinarily when we see a time like that it means that the delivery is open... but not in this case. After a few hours my trailer was empty and I finished snoozing.

My next preplan arrived during the trip. After delivering in Sterling I was to head back to Aurora, Illinois to pick up another load heading to Kansas City. But by the time I finished my break in the late morning the preplan had gone away. After a short wait a new plan comes in: head over to Morris, Illinois and pick up a load heading to West Virginia.

Year Two, First Quarter Results (June 09 to September 09)

This post covers the first quarter of my second fiscal year as a lease-purchase operator at Hill Bros. I'm going to be comparing numbers from each quarter this year with the corresponding numbers from last year, with the previous year in parenthesis.

Paid miles for this quarter were the lowest yet, just 29,917 (33,898). With 32,090 (37,000) total miles driven, it comes to 7.26% (9.2%) Out-Of-Route miles which isn't bad.

Total fuel expense this quarter was 10,975 (22,533), FSC was 6,774 (18,587), leaving adjusted fuel cost of 4,201 (3,946). Holy crap look at those numbers! I had almost triple the FSC a year ago because fuel prices were so high.

My adjusted fuel expense per mile was 13.09 (10.66). In other words, that super high FSC helped me out by about 2.5 cents per mile last year compared to my most recent quarter.

Average paid miles per week was 2,301 (2,608), compared with 2,564 average miles per week across all of last year. July was a brutal month for miles this year.

Total revenue for this quarter was 34,879 (50,585), or 1.17 (1.49) per mile compared with last year's average of 1.26. The difference here, by far, was the difference in FSC.

Average gross revenue to the truck each week was 2,683 (3,891).

My net pay for the quarter was 14,644 (14,433), or 1,126 (1,110) per week.

Up until the last line you may have been thinking how dismal a quarter I had, but despite everything I still made more per week in net profit than I did in my first quarter last year. I did have some extra escrow payments deducted last year that I didn't have this year, but I'm also currently paying 10 CPM towards my maintenance escrow now that I was only paying 5 CPM then so it is something of a wash.

I'm glad that my OOR is below 8% again -- those miles really take a lot of money out of my pocket. I'm also glad that even though my average weekly miles dipped by about 250 over last year's average my weekly net income remained just 28 dollars off of last year's average.

My second quarter last year saw an increase of net weekly pay of 17 dollars over the first quarter. My goal for my next quarter is to increase my net weekly pay by 74 dollars, to 1,200 per week.

Net Pay By Week:

1: 1916
2: 769
3: 1811
4: 61
5: 985
6: 1475
7: 1201
8: 1425
9: 1105
10: 1344
11: 1303
12: 535
13: 714

Another day, another preplan... but no trailer

The food warehouse trailer lot in Kansas City was full way beyond overflowing... ordinarily we park loaded inbound trailers on row 4 or 5, with row 6 as an overflow. The yard driver saw me looking for a spot and saved me some time telling me to take it over to row 3 since every other spot was taken. He hadn't seen it that busy ever, including Thanksgiving. I'm guessing there were 150-180 loaded trailers in the lot, not counting the ones that drivers doing live unloads had on the other side of the building.

Hill Bros had six trailers on the lot including the one I brought but all of them were full. I had a new preplan but it requires a clean reefer and I got nada. Told dispatch I'd camp out until morning and take an empty if AWG managed to unload one.

No joy there: this morning all of our trailers were still there and still full. I drove over to Nebraska Furniture Mart on the west side of KC and found a single empty reefer so I grabbed it. It had quite a bit of debris on the floor but I stopped on the way to Nebraska City, Nebraska and swept it out (not an easy task in a reefer with a ridged metal floor).

Here I wait after having checked in at a Cargil meat plant. My preplan has me taking a load from here to the Walmart DC in Sterling, Illinois with (praise Jeebus) an open appointment at the other end.

I'm going pretty good on miles this week. After I deliver this tonight I should have about 2,500 miles and the cutoff isn't until Wednesday, so it could be 3,500-4,000 by then.

Another day, another preplan

The rest of the trip up to Rochelle, Illinois was uneventful and I swapped my full trailer with an empty. The next trip was already lined up: deadhead east about forty miles to Aurora, Illinois to take a load heading to Kansas City for delivery any time Saturday. I like it.

I checked in several hours early in Aurora to miss some of the Friday evening Chicago traffic and even with that extra time they still managed to take almost five hours to get me loaded. Since that was more than two hours after the appointment time I punched in the macro for some detention; maybe I'll see a buck or two in a few weeks.

The lazies kicked in on my way back west and I ended the day back in Rochelle.

Whoops, my bad

Russellville, Batesville, thisville, thatville. What is the difference?

I misread the communique from headquarters last night before I went to bed and thought my next load was coming from ConAgra in Russellville, Arkansas. Apparently, the computer lied to me or something because the load actually originated from Batesville, Arkansas, about 150 miles away. Whoops.

Dispatch was notified of my boo-boo and I motored as fast as I could to the real shipper. Upon arrival, the shipper dithered for four hours before finally getting their act together. I departed in a pouring rain to start four hours of driving along a series of crappy state highways in Arkansas and Missouri before reaching civilization.

I know that the consignee in Rochelle will let me drop and hook so there isn't any real hurry to get there. Because I didn't knock out the deadhead miles to Batesville yesterday I can't complete the entire trip, so I have to stop someplace along the way and Troy, Illinois won the mental battle.