Monday, February 25, 2019

Monday morning.
No clue what's going on at work with  the truck, but I"m going to find the number for the lady over purchase program and call her in a while and find out the details of their program.  Rest assured I do not want to buy the truck I am currently driving.  700k miles, endless problems, no thanks.  I don't even know if I'll qualify or what the requirements are since there is nothing I can find anywhere on the internet from this company telling about the qualifications. 

Meanwhile, flooded with emails and a few phone calls about the application I put in.  But, as suspected, they are all OTR garbage, not interested. 

__________________

Well. I got started on the leaves out front.  Huge mess, hasn't been touched the entire leaf-falling season.  When I come home, it's raining almost all the time.  So it eliminates the ability to be able to do anything about it.  Well today it's not raining, tho it's windy and that was making it difficult.  I've got 2 huge piles right now going.  I only stopped because of the endless phone calls that I am current getting - and ignoring from prospective trucking companies - one of them was my manager.

She asked me why I hadn't shown up for the load today?  Uhhh, Ann, I thought, are you daft, but not saying it?  She has a very poor memory.  I informed her that the truck had lights out and a fuel gauge not working, remember?  She replied she "thought you were going to use another truck". Well whose responsibility is that to assign that other truck, much more bring up the subject?  She still asked if I wanted to transfer to another truck - no thanks. I"m tired of that. 

I'm not going to keep writing up the same problems, over and over and over - and have those same problems continue to be ignored.  After the phone call, I took a screen shot of where she left this. The conversation was that the repair shop was now closed on weekends so I replied, "Okay, now what?".  Receiving no reply, I said take it to Peterbilt on Monday. Or take it to National I guess?  It was hours later she finally responded and said I will discuss it with Ryan (mechanic) and we'll take it somewhere.

There was no discussion about another truck.  She isn't playing that one off on me.  This is why I keep all of my text messages with anyone associated with the company. 

Anyway, I ended up calling the truck purchase program office and asking about the details.  The lady said she would send them to me - which was hours ago and still nothing either in regular inbox or spam inbox.  I'm guessing she didn't write my email address down correctly. I'll have to call back and ask if she had sent it yet. 

But, in all of that, I have still been outside, raking up leaves, hauling them around back and burning them.  After hours of that, I can honestly say I am tired and don't feel like doing any more today.  I'll undoubtedly be home tomorrow. I can pick up where i left off.  I got all of the leaves that I had raked up at least to the back and burning.  Would be a waste of time to do all of that work and then just leave this huge pile sitting there for the wind to scatter back all over the yard again. 

I literally could have a job with 50 different companies right now.  Not a single place that has called me would turn me down.  Only a few I was interested in. Tutle and Tutle being one of them - until I found out reading their website that the "typical well" runs out in about 2-1/2 to 3 weeks and you are expected to stay there the entire time? lol

Another is the wood chip hauling - they are still hiring from my town.  That's a day job.  There's a fuel hauling gig out of Shreveport, but I'm not sure I want to drive that far to work anymore. Did that for 3 years and really wasn't in love with it.  Then there's this guy practically begging me to join his company - it's literally the owner of the company, been texting me since yesterday.  But that's out 5 days. The only good thing is you're home 2 days every week. The overall pay, tho, I don't think would be even what I'm making now at current company, so scratch that. At least I get home after every run on this job.

I didn't think it would be easy find the job I want. Gemini isn't hiring out of the terminal I would need.  UPI apparently isn't interested in me, for I have never heard back from them.  A bunch of other small outfits out here that aren't paying anything. So, I'm just kind of hopeful that I can get into my own truck - with a lot less miles on it - and work at current employment for a while.  If I'm forced into it, I'll take the chip hauling job and just continue to keep my eyes open for a local gig that actually pays something. 

Smoked pork loin roast, yum. 















Letter to the president (of our company) written.  Read it through and adjusted some things. That was last night, today I'll take a 3rd look, finish it up and send it off. No rush there, I don't even know if it will get read and even if it does, I have no idea whether they will give it any credence, take it seriously or reply to it. Although it would be in their best interests to reply to my demand for immediate payment for the trip made over 2 months ago.  They've had almost a month since I started asking for it and they have done nothing about it.

Meanwhile I went through my own internalizing all of this nonsense this morning.  Got myself riled up, actually, but that's a good thing. Get it out of my system and don't actually take it out on anyone.  I had forgotten about the favoritism in that email to the president, I added some of that to it - but only the stuff I know for sure is occurring. The rest is hearsay. That would be something I would want to ask my manager directly about - is this true? But she will get defensive and angry, from what I've been hearing.

Not that that will stop me from asking tho....  At this point, after all I've been through, I'm not really concerned about any consequences from this company. The worst they can do is fire me.  I'm prepared to deal with that.  I keep flip-flopping on sending out a bunch of applications.  I want to but something in me tells me to wait until I send out this letter and see what happens. And also, to call the lady over the purchase program Monday and see if that is anything that would work in my favor.  Not ready to burn my bridges just yet, is what I'm saying.  Well, unless it blows up I'm not going to burn bridges anyway, not really anything going on here worth burning bridges over.  A person can leave a company without going out in a fiery blaze of glory.

I didn't even do that at Ferguson - that manager certainly deserved, IMO, a good taste of hearing about himself. Instead, I just left that last day.  My manager was hiding in his office - he wouldn't talk to me the final week after I put in my notice.  I have no intention of ever going to back to that company, so I'm kind of proud of myself for keeping my mouth zipped and just letting it go.  He can sit around in eternal self-righteous contempt for me and I am fine with that. They only thing that really perplexed me was these "Christian" salesmen who refused to give me a goodbye handshake.  I was on good terms with them.

I'm thinking of going to the yard today, tho, and getting my stuff out of there. I forgot my new computer is in the bunk.  The truck is locked up  - but they have no choice but to take it into a shop. The mechanic is sick with pneumonia, he isn't going to be around for a while.  I'm thinking I may end up finding myself a new job - I have one in mind already. The pay is equal to what i am taking home now. Not equal to last year, but equal to now.

The job is either around 14 hours a day 5 days a week or less and spread it out over the weekend. Non hazmat, wood chip hauling, they always have ads up for hiring new drivers.

Ok. I just put my name in a data base that puts your name into - probably thousands but at least hundreds - of trucking companies.  One of them showed up as a local job that has excellent equipment and pays almost as much as I'm making per mile now.  Home daily.  I dunno what, if anything, I'm going to pursue, but now I'm seeing plenty of regional runs and even a few local type jobs that would work for me.  That job is a bit far away for a daily commute, the only problem with that. Like 60 miles each way. 








 Sunday - early 20 minutes until departure time.  I don't much care for delivery on Sundays for it takes a while to get security to the ...