Well first off, I've been sitting at a place in Hammond, Louisiana, for 7 hours and will be here at least another 10 before I can get out of here.  When I found out they wouldn't unload me today, I took off to the nearest truck stop and had dinner, tho.  Spaghetti and salad. Very tasty with some leftovers that I am about to eat.  I wasn't near as hungry as I thought I would be. 

I did get some exercise today, tho, in traipsing through woods where the truck is parked.  And stood on a set of railroad tracks for an hour at least, just thinking about things.  I know how truck drivers get so fat and out of shape.  I am struggling to figure out ways to avoid that.  I already had a gut going before I got into this job. Yet, I am eating some granola bars throughout the day and having dinner at night.  I want to change that to eating the meal earlier and not before I am going to bed.

Anyway, the truck is making some chattering noises in the gear box and I have my doubts that it's going to last much longer before it dies and needs repaired.  I did say something to the dispatcher about it, he asked if it was a throwout bearing. Very well could be, I replied, to which he had nothing to offer. Great, if the thing breaks down, I thought, don't say I didn't say anything, is in writing.  He's a cool guy but he is far too overextended.  32 drivers? How does one person manage that many drivers in a day? I just text him mostly, he can get back to me whenever unless it is urgent then I try to call him. 

If the truck doesn't die on me, then I will get this thing finally unloaded at 4am this coming morning, get on up the road to 17 miles to a load site, then up to near Jackson to drop the trailer, go to another site, pick up another trailer and head - home.  Should be doable in one day. Monday morning I will have to be in Oklahoma City at 9am. 

Meanwhile, my first paycheck is everything I thought it would be and then some.  The orientation dude said there are potentials for bonuses on paychecks, I had no opinion one way or the other. Just sounded like blather that oritentation guys give when they are trying to get you hired on. If it's true, wonderful, if it's not, I wasn't holding my breath for it and turning blue anyway. Well, there was $150 bonus on that check.  It was amazing to see that. I busted my ass last week tho, not like it was a free ride.  Still cool tho.  Not complaining. Haha

And then there is the prospect of this other job. I am just in limbo. What to do, what to do. I'll tell ya what, I netted $400 more on this paycheck in one week's work than I netted in any paychecks in recent times from my previous employer for two weeks worth of pay.  If that stood, that's a net gain of $1600 per month. That's after taxes, mind you.  Net, not gross. Gross pay even more.  I could get used to this job for a while.  I could.  Weekends off. The other job offered, however, is even more pay. But, no weekends off, not guaranteed anyway. Just come and get the truck, drive over to Eastman and get the tanker loaded - they do all the loading, you actually have to unhook the trailer and leave the premises while they do that (very hazardous material, the the 195 below zero factor is enough to kill you instantly, if not that, the suffocation and one other thing that kills you that was explained to me that I have since forgotten).  But I don't really care about that.  They haul these trailers all over the place.

If I did have some happenstance that took my life, I figure instant freezing wouldn't really be that bad?  I dunno, not really wanting to find out, but I do think death would be quick, fast and - painless?  I laugh at these people that say "instant death, no pain". How the HELL does anyone KNOW that for sure?  Haha, great minds that propagate their scientific wares, anyway.

I'm getting more comfortable with this.  I hate being away, but this stuff I can endure. Would be better in a newer truck and definitely if it was the new trucks that have the free Direct TV in them with a 22 inch flat screen tv mounted in the sleeper and a double bunk - I'd brink Addler once at least to see if he can deal with it, because from what I am seeing, he is a grumpy dog when I leave.  That's coming from them, at the house, not me.  He is well loved, tho, and well taken care of. Two other dogs for company as well.  So not the end of the world, I just want better accomodations if I'm going to do this.  I  can't get the cigarette smoke smell out of here as much as I have tried, it's tamed down quite a bit but that pervasive odor doesn't go away. 

Anyway, I'm going to wind down for the night, meaning getting off of here and dealing with paperwork and getting ready to go to sleep. 3am I need to be in there with my paperwork.  I don't have to drive anywhere, the door is 300 feet away : )

A short entry. 

4 accidents in various places today left my in want on the total number of miles driven. I guess 600 isn't that bad but closer to 700 would have been better.

Meanwhile, this lady from that other place called today. I had totally given up on them. She wouldn't call me back, but it's a large, nationwide company that is reputable and has great benefits, better than what I would currently be getting at new job.  They still want to hire me, they said, when can you come in for a road test?

I didn't bother to tell her I was working a new job, I figured to go ahead and schedule it - for this coming weekend - to give myself some time to think about this.  And also to see my first real paycheck from this new company.  I had ample miles last week, I should have a healthy check.  But the proof isn't in the pudding until you see what that check is.  

I have always wanted to do tankers, tho and this other company is nothing but tankers.  Enough experience with them - like 1 or 2 years anyway - and I could easily score a local job hauling gasoline and home every night, making decent money. In fact, this company has a huge fleet of gas tankers running all over the country.  You've seen them, KAG or Keegan Advantage Group.

Doing the road test and just even leading up to doing the road test gives me time to revisit this in my mind.  For I was sold on that job in the beginning, I was going to go for it.  But she got caught up in whatever is going on over there. I did talk to several other drivers and they wouldn't do anything else.  People that have been working there since the 80's and 90's, when their yard was located in Magnolia, Arkansas.  They moved to Longview cause - well, the supplier of the chemicals they are hauling is in Longview. 

So anyway, I do want to see my first paycheck here, before I make any decisions and I willl get that on Friday. Well I got the "first" paycheck, it was only for 2 runs and that wasn't going to be that much money, obviously.  The difference between home time for current company and the other one is actually quite a bit. Current company at least gets me home on weekends.  That company gets you home every 3 days - but only for a day and only if they don't have another run for you to turn around and go out on.  

But, the future is what I"m looking at and KAG could eventually lead to a local job, either with them if possible or move on to another company.  Preferably stay within company.  

And then I was thinking about doing online classes with ASU today, as I keep hearing their ads on the radio and they are offering over 150 courses that you can do whenever you can get to it, all online, all the same credits as if you had shown up in the classroom. ASU is from my 2cd hometown, they have the most registered students of any college in the nation.  They continue to expand all over the place, I didn't even know they were offering online courses.

Tho, I learn better in a classroom setting, to be honest. 

Anyway, that's it. There's more but it's bedtime and I have a full day ahead of me tomorrow.  

Driving in hellish traffic all day long today.  I was sent to Columbus, Ohio, a place I haven't been to in decades.  Had to pass through several large cities, got caught in rush hour traffic in one of them. But that, bad as it was, wasn't the worst thing.  My GPS came on and told me that I could "save 36 minutes" by taking an alternate route. 

Well darn if there wasn't a bad crash and I got off the Interstate just in time, so I thought.  I got to a turn in the road that said "trucks turn left, bridge ahead 11"".
Traffic was totally snarled anyway.  I gave up on that, went back to the Interstate and spent two hours - yes, two freaking hours - going the distance of 4 miles.  I mean, 30 minutes of that was sitting on the side of the Interstate - I ran out of hours, I had to take my mandatory 30 minutes break or be in "Hours Of Service" violation, so I did. Just pulled over and parked. By the time I woke up - I was tired, fell right asleep - 25 minutes later, the traffic had completely  cleared. 

Anyway, traffic ate up my drive hours today and I didn't have enough time to get to the drop place.  Or I might have, but I wouldn't have had any time to leave that yard.  No thanks.  I'm not sitting in a yard all night long with no access to a toilet or food.  Yes, I could "improvise", but why bother.  Well, I was fighting the clock just getting here.  I mean, I pulled into this Pilot truckstop with 3 minutes left on the clock!  I stopped, pulled the valves and put myself on "On Duty", taking myself off of "Driving".  Yup, electronic logs.  Pros and cons to it.  Pros are it's much easier than filling out a log book. Con - Once the 14 hour clock starts, you don't get off of it.  You can't just stop, but yourself on "Sleeper Berth" line and take a few hours to sleep if you're tired, losing no on Duty or Driving time. 

Lots of truckers are complaining about that and another road block apparently is being planned, or so I heard on the CB radio today. Ahh, yes, just found it, a Facebook group called Operation Black and Blue, but it's a closed group. Kinda dumb to be a closed group if you're trying to encourage a bunch of truckers to stop dead on the highway for 2 hours and block traffic. I asked to join anyway, just to see if this guy I was hearing on the radio was making accurate statements.

Well anyway, this is a small Pilot truck stop. I guess they are all small, but when I pulled in there, I was aghast.  I am out of hours, I am not going anywhere, even if every single parking space is full.  And they were  -  allllll - filled up.  I drove around to the fuel pumps to act like I was fueling - which I was not, had fueled up earlier since I also pushed that one to the limit and ended up putting 226 gallons of fuel into this thing.  See, if you aren't doing electronic logging, you can just fudge the books if you have to drive down the road to find a place to park.  In this case, you can put yourself off duty, but if you start pulling through the gears, that thing is automatically putting you back on "Driving" status.  So I stated in 3rd gear only.

Well, I pulled through the fueling lanes and much to my surprise, a truck pulled out of it's spot, right there.  And at the same time, another truck had pulled in and was backing into another spot.  I pulled up in front of my intended parking space and waited. And waited some more.  You see, this lot wasn't exactly designed for big trucks to be pulling intricate backing maneuvers into tight spots between 2 trucks already in there. This is a daily dilemma for truckers across the country and have been complaining about it for years - it's only getting worse. 

I can envision an entrepreneur with money simply buying up land, opening up parking only lots and charging a monthly fee for nation wide access.  Yea, I mean something on a big scale.  I mean, if I got out of this truck right now, at 7:00 pm, I can guarantee you there are no empty spaces and this is the only truck stop around.  That I know of anyway or saw coming in.  There are several 50 miles outside of town, but not here.  I was afraid I was going to run into parking problems when I got here.  Anyway, I waved all the fuel lane trucks trying to leave past me. Yup, please go on.  Cause I was going to go down, to the end, flip a U-ey and come back.  NO way I am backing a truck this big and long into a space that small without doing it from the right side. Blind side backing is dangerous even for the most skilled driver with backing skills. You can do it, but you are likely going to have to get out of the truck several times to make sure you aren't about to take out the truck you are backing against.  

I have seen drivers using a spot mirror on a pole so they can see out the passenger side while blind side backing.  It is just highly not recommended if you can avoid it.  If you can't, do what you must. 

My problems were exaggerated by a broken down pickup across the other side and a parked semi over there behind it. I could not get the full access to pull up as the "designers" intended. Fortunately for me, a man decided he was going to help me back into that spot, and I was very much grateful for the help.  He was quite adept at giving hand signals, obviously been helping drivers get their trucks into spaces long enough to have gotten good at it. But, at the same time, the driver has to have the sense enough to get that thing angled right and get the truck banking around just right.  You take a tractor that long and a trailer that long and get it off even a little, you are pulling up and trying again. I had to do 2 pullups just because of the obstructions in front of me, but the 3rd time was the charm.

Thank you!  To the man that took his own time out to help me. 
\
So, I am stuck here for another 12 hours.  Yup.  I could get the load delivered after 10 hours - meaning 2am - but I can't get the next load on until 8am and it's only 13 miles away.  So, I have some free time! And, I am going to decide what movie I want to watch and go on Putlocker and watch it.  I have so much gigs every month on my phone, I can do a lot of streaming before I even come close to running out.  And, the phone works very well at supplying the computer it's needed input to pump out a movie. I watched Unstoppable last night - runaway train movie with Denzel Washington, trying to decide what I want to watch tonight.  Anyway, that's enough for one entry. 

As expected, getting up at 11:45 pm for work and starting driving at around 12:15 am was a total disaster. For me anyway. I am definitely not a night driver.  I only got 3 hours of sleep to start with and keeping myself awake all night long until I arrived at 7 am was ridiculous. I climbed into the sleeper after I got backed up to the dock and told them to come knock on the door when they're done, cause' I'm wiped out.

I was sleeping soundly, too, when that knock came on the door.  Well that much driving ate up a bunch of my allowable driving hours to the tune of over 7, leaving 3 hours and 45 minutes drive time left.  I was given instructions to head northwest to a company that we do a lot of business with, get loaded and the head out.  I didn't look at where I was heading out to, just the loading information.

I was a bit shocked when I went to do a map route for it to see I am going to Columbus, Ohio.  I can't remember the last time I was there, at least 2 decades.  I decided the miles outweighed the home time.  They couldn't have gotten me home today anyway, not enough driving hours left to get there.  So, I put on almost 700 miles today, which is a pretty good feat in a truck the is governed at 70 mph.  You get 11 hours of driving allowed in a 14 hour time period.  The extra work hours are for loading and unloading, fueling, whatever.  I'm a driving fool when i want to be, I can go on and on and on without stopping for anything at all.  Keep a nicely stocked truck and you don't need to stop.  And yes, I bought a variety of low calorie/fat snacks - several boxes worth this time.

The last time I just bought one huge box of granola bars, and tho they were tasty, very much a big mistake.  Must have a variety in the offerings.  So now I have 4 different types, plus some crunchy things that Rene gave to me (tenant) and another case of water.  Welp, the load itself was difficult because it is very near 80,000 pounds, meaning trying to get the steer axle, drive axles and tandem axles all below the maximum amount allowed.  For whatever reason, this company doesn't want drivers fooling with the placement of the Fifth Wheel.  Meaning I can't slide it back or forth.  The only thing you can do is slide the tandems - that's the axles and wheels on the trailer.

Well, when I looked into the trailer I picked up, I knew right away it was a heavy load, so I just went ahead and slid them suckers on up.  It wasn't enough, tho, my first round through the scales at that place I was over on the drive axles by 1,200 pounds.  You don't go through weigh stations like that.  They will give you a hard time at best, most likely issue you a fine at worst.  So, I slid them even further forward and it came out very nice.  I've been through 2 weigh stations since then so I know it's good lol.  \

The things that I have forgotten about trucking.  It's all coming back to me now.  I despise heavy loads that are near full amount of legal weight because it can take several tries to get the axles set to where the truck is no more than 34,000 on the tandems, 34,000 on the drive axles and 12,000 on the front/steering axle.  You can't just be below 80,000 and call it good, you have to be good on all 3 of those things as well.

After careful consideration, I decided to simply try to take a nap this afternoon for at least an hour, or however long I can get out of it, go to bed around 8 - 8:30 and get up at midnight. 

I would have to leave out of here at 2:00 pm today - which is an hour and 45 from now, to get there in time to have the mandatory 10 off time and be at the delivery place on time.  The problem is, I am not really a night driver.  I get sleepy.  I'm going to have even more discussions about this night driving business.  A few hours of it, fine, all night long, no thanks.  Plus it throws off my sleep schedule and takes awhile to get back to normal. 

I'm not really looking forward to tonight, to put it mildly. 

Whatever.  I've got most of my stuff done. Just a few more loads of laundry and all of that is over with.

I turned on the truck today to make sure it was going to actually turn on - unlike last Monday - and Addler went goofy crazy.  He figured I was leaving right there and then and wasn't really a happy camper.  He has figured out already that the truck running either means I am coming or going.  Since I'm here, means I'm going. 

Well whatever.  Meanwhile, I am still putting my thoughts to local work. Yes I know I just started this job but I am not really happy with it.  Unless they move back towards the center, at least, of where we were discussing my home time should be at, I don't see myself staying here that long.  I've spent minimal money on supplies for the truck and not buying a refrigerator and such just because of my reservations.  I made my case to the recruiter in a polite email, let's discuss this.  The original conversations were to do this, you are doing that, how can we adjust this and bring it more to a central position? 

I haven't heard back from that one. If I don't get some kind of reply this week, I will call him and try this again.  I'm the only one from out of state working there, I found after I got there. They aren't taking into consideration that I don't live there and the concessions they make other drivers simply do not apply to me because of that.  I could be home frequently if I lived over in Jackson.  Nope, not even remotely thinking about moving there, just saying, if I were like the rest of the drivers, I could park the truck at the yard and go home on many nights.

The only move I could think of to go to now would be an old friend that probably would have a job for me if I decided I wanted to take one.  We're good friends from the 80's in the mission field.  I missed the opportunity to go visit him because all of this other stuff came up with my dad and then my son getting married.  Now I have no paid time off and not likely to get any of that going for a long time.  I can take time off, just isn't paid.  Not in a position to absorb that right now.  If I did decide to stay, I likely wouldn't want to even ask until being there for a while.  I would really like to go visit mom tho.  Even a weekend and a couple days before or after would work. 

I have to say that there are a few competitors in the area vying against my old company. They are making gains and taking over some of our contracts because some of those contractors absolutely despise this new manager.  He's not really new, now, but I call him that because he is an ogre, a troll from the past.  an antiquated relic of a human being stuck in some time loop from the past where things, in his mind, were better.  Anyway, I am definitely considering putting in apps to any of those places that might be hiring drivers.  I have enough experience to supersede anyone else that might be applying for that specific type of position. 

Whatever the case, I have few precious hours of home time left, so I'm ending this one. 

Well the recruiter asked, so  I answered.  Not in a very negative way, just sort of, this is what I imparted at the beginning, this is what was told me, this is what is happening.  Look I'll drive that ruck - I have - without stopping for hours and hours.  Get it over with. If the next stop is 9 hours away, I"m driving it out until 6  or 7, where I have to stop by fed mandate for a 30 minute break, get out of the truck, exercise, and then go until it's done.
____________________________________

Yesterday, neither my final vacation payout nor my first paycheck arrived in my checking account.  I should have gotten both.  Meaning, for the time being, putting off paying the mortgage payment.  I can do that all the way up until the last day of the month, after that I jeopardize my credit score once again.

I have enough to pay it, but not enough to pay it and the bills that are going to hit my account in the next 15 days.  Right now, the worst that happens is a $40 late fee. 

Obviously, I contacted both my GM of the old company and the recruiter of the new company.  The recruiter wrote back and gave me a number to call for a specific person - who did not answer the phone.  I tried throughout the day to get a hold of him to no avail and left my name and phone number, with no reply to it.  I wrote the recruiter back asking him to look into this, for whatever money is there, I want, it's owed to me, this isn't really a good way to start off an employer-employee relationship, thanks. 

I don't mind that he handed me off to the department that deals with it, I do mind that that department doesn't answer their phone nor reply to their voice messages. 

As for the vacation hour payout, the GM wrote back and said he would look into it. At the end of the day, like 9 hours later, I heard nothing back from him and asked him why.  He made a lame excuse and yes, I called him out on it, then wrote the Regional Manager for help with the situation since he wasn't going to do anything.  Monday, I'm bypassing both of them and calling payroll myself.  I should have received that payout yesterday.  I will find out why it wasn't paid out, it is company policy, in writing, that's all I need. 

So, two strikes.  Fortunately I had the money from the house rent in Phoenix in the account - otherwise I would be totally screwed right now.  Like, get out the credit card again and start paying bills with it, for there are no other options.  I want to start paying those cards down, not continue to have to use them. I figured go pay out $500 on one card with the vacation payout, which will bring that card down to almost zero.  I then figured to start paying off one of the zero interest accounts, I have two of them now.  That will take some time, but I need to get this credit card junk managed.

Well well well. Sure enough, the Regional manager wrote and gave an excuse for the GM. Short, curt and to the point.  My rather short email to him was polite and professional.  No reason for him to reply to me in that manner.  I have no expectation of ever going  back there, certainly not now.  I mean, yes if I moved back to Phoenix I would certainly ask my old GM, he's a great man, knows how to treat employees like family, like they are a part of a team and makes you feel like you actually belong there. The Regional manager over there as well, very cool person. 

I did reply to him just now, but not in kind.  I'm not going to fall for it.  I don't care what they think about me, my requests for pay raises went ignored. That's that.  In fact, the GM actually lied to me about getting a pay raise, but he doesn't acknowledge that, of course. I didn't bring that up, at all, in this round of emails, not worth it.  I'm going to go out in class and keep my head up.  Whatever happens to me, is on me at this point.  I am going to rid this new job out for while - unless there are going to be pay issues, that's a bit ridiculous.  I will be keeping my eyes open for a local job that pays good enough and gets me home at the end of the day.  If I'm going to live in a truck, I want one of the new ones since they have already reneged on their promise to "have me home most nights".

That was just utter blather, no reality to that at all.  I don't want to move around from one place to another, but in the trucking industry, that is actually a very common thing to do. Move around until you find one that works for you.  They are mostly the same, but it's how you are treated that makes the difference. I was going broke at the old company, I was going into debt, no thanks.  I made my pitches on several occasions for a pay raise, it ended up empty handed. That's their decision, mine was to move on, I let them know that near the end, like the last few months.  I flatly told them because of the hour reduction, my banking account was almost drained and I had no savings. 

When I got to the point that both were empty, living paycheck to paycheck, that's when I made the move. This wasn't some thing that I just decided to do overnight. This was a long time in the coming.  I can say that I am very elated not to be working for that a-hole boss anymore.  It's like becoming unshackled from chains and locks. 

Anyway, I must be about my Saturday. Need to visit Walmart and get some supplies for the truck - water and low calorie, low fat snacks to munch on.  The granola bars I bought for the last two weeks were okay, but just okay.  Try something else.  And a haircut.  It's pretty difficult to wake up in the morning and not have a shower to go to to wash your hair and get it kempt looking again.  I have to have a haircut that looks good regardless and that would be short hair. 

Today was a little different.  I was in some town south/central Mississippi, parked over night.  Got up this morning, made the delivery and then sat and waited for the next load.  Meanwhile, another truck pulled up so I asked him if he could help me identify where an air leak I kept hearing when I hit the brakes was coming from.  I can't hit the brakes and go look at the same time, but I pointed him to where I thought it was coming from and sure enough, a good air leak coming out of one of the air lines that goes from the truck to the trailer. 

So I threw that in the text as well: Got a good air leak, gonna need fixed soon.

I had called him before that asking if he had received my other texts cause he wasn't responding.  He's a busy dude, I get that but I don't want to needlessly sit around when there are miles and money to be made.  I was waiting there 2-1/2 hours when he finally said well come up to the shop and get it fixed. 152 miles away, dead heading? Okay.  They pay me for it, so that's on them. The entire glad handle had to be replaced, which was done relatively quickly and then I get a text: Get over to Brandon's ASAP. 

When he says that, I assume the place is closing shortly and a narrow window of time to get there. So I boogied on over, got the truck loaded with riding, zero turn lawnmowers - at least 100k worth lol, wish I could take one home - and headed out.  I'm back in the same area my old job used to send me.  Too bad I couldn't have gone another 80 miles further west, I could have spent the night at the house. 

Oh well. I will be going even further west than my house tomorrow and I have 4 drops, so maybe, if I"m lucky and time works out that way, I can still take a break at the house.  You never know, I'm not counting on it but it's a possibility.  I can't see myself leaving the last stop before 2 or 3 - these stops are scattered over 130 mile range and obviously trying to get them done in a day.  I would really not even want to do this junk considering the lack of miles, but they make it up by paying a per stop pay on top of miles in cases like this.  So it's $200 worth of stop pay plus mileage, it will be a good paying day tomorrow. 

I'm stuck in Minden, LA, just a mile down the road from the 1st delivery.  Hit them up early and get on down the road to Shreveport, then down to Mansfield and then over to a small town just south of Tyler, Texas. 

And so it is. I dont know what to make of all of this yet, hence I have kept my mouth shut about home time.  Give it some time to figure out whether I can adjust and actually maybe even like the lifestyle.  Last night was the first night I really slept good in the truck.  I drove until 11:30 pm and I was bone, dead tired.  I finally figured out how to adjust the AC on this APU, that was one of the problems. It would freeze this thing out.  I mostly am running it to get rid of the humidity, the temps aren't that bad at night. 

I'm kinda in lala land today.  Not sure what to think about anything going on.  Just riding it all out, seeing where it goes. 

Sunday - noon.
Watching a movie.  Thinking about this job.
Trying not to look at tomorrow morning and leaving here again as some sort of negative thing.
Kinda hard at the moment.  I'd have to leave for work anyway, but I would normally be coming
home 9-1/2 hours later, not heading to some unknown destination far, far from home. 

It's the lifestyle that I've lived for the last 15 or more years that I am fighting against right now.
It's ingrained into my head and it's a tough one to crack open and "renegotiate" with  myself.  This is why I asked specifically to be home. Much more than this anyway.  I figured if I could even just sleep at home,a few nights per week, if nothing else while I'm here, that would really help me make it through this transition.

I'm not 20 years old anymore. The allure of being out on the road all the time has long since passed.   The allure, however, of making good money has not.  There just has to be a middle group these people need to find for me somehow.  I guess they don't have to do anything, but these are words I garnered from the own of the company on the very first interaction with this place.  "You live in a good area for us".  "We can have you home most nights.  You might be out one (he may have said two)".  The recruiter didn't reaffirm every night, he said they would try to accommodate as best they could for it.

Well so far, they have done nothing to accommodate for me.  They just run me constantly. I get done with on load and it' immediately on to the next thing.  It's great for miles/pay, but the lifestyle is grueling.  The hours of the day are meaningless. They only thing that counts is hours - hours of service, 14 and driving hours, 11.  Without saying it, you are expected to drive out your 11 hours if necessary on any given run and then stop, no matter what time of day it is.  It really messes with your sleep schedule. 

Now, there is a no-forced-dispatch policy.  I could say no.  But at the moment, I'm trying to decide whether I want to make a good impression on this company and eat all of this, do all this running around and live with it - or - tell them I need a more normal sleep schedule.  They determine appointment times.  That's based on how long it will take you to get there before you are even done delivering the next load. That's right, I'm to contact the dispatcher before I'm done unloading so he can crank me out to the next place.

The whole thing is perplexing. From what they told me on the phone and in writing to what is actually occurring are literally worlds apart.  I should have expected this, this is the way trucking companies operate - offer you the world, go back on their words where the rubber meets the road.  It would be a little easier if my sleep hadn't departed from me.  Even last night, in my own bed, I didn't sleep well.  Really hard to drive all day long when you're tired. 

So, in context of all this perplexity, I haven' written the recruiter yet about any of this.  I really need the money right now to get back up to even, much more ahead.  I'm looking at my credit cards and choking on all of that mess.  Way too much has been charged and I really want to pay all of that down.  A rock and a hard place, literally is where I'm at.  Consequences for any action I take, including doing nothing and continuing what I'm doing now.

Whatever the case, I fully intend on being in Lufkin, Texas at 8:00am.  Let the race begin.  Last week, after that, I dead headed 132 miles to a flour plant up north Texas.  I was amazed to find out they pay for dead heading. That didn't used to happen in the "good ole' days", any dead heading wasn't paid and you ate it, meaning you demanding that the next load be within 75 miles max. 

I'm still happy to have found out yesterday morning that the truck stop isn't supposed to be charging to park there. I didn't really think so, that place is a pit, but it's the only one in town here. Amazing this little town has any kind of truck stop to be honest. 

Welp, I'm going to see if I can find my brand new, never used CB radio. It's in one of those giant boxes from the storage unit.  I really don't feel like taking all of it out of the shed, tho.  If I can't find it within the first few boxes, I may give up on it.  I'm pretty worn out right now, not much energy, trying to recoup for the coming week.  but, talking on the CB used to be rather stimulating, way back when. I've heard it's nothing but a bunch of people cussing each other out. I dunno, but since I have one and the power and antenna inputs are already on the dashboard, might as well find out. 

If I were to really get serious about this, I wouldn't mind getting some audio books to listen to.  Not to mention a refrigerator.

Well enough of this for now.  I"m watching yet another movie, lol. 

I've decided to hold off on any comments about home time.  I don't need to be home, I need to make some money and get out of debt.  I'm just going through the pangs of a completely different lifestyle that places huge demands on time.  I went through almost all of my 70 hour allotted work week - that's the Feds rule - by the time I got home today.  Driving home, however, was also paid miles since it's on the way to delivering Monday morning.  Likely I will have to dead head 132 miles again for a load and then head back to Mississippi. They are in Mississippi, their main accounts are in Mississippi. 

__________

Well dinner  called and right now? Good ole' home cooking is a mighty fine distraction.  I cooked the potatoes though, I like them nice and crispy or at least semi-crispy. Delicious. 

Anyway, the point of this particular post was the idea of contacting everyone about getting my @$$ home at least once a week.  I think I'll go through another week at least of this and see what happens first.  The reason being is that I am being kept busier than a truly OTR driver.  Whether that is a test to see if I'll drive of if that is a constant thing remains to be seen. But since they have their own in-house broker, they get the runs they want to take that are going to keep drivers busy. 

I'm just running through all of this.  If I could get my  sleep back this would be much better.  I am going to take my big ole' box fan with me this time, it's the sound I've been sleeping to for years and years now.  There is a perch in the sleeper where it will fit. That perch is where a TV normally would be, but I don't have that and I am not investing in anything beyond low cost items for this.  I expect that sleeping tonight in my own bed in normal surroundings will result ina  good night's sleep. 

This is such a huge adjustment to my lifestyle.  I'ma give it time before saying anything about it.  Maybe I will can adjust.  Maybe not, but a week's time isn't enough to determine that.  I can tell ya that driving I-85 through South and North Carolina is a major clusterfreak.

Anyway, when I went to park the truck at the truckstop today, I went in to pay for the privilege.  The lady was on her cellphone, standing outside, but came in after I did. How may I help you?  I'm parking here through tomorrow night.  Okay.  Well you don't have to pay.  Oh.  Well 2 guys working here said I did and took my money.  Umm, no, she said, they are wrong, you don't have to pay to park here.  Thanks!

I'm going to bed.  Early? yup, but I need the comfort of my bed and the sounds of my room at night. 

As I predicted on Wednesday evening, I wouldn't be making it home tonight, Friday night.  That's because as soon as I got back from North Carolina, they had me turn around yesterday and go almost all the way back there to deliver and then pick up.  I did the math: no way would I have enough available driving hours to be able to leave there and get home today.  In fact, I ran out of hours just getting to the truck stop I am at.  I'm still 4-1/2 hours from home. 

Now, I left home Sunday at around 2:45 am.  I'll be getting home sometime tomorrow late morning, I'm guessing and then I have to leave early Monday morning to be down in Lufkin for an 8 am delivery. So, I don't get anything near a full weekend.

See this is my problem here.  I mean, I was going to be home every night but one, maybe two per week.  That was cool. I could deal with that.  Then I got to this company and now I'm not even getting a full weekend, much less the fact I've been on the road forever.  Yes, I have made bank this week - $1,400 worth of miles, because that is all I have been doing. Drive 11 hours, sleep 10, drive, sleep, drive sleep.  This is what is getting to me. The fact that they so easily just said oh well to the agreement that we had.  Maybe they don't think it was an agreement and now they have me on their hook? 

So, I am going to write a - nice - letter, explaining to them my position. We really did discuss all of this and I have some texts at least from the recruiter to back it up.  I mean, at least meet me in the middle, cause right now, y'all are getting your way and I"m getting - nothing that I wanted.  Probably won't word it that way, but that's the gist of it.  I didn't get a sign on bonus, I didn't get a new truck, I didn't ask for those things because I wanted the schedule I wanted or at least something somewhat even remotely close to a semblance of it. 

I don't know, I'm just going to politely ask them to revisit this subject and see where it goes. Perhaps a trade off - one week with more home time and one without so much - but definitely, I want to be home at the latest, Friday night.  I really want 2 whole days home, like everyone else in the company is getting. Turns out I"m the only one from out of state, or even out of area. Everyone else lives there and they go home frequently.  Pehaps they thought that would work with me.

Actually, with the Lufkin run, I did the math and came up with how I could get home most nights and still get good miles in.  But, I forgot in that equation that I won't go back empty and may have to do a lot of dead heading to get to a pick up point.  There has to be some sort of happy medium here where I can get what I asked for at least to some degree.  I really do not like when trucking companies make all kinds of promises and keep none of them. It's a common practice, but I thought this was different since the owner had called me first and told me I could get home most night. Those were his words. 

So anyway, I'm currently sitting at a Flying J truckstop in Jackson, Mississippi. The company yard is just down the road, but I wasn't going to sit in there all night long.  I needed to eat, sit down somewhere after a long, hard week and have a bite. Denny's here, had the Lumberjack breakfast, love that stuff!  No such thing as fine dining at truckstops.  Sometimes there are other restaurants nearby them, but not anything I have been at lately  I have been eating granola bars and subway sandwiches. 

I'm going to think about my wording of this letter, but I am definitely writing it and definitely expect some kind of reply to it, even if negative.  Sorry Charley, we just can't do that.  Or, okay, we'll discuss it next week when everyone is together.  Or whatever. 

Oh, and then there was yesterday!  I got to the pickup point in Fort Mill, way late.  Road construction galore, too much traffic and dumb drivers doing stupid things - people are paying attention to their cell phones, folks, not the road. I can see into their cars when they are sitting there at green lights or driving 50 MPH in a 70 zone.  This stuff is out of control. Anyway, I had 12 minutes of drive time left before being out of hours!  Haha, where am I going to  go park for the night? Fortunately, a local freight driver was in there. I asked him, he thought about it for a minute and said, oh yeah! Walmart. 

Is it far? No, it's 4 miles down the road.  I could envision 4 miles in that traffic taking more time than I had, but I had no choice but to try.  Kinda get into trouble for driving over Fed regulated hours.  In fact, this company will fire you for it if it happens too much.  But Walmart  - they all have those no truck signs, but you never know if they are going to allow you to spend the night or not. Some won't many will.  I got over there and parked my truck way  out of the way of anything and everything. HUGE parking lot, this one was even bigger than most and half of it unused.  Parked the thing, went inside and got, yes, a Subway sandwich, came back out, got in the truck, hoped that there wouldn't be an issue and went to sleep. First night since last weekend I actually slept pretty well.  I woke up to the alarm in the morning, thank goodness they didn't bother me and there was actually another truck I didn't hear pull up, parked directly beside me. 

Well, long day.  Started at 4:00 am and ended at 5:30 pm with 15 minutes of drive time left, lol. 

There is one thing that I am definitely not used to, and that is the sound of this APU - Auxiliary Power Unit - running all night long.  It is mounted behind the cab so the noise is right there.  And it vibrates the entire truck.  Now, I am used to the sound of a truck engine running, but that's really much different than this contraption.  They want you to use these things instead of running the engine all night long and at 11k per unit, they are obviously serious about that factor.

I ended up shutting it off last night. I was fortunate that the air was crisp and cool at the location I was at, for I simply could not get to sleep with all that noise going on, even with earplugs.  I should really have brought my fan, but I figured the noise of the APU would replace it, definitely wrong about that.  I am running it right now, but it's day time and I"m sitting at a Proctor and Gamble plant in North Carolina, waiting for them to unload the truck.  I did eventually get to sleep after I shut everything off, but that is a negative in itself since I'm used to the sound of a fan running. They have a huge inverter built into this truck, just turn it on, plug into and you have AC electric.  I checked it, it charged up my computer last night, of which I am using right now for this entry.

No sense not taking my computer with me since I do tend to get hours of enjoyment out of it.  There is no TV in this truck, but I don't miss TV.  I'd watch the news if I had it, but I can get that on line.  Wifi supplied by Iphone, at least one good idea they had. Well anyway, the life of a truck.  This place had my unhook the trailer and go wait with the tractor in a separate parking spot.  Crazy.  I was supposed to load for a run back to Mississippi, but I am guessing they are going to be closed by the time I get there, meaning waiting all night for the next load.  No biggies, I've already driven 9 hours today, I would have liked to have gotten the other 2 allowable, but if not, it's not.  I have lost so much sleep that I need a night to catch back up on it anyway.

Still, I"m working here to make the bucks. The only way to do that is to get 600 miles average per day.  Actually, I"m close to that even though I got caught up in a police chase this morning - I wasn't involved

I've spent much more time this weekend on this truck than I wanted to. I wanted to relax and enjoy time off before going back to the grind.  Instead, I have been cleaning the thing out, scrubbing it down and putting in scented stuff to try and get rid of the cigarette smoke smell in there.  I have the doors wide open at this point trying to air the thing out.  I'm not really happy that they not only gave me an older truck, but also one that has had a chain smoker in it.  Next to impossible to get that kind of stench out of a truck when someone has been doing that in there for that long. 

I can only hope leaving the doors open all day long - especially considering there is a breeze and the air is blowing straight into it - will help relieve some of that smell out of there. 

It is what it is.  Just kinda of pisses me off that they would knowingly put a non smoker into a smoker's truck.  That thing has almost 500k miles on it, did that same person drive that the entire time and .... if he did....yea, likely never going to get all of that smell out of there. 

Meanwhile, I find out that my last paycheck gets my vacation hours paid out on it.  Well that isn't for another two weeks. Won't get my first check from here for a couple of weeks, either.  I'm going to have to nurse the check I just got - which is very small, the way it was going there, small checks for a lot of work.  I can't nurse it, tho.  I have bills to pay and they are due in in the next 7 days, spread out.  Sat down last month and wrote everything out, how much the bill is for, what day it is due on so I could just whiz through everything and pay it all at once.  But I'm not paying the entire month's bills this time.  Just the stuff that is due in the next coming week. This is the only thing that motivates me right now, even if it's a job I'm not home much: start getting some money back into the bank, not be broke.

Oh well.  This is the life I chose, long ago, now I have to live with it.  Should have just gone to school when I thought about doing it.  Not sure if it would have paid off tho. And the vast amount of money it costs to go school.  I'm really going to have to spend some time in prayer about what I should be doing at this time in my life versus what I am doing with it.  I've always works, but I also worked for free on the mission field and tho I didn't come out of it with money, I have never regretted it. I would love to be involved with a relief agency that goes to the points of natural or man made disasters where they occur. 

I'm kinda curious how that works in the federal government.  Or even in organizations such as the Red Cross or Salvation Army.  But there are so many of those types of organizations out of there.  Wouldn't it be great to do something you like and get paid for it?

Ahh, whatever.  Just kinda feel like I'm wasting my life away just to earn money.  There is more to it than that, yet I can't seem to find my niche in how about getting that done - doing something I like while getting paid for it.  Trucking is just a grind.  One place to another to another.  It can pay well but it's a pretty pathetic existence. 

Just like facing tonight at 2:30 am, having to get up, get in the thing, go hook it up to the trailer and head out on the open road in the dark.  It was the only load they had for me over here to pick up and deliver, I really had no choice but to take it.  Night driving is not my forte.

Well whatever. I'm getting close to done, finally, with truck stuff. Just washing sheets, put them on the bed in the thing, get my clothes packed and get ready.  Take the rest of the day off, go to bed early. 

I've gone blog happy.

I tend to write things out to get stuff out of my system.

It helps. 

This entire situation represents extreme changes to my life.  

My dog doesn't see me coming home at the same time every day.

He sits there and starts making his high pitched noises.

So I'm told.  He'll get past that eventually, but he is very clingy right now.

I was only gone a few days.  What will it be if I'm gone 5 full days?

Yet, I think he will be much happier here left home without me than

crammed into the back of a truck for endless hours per day.  

I can't just stop and take him out every hour or even every couple of hours.

I am already under the understanding that "making it" at this company means

getting to destinations and appointments on time or even early.  This is one

of their biggest things they harped on: make your appointments on time.  They

don't give unrealistic appointment times for the two I've been to so far, but they 

also don't give a lot of leeway.  

And, they get rid of people that consistently miss on-time appointments.  

Honestly?  I'll make the effort.  But if it doesn't work out for me, I don't mind

 moving on.  I understand they want the truck profitable, I get it.  This is just a 

matter of time thing for me.  I'm not going to kill myself to keep up to some 

company's expectations.   I want to make money, but from the day I have spent 

driving there, I can see there isn't any time to stop anywhere.  I mean, I stopped for a

10 minute rest area break yesterday and still was late.  But, that was due to the

dispatcher giving me a load to take out and we hadn't even finished the training. 

That lies fully on the recruiter's part.  They have this device in the truck that does 

electronic logging.  Well and fine, they didn't show me how to use it. He was going

to until he realized when we were going to do training on it that he didn't have me in

the system, therefore I couldn't log and therefore, it escaped him after he did get me

in there.  So, I'm sitting there pushing screen fields and attempting to figure it out.

Great.  Got it figured out.  

Whatever. I knew from my Iphone maps app that I wasn't going to make it on time, 

in fact, I was going to be around an hour late.  That, giving myself 15 minutes to stop

somewhere along the way.  And so it was, the dispatcher was unphased. They'll be 

there until 7 tonight, no problem.  The next appointment I had ample time to make it 

to in time.  

So here it is, Saturday night, definitely enjoying my time off.  And, tomorrow night at around 2:30 am, I will have to get up, get in the truck, drive to the truck stop, hook up to the trailer and drive to Mississippi.  I don't get why the dude gave me an 8:00 am appointment time, Testing me?  Will I 

do what they want when they want to? Or what....dunno.  I hate night driving, I can say that.  

Again, not really sure about this place yet.  

The rubber meets the road when you come to understand that they were not fully up front with you.  I didn't want a brand new truck, I didn't want any special anything except getting home frequently.  That was my main qualifier as discussed first with the owner of the company and then the recruiter.

But it became evident yesterday that the dispatcher has other ideas.  We'll definitely get you home on the weekends but the rest of the week may be a different story, spoken right in front of the recruiter who knew my expectations.  But, that's the way trucking companies operate: promise you the moon, deliver you a toilet full of pee.  Okay this isn't anything near that bad, I'm just saying they make promises that they can't or won't deliver on. In this case, it's won't, because they have at least 8 loads a day going to Lufkin and this plant's busy season is about to fire up.

They take these massive rolls of paper and make flyers and inserts out of it.  The busy season is Christmas, obviously, when they say 20 to 30 loads a day are needed there.  It's a year round operation, though, not like the plant just closes up and goes away after Christmas is over.  After making that delivery, I dead headed 132 miles to pick up a load of some sort of special baking flour.  Like, a LOT of it.  And then back down here.  I was on the road for about 12-1/2 hours yesterday, a little more than I wanted but not too bad. 

I mean, I've worked 13 hour days at the previous job before the new manager came along.  We worked 10 hour days as a rule of fact before he came and often enough longer than that.  So, long days aren't really a big issue.  But I do have a learning curve to get caught back up with all this kind of driving.  Haven't done it in so long I have forgotten the nuances of it. Time management being the key to making a successful career out of this kind of driving. 

The point is, I'm here, I'm working for them and I can see the money earning potential. Even if I'm only home on the weekends, I will likely do it for a while to get my financial situation turned around. Which doesn't mean I won't be keeping my eyes open for a good local job.  I intend on spending some time doing that today.  If there is something that comes up that is too good to pass up,  you can bet I will put my application in for it.  I can't really see myself doing what is know as "regional" work for the rest of my trucking career, which is really what this is.  Regional simply means they get you home on weekends.  You could be sent clear across the country but driving 600 miles a day you are right back in a couple of days.  Regional driving, in my view, is simply a version of Over The Road driving, you just get home more often.  The thing about this regional job is, if you get the same miles per week as a purely OTR driver and making the same money, why not? If that's what you want t do, that is.

I suppose it's just a matter of whether I can adapt to that kind of lifestyle again. Did it for years.  Got old after awhile, but that took a long time to actually get old.  Like 5 or more years.  I like going home every night to my dogs and my bed and the security and peace of a home.  At the same time, they are buying all new trucks and all of them will be outfitted with a 20 inch screen and Direct TV for free.  That's not bad.  I don't have a new truck, I'm stuck in an old thing that has almost 500k miles on it.  It drives fine, but it has very few of the bells and whistles that newer trucks have.  Not to mention whoever was driving in it before was a smoker.  No thanks.  I'm going to open that thing up today and let some fresh air go wafting in there and try to get that smell out of there.  This truck does have an APU tho, basically a glorified generator that runs electricity and AC/heat to the truck.  They don't want you idling the truck all night long as we did in the good ole days. But then again, we didn't have APU's in the good ole days, you had to buy your own power inverters or buy the gadgets  you want that run off battery/DC electricity, which are always more expensive. 

I can tell ya the first gaffe I made was bringing a small suitcase and trying to cram everything into it.  No reason to.  That will change.  They don't give you sheets for the bed in the truck, that's all on you.  Or a pillow for that matter.  I don't have an electric shaver, which will change today.  I've been meaning to get one anyway, much easier to shave than having to use shaving cream and razors all the time.  And, I'm going to have to scrub that truck out.  They did their version of it after the other person gave it up, but that's not even remotely close to good enough for me. Not when considering spending that much time in it.  A dirty truck gives a feeling of - I dunno how to explain it.  Just not a good feeling.  It smells bad, it looks bad.

As it stands, and I don't know why this guy did this, but I have to be somewhere in Mississippi at 8 am Monday morning to deliver this flour.  It's like a 5 hour drive from here.  That means my weekend is really cut short and I will have to get up in the middle of the night to get into the truck and drive.  Not really a fan of that. Give me my whole weekend so i can get up around 6 am on Monday and get moving.  If this continues, my dispatcher and I are going to have issues.  He's also a good guy, he wants me to make money, which is fine, but it isn't good for you to have your sleep schedule all screwed up by having to sleep during the day one day, the night the next and so on.  Perhaps it's just trying to get onto a schedule when you first start out, perhaps it's just that I said I'm here to make money, let's going on with it.

I'll keep my mouth shut about that stuff for a while to see how this all plays out. I'm actually kind of interested in driving to PA and some other areas that they deliver to and pick up from.  I'm also happy that I get paid for dead heading.  I mean, that was 132 miles last night of that.  I don't know if most companies pay that or not.  Back in the good ole days, dead-heading was never paid.  Which meant you had to insist the next load wasn't too far off. 

As for Adler, it would be tough to take him in this truck.  I would need one of the new ones with a bunk bed so he can have a bed to sleep on at night.  As I said, this truck isn't really built that well. I'm guessing going the route of taking a big giant dog would also necessitate me getting a ramp for him to get up in there with. Not to mention getting him to actually do it without getting all freaked out.  And, I would have to find time to stop and give him potty breaks and exercise, which during the course of the day while driving, you really don't have a lot of time.  This company makes you appointments and they want you there on time.  That is apparently one of their pet peeves. If they make an appointment - which they do on every load - they want you there at or before that time.  The other pet peeve is driving over your HOS hours as regulated by the Feds. I was informed they just fired 9 drivers for driving over the 11 hours, or staying on duty for over 14 hours or both. 

I do remember the days of wanting to drive endlessly - but you got away with it then.  You don't get away with jack nothing nowadays, it's all electronic logging.  These people were turning the unit off and trying to get away with it.  Lol, that's pretty funny cause even though I've been out of that kind of stuff for a while, I know that the truck knows what you are doing regardless of whether that unit is on or not.  The Feds can audit a trucking company and if they find a bunch of that stuff, they can downgrade the company's status. Meaning racking up points in a system the feds use. The higher the number of points, the the more scrutiny the company can get all the way to the Feds actually have the ability to shut a company down now.  I personally believe that's too much power in the hands of the Fed. Though I can see the point of it in cases where a company is operating unsafely. 

Anyway, I didn't know that electronic logs completely replace hand written logs.  You don't have to do any of that, you just input it on your dash mounted device, it's very simply and much easier than hand written logs.  However, the company still wants everyone to do hand written ones as a backup. Gag, what's the point then.  The point, apparently, is if the device stops working, you have something to back it up.  I guess it isn't that big a deal to keep a log book, but at the same time, they didn't provide me one.  That was a bit weird.  A trucking company that doesn't have a pallet full of them? lol you have to buy your own. They're very cheap, not the issue, just strange that they want you to keep a log but don't even off one of them to you at the get go? 

I'm totally out of it today. It's not the driving, it's my sleep. I have been sleeping poorly since I quit the old job.  I mean, very badly.  Some nights only getting 2 or 3 hours of sleep.  That's not enough to do a whole day's worthy of anything.  I don't care what you are doing unless you are just sitting on your butt all day long.  Is that the allure of living off the government? That the only thing you have to do is spend time in government offices convincing them that you shouldn't have to work and please give me everything for free?  I never understood that ideal.  This company's higher ups were complaining about a lack of work ethic.  Drivers doing "dodging" - meaning not driving when they should be.  They don't have any set rule, but they really want you to drive at least 3,000 miles per week. Which is legally done if you set your mind to the grind and just do it.  I'm guessing for the truck to maintain a minimum profit margin, the 3,000 is the point that they want it getting.  Still, they cited some people driving 2,500 miles per week.

Doesn't make any sense.  If you are out there anyway, you might as well just drive and make the money.  Isn't that what they're out there for?  Well, I need to write down a list of things and go to Walmart and buy some stuff.  I'm going to ask them about parking the truck there, too.  Do they charge for it? Do they care if you leave it there for several days?  The place where it's parked now is actually charging me.  I'd rather not pay if I didn't have to, Walmart parking lot is loaded with trucks in it all the time, even though there are "No Overnight Truck Parking" signs everywhere. It's been that way at that particular store since I started living in this town. Still, I would rather ask and make sure I don't come back to an empty space where the truck once was.  Those towing companies charge a fortune to tow a truck. 

Long day.
They didn't get me out of there until 10:30. 
The dude that does the orientation has a lot to learn.  He's a great guy, very likable but very much
not so clear or definitive on how they want you to do anything, really.  I'm not going to sweat it, it's
just truck driving. If they don't like the way I deal with their issues, I'll move on.  I have been through orientations that lasted for 3 full days.  I am not saying I want to do that, but at the same time, if they want you to know everything, don't dump a bunch of information on us all at once, then give us hypotheticals that rarely exist in the real world, don't leave out a bunch of stuff that you need to know, don't fully explain the things that you are including in the infusion of knowledge and by God, learn how to spell!

I mean, there were at least 30 spelling errors in all of the paperwork that was handed to me. He's a really good guy though, not really worth making an issue out of it, but it looks very unprofessional to have a packet of paperwork coming from a company that is reaching for the stars in terms of the numbers of drivers it has that is full of spelling and grammatical errors. 

Well it's really late.  I started today in Clinton, Mississippi, which is just outside of Jackson, drove to Lukin only stopping once for a 10 minute break to get out of the truck at a rest area and relieve myself.  I was seriously tired for about an hour, but then woke up and went on the rest of the day.  I had to take a 30 minute break - that's fed rules - before 8 hours up, so I did that at a Love's truckstop in Lufkin after filling up extremely large fuel tanks, lol. Much larger then the semi at my former employer. 

If I hadn't started so late today, I would have been home at a very nice hour.  But, it was 11 pm when I got here and now it's past midnight. I'm fixing to go to sleep, but I have to sit for a while and get road buzz out of my head first.  It was almost 600 miles of driving and I can say that I made more today than I would make in 2 days at my previous employer, which was the goal.  My dispatcher is very competent. He was a truck driver for decades.  He makes appointments to deliver based on realistic times, ,but right there in a window that has you cranking down the road to get there on time.

I'm sooo tired and that road buzz is finally going away. It's time to go to sleep. Pick this back up tomorrow.

I know I just put up a post, but it really didn't get this all out of my system.
I am working through this entire situation in my mind.
How did I get to this point? Why did I agree to travel clear to
Mississippi for a job?  What is going to happen now?  Will I ever get home now?

Some of the numerous thoughts flooding my brain at this time. 
This place is just another trucking company.  Or is it? They certainly
take a personal interest in the drivers.  They have a vision and a goal.
They are at around 100 drivers right now, they claim they will double that
by this time next year.  Considering the rapid growth they have been making
up til now, I don't doubt them.  But, uhh, what is my part in all of this? I just
want to make a decent living and yes, get home.  Not 3 weeks, not 2 weeks.
Not even weekly. I want home more often than that.  This I made very, very
clear at the beginning of this. 

So I am hearing all this stuff and I have no idea what to think of all of it. 
What I will find out tomorrow is, where my first load takes me. Cause yeah, that's
where this is going. Get in a truck, get a load, drive.  Cept' there are loaded trailers
in the parking lot and they have the paper rolls that I was allegedly hired to haul
in them. In fact, the trailer I pulled today was filled with them. 

I'm just so - perplexed right now.  Not confused, perplexed.  I know why I came out here,
I know what the circumstances were that led me to quit, which will be reaffirmed tonight
when that pathetic paycheck comes through, I just am having a seriously hard time
digesting my decision.  I hated that place, but all because of one man.  Yet, that one man
has turned that place into a very undesirable place to work.  For everyone there. 

Of course he wasn't man enough to say goodbye.  Or anything at all.  I don't consider him a
man in the sense of a person that is mature, has some amount of wisdom, exercises some
restraints on their actions, gives thought to what they are going to say before they say anything.
He acts much like an impudent child. He has no empathy, no amount of concern for his fellow human being.  I much consider him like a dictator with the god-syndrome. 

And now, the other driver that quit a few months ago says the GM called him.  Why? But my thoughts went to: of course.  He's getting pressure from corporate. Why are all these people leaving? You may be able to dismiss one of them as a bad egg, but 3? And are there more considering quitting?  Well, they'll find out eventually, lol.

Yes, I would go back to that place - sans that manager.  No way will I consider going back under his management unless the price was right.  I'm not even saying they would call me back, but I did leave the option open.  Hey, I'll come back for the right money, if you ever decide to make me an offer, feel free to call me.

Whatever.  I"m bone dead tired.  I hope I sleep something tonight, cause tomorrow not only finish orientation, but pick up a load wherever and head out on the open road. 

Oh, the road test.  Lol.  The Safety officer - well, he was asking me questions to fill out on his form for the driving test.  I mean, he was totally kicked back in the truck, making small talk. If he was paying much of any attention to what I was doing, he certainly didn't act like it. But then again, perhaps he was just testing me to see if I can rub my belly and my head at the same time, ie: be completely comfortable behind the wheel and focusing as much thought on the conversation. I'm guessing that was it, but, who knows. 

I mean, the test was like, not even existent.  I had to keep asking him where to go next cause I want to know before I get to a stop sign or red light. Not that that bothered me, I just thought, well, with this dude all kicked back like this and barely even looking at the road, I'm pretty sure I'm passing this test. 

Alright. It's bedtime. Not really, it's over 9 hours til I have to get out of bed.  But I'm zoned out on all this thinking and lack of sleep and stress.  I am stressing, I will definitely admit that.  Paychecks solve my financial problems. Staying out on the road for seemingly endless spans of time isn't acceptable in order to accomplish that.  Weekends are off, yes.  But where will I be spending them? That is the question. 

An entire spent in orientation today. 
As I said yesterday, whatever reservations I may have had? I'm here now.
I need the job, I need the money, I can work on finding something else if it comes to that.
But, the safety Director is also a Christian so we hit it right off.  But, the first half of the day was spent with the recruiter going over policy and how to do paperwork and such. Which was fine, but I was tired.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and my head was full of thoughts.  Mostly, what the heck have I done? Til I remembered what my paycheck is going to look like when they direct deposit it tonight at midnight.  It will be - nothing from my perspective.  They want you to do at least 3,000 miles per week, which at the pay I am at equals to about $550 more per week then I am making now. 

We got through with all of that and then came time for road tests. I didn't want to do it first. I figured it would take a while and I could take a nap.  There were only 3 of us there for this orientation.  The road test - by the time you get done with the pre trip and the paperwork and the actual driving test - takes an hour.  At least.  I disappeared after the first one and fell asleep on a bench outside. Then I realized I have access to a brand new pickup truck they rented for me, so I mozied on over there, turned it on, cranked the AC, and took a nice nap.

I felt much better after that.  I am hopeful these bouts of sleepless nights will diminish with a change of jobs and getting away from an abusive manager.  But there is still the shell shock of leaving a company I have been with for 12 years hitting me. I expected some of it, I didn't expect it as much as it has hit me. This too shall pass.

I guess the thing that really got to me was all this talk about "we run in 16 states".  That's nice, I most emphatically did not agree to be running to North Caroline or Ohio or Pennsylvania.  Sent me out west, that's what I agreed to, that's what we discussed.  This is a "wait and see" thing.  As it stood, they wanted a volunteer to drive to Bowling Green, Kentucky to pick up a stranded driver.  I gave that little thought.  Well, if I do that, they'll think I'm good to go for anywhere, screw that. 

Look, I wouldn't mind an occasional trip to the east and especially to Pennsylvania, that's where I was born and raised for the first 10 years of my life.  But all the time, no thanks.  Get me west, I'll come back east to pick up, get me back west again.  My road test was, in fact, done with a loaded trailer with the paper rolls in it. And my goodness they are heavy.  That truck was 79,000 and change pounds.  They are going to open up a terminal in Dallas soon. They keep pointing at me because I am from Texas. Yeah? That is 150 miles from me lol.  Not like it's a trip to and from work on a daily basis. Still, I would much rather be based out of that terminal than a terminal so much further east of me. 

The even more bad news today was the giant letters on a printed piece of paper. I was handed a stack of papers and read through all of it.  We have a no rider policy, which includes pets! Yes, the exclamation point included.  I was like, well damn.  If I could bring my Dane with me on a trip here and there, that might make make it a little better, providing he can handled the traveling.  Like, not every trip, but he's going to miss me as much as I miss him.  He lays around more than he does anything, sleeping in a truck really shouldn't be a problem with enough exercise on the 10 hour off times. 

But when we actually got to that sheet during the orientation, the recruiter said, well, that policy has changed.  A rider as long as they are registered with us first, a pet with a $150 deposit.  Okay!  I'd try it once to see if he could deal with it.  I don't care anything about human riders, who wants to do that? My son is grown, no kids to take or a wife.  No-one in the house would want to and even if they did, I wouldn't want them going with me.  It is a very intricate, delicate thing to think about taking a person with you that is not related to you. You are stuck in this little box, 24 hours a day.  If that person is unclean, smells bad, doesn't take showers, has annoying habits or characteristics? Screw that.  A dog, totally different story. Some dogs are cool with travel, some hate it. 

Okay, I'm the guy from Marshall. That's what I'm being called. They don't have people from all over the place currently.  So it is an oddity I guess. The allure was driving through my town frequently, getting to stop frequently for my breaks.  They did say finally, after the day was near done, that I was a different situation and would be heading west "a lot".

Ideally, I will eventually find a local job that pays well and can go home.  Weekends are off at this company, but if they aren't off at my house, that isn't going to work.  This is a wait and see, see how they are going to work this out type of thing.  If they really do my right, I will stay. The earnings potential is good enough.  A young lady driver was stuck there for a while today preaching the virtues of just staying out the entire week and getting your home time on the weekend.  Yes, ma'am, well you haven't been doing this that long. Wait til you have 20, 30 years under your belt and come back and talk to me about home time not mattering. 

So, I'm finally in Jackson, Mississippi.
Got here and got a sick feeling in my gut.
What am I doing?  Why did I quit my job?
I'm so far from home right now.....

Had to seriously revisit all the reasons I quit my job, the biggest
and most pressing one being paycheck to paycheck living.  But it
crossed my mind, after getting here, that at least with that other
company I was looking into, I might be out 3 days but I am always coming
back home because that's where the plant is to reload. They don't reload
those trailers anywhere else in the US.  It's like, guaranteed come home time.

Then, when I started discussing the situation with the recruiter, he changed the
other guy's tune.  Well we will get you through there mostly.  Mostly? Where the
hell else am I to be driving?  All over the US? Really, really don't want OTR, didn't
sign up for it, if that's where this is going, they can stick it in their rears. 

Now wait just a second, I have the email from the owner of this company, I do believe,
going to go look it up. Ugh, no, it was a phone conversation with him now that I think
about it, the rest of my communications have been with the recruiter.  But even the job
parameters were set up in the Indeed ad for drivers out of my area for dedicated run.

But, that job listing has expired and the details of it have disappeared hahaha.
Well whatever, I'm not going to stress too much, it's more of this thing that I quit an almost
12 year job.  I distinctly remember the CEO of this company saying I live in a good area, I can
get home most nights. He didn't guarantee every night, true, but the idea was that this was a
dedicated run. I am not sure where this is going, I will ask a lot more questions tomorrow.  I don't mind just getting right back on a bus and heading home, to be honest.

I take that back, not good on your resume too much time in between jobs.  I'm kinda stuck here.  For now.

So.
I spent the day driving down south.  They expected me to get a slate full of stuff done before a certain time frame, the final stop would have to be before 3pm.  Yeah, I knew that wasn't happening. The manager has us coming in at 8 am, which is a ludicrous notion for a start time in the construction industry, of whom buys our products.  I didn't get back to the yard until after 4:00 pm and that was without getting to the final stop.

The warehouse "manager" had called down to the second to final stop - the place that I was to pick up an entire load of concrete meter boxes and then head almost 2 hours north to Ruston to deliver them. The place is a joke.  Have me come in a 6:30 am for a situation like this, I'll get it done.  Anything after that? I don't care who it is, it is not going to happen.

Not that I cared. I will be ridding myself of this company in about 20 hours from now.  You know, if my job fell through? I would still leave.  I still have not received any kind of response from my manager or the GM of my notice and I am quite sure there will not be one.  Screw this place, screw these people.  May it come to bite them on the ass in the future.

This is going to be a different lifestyle. It's going to be a change to my routine.  It's going to be a lot of things I may or may not want, but it's also going to be AWAY from that place.

____________________________

Tuesday.
Today was last day of work. I got sent out to a town about 80 miles away to deliver an entire truckload of concrete meter boxes.  I wasn't in a big hurry.  I figured when I got back, I would be sent off to a lunch break and I"m not doing that anymore.  I was going to leave.  And so it was.  I got back, did my paperwork, went through my company email account, forwarded a bunch of emails that I was interested in keeping - some from my dad, brought back memories when he came up to Caleb's graduation.  It was really the last trip he ever took.  I thought a remembrance of it work keeping, going to forward some of that to Caleb, he really loved his grandpa.  Mostly I did not interact with family in the company account, but i found a lot of funny emails that my mom had forwarded.

There was also a whole episode of emails from company security about that woman that was living with me long ago that was smoking meth in the house.  I didn't save any of that junk, I have that firmly cemented in my memory and seeing emails about it wasn't really helpful.  Way back in 2009, lol.  That's how far back my emails went. I'm not really good at deleting email. 

I probably missed some emails that I would have liked to save, but I didn't have all day and enough is enough. I got that done, and then found a fresh email from the GM.  Well well well. He waited until the last day to actually try to contact me.  He asked me to call him before I left work.  Why? who knows, I thought, I know he's not going to offer more money, what is the point.

I called him, he was busy. But, he called me right back.  He started on the same line of junk, we'd like to keep you.  Yeah..... and?  Well we can't offer you more money right now.  It actually turned out that it was my manager who was denying more money to me.  I already know how it works, the GM was lying and I just didn't want to go there.  My GM in Phoenix taught me how the company works, this GM apparently didn't understand that I know full well how raises are granted.  I just cut him short, you know, you aren't going to change my mind, I'm not going to change yours.  I want more money, I am broke. That's my bottom line. If you can't help that, thanks for the call.

It wasn't quite that blunt, that was just what was going on in my mind.  I was actually being pretty polite about it, but my thoughts were, what the hell is wrong with these people? Stingy Scrooges.  Driving brand new Ford pickups, the GM is driving a new Platinum series that is estimated at around 60k, and he's telling me that the company can't afford raises?  Of course, I understand how it works, I just see the utter hypocrisy of it and laugh.  Whatever dude.  I informed him that my manager told me that "I don't believe in asking for raises".  The GM was actually shocked.  Ohhh, well of course you can ask for a raise, with other blather involved.  Again, whatever dude.  This is really YOUR venue, not my manager's. Again, my thoughts, that last sentence, not anything I said to him.

Why bother?  I didn't want to get into an argument over pay, my mind was already made up: I'm leaving.  I dd leave it at this: if y'all decide you want to pay me what I'm worth, feel free to call me.  A long pause.  No reply to it, didn't figure there would be but - I didn't burn my bridges.  That was the only thing I can safely say I didn't do today. Well I sort of did.  I didn't go into the manager's office.  He's been a coward, avoiding me this week and last.  He's not a manager, he's just a person occupying the manager's space. 

Anyway, after was all was said and done, he finally offered some praise, some kind works, a good ending. Seriously, he could have just gone straight to that and bypassed all this pay talk, I guess they didn't believe I would actually do it. Hey, over here! Yeah! I know what I'm worth! I will find a place that recognizes that, thanks. That will pay me that right off the get go without all the bs.  Thanks.

But, I was nice.  I really was.  I just didn't see or say anything to my immediate manager. He isn't worthy of my time, frankly.  He's a total ASS. I would have been tempted to unload on him if I had gone in there. 

I contacted the inside salesman that left 2 weeks ago, via text messaging.  He said the other inside salesman has actually been looking for a job since this manager took the position.  I hope he finds something.  It would end this idea that it's just troublemakers that are leaving.  He hasn't started anything with anyone.  He's obviously fed up with the manager. 

Well anyway, that was it.  I said goodbye to everyone in the showroom.  The warehouse manager grunted. That is his way of saying goodbye, lolol.  He did say earlier that "you have to do what you have to do", which coming from him is actually a blessing to leave.  If you ever met that man, I can guarantee you you will never meet another person like it in your entire life. 

I was kinda sad that my coworker buddy wasn't there to wish goodbye to. He was out on the road somewhere. I took my time getting everything done hoping he would come back in time to wish a goodbye to, but it didn't happen. Likely never see him again.

Well whatever.  16-1/2 hours from now, I'll be on a miserable Greyhound bus - lol - get over there, get this going.  I liked their idea of a rental car, but apparently that wasn't going to work out too well.

Not much consuming my mind at the moment, excepting the thoughts of getting debt paid down and getting a newer vehicle to drive, preferably a pickup truck.  Getting some things done around, helping out my son a bit, such as my dad did for me.  Lots of things, but, don't count your chickens before they hatch.  Right, got it, still hopeful at least. 

 Well, the weekend is here. Have redeemed the time today, too.  Got a bunch of cleaning done around the house, went out for 4 hours and got a bunch of errands done, including getting a nice haircut for a new job.  But a lot of other stuff as well.

In fact, the only thing I didn't get done was buy a new charging cord for my Iphone - because the place I went to doesn't take credit cards.  Well, he says he does but his "machine was down".  No biggies, especially considering the fact that his guaranty is that if it fails, just bring the cord back, I'll give you another one without a receipt, hassle free.  Didn't make it back there.

Meanwhile, I am still considering my decision to quit my job.  200 hours of vacation as of January 3rd of next year if I were to stay. It makes it so hard to walk away from . But, what can I do with all that time off if I can't afford to go anywhere? Stay-at-home vacations are nice, I suppose, but I want to travel.  I'm going to hope that this new  job pays as much as they say it does and I'm going to both pay off credit card debt and save for vacations at the same time.

Trust me, I'm accounting for the potential that it doesn't pay as much as they say it does, but if it comes close at least, I'm good with it.  Still far more than I'm making now.

___________________________________

Sunday.  I just got done looking at the route between the 2 destinations for pick up and delivery.  It is possible to get 3,000 miles per week in and be home every  day or night, just depending on when I would get there, excepting 1.  Plus have the weekend off. It involves 3 days of driving 537 miles, easy enough and 2 days of marathon driving at 730 miles.  That can be done legally if the traffic conditions are right.  You can drive 11 hours legally, be on duty for 14.  That simply means the other 3 hours are for fueling, loading and unloading.  The tangents, of course, are if you can keep up a pretty high MPH average which may not be possible with road construction going on in Louisiana right now, that slows you down for a stretch that costs you time.  It may not be doable legally, but it's a goal  I mean, looking at maps on my iPhone, it's a 5 hour and 17 minute drive each way from my place to there and back.

The recruiter told me they have their trucks set at 72 mph.  It would be helpful to notch it up to 75, but I'll take it.  Btw, maps takes into consideration road delays and speed limits and going through cities and such.  Most of the driving is Interstate excepting the part where you jump off the 20 to go down to Lufkin. Even that, though, the Texas part of it is 65 to 70 mph speed limits,, meaning I can get away with top speed without worrying about it.  Texas 2 lane highway speed limits are much more generous than most other places in the country, save for wide open expanses like Montana and such.

It works on paper, anyway.  Took me a while to figure it out, I wanted to get this down. Will I actually be able to get home during the week and sleep in my own bed?  Simple question that I wanted to be able to answer on my own without them trying to cook it.  It has to be legitimate and within legal hours of driving.  If I can do that for the most part - I almost always beat maps time.  If it says it takes 5 hours to get somewhere I'm there in 4-1/2 hours, or usually at least 15 minutes earlier. I'm a "driving fool" when I want to be. Haven't done it in  years but I can pick it up again.  I was kinda worried about that particular aspect of this job, how much home time, until I sat down and figured it out.  My pay would increase just short of 2k per month. That's the increase in pay I would get.  even if it were $1,500, I would be happy as a bug in a rug.

Still, you never know. Sometimes trucking companies will say anything to get  you over there and into their office.  That's why you have to ask a lot of questions and do some figuring on your own.  I haven't done this kind of driving in so long, I looked up several different sources for average driving per day for experienced drivers.  A lot said average around 550. Some went higher, some went much higher.  Really, a lot depend on the speed limits, the max speed of your truck, road/weather conditions and weather there is construction or not.  I am prepared to face the fact that if I get off that schedule on any given day, that throws it all off and who knows how many days I'll get home during that particular week.

I'm fairly partial to being able to go home, thanks.  I've done my time OTR. I wouldn't consider it unless the pay was just too good to pass up, like 100k.  There are some places with specialty trucking that pay that much, but those jobs are far and few between and when they come available, they are swamped with applications.

I haven't actually given up on filling out applications tho. I applied last night for one that is a "local" job even though you go out of town.  In a trucker's world, local simply means you are home every night.  It doesn't mean you stay in town or even close to town.  In fact, my current job has me driving all over the upper portion of the state somewhat frequently, though the new manager has cut back on the driving.  He's hurting the business, actually, by having us coming in late.  It's the construction industry, no one starts their drivers at 8 am.  We've already lost business because of it and some of the other companies are sending their own trucks in to pick up materials.  All well and fine, but our biggest competitor is picking up their game and matching what we do. If they start under bidding us and giving better service, well the writing is on the wall.

The other drive and I have discussed this pretty thoroughly.  The need for 3 drivers is already questionable.  They rotate who is going to spend most or all of a day in the yard because the amount of deliveries has gone down drastically under this new guy. I don't know what he's thinking.  Cutting back on expenses is all well and fine, but cutting back your service level when you have hot competition wanting to take your business away is cutting your own throat. Anyway, we already have a yard hand/ex driver there all day long.  It gets monotonous standing around doing nothing. The manager comes out and gives stares.  Of which I could care less, this current situation is because of his policies and yes, because him and certain contractors go wayyyy back and they dislike him greatly.

It's just another reason I want to get out of there. If our numbers stay down, as they have been going now (we've had some good months but we've had several that are low in terms of gross sales and GP), corporate will come along and force the hand. They will tell the GM that "that store doesn't have the numbers to support that much labor costs, you are going to have to cut back".  They've done it before, I've gone through several layoffs in this company. I've survived all of them but with this manager? He doesn't like me because I don't bow down to him and worship. I would certainly have the thought of being the first to go.

Anyway, I looked at whatever reviews of this new company I could find.  Not a single negative word about them, either from current or previous employees.  That's certainly a good sign. It's a family run business and they apparently take care of their people.

I am not 100% sold on this place. Yes, I have a job offer, yes I am planning on heading over there Wednesday by whatever means they have available, but....if something else comes through that looks better, and researching it, I am not stuck on the idea of this place. Home time and pay are my top concerns.  After that I don't much care.  A pet policy would be nice. Take Addler on a trip here and there with me.  Not a deal breaker though.

There is a pro that is also a con to this job.  It's the driving.  No more working in a hell hot yard.  No more working around grumpy old men.  No more winter work outside where your hands freeze while picking up parts.  The flip side to that is I don't get all the exercise, either.  Picking up heavy parts and putting them onto pallets.  I would have to consider starting up a work out routine to make up for that.

Whatever the case, even the yard man is looking for a new job.  How many people will it take quitting there before corporate gets the idea that the rosy picture being painted of that place is not in alignment with the reality of long time employees walking out of it?  When I leave, that will be 3 people with a combined total of 30 years of experience having up and walked out.  If the other driver leaves, add 14 more years to it.  This is part of how corporate looks at things. Why are all these long time employees leaving?  The exit survey is the teller.  If you are candid about your reasons for leaving - but not getting hysterical, keep it calm, cool and collected and not exaggerating - then you might get some credibility when stacked up with other exit surveys that might be saying the same or at least close to the same thing.

Anyway, this is pretty much where my head is at right now.  Hard to think of much of anything else.