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.

Welp, the last few days of work.  I have a coworker with which we really get along. Actually, we're pretty much going at it a lot, but all in fun.  Definitely in fun, keep things live spirited versus dull an boring.

This afternoon in the yard, I"m loading up the semi for Monday delivery.  He's looking at all the pallets on the ground and looking at truck: You ain't fixing to get all of that on there.

Oh yes I will, there's plenty of room.  He says, no way, you can't get all of that on there. I'm firing back, hell if I can't, all of that is going on there, pointing at the truck. I had already assessed the loading sequence necessary to get it all on there.  He says I'll bet you can't. I said fine, I'll take your bet.  He says, you want to be a beer? I said, no, I"ll take 3 of them!  I was taunting him for the next 30 minutes as he was driving by on the other forklift and I was almost finished.

"Well yooooooouuuuuuu cheated!".  Cheated? How do you figure?  Well you put that pallet on top of that other pallet and you moved the pipe.  Whoa, pardner, there wasn't any agreement on this bet as to HOW I was going to load the truck, only that I would get it done.  He finally shook his head, sitting there watching me load the last pallet on there.  You won.  And yes, true to his word, we went to the liquor store after work, he bought a 6 pack and gave me 4 of them.  Lol.

I have subsequently found out, today, that everyone but the outside salesmen are looking for new jobs.  No idea if any of the salesmen are or aren't, they aren't letting on.  I would guess no, because they are making bank. Or are they? I looked at the numbers today, sales are down.   Meaning their commissions are down as well. Even the yard guy today was overheard on the phone talking to an employment agency.

Anyway, I'm not doing anything differently at work. I work my butt off, I get the job done.  There is no-one that is going to be able to accuse me - legitimately anyway - after I leave that I had a change of attitude at the end.  Monday is a full day.  Drive the truck to the port, unload all of that stuff I put on there today, drive to Lena, make a small delivery, drive to Alexandria, load the truck up with concrete meter boxes, drive up to Ruston, deliver all of them and then back to Shreveport.  With all the driving and loading and unloading time? That's getting me back to the yard by 5 at the earliest.  Tuesday will be my last day and then, get a suitcase, load it up and get over to Mississippi in whatever fashion they are going to figure out.  Which is likely a truck coming through here, going back to Mississippi.

I saw one of their trucks driving through Shreveport today which sparked the memory: Oh yes, I've been seeing them coming through here for a while, just never gave it any real notice.  I mean, I am a truck driver from the old days though.  I look at trucks.  The colors, the chrome, the name of the company. I always note things that are wrong with them.  Today? A logging truck with no mud flaps on the tandems.  Violation of FMCSA regulations - they are there to protect the motoring public's vehicles from debris flying up from the tires.  There weren't even brackets for flaps on this truck.

BTW, have you ever seen the signs on the back of these dump trucks that say "stay back 300 feet, not responsible for damage to windshields"?  The hell they aren't.  They are solely responsible for any "unsecured cargo" that is ejected from their trucks, including rocks that they are hauling.  I got on a hauling company's case one time for a truck dumping rocks all over the highway and cracking my windshield.  They thought I was going away, but I made frequent calls and increasing levels of irritableness.  YOUR truck did NOT have a tarp on the load and those rocks were flying out everywhere.  They finally dd replace the windshield.

Anyway, the manager has been avoiding my like the plague.  He rushes on by if I happen to be heading towards his direction.  There is no way he's spending any time in the same room with me, at all.  If I come in, he walks out.  This is a "manager", an insecure, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing small, little man.  My last thing to do there will be to send an email to the regional manager and also include corporate management in it with a forwarded email - the one I sent these 2 individuals - and a statement that I never received any kind of reply form them at all. Note,  it doesn't matter if the reply doesn't agree with my assessments, but can these people see beyond their own pathetic selves and wish me a successful career such as I have them?

I am going to contrast the GM of the region I am in now and the GM of the region I was originally hired into.  WORLDS apart.  My Phoenix GM I will ever hold in respect and admiration.  A man of class and a true professional, yet had compassion for every single worker. He showed concern for the everyday trials and tribulations we went through. He gave generous raises to those that supporter his vision and kept within the parameters of the goals of the company.  Held Christmas parties at his house.  Compared to a GM here that could care less, doesn't check up on anyone,  is part and parcel of the good ole' boys club - so on and so forth. If it burns my brdiges, so beit.  It likely will have no effect. so beit as well.  But I am likely to speak my mind -within some boundaries.

 So yesterday, I write a professionally worded intent to terminate employment, here is the advance notice you requested email to the manager and his manager, the GM.  I am good at writing letters like that when i want to, learned that in High School learning secretary stuff while learning typing.  Some of it still in my head lol.  I did leave the option for a pay increase offer.  Not getting my hopes up - AT ALL - but still put it in there.  There was nothing accusatory, condemning or any malice in that letter at all. It wasn't even that long, quick and to the point.

So, neither manager responded.  No email back, no phone call, not even a word about it in person.  Instead, this morning, they had a dude in there applying for my position.  What a lame management structure.  I have only a few times in my life worked for such pathetic, sad, sorry people and that was when I was in my mid teens working kitchens in restaurants.  I distinctly remember one of them, she was the GM of this restaurant I was working at, she was a drunk and would get drunk at work. And, she was a total b****.   That's the only real word that comes to mind, sorry.  She intentionally had me replaced a "burnt out" light bulb to see me get electrocuted.  Yes, she was cracking up about it when I got zapped by the current that she already knew about.  Without going into full detail, stuff like that.

These people aren't any different.  Juveniles in adult bodies.  I'm trying to hang in there til Tuesday, but I am finding that to be very difficult.  The only reason to stay, obviously, is a full paycheck next week when it comes into my account.  Just one more day for that.  I could skip next week at work completely for the way they are treating me and not bat an eye.  I have 137 hours of vacation that they will pay out - how long that takes I don't know tho.  It's a couple thousand dollars worth and then some, enough to tide m over for the interim of starting a new job and actually getting a full paycheck.
I'm slated for orientation on Thursday.  Meaning I have to take a bus or something over to Jackson, Mississippi.  They were going to try to find me a ride with a truck coming through, dunno how that may work out.  I would rather ride in a truck than take a Greyhound.  I can't drive my car because the intention is that I will leave there in one of there trucks after a couple days orientation and go straight to work.  Which is fine by me. That's what I want.

Meanwhile, I called the other place. Not as alluring because of the lack of time off.  You are out 3 days and come back, no guarantees on that 3rd day that you actually get to go home, you might be sent straight back out.  Anyway, they were supposed to have me slated for a driver test a week plus ago and she never called me back.  Out of curiosity, I called her.  Well, she says, I was going to call you. I thought, when? but didn't say it.  She said my application says that I don't have a Hazmat or Tanker endorsements.  It's an old application I placed there 2 years ago.  These trucking companies keep your name forever, basically.

So I told her no, that has changed since that app was put in, I have an X endorsement (hazmat and tanker combination), what's next?  Driver test and physical.  Let me get some stuff done and I'll "get back to you".  I mean, I'm getting mixed signals from her.  If she doesn't like me or want me, why not just come out and say so? Or is this just the way she operates?  She seemed to be a very organized person when I was in her office.  The allure of this job is the money. .51 per mile, which in the trucking industry is excellent mileage pay.  The other place is starting me out at .40 cents per mile, which is the top end for new drivers coming into that company. That is the top end for a lot of companies for a new hire, tho some pay more.  You have to prove to them that you will get your work done, ie: get as many loads as they want you to get done in a specific time frame.  you do that, consistently, over a period of time, they'll bump your pay up.

Actually the job I am already slated to going to in Mississippi sounds better because there is no weekend work, there will be nights during the week I can sleep in my own bed and see my doggies and not be out so much.  I can still make decent money there, around $1,250 per week to start.  I never did ask them if they had a pet policy.  I could take my giant Great Dane on a trip here and there.  He is quite at home laying on a bed and sleeping lol.  Btw, that's about 60k per year, which is FAR more money than I'm making now ever since this manager took over and stripped us of our OT.

Changing the subject, do you ever listen to the potential side effects of these drugs that are touted on TV?  I don't know how many of them say "and possibility of heart attack, stroke and death" for drugs that aren't life saving for a life threatening situation. Would you take one of these drugs?  Knowing that you might keel over after taking it? How is it acceptable to have drugs that can kill you?

Just one of many things I ponder in life.  Like, if I had condition, would I take that drug?  I guess it's hard to say what you will allow yourself to get into when you are faced with some dire situation.

Oh well. I was slated to have the lowest paycheck I can possibly get until the manager decided I should take a late run that would have me out a couple extra hours.  How nice of him.  But when I get these paychecks as of late, I just laugh at them.  These aren't paychecks. They're like spiffs.  A bonus.  Like a big tip at a restaurant.  My next paycheck will still suck with only 3 hours of OT on it. Remember, that's a 2 week pay period, not a weekly check.

I do believe on my last day there, I'm going to write a letter to the regional manager - who probably doesn't care either but I'll tag corporate into it as well - and the manager and GM, forward the message I sent to the GM and manager to him and explain to him that I sent this email out of good faith because I was asked previously to give an advanced notice, and instead of a thank you or some kind of reply, I got nothing from either of them.  Why go there? Why not.  This is not the way this company operates anywhere else. This division was mom and pop thing that was a statewide setup with several stores that was bought out the company.

If hindsight were 20/20, I should have left as soon as I found out this new manager was taking over.  If I really want to fault myself, I should have never agreed to a pay cut to come out here working the same job and taking a $6.24 per hour reduction in pay.  Actually, I probably should have never come out here in the first place, but I am not really regretting that decision.  I made new friends, people that actually love me (and even say so) - my friends that own the house - and it's a much nicer environment out here. I miss the mountains, mostly.  No mountains here, none at all.  A few hills here and there but nothing like the Rockies.

Of course, changing the subject again, in all of this, finding an entirely new line of employment goes out the window in sitting behind the wheel of a truck every day for 10 or 11 hours.  \

At least my 401k is growing if nothing else.

I was actually amazed that it's been a year already since I did the fed loan restructure thing on my house.  I've made a year's worth of on-time payments, but for whatever reason, my mortgage company always lags behind on updating payment information by up to 3 months.  Once it ever updates to showing a full year's worth of on time payments, that should bump up my credit score. I don't know how much, but that's what i was reading some time back about the subject.

I am trying to wait until I get my score up into the good range before looking for a car loan.  My current car is simply falling apart, has a lot of miles on it, I"ve been driving it for 9 years now, I'm tired of it.  I want something - newer.  Not new, but at least 2010 with low miles.  I just don't want to pay anything even remotely akin to "high interest".

With a new job, hopefully I can start saving money again.  I am literally down to almost nothing in both my checking and savings accounts, which is what led me to start looking for a new job in the first place.  I haven't been in this position in a long, long time and it doesn't feel good.  The manager could care less.  He's a total jerk. He knows business, he doesn't know people, how to deal with them and how to treat them.  He should have never been put into that position, a scenario that will likely play out as more people leave the company solely because of his bs.

When I do the exit interview - they call you - I'm going to spell that out.  In fact, I am writing my thoughts down so I don't forget anything.  They will have heard by 3 different people at that point complaints about this manager's behavior and how he treats the employees.  When the other inside salesman quits - providing he does - that will send a resounding message, this manager is a piece of s*** and needs to be dealt with, ie: fired or moved back to his old position.  Not that it will matter to me, I'll be gone, but in this case, that dude has ruined for me a 12 year career that I was attempting to make out of that place, has forced me to find new employment because of his petty, narcissistic and egotistical views on things and now I am losing the ample amounts of vacation time.

Note that OT wasn't removed from anyone else in the region. It was reduced slightly, but they are still getting OT.  I looked at our sales today, pretty lame.  This time of year should be double what's in there near and at least triple that by the time the end of the month gets here.  Writing on the wall, since I've been through this with this company before: enough of that and layoffs.

Well whatever.

Sunday afternoon.
Haven't been to work since Tuesday morning - went and came home. Sick. Been sick the entire time.  I was hoping the flu would run it's course and go away, but it got replaced by other things.  I finally went to the doc yesterday who said I have an upper respiratory tract infection, sore throat, had the flu, had GI tract junk and .... possibly TMI....but jock itch.  Never had that one before so I didn't know what it was, only that everything in that region was quite sore.

I wasn't able to get the prescriptions til this morning, pharmacies close early around here on weekends.  I was, of course, there at opening.  Because right now, I still feel quite bad and if I feel like this again in the morning, it will be yet another day that I don't go to work.  Which might cause issues at work with this manager.  Not that I care what he thinks, but I would rather not hear it.  People get sick, oh well, s*** happens.

The whole thing has put off my new job aspirations at least temporarily.  I can't even think about starting a new job feeling like this. Heck I can't even think about doing my current work like this, but at least I know what I'm doing, if I must go, I can force myself through it.

Well anyway, nothing really new going on.  The part for the dryer came in, popped it on there, fixed in less than 5 minutes.  Dodged another bullet on that one.  Of course, I didn't dodge the bullet on the doctor's visit, hence the reason I hadn't gone.   $108 just to walk through the door of the place and pay that up front.  I didn't have to pay anything else so I guess not that bad and I will get half of that back - eventually, like a month or two down the road.

_______________________________

So, the inside salesman quit on Friday.  Today, showed up to find out they had already transferred a young dude from one of our stores down south to take his position. The position was never offered to any of us, at all. Not to mention this kid doesn't know anything about the software that we use, doesn't know the basics of anything, really.  It was astonishing to see that they had not only filled the position that quickly, but also just passed over all of us for any kind of promotion.

That prompted me to write the manager and the GM a short letter.  Basically, I'm quitting.  Unless I receive and offer of increased compensation, Tuesday of next week will be my last day working here. That was his advanced notice. The inside salesman gave no notice and the other drive didn't, either.  I got no reply back from either of them.  I didn't expect them to offer me money, at all, but I did expect that they would at least have the courtesy to say something.  I hate going to work.  It's a daily thing. Go to work, dread being there.  It's even worse now. In the middle of summer, our sales are slumping when they should be rocketing towards the moon.

The reality is, several contractors despise this manager - decades old bad blood - and refuse to do business with him.  That coupled with the fact that we start at 8:00 - none of our other outlets start that late.  That means, we come to work, contractors want their stuff, we aren't even out of there sometimes as late as noon.  We aren't servicing the customers.  That's it, this is the kind of business where you go out of your way to do whatever it takes to make them happy, and a large portion of that is early deliveries.  I was amazed that this guy was allowed to even get away with starting that late, but, the GM is a gutless wonder. He doesn't have his managers under his control.  He simply lets them do what they want.

So, I was discussing this with the other senior driver today. Good luck! I exclaimed to him, because now they are going to have 2 new drivers that know nothing or very little about this type of work.  they nothing about loading big trucks.  If you stay here, you do understand that this isn't going to get any better?  Remember what happened when the other driver quit? We were still held back at 8 hours.  He hates driving the big truck.  He's 57 years old and tired of all the work entailed with it.  The new guy has no clue.  I'm not leaving to spite him or most anyone else, I'm leaving because of low wages and an ass**** manager whose bizarre, narcissistic and egotistical behavior is insufferable.  Tho if they offered me enough money, I would just ignore his stupidity and do my job.  That would be a far easier thing than going to some company I have no clue about excepting what I can find online, get thrust into a totally new environment and also have no tenure, ie: benefits.

But, now I've freed myself of this current place, I have nothing anchoring me down anywhere.  I'm fine with going to work for this place and if it doesn't work out too well?  Find another one, keep going til I find the pay and home time that will work for me.  Pay being the biggest issue.

Meanwhile, my new Citi card arrived.  It has no credit available since I am transferring it's limit from my Capital One card. It's a zero interest deal for 18 months.  So, that pays down the Capital One card quite a bit, still some on there tho.  This deal was just to get zero interest, not to have more credit available.  It will, however, increase the amount of available credit on my credit report, so my score should go up a few more points. It's slowly creeping up there.  Still a bit off from the good range, but it's actually a light at the end of the tunnel now.

My sickness is almost past now.  That is one of the worst ones I have ever gone through - 6 days laid up in bed.  I can't remember being laid up by a virus that long.  I can remember being bedridden for a long time after getting fully injected with a black widow spider's venom, that was a hellish event as well.  But this thing here was an animal  I got hit with the flu - body aches ALL over, terrible headaches, fever, cold chills.  Then 3 days later I got hit with an upper respiratory infection and a terrible sore throat, meanwhile, the flu symptoms hadn't subsided and in all of that, I had stomach junk going that ended up with - a lot of bathroom visits and then on top of that, I find out I had jock itch, I a thing I have never had so I didn't know what was going on.  The doctor just said - you've had a helluva a week!  Yes and it sucked, totally.  Sometimes you get in the middle of these things and wonder if you're ever going to get better.  Like, am I dying?

I can't say that I'm 100% but dang it's good to be back among the living!

Umm, well what a day!
See, I thought I felt some grumbling downstairs this morning before going to work, but I didn't give it a lot of thought.  I got to work, got in the truck and headed south.  And that's when it started.  I don't want to TMI, so I'll just say that I spent quality time in the woods on the side of the highway dealing with business you would normally do in a bathroom.  Yea, that bad.  Either crank the truck over and get out in the trees or end up with pants filled with.....

I finally got to a place 6 hours later where I could both get some acetaminophen and some Pepto.  That helped - a lot actually. Though the day was 2/3rd's over by then.

Huh.  Didn't stop me tho.  I got off work at 3, as I had asked the manager, and headed the 65 miles over to the job interview  The lady says, well, what are you here for today?  I mean, she knew I was there for a job, but took that question in stride. I'm here for a job, going into current situation - without going into foul management, just pay issues.  I kinda think if you sit around saying your manager sucks, they might think you are the one with the problem and dismiss you.

Well, we didn't really get too far into before she invited me out to meet some of the drivers that happened to be there.  I knew where this was going.  Lol, no problem there, i can talk to other drivers for hours.  And sure enough, we got to talking that she eventually left. But, that was what she wanted.  She told me before we went out there: well, you aren't really going to hear what you need to know in here, let's go talk to the drivers.

She eventually resurfaced and said, ok, let's go back in side. She had a 5 page list of pre-printed questions.  The only thing I disagreed with was team driving. No thanks.  I'm not driving all the time with another person I don't even know.  She said, yea i didn't think so, lol, it's not mandatory.

I left thee with a job offer pursuant to passing a driving test.

__________________________________

That was Tuesday, now Wednesday.  Whatever I had yesterday? Got worse today.  I had half a mind to call in sick today, I should have.  I took a load of concrete pipe out to a job site and started feeling really bad.  I got back to the yard, noticed that the delivery board had been wiped clean of deliveries. Went and asked the boss, can I go home? Doesn't look like anything going on today. I left there, 10:00 am, came home an slept 4 hours.  Body aches all over.  Just a virus of some sort.  But yeah, yucky feeling all over.\

Hopefully I won't get a call to go on the driving test today.  I dunno when she was going to get that set up, I just asked her if it could be after hours or on the weekend so I don't have to figure out an excuse to leave work early.  Today simply wouldn't be a good day. I could do it, but I'd rather be on top of my game for a driving test, considering it will be done by another 30 or 40 plus year driver.  We can get a bit picky on how a person drives, lol.

So that's that.  I also so yet more jobs that looked interesting today, so I applied for those as well. Ideally, it would be a local job. The Kag one is 3 days out, sometimes longer.  They have various length runs and she - the dispatcher - likes to even them out so the drivers get equal amounts of long and short runs.  Which is cool, means you get some good miles in and decent paychecks.  I'm still kinda leaning towards that other job, tho, too.

That's really my focus right  now.  I am taking into consideration that it's kinda hard to be involved in a church in any capacity if I can't even be there consistently on Sundays.  Not that I am involved in this new church yet, I'm just going to services and feeding on the Word for the time being.

Well, today is mom's birthday. I texted her early this morning a Happy Birthday wish, got on her FB wall and did the same.  Then, when I got home from work a little while ago, I definitely called her to give her the birthday wish in voice.  I then went on to post a happy birthday to her on my fb wall as well.

What was strange?  The fact that I was the only one that actually called her today.  Everyone else, including my brothers, had texted her. I understand acquaintances doing it via text or Facebook. I get people that met each on Facebook doing that on Facebook, of course.  But people that you have known all your life?  Or your own family? Seemed rather strange to me.  I guess in this day and age you count your blessings to get it in the form of printed words than nothing at all.

Even my son sent a text.  Does that take the place of an actual phone call from your own family?  Am I off base here? I'm really just asking.

IMO, strange times we are living in. Not just because of this, this is just another factor.

Meanwhile I was stuck behind 3 cars going 60 in a 70 zone for several miles before I decided to pass on the right.  Well, turns out the car in the front was a form of law enforcement, no idea which, just had a small ensignia on the side and......the dude turned on his lights and gave me the siren job.  I figured I was busted and oh well.  Guess he had better things to do. I never passed him, not after he did all of that. I was coming up on him when he did all of that.  I backed off, he turned all of that stuff off and I guess decided to let it go.

Okay, well on to the real deal. I made a legitimate excuse to leave work this afternoon to go for the interview. I was engaged in that this morning.  So I got the approval from the manager and then found out that the lady that is going to do the interview is going to a funeral tonight.  In fact, there right now.  One of the drivers that she has worked with for years passed away and she was going to give her condolences.  Kudos to her on that.  And good thing i called this morning, otherwise, I would have gotten the time off for nothing and then would have really had to figure out how to get to this interview, the next day, tomorrow actually.

_____________

Some serious looking at reviews on this company.  Not in the division I am looking at going into, but in the gas industry division.  In fact, the gas hauling industry in general. Not really as good as I thought it might be.  Or is it?  Just depends where you are looking, but I was looking at reviews for the gas haulers on this specific company and I didn't see a lot of good stuff on there.

Is the gas hauling industry what I thought it was?
Perhaps not.  Appears the chemical hauling industry is much more lucrative, but, it's not really local.
What now.  Go in for the interview tomorrow. This is the company's chemical sector, has nothing to do with gasoline.  I've gotten this far with this company, the pay is definitely excellent.  I can't even think about complaining about it.  This particular type of job is available to people that live close to the plant that manufactures all of these chemicals, namely: Eastman Kodak.

Anyway, I'm going to go to that interview tomorrow. If a job is offered, I am now at the 90% chances of taking it, where as before reading all this other stuff I was at 100%.  The reason for the downgrade is simple.  It doesn't appear that transferring to the gas division is a viable alternative in the future.  the near 80k per year pay with this division, is, however, quite compelling.

Anyway, I started feeling bad today, like lung congestion and feeling ill at work. It started shortly before I went to the hour long lunch break junk. Which, today, I was glad to take. Got in my car, drove a quarter mile down the road to my favorite, huge but low-lying tree and slept for 45 minutes. I felt better after that, but not great.

Well, it's almost 9 pm and I decided earlier I was going to go to bed early tonight.

This is likely to get repetitive over other posts I have put up in the last week or so, so probably not worth reading. I just need to get this out of my system, sometimes writing about things helps me do that.

Well, first off the dryer quit working.  Pressing the start button, however, I noticed it didn't move either way. Like,  those push button switches are spring loaded so it should move in and pop back up once you let go.  Figured that problem out pretty quick, the switch is broken. Ordered a new one but still figured out how to turn the machine on without it.  I'm not recommending the tenants here do that, though, if they aren't careful they will electrocute themselves.

When facing such dilemmas, tho, and know you really don't have the finances to go out and buy a new one excepting putting it on credit, that instantly becomes a scary thought. "Hey Ben, the dryer quit working".  Gag, I'm thinking, how much is this going to cost?  I went to work immediately on that and it didn't take long to figure it out.  New switch ordered via the internet, grand total: $17.53 including shipping.  Wipe the sweat off my brow and hope nothing else goes wrong.

Well, we do have a rat problem and I"m sick of it.  One of the tenants is allergic to cats or I would have gotten a couple of them a while ago.  As it stands, I may just go ahead and get a cat for outdoors.  Feed it, give it a cat style home to live in and hope it sticks around - and does it's job.  But at this point, it's time to call in an exterminator.  We've caught probably 15 rats but it's never-ending. They breed quickly and their offspring love the couches and recliner and wherever they can find to nest.  Just before they damage wiring or whatever other damage rats can do, I'm calling in the professionals.  Yup, it's going to cost, yup I"m going to have to put it on a a credit card, but this is one of those things you just can't let ride forever.

Which brings me back to my job search. Tomorrow, a job interview at a place that I have now determined I really want to work at. On the road a lot? Yes.  Money? Yes.  Pay off bills? Yes.  The training is $21.00 per hour.  Far greater than anything I have ever seen anywhere else.  Common is $500 per week of training, which is ridiculous and unrealistic, but, if it's a good company otherwise, you eat it and deal with it. Not so here.  I dunno, but I have a lot of vacation hours that will help me float through several weeks of paylessness.  Depending on how long that takes to get paid out.

Whatever. If I get that job, I have no qualms paying with credit cards until I get some serious finances in. I hope not, but it's a possibility I am willing to deal with - and then pay all that junk back down.

Well, it's Sunday night.  A wonderful day of the same ole s*** tomorrow at work. Actually, it should be drive a vehicle to Monroe to get the semi, which should be fixed.  Unless they do, for some reason, send someone else.  I dunno, but if they send me, that eats up half the day.  I plaster a fake smile on my face at work and act all upbeat.  It's all acting on my part.  I'll not give them a reason to get rid of me, if such were the case, for "bad attitude". I keep much of my thoughts to myself. I have determined, however, that if necessary, I will take option two to go work for and though it's a "lessor" job in many ways, it's plenty more money than what I'm making now.  Just no real room for advancement.  I have always wanted to do tanker jobs and the second job is not a tanker job.

Posting this and on to a new one.

My situation:
I have a solid job offer of about $500 per week more than I am currently making. This job entails hauling paper rolls from Grenada, Mississippi to Lufkin, Texas.  It's a small, family owned company.  I can get home a couple of times per week from what I'm looking at on a map and intended time it takes to do a round trip.  It's 40 cents per mile, expected about 3,000 miles per week.  There is no guarantee of pay raise, but it's still a lot more than I'm currently making. I believe they said they don't do weekend work.

So, I'm home fairly often. Which is a good thing, but I don't get ahead on bills that fast.

The second job I am almost sure to take if it is offered to me.  I have passed the corporate headquarters background checks - which is a significant portion of getting hired on at any trucking company.  I was calling them when they called me yesterday, actually. I hadn't heard from them and I wanted to see where the process was. It was really strange that the urge hit me to call them and they were, in fact, calling me at that very point.  I don't necessarily call that a "sign", lol.  But who knows.

Anyway, this job pays .51 cents per mile, around 3,000 miles per week, work your way up to .56 per mile over time.  You don't really get much better pay as a company driver than that.  Especially considering you are pretty much looking at stable, constant work.  This is hauling nasty, dreadful chemicals that are used in products you use on a daily basis, but get exposed to them? You're pretty much instantly dead.  I've had a driving career devoid of any serious accidents and none of them my fault.  In such accidents and if I had been hauling a tanker, the tanker would never have been in danger of rupturing.

The con to this job is 3 days out at a time.  And when you get back, you get a day off - maybe- but if they have something urgent that needs to go out, you're back to back runs.  She named off many of the places the run to.  Some of them definitely a ways off, even up to Canada if you have a passport - yes I have a passport and yes I would gladly take one of those runs! - others as close as Houston, which is a day trip there and back, offloading the chemical included.

The chemicals are loaded onto the truck at Eastman - Kodak in Longview, Texas.  about 30 miles from here.  Loaded drive down, empty drive back, paid the same both ways.  The plus side to this job is the money, obviously.  At 3,000 miles per week, that's almost 80 grand per year.  Realistically probably in the low 70's.  Which is quite fine by me.  This pays off my credit card debt in short order.  6 to 8 months I could have most cards paid to zero balance.  I could get 5k back in my savings account and a could k back in my savings account, just as it was before this manager came along and decided to do away with my OT.  Oh, and I don't load or unload chemicals. That is all done by the plants you are delivering to. They have their own teams of people doing that. No objections.  Some of these chemicals are serious stuff.

I could see myself doing a job like this for a  year, maybe two and then asking for a transfer to the gas delivery division where I would just be doing local work.  Yes, I'd get sick of being on the road, but no, I wouldn't get sick of the money, the goal of getting out of debt or the idea of getting a newer vehicle and paying cash for it, or putting a hefty down payment on one and having low monthly payments.  The appeal to this job is that there is a way out: transfer out of it to a different division. Even if not, tanker experience will land me a job at a gas hauling company and home nightly scenario.

Any way about it, I'm going to have to make some sacrifices to get out of this s-hole I am working at now.  I'm beyond tired of it, I'm very much beyond these pathetic paychecks.  The other experienced driver is also looking for a new job and others in the organization are also looking to get out of there.
The only ones that are probably not looking to get out of there are the salesmen. They are making too much money to walk away from it.  How this manager gets away with the behavior he does without anyone of "importance" turning him in?  They want their jobs.  They don't care about this dude because the money over rules any objections.  You have to get to the more blue collar positions or semi white collar to get anywhere.

Anyway, I have an interview on Monday with this company I want to drive for.  I spoke with the lady on the phone for about 30 minutes.  Seemed like a good conversation, trying to make a good first impression.  I'm going to leave work early and get the 60 mile drive over there - my work is much farther away from there than where I live, and hope that I get the job. If not, I"m taking off on Wednesday for Mississippi for orientation, if not this coming week definitely the next.  The only factor that would change my mind is if another company finally called me that I have applied at offering a more appealing work schedule - meaning home more often.

I've pretty much come to accept that the way out of where I"m at is to spend some time on the road.  Driving a late model Peterbilt and sleeping in it will be ok.  I'll get used to that lifestyle again, I probably won't like it much, but I have to make a move and I'm getting too old to wait too much longer.  I want a good chunk of change in my 401k by the time I retire and that sure ain't happening where I"m at now.

And, along the lines of paying down credit card debit, I just applied for yet another credit card a little while ago. It was instantly approved and I went ahead and made an immediate request to transfer the credit line limit that they are giving me from my Capital One card to that one.  That was also approved. It's interest free for 18 months. That is the appeal.  Every dime I pay goes straight to principle.  It was only a $35 fee to do that so definitely worth it.  It will bring my monthly payment down on my Capital One card as well.  Credit Karma has actually helped me quite a bit in this endeavor.  The cards that they said I have a "good" approval chance for, I've been approved for.  This will also cause my credit score to go up yet again. It will take a hit at first and then it will go up because my percentage of credit usage will go down.

But, the late mortgage payments from before I did a refinance on my home loan are going to take a while to fall off and that is what is really affecting my credit score.

Fingerhut, however, is messing with my credit score and I am going to ask them to stop giving me "temporary" credit line increases. It helps my score initially, but then they take it away and that hits it.  I don't want their temporary increase. They are just trying to lure me to spend thousands of dollars with them and that isn't happening - ever. Not with Fingerhut. It helped me get my score out of the hole but now? I'm ready to dump them if they won't stop this temp crap.  I've had a balance with them in the past upwards of $800 bucks, it's down to $100 right now and I have no plans of buying anything from them.

Anyway, it's Saturday. I got my butt out of here, went over to Lowe's, got some small engine carb cleaner, some fresh 40:1 2 stroke gas, some weedeater line.  Pull the weedeater out of storage, sprayed the cleaner into the carb, let it sit in there a while, turned it up side down.  Drained the old fuel out of the tank over the fire pit then put fresh fuel in it, fired right up after the second try.  Got the front done - which was over running the curbs with grass.  I was very glad it fired up and worked.  I don't have to buy another weedeater.  I do need a blower, for I am tired of the trees endless dropping on to the ground and having to sweep it up. Other than good exercise, it's a waste of my time.  A bower would get the job done in a fraction of the time spent.

Anyway, I'm going to get out there and rake the yard - once again.  Sweep the concrete - maybe but probably tomorrow.

There are other things going on, but I don't feel like writing anymore right now.