Day 1

So it begins. Today I am in Pembroke, NY which approx. 25 mi east of Buffalo. I deliver up the road in a few hours. This will be boring posts sometimes, but I will try to start loading pictures here before long. I have plenty on computer from this past winter, so I can start with those.

I just recently left home last Tuesday from a week's vacation. I will start later when I stop again, posting the pictures of moving my parents from Lufkin, TX to Calhoun, TN. They are elderly now and older brother just retired and can better take care of them.

Leaving home last Tuesday I picked up a load in Longview, TX and took to Paducah, KY. The delivery appointment was supposed to be on Thursday, but since such short trip and got there Wednesday morning, I checked with receiver and they took it a day early. This got me back on the dispatch board a day early. Since the downturn in the economy, you try to take every advantage you can get to keep moving.

Reason this is not for everyone: you are paid for rolling down road. You sit you get nothing. No layover pay for sitting waiting on loads. Sometimes you can get a little detention time if a customer makes you wait to load or unload beyond 2 hours, and that is something. This took effect because of the change in how you log your hours few years back. First comprehensive change in logging driver hours since the 1930's. Imagine still running in the year 2000 with the logbook rules they used 70 years ago.

Before you could drive 10 hours and after you take 8 hour break you could go again. You could also split up your break hours and be legal. Say if you set at a customer 5 hours you could show that as portion of your break time and drive up say 5 hours up road take 3 hour break to finish your 8 hour break requirement, and then drive the rest of your 10 hours allowed by driving up to 5 more hours. On and on.

The new rules: once you start your log in the morning you have 14 hours to work before you have to shut it down. During that 14 hours you can drive up to 11 hours, if you are sitting at a customer in that time for 8 hours then you only have 6 hours left to work. You aren't driving so you aren't getting paid anything. So the rule change forced companies to charge detention for after 2 hours sitting at customer so driver would get a pittance to make him happy. Does little on that score, but the nature of the business.

Driver's are seldom happy, that is why they change jobs so frequently. They go from one job to the next, because companies are begging for drivers to fill seats in trucks that are sitting idle.

Enter the screwed up economy. Now trucking companies with too much debt and no loads to pull are going out of business and the one who are surviving are very selective of who they put in their trucks. This is a new thought for trucking. I am fortunate to work for one of very few who are totally debt free. They buy equipment with cash and are getting great deals now because manfacturers are giving great deals just to make trucks and trailers and keep their doors open. Why it is nice t be out of debt in a downturn in economy.

As you can see, I get started on something, you will have to put up with more than just my daily escapades. Not many are going to care what the rules are for truck drivers. You should, because you are surrounded by them and they effect everyone's lives. Just about anything you eat, wear, live in or play with came to you by truck. There was a person in that truck who delivered it. They are not all great people or have great patience like they need, but most are. I don't like the ones who drive erratically anymore than I like the four wheeler that cuts me off in traffic not thinking I can't stop that fast. Maybe this can be an education page too.

Few people listen to anything I have to say, so I have found an outlet. I can set here all day and believe in my mind that thousands are receiving my words of wit, and waiting on the edge of their seats for the next day to come around. Hey, I have a lot of imagination. I think all day long while driving. It will probably never be as eloquent when I put it down as when it was composed in my mind though. Hope you will come back.