After loading at Lowe's, I started back to towards the terminal in Gary, IN where I would fuel. A couple of miles down the road I realized I wasn't on the road I thought I was on. Drats. After making a few calculations on how to get back to where I needed to, I was once again headed in the right direction.
My fleet manager (Mr. K) wanted to extract the VORAD unit from my truck. This is a device that warns you if you are to close to vehicles/objects in front of you or to the side of you. It gives a series of piercing beeps to indicate that you're in danger of hitting something or someone. The units were installed on a number older trucks in our fleet (and other fleets) some years back to reduce collisions between commercial vehicles and other vehicle types. It's a system that for the most part works like it supposed to. However it does get annoying when you are passing going through some construction zones with tight quarters. It will beep every few seconds to let you know you're too close to the construction zone objects (retainer walls, guard rails, etc.). In addition, you get a beep when you go under a fair amount of overpasses. I'm glad that they are extracting the unit. I let Mr. K. know when I would get to the terminal so that the maintenance team could get to it right away.
When I arrived at our terminal, I immediately put a slip of paper in the maintenance inbox saying that my fleet manager had scheduled an appointment to have the VORAD unit removed. Then I fueled-up, added the necessary fluids that I depleted on the previous trips (oil and windshield wiper fluid) and then set out to wash the truck because it was filthy from all the salt spray over the past 2-weeks. That's when I discovered they had a flatbed with a load of lumber drying in the enclosed wash bay area (it took up both wash bay spaces). Great. Now the truck will be dirty for another 2-weeks. I don't know about you, but I think a clean truck goes a long ways in projecting an image about a company. Sure it costs money to keep trucks clean, but one of the benefits is that a clean truck will be seen and noticed by other drivers and that's a good from a safety stand point.
So, now that I didn't have to wash the truck, I parked it and then scanned my paperwork from previous trips so that I could get paid next week. I took 30-minute break and then checked to see if the maintenance crew had started on the truck. They hadn't.
I also expected to get the orders to drop this trailer in the yard and let someone else take it to Milwaukee since it wasn't due until tomorrow at 5:00 PM. I assumed that I would pick up another trailer and start another journey before getting home on Friday. But that didn't happen. They kept me on the present Milwaukee load. That's strange and unusual for the company I work for. They usually keep you going until you get home.
So, once I realized that a) I was still assigned to the present load, and b) the maintenance crew had not yet gotten to my tractor after 45-minutes, I decided to head for home. Since I don't get paid for sitting around (only miles driven), I decided I'd much rather sit around with my family this evening rather than being stuck at a terminal all day like I was two Friday's ago.
And off I went.
And our family had a great time this evening.
And my miles driven for the week is abysmal. I could even set the record for fewest personal average miles driven-per-week. I will once again let Mr. K know that the miles I'm getting per week is not good at all. Looks like I may indeed need to start looking for another carrier to drive for. I know for a fact that other carriers pay a lot more to drivers for driving the same amount of miles I drive in an average week. Bottom line: I don't like being misled (no one does) and will be none to happy if I need to switch to another carrier after doing all the research in choosing this carrier. Here's the thing I really don't get. The company should be driving my rear-end off. Then I'd be happy and making money. And they would really be happy and making a profit off of me since they aren't paying me as much as other more experienced drivers. I just don't get where they are coming from. It's really a goofy way of running things. Perhaps they have a good, positive cash flow so they aren't that concerned if some drivers "fall through the cracks." I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me.
So, I'll spend most of the day around the house tomorrow and then drop the load off late in the day. I'll also check in to my voice mail messages to see if they assigned me a load in the morning hours before delivering the one I'm currently on. Then I guess I'm back at home for tomorrow night and then may have a day of light driving around the greater Milwaukee area Friday before going home for the weekend. Who knows--maybe it's a very slow week in terms of loads and I'll have Friday off as well as the weekend. Hmm...if that's the case I've got to wonder how much of a driver shortage there really is! Perhaps it's just a very dead shipment week (if so, may it quickly pass!)
miles driven = 374
11:03:09 PM
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