The Long-Awaited

I know what you’re all thinking: “Oh, is he still doing this blog? I thought maybe he realized nobody reads it and nobody cares. “

But frankly, I don’t care if anybody cares. This blog is for me, and the rest of you are given leave to ignore or enjoy as you see fit.

Honestly, I’ve been kind of busy for the past several weeks, and when I’ve had free time, I haven’t had internet availability, or I’ve had better things to do (re: spend time with my family).

However, right now, I seem to have some limited internet, some limited time, and I’m in “Colorful Colorado.”

Here’s the long and short of what you’ve been missing:

I ended up in New Jersey (very pretty state, if you stay away from Newark), bringing me all the way from one coast to the other. I completed my training period on March 25, and ended up stuck in Denver for a few days waiting for a truck. Eventually they rented me a car and had me drive down to Dallas to get my truck. So, after about 2 weeks of not working, getting paid roughly $20/day to sit around and twiddle my thumbs, I finally got on the road.

My truck was… less than perfect. 505,000 miles when I got in it (now up to 524,000), it was certainly showing its age.

I drove solo for about two weeks, spending 98% of that time in Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, and Texas despite the fact that I was technically a “Western Regional Driver,” meaning I was supposed to be driving in the western 11 states (and some of western Texas). Then I got a call from a dispatcher who had an opening for a team on one of his dedicated runs between Ogden, Utah and Paris, Texas. It was a guaranteed 7800+ miles every week, resulting in a pay increase of roughly 90%. The teammate he was hooking me up with was from Ogden, and (as it turns out) LDS, so I agreed.

Our first week running together, we pulled in about $500 more than I made my first week running solo. Our second week running together, I pulled in about $100 more than I was making in training. That was kind of rough. But I think I know why:

We have had to stop for hours and hours on EVERY SINGLE LOAD that we picked up that week because of broken this and broken that on the trailers. Every driver should be checking these trailers and getting them fixed, but NOOOOO they’re too lazy so Josh and I are single-handedly getting the entire Werner Enterprises trailer fleet (16,000 trailers strong) repaired. We’d probably let some of these go, except that we actually got pulled over one day, and Josh ended up with a ticket because we hadn’t noticed something was wrong. So now, we check and fix everything. Well, except for one tire that actually looked ok, just a little worn. Not three hours later, it blew, costing us another five hours of sitting and waiting.

So, all our sitting and waiting cost us between $400 and $600 this week. Totally unacceptable. Right now, we’re in a motel in Denver waiting on repairs to our truck (leaking water-pump). Could be another day or two. So… I’m expecting a smaller than acceptable paycheck again this week. Nothing I can do about it, though.

I’m sure I have more to blog about, but I’m not going to right now. Be grateful for what I give you, and be glad I don’t give you more ;)