F--- you, winter!

So here we sit at a truckstop, no point in continuing on because the highway ahead is closed until tomorrow morning (we hope). Granted, the point of closure is still several hundred miles away, but fog is bad in this area and we're still dealing with a bit of a winter storm. We stopped while we could still find parking at this here truckstop.

So, our hopes for a stellar earnings week are pretty much shot. We're not going broke by any means, but we were planning on running our asses off and sending home even better coin than we'd been making.

Such is the life of the truck driver. We've got to take the good with the bad. The good is that we found a nice place to park and that we get to sit on our asses and watch movies in our "Ghetto-piece Theatre". We slapped a tape adapter onto my laptop and plugged it into the truck's sound system. Works pretty good as a quasi-surround sound system. It won't be putting Bose out of business, but it sure beats the crap out of my laptop's speakers.

The great part of this - it will be my second 34 hour restart in three days!!

On the road again...

I'm back on the road. We're taking this weekend kind of slow so that we can ease into things. See, we're still on guaranteed pay ($500/wk minimum) and the way our load turned out to be structured makes it next to impossible to grab enough miles this weekend to top it. So, we can either run our asses off and make minimum, or we can take it easy (lots of time on this load) and make... minimum.

Besides, I'm trying to fight off a nasty head cold.

For those who are curious, I will not divulge my location, route, destination, or load info while I am actually under the load. This is for the safety of my cargo, my teammate and (most importantly) me. I'll talk about this load later, though it's really nothing special.

I will talk about food, however. We have figured out a few good recipes for good eating. In fact, once we bought our two lunchbox ovens, a whole new world of possibilities opened up to us. And after spending the first run eating cold sandwiches, it was very welcome.

Excellent food choices that we found:

• canned soup. The chunky kind. Don't skimp here.
• Hot sub sandwiches. Wrap in foil, cook for 30 minutes. Yum.
• Baked potatoes. Hell yeah!
• Chicken breasts. Wrap in foil, season, add a little butter.
• Hot Pockets. Believe it or not, the lunchbox cooker actually does these well.

Here's a picture of last night's dinner (chicken breast and baked potato):

Where the heck have you been hiding?!

Ok, I've been catching hell because I haven't updated this blog for a while. I'm sorry, but internet access has been almost nonexistent on the road and I've been busy, busy, busy while at home. I promise to be more diligent with this in future.

I'm not going to go into the first run because I really don't remember much about it since I didn't record any details. Believe me, you'll be amazed at how much these runs start mashing together into a blur.

I purchased a laptop during my first time at home period, so I was able to keep records. In fact, I keep a spreadsheet tracking paid miles, out of route, and a guesstimation as to what pay for the week will be. It's actually been pretty accurate, with Schneider's mileage calculation always being slightly higher than mine (no complaints!!).

I'm not going into my actual pay for privacy reasons, but you can approximate it knowing that new teams get 31 cents per mile.

First week:

• Denver, CO to Macon, GA: 1497 paid
• McDonough, GA to Mount Vernon, TX: 777 paid
• Coppell, TX to Ogden, UT: 1353 paid

My half of the miles came to 1814. It was a short week due to TAH, after all.

Second week:

• Carson, CA to Macon, GA: 2229 paid
• Atlanta, GA to Paris, TX: 793 paid
• Paris, TX to Hazleton, PA: 1352 paid

My half came to 2187. I also missed the miles between Ogden, UT and Fontana, CA. Monday was wasted due to Safetrack. It was yet another Schneider test to determine whether or not I had picked up any bad habits. My teammate couldn't knock his Safetrack out because he was out of hours. We're going to have to sacrifice another day to that sometime in the near future.

Third week:

• Aborted run from Wilmerding, PA to Alpha, IL: 243 paid (more on this later)
• McCoole, MD to Sauk Village, IL: 658 paid
• Chicago, IL to Roanoke, TX: 971 paid
• Haslett, TX to Statesville, NC: 1115 paid
• Charlotte, NC to San Bernardino, CA: 2382 paid

Monday was a waste again. We had to drive almost all the way across Pennsylvania to pick up a load in Wilmerding - NOT easy to get to. We finally get there only to find out that it's a Haz Mat load. We don't have Haz Mat endorsements yet. The shipper neglected to tell SNI that it's a Haz Mat load, so I can't really fault Schneider for that. But it still sucks. We get the replacement load and have to go down to Maryland. That region SUCKS for truck traffic. After we get that delivered and pick up the new load in Chicago, it's a race to Texas to beat the ice storm. I made it to Joplin, MO just as the rain starts pouring down. My poor teammate is left to brave the deteriorating conditions in Oklahoma. By the way, it's HARD to sleep when you know that you're being driven through an ice storm.

The next load is expedited - less than 24 hours to make it 1115 miles from Texas to North Carolina. During an ice storm. We manage to make the pickup about 30 minutes late because we were assigned to pick up a trailer from a place that didn't open until 15 minutes before our pickup deadline. We make the drop in NC - only 15 minutes late. Talk about pulling some miles out of your rear. By the way, safety was NOT compromised and we never drove too fast for conditions.

My half of the miles was 2684.

Fourth week:

• South Gate, CA to Winchester, VA: 2640 paid
• Colonial Heights, VA to Charlotte, NC: 419 paid
• Huntsville, NC to Indianapolis, IN: 621 paid
• Indianapolis, IN to Henderson, CO (HOME TIME!!): 1065

My split was 2372. Again, another Monday lost because they couldn't relay our delivery in San Bernardino. And the consignee took a LONG time getting around to unloading, and over an hour to get the paperwork done once the truck was empty.

The miles have not been great yet, but that's because we still tend to stop too much. It's not Schneider's fault because the loads always come in either immediately after showing available or we get loads assigned ahead of time.



This is my truck after hooking up to my first trailer:



This is a very nice sunset that we saw at the Seville, OH operating center: