A Lucrative Week and Home Too
by
Phil Madsen, Expediter
(Written October 26, 2004. Edited February 28, 2007, for publication on SuccessfulExpediters.com.)
Diane and I left with a load from south Florida last Monday (10/25/2004) and delivered Wednesday in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The non-stop run was uneventful except for several hours of slow driving through heavy fog in Kansas.
At times the fog limited nighttime visibility on Interstate Highway 70 to two or three white center lines ahead. Much of the road was newly paved and not yet painted.
With no lines to set them off, the lanes blended into the shoulders. The shoulders faded into the fog, leaving no hint of what laid beyond. Tiny white dashes marked where the center line would be painted. Freshly painted themselves, the dashes contrasted brilliantly with the jet-black surface and guided our way.
With hundreds of uninterrupted miles of wide-open space, Kansas is usually great for open-road driving. This night, with no vehicles or towns in sight, the road closed in. We slowed down, sometimes to a crawl.
Out front, there was thick fog and the white dashes that came crisply to life when the low beams touched them. White milepost disks floated one at a time out of the fog. Behind, a colorful halo glowed where the fog met the trucks amber and red lights.
With white spots guiding our way, a warm glow behind and a smooth road below, there was no time for the philosophical thinking that night driving sometimes lends itself to. I concentrated instead on maintaining safe space ahead of the truck. I remembered from the CDL book, one second of safe space for each ten feet of truck, one additional second for each 10 mph over 40 mph.
I looked out as far as I could see and gauged the time it took to reach the furthest object ahead. The truck is 40 feet long. If I could see three center lines ahead, I would count; one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three, one-thousand-four, one-thousand five…, until I reached the third line.
Our speed was less than 40 MPH so the additional seconds did not enter in. If I reached the third line sooner than four seconds, I would slow down. If the fog grew especially thick, I tossed in an extra second or two. White lines and mile post dots to are designed to reflect light. Deer and road debris are not.
One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three, one-thousand-four, one-thousand five; … one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two;… one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three, one-thousand-four….
The seconds accumulated into hours. As we drove and slept in shifts, much of the night was spent counting the seconds and adjusting our speed to the density of the fog. That technique made us two of the slowest drivers in Kansas.
We passed very few vehicles in that fog but dozens raced past us. The new-style LED tail lights on some trucks provided some comfort. LED lights cut through fog better than the old incandescent lights. We could see the LEDs for several seconds before they disappeared into the fog.
Having LEDs on our truck, we knew others could see us too. We ran the four-way flashers to indicate our slow speed and rolled slowly through the night, trusting the fast moving drivers approaching from behind would see us in time to avoid a rear-end crash.
We recently read of a multi-vehicle pile-up with fatalities in Colorado that happened in fog. As we drove through Kansas, that story was very much in mind. Some would say the fog caused the pile-up. That is incorrect. People caused that pile-up, and in some cases their own deaths, by driving too fast in the fog. People drive faster than they should in fog. Again and again, we wondered what people were thinking (or not thinking) as they raced blind into the fog.
Fortunately, no pileups occurred ahead of us that night, and none in Kansas that we know of. We were again glad that we selected the carrier we did when we researched the industry. Safety takes priority with them. When we told dispatch of slow going in fog, we knew they would adjust our delivery time if necessary. We have never once had to drive faster than we felt safe to make a delivery deadline. "Safety takes priority," says our carrier. They mean it and we are glad they do.
It was not necessary to bump the delivery time. When calculating delivery times, our carrier assumes an average speed of 50 mph. Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri freeway speed limits range from 65-75 mph. Fifteen-hundred miles of open road driving put us well ahead of the load before we slowed for the Kansas fog.
Oops! I almost forgot. The trip was uneventful except for Kansas fog and an alternator failure in Florida.
The low voltage alarm went off north of Miami. The voltmeter indicated the alternator was not charging the truck batteries. A few hours of daylight remained. I knew the alternator belt was good because it drives the air conditioner too. The AC continued to work. We could probably drive until dark, but if the truck components had not drained the batteries by then, the headlights surely would and we would be dead on the road.
I was driving. Diane turned off all non-essential electrical devices; the refrigerator, the battery charger (we haven not purchased a D, C, AA, or AAA battery in over a year), cell phone chargers, etc. It would have made sense to turn off the air conditioner too but in the Florida heat, we ran it intermittently to stay cool. Day or night, we run with headlights on. Under the Florida sun, we turned them off to save power.
As I drove, Diane got out the Freightliner dealer directory and started making calls. It was after 5:00 p.m. If we could get into a dealer, the night shift mechanics would be working. We were surprised to learn that three dealers within daylight driving range had alternators in stock. Previous Freightliner experiences led us to expect parts would be out of stock.
Two of the dealers had only one mechanic on duty and had no interest in helping us until the next day. The West Palm Beach dealer had two mechanics on duty and understood our needs. Florida to Colorado is a good run. We did not want to lose the good-paying load we had on board.
If we were down too long, our carrier would send another truck to take the load from us and deliver it on time. We would be paid for the miles we drove, but that would not be much since we had not gone far. If we could get quickly repaired, the run would remain ours.
Our original route was the Florida Turnpike north. We diverted to Interstate Highway 95 to get to the West Palm Beach dealer. As we arrived, the service manager saw us coming and walked quickly to his counter to start the paperwork. He told me to nose the front end of the truck into a bay where another truck sat. The first-available mechanic would get to us next. Both were just finishing jobs on other trucks.
Before pulling in, we sent a Qualcomm message to dispatch. We would lose our signal once the truck was under the roof. If we did not tell dispatch what was going on, they would call us to find out soon after our truck stopped moving on their screens. We reported that we were stopped for a quick repair and would keep them posted by phone.
A dispatcher messaged back, "OK. Entered in notes. Keep us posted." We knew dispatch would immediately start looking for other trucks to take our load. While safety takes priority, so does on-time delivery. Their concern would not be with us getting paid for the full run. It would be with getting the freight delivered on time.
If our quick repair turned into something longer than the 90 minutes we told dispatch to expect, another truck would likely be dispatched to our location to rescue the freight. We understood that. It is fair. If we could not keep the delivery promise we made when we accepted the load, dispatch would find another driving team that could.
In the long run it is good for business. Customers call our carrier precisely because they have the resources to get the loads delivered as promised. Several customers have told us stories about how they were hurt by low-price carriers that were happy to put the freight on their trucks but failed to deliver on time. Nevertheless, it would have been a big bummer to lose that lucrative load to a failed alternator.
By the way, our carrier understands that mechanical breakdowns sometimes occur. But if a pattern of service failures develops for mechanical reasons (or any other reason under your control), the truck and/or drivers in question will be dropped from the fleet. Expedited freight is important freight. If you have more than two or three service failures in a hundred runs, your future with most expedited carriers will be in question.
We were almost shocked by the service this dealer was providing. When a mechanic headed to our truck, the parts counter already had the alternator sitting out. Once the diagnosis was confirmed, the alternator was quickly installed.
Proceeding on the assumption that an alternator replacement was all that would be needed, the service manager wrote the paperwork up ahead of the job being completed. He did so to save time and get us out quickly. Our truck owner was available by phone and authorized the Comcheck to pay for the $518 repair. We were in and out of that dealership in 75 minutes.
That must be some kind of a record. We remembered the week we once spent broken down at the Tampa Freightliner dealer and marveled at the difference dealer attitude can make. (See: Marooned. Our First "Bad" Week, posted 10/25/203.)
The West Palm Beach service manager told me Freightliner is trying to get better at providing emergency service by distinguishing between scheduled service and emergency service. He said all customers do not need their trucks fixed the minute they bring it to the shop. First-come-first-serve does not need to be the law of the land. Emergency jobs can be worked in ahead of other trucks and the other trucks can be well served too. He said some of the larger dealerships may start keeping a bay open all the time just for emergency repairs.
I hope they can pull it off nationwide. While two of three Florida Freightliner dealers could do nothing for us, The West Palm Beach dealer saved our bacon. With the number of Freightliner trucks on the road, thousands of drivers would benefit if all Freightliner dealers kept common parts in stock and quickly made emergency repairs.
Finally clearing the Kansas fog, we cruised happily at highway speeds, westbound on I-70 and US-24 in Colorado. The sun rose behind us. The October air was crystal clear. When I crested the hills, I could see miles ahead and all around. The morning sun lit up distant farm buildings that dotted the vast plains.
It was easy to imagine what those plains and earlier sunrises must have looked liked before the settlers, railroads, and highways came through. "Where the buffalo once roamed," I thought to myself. The buffalo hunt scene from the Kevin Costner movie Dances With Wolves came to mind.
About an hour after sunrise, we received and accepted a load offer. We would pick up in Pueblo, Colorado, 42 miles from our delivery and take that load to Saint. Louis. The pickup would be later in the day, giving us time to refuel and sleep.
That is called being pre-dispatched. When you are under one load and the next one is already arranged, you are pre-dispatched. It is happening a lot these days. Drivers are in short supply. It is the busy freight season as Christmas and year-end approaches. All of our expediting friends are running as hard as they want to. No one we know is waiting long for loads. The smart ones know to make hay while the sun shines. Expediters are not passing time over coffee and talking shop these days. They are running!
We completed the Pueblo to Saint Louis run Thursday morning. As we drove east on I-70 out of Colorado we were pleased to have the sun and a tailwind at our back. A tailwind helps the fuel economy, and at $2.00+ a gallon every boost is welcome. We are doing OK with the higher fuel prices. 100% of the fuel surcharge our carrier charges its customers is passed on to us. Though, the surcharge does not apply to deadhead (unloaded) miles.
After we delivered in Saint Louis, we stopped in the truck parking area of a QT store to use the bathrooms and sleep. Before we even laid down, the phone rang. Dispatch wanted us to go to Minnesota to pick up a load going to Colorado. The pickup was over 400 miles away.
Some drivers would turn down that load without giving it a second thought, saying, "Too much deadhead." We think different. We added the deadhead and loaded miles together and divided that number into the dollar amount of the load offer. It worked out to "$1.15 per mile, all miles" as we say. We accepted the offer.
Because we drive a fleet-owner's truck, our truck operating cost per mile are low. While it was not a great-paying load, it was still profitable. In return for providing and maintaining the truck, our fleet owner gets 40% of the gross. Thus, $1.15 per mile gross to the truck becomes $0.69 per mile gross to us. We pay for fuel out of that.
We could have declined the load and hoped for something better, but we figured a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The "more-profitable" load may not come until the next day, which would have put a zero-income day on the books while we waited. That zero-income waiting time would bring our daily income average down. Again, a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.
Also, while we live mostly on the road, Minnesota is home to us. The pickup was just 50 miles away from the house. As regular readers know, we sold our cars, house, and all household goods (except keepsakes) to take up life on the road. For us, "the house" is now rented space in a relative's home. The pickup and delivery times allowed us time to head home, shower, do laundry, sleep one night, and be on our way.
As we drove toward Minnesota on Thursday for a Friday pickup, the delivery time changed to Monday morning. Yes! That meant we could pick up the freight on Friday and stay home until Sunday morning. A weather check clinched the deal. As long as the truck ran well — and it usually does — there would be no problem leaving Minnesota on Sunday and delivering Monday in Colorado.
While we were at home on Friday, the shipper called our carrier and said, "The freight is ready now." Translation: "It is Friday. We are trying to get our work out the door so we can leave early. How soon can you get your truck here?" When told we could pick up the freight sooner than first scheduled, we left immediately to do so. With the freight on board, we could park the truck, drop our guard, and enjoy being home. We used a borrowed car to get around and returned it with a full tank of gas.
It felt good to be home. We were last home in July and had not planned to return until Christmas. This was a nice treat. We were able to do some paperwork we had not planed to do until Christmas. We shopped in stores we knew. We spent three nights in a real bed at home, saw some familiar faces, went to church and took off for Colorado.
In our bookkeeping, we credit the run pay when the freight is on the truck. That enabled us to book the Minnesota to Colorado run in the same week as our Florida to Colorado run, making it one of our best weeks ever.
Not bad!...one of our best weeks ever and three nights at home. Of course, we did some driving to earn that money; south Florida to Colorado, Colorado to Saint Louis, Saint Louis to Minnesota, and Minnesota to Colorado; over 4,500 miles. It was high-paying freight too. That was an exceptionally good week. They are not all like that. On 12/04/03 I posted a piece entitled, Skunked! It describes a week where we made next to nothing.
On 8/28/2004 I posted a piece entitled The Meaning of Home. It has been said that writers write to discover what they think. That piece is a case in point. Selling our house and living on the road continues to be an ongoing discovery process.
As the weeks and months roll by, I have been thinking out loud online about home, house, possessions, profession, etc. We continue to believe that selling our house and goods was the correct decision (for us but not necessarily for others). We are especially pleased to bank the money that was previously mailed mail off each month for the house payment.
However, it is not all good. Lately, I have been feeling homesick.
As I said, we have not been home since July and had no plans to return until Christmas. About mid-October I started missing home. I have not felt homesick since I was a 17 year-old private in Army basic training. Thirty-three years and several career changes later, I am having the same feelings I had way back then.
It was plain and simple. I missed home and wanted to go back. Diane had no such feelings. She was eager to keep running, especially now in the busy freight season. My feelings were not strongly felt and I wanted to keep running too. But as we ran, my thoughts turned to home more than usual. Our Minnesota pickup and free weekend there could not have come at a better time.
Note that I did not say I missed our house, cars and goods. Neither of us do; not even a little. It is great to be free of the ties and obligations such possessions create. Our Saturday errands took us just a few blocks from our old house. I asked Diane if she wanted to take a quick drive by the place. She immediately answered, "Nah, do you?" My answer was the same. The house held no interest. We were glad to be rid of it.
As we neared home Thursday night, I came to understand what I had been missing. It was not the house. It was not even the people. I missed being close to familiar people, places, and things.
As we saw familiar highways, buildings, and faces, my homesick feelings gave way to a quiet joy. On Saturday, as we drove around town and shopped in familiar stores, I started thinking, "OK, we have been home. Everything is still here. It is time to hit the road again." Diane first felt the itch to get back on the road on Sunday morning.
Sunday morning we drove the truck to church and left for Colorado from there. At church, we were received as new members. Bit by bit we are completing our change of residence. Our absentee ballots were sent to our new address. We are now members of a church near our residence. Our bills, business mail and personal mail all come to our new address. The few goods we now own are kept there. This new place is where we sleep when we go "home."
We hired a contractor to upgrade the driveway and install a concrete slab that will be used for truck parking. Water hoses and shore power (electricity) are in easy reach. The nieces and nephews have already been advised that we will have plenty of brushes and buckets on hand for the family picnics and truck washing parties we will host.
We are on the road most of the time. We will see in the coming months if I feel homesick again. If it turns out that one or both of us wants to return to Minnesota every so often, we will work it into our business plan.
If we are east of the Rocky Mountains and not in Florida or Maine, we can be home within 24 hours if we drive straight through. If we want it, home time can be easily arranged. That is not likely to happen. It is more likely that the freight will take us to Minnesota a few times a year.
A few freight-paid trips home a year should provide the doses we need of things familiar. If not, and if the desire surfaces, we will simply take ourselves out of service and head home for a visit.
More on our minds than home is our new truck It cannot come soon enough. We have been driving other peoples' trucks since we entered the trade in August, 2003. While we are fond of saying, "The truck is our home; the nation our back yard." our new truck will make it much more so. It is designed specifically to support the kind of business we do and life we live on the road.
Living and working in a truck of our own design, and having the freedom to drill a hole in the wall or install a shelf may be all that is needed to overcome the longing for things familiar I recently experienced.
Or not. We will see.
Changing the subject, a funny thing happened to us on the way to Colorado. We stopped for fuel at the TA truck stop in southern Minnesota, near the I-35/I-90 interchange. We have never been there before and laughed as we realized we will probably never spend a night there. Being that close to home, we would drive by the TA to sleep at the house.
We laughed because this is far and away the best TA we have seen in the nation. It was clean inside and out. The staff was cheerful. The food looked good. The travel store was great. The store was much larger than you see in most TA's. With its high ceilings, log beams, decorations, and lots of light, the inside reminded me of Outdoor World.
Having spent as much time at home as we dared before getting underway, we had no time to spare in the store. I wished we did. The merchandise drew me in. While all the standard truck stop stuff was there, so too were some interesting books, unique post cards and more. We will return to properly browse that store another day.
Changing the subject again, a not-so-funny thing happened at church. At the point in the service where the pastor asks for prayer requests from the congregation a man about age 40 to 50 asked for prayers for a close friend of his that was ill and near death. The man's eyes filled with tears as he spoke.
After the service, numerous people including this man greeted and welcomed us to the congregation. I visited with him at length. He spoke of how his friend's circumstances reminded him of his own mortality.
A few hours later Diane and I stopped at a Nebraska rest area. We arrived just behind a tour bus filled with senior citizens and guessed the youngest of them to be about 70. Still thinking about the conversation I had with the man in church, I watched these seniors come and go. Half of them would be physically incapable of climbing into our truck. It would be an unsafe struggle for most of the rest. Those folks have attended a lot of funerals in recent years. Each knew that his or her own is coming soon.
On that sunny autumn afternoon, as Diane and I enjoyed the scenic Nebraska landscape, two men our age were suffering in Minnesota; one was near death and the other was broken up because of it. A group of senior citizens were out and about, seeing the country as best as they were able. As we drove, Diane and I talked about these folks and felt grateful for the health we have and the career change we made.
I am 50 years old. Age 30 seems like yesterday, 70 is not far off. When we changed careers, we felt we would rather walk away from successful white-collar careers and fail at trucking at age 50 than sit around at age 70 regretting that we never tried. The merits of that view were confirmed that Sunday. Better still, we are not failing as truckers. We are doing quite well.
While we plan to stay in trucking as long as our health holds out, our post-trucking vision is already shaping up. We are talking about buying or building a house in the small Wisconsin town where I grew up, within walking distance of the public school. That town was home to me in my youth. It will be home to us when we are old.
We will be teachers and/or volunteers there, working with young people that are preparing to lead lives of their own. There will be no retirement communities for us where everyone is old. We want to be productive in the mix of human activity as long as we are able.