First Year Solo. Knight Flatbed

I am going to shoot an educated guess as to the parking issue that you are facing. Oh, I just experienced it in Jacksonville kast week.

My educated guess is that shipping and receiving of loads to many parts of Florida got put on hold because of Ian. Those same shippers and receivers are probably trying to catch up. In top of this, you have the added trucks coming into the state to aid recovery efforts. The increased volume of trucks will make parking a premium.

TwoSides11, I'm just going to give you a couple of pieces of advice. These are both things I do with every Hydro load I take. Believe me, I feel your pain. I've pulled a crap load of aluminum out of Cressona.

1) When scaling out at the plant I don't just weigh my whole truck and trailer. As I leave the scale I get my steers clear of the scale and subtract the weight it shows now from the weight it showed with all the axles. Now I know my steer axle weight. Then I proceed until my drives are clear of the scale. Once again I do the math. Now I know the weight on my drives and the weight on my trailer's axles is displayed for me to read. ALWAYS do that procedure. It will either give you some confidence, or will confirm you need to get it reworked before you leave.

2) The other thing I do is go through every detail of every BOL, confirming where the pieces are on the trailer, before tarping it. This has saved me countless time and problems over the years. When you are doing multi-stop loads that are tarped, you need to know where your customer's pieces are. You can't figure that out after it's tarped. Had you done that you could have got it reworked before leaving.

Don't beat yourself up. Embrace your rookie lessons. Just make sure you are actually learning from them and not just motivating yourself to look for greener pastures.

Ryan, that makes sense about the parking issues. I haven't thought about the shippers/receivers being backed up due to the Hurricane. I was so frustrated those days that I didn't think of that.

Old School, how are you? Hope you are doing better than me hahaha. Thank you for that advice, it beats going over to the Loves on 78 to get weighed. It's not far but it's far enough to have to go back and forth. For now on I will definitely do that procedure you mentioned, thank you for that!

Yes, on multiple stop loads I triple check each part and write them on a notepad. Many months back I made that mistake and had to untarp the whole trailer, never again will I do that. The tags on those bars were not visible so I assumed they belonged to the last stop since everything else around it was for the last stop.

I'm not beating myself up about it but I really should have caught the weight issue just by looking at the placement of the load. It was 40,997 and was loaded towards the rear.... rookie or not, I should have noticed that immediately.

Now Friday and I'm on my way back to Cressona for my next load going to Northwood, OH and Montpellier that is due Monday. Earlier today I delivered those 3 missing pieces back to GA when I was done in Orlando. Everything has calmed down now haha and I had no issues dropping them off or the ride back up. I made it to Virginia on 81n exit 80 at this flying j. I will leave very early from here and plan to arrive in Cressona at 1pm at the latest. I want to get loaded and have some time to relax before driving again. I'm only going to Ohio so I will probably start driving Sunday morning.

The weather has drastically changed haha. It was 90 degrees in FL and I come back to 65 degree weather. The Florida heat was brutal having to untarp and retarp 5 stops. I remember saying in an earlier post that I would rather untarp and retarp a 5 stop run than deal with the Conestoga trailers Knight has..... well that was a lie haha. After actually doing it, I can say that I would rather struggle opening those Conestogas than going through the tarping at 5 stops haha. Be careful what you wish for... it might come true hahaha.

Thank you Grinch for your ideas. You are a week late about the freezer haha. I ended up ordering a 10 qt freezer from Amazon. I chose this one because I didn't want anything too big and I could not find an upright freezer slim enough that could slide behind the passenger seat. It's a bit small but it works. It holds 3 bags of chicken and a LB of salmon. In the truck fridge I have another bag of chicken and placed raw spinach leaves in the freezer. Please do send over the link for the crockpot recipes.

I spoke with the wife, found out she pulled them off of Pinterest. So I will check those out when I get home next week. I had also done some looking and found this which has some I will try. Prep them at home and freeze in gallon bags and just drop in during the day.

https://www.delish.com/cooking/g3849/best-slow-cooker-recipes/

Still out here making runs and going hard. It's a few days away from the official 11 month mark for me and I have learned a lot throughout these months. I still have much to learn but I'm feeling more comfortable in certain situations than my first months starting. I have 10,083 more miles to go for 100k. I want to reach 100k before my first year is up but with the holidays coming I don't think that will happen. Hopefully I will get there by the second week of January.

I have been going to new places the past couple weeks. My DM is mixing up runs to the South in GA, KY, and SC. I usually do runs in OH to WI. It's a nice change of scenery from the North Central Region and warmer this time of year. But driving in the Southern states has shot up my smart drive score smh. Atlanta, to put it nicely is a freaking mess! My drive score is at 55 right now down from 82. I didnt receive a safety bonus last month and it will be the same for this month, which sucks.... The DDM called me in the office to review some videos and I disagree with all of them. All of my violations are from 4 wheelers and truckers cutting me off and not resetting my following distance fast enough. It's clear as day in those videos that I am braking and slowing down but apparently not fast enough for their liking. Of course I expressed my opinion on the matter and asked how can I fix that. The only way I see is to slam on the brakes which is something I will not do. I try to predict what the other driver will do when they pass me but I'm not psychic... Drivers cut me off, I slow down, reestablish my following distance and keep trucking... I don't know what else to do....

Had a little hiccup last week. I got too ****y and missed the closing time of one of my stops. This happened on Thursday last week. I had a two stop run in Alliance, OH and in Salem. Alliance is where I had my first incident and got the steers stuck in a ditch leaving. Now that the ditch wasn't covered in 5 ft of snow I was able to see how deep it really was. All I can say is wow... But I got loaded Wed. evening for the open deliveries on Thursday. It was only 300 and something miles so I decided not to drive that night and wait until the morning. That was my first mistake. I had time on my clock so instead of relaxing, I should have driven. The second mistake was hitting the snooze button the next morning. The plan was to leave at 4 am but that snooze button is the devil. Ended up leaving around 7 am instead of 4. Then I got to the first stop and they took damn near 3 hours to unload me... My last stop closes at 3:30 and is only 30 min away but by the time I left my first stop it was 3:20... Obviously didn't make it to the last stop that day but the worse part of it all is they only receive M-TH.... I had to sit for 3 days in Ohio because of my screw up. Very very disappointed at how that turned out. I messed up my earnings for that week and the following week and I haaate sitting...

When I finally finished that run I came back to the terminal Monday because my Zonar was acting up and I needed it fixed. While I was there they decided to do a B service on my truck. Now that day was shot, it took them all day to complete that. When i finally got my truck back, my DM gave me a run going to Rochester, NY that was due Wed. I dont understand why he gave me that on a Monday but whatever. I stayed at the terminal that night and left to Cressona Tuesday afternoon-ish. Arrived at Cressona only to find out it wasn't ready. It was done getting loaded Wed around 4am so that's when I picked it up and started the drive. That was probably the easiest run I have done other than the Ohio runs and the scenery was beautiful, a lot of hills but beautiful. I took US-15, 99, 86 and 390 up.... I was able to complete that and return to Cressona the same day for my next load going to Richmond VA for a Friday appointment at 9 am. Got to Cressona late afternoon, early evening only to find out the load wouldn't be ready until Thursday between 9-11 am. It's going on 1pm and the load still isn't ready....

Now I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed that I have to wait everytime I come to Cressona and also this is the 3rd run in a row under 400 miles. Now I don't know if this is a punishment for my mistake last Thursday or if it's in my head. He knows the type of driver I am and to give me runs under 400 miles with a day in-between is not cool. I get assigned a 300 mile run on a Wednesday for a Friday delivery. That is not cool at all. There are runs in there going to Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma, Illinois but he gives me these BS runs.... I been out here for 4 weeks now so I tell him after this Richmond run I'm going home. Maybe after I rest up and reset things will get better the following week...

Oh Old School if your reading this, hello to you to good sir haha. Tim gave me your message. I saw him today while I'm sitting here waiting at Cressona...

Drivers cut me off, I slow down, reestablish my following distance and keep trucking... I don't know what else to do....

I feel your pain on this. While on the Walmart Dedicated account with Swift, I used to have this issue as well. We all did.

My approach to it is slow the truck down while the other vehicle is in the process of passing you, not waiting until they are clearing your bumper. Might reduce the events being recorded and better your bonus score.

Also look for clues; two vehicles passing with the trailing vehicle following the lead vehicle too close…it’s a fair bet one of those vehicles will cut in front of you.

Good to see you're still running and doing well. Atlanta is combat, Florida is a mix of Nascar meets little old lady driving 25 under. I still manage to keep my smartdrive score at 10 or lower running down there by doing exactly what Gtown said. I roll off early and pre slow for the cutoff. Seems to work.

Not sure if it's the same for flatbed but in dry van , we're taking whatever we got, lots of small runs, odd ball stuff. If they're keeping you going, there's a lot of drivers that are sitting right now, count your blessings with it. The contract market is experiencing a pretty big hit right now. Sometimes the planners and DMS may be seeing things you're not able to.

If I do have loads with too much time on them, I get cleared for layover pay right when I get it. I politely let them know that I'll be sitting for a day and ask for it. First course of action is to pick up and deliver early if possible though. Again, not sure if that's feasible in in your situation.

Good to see you're still running and doing well. Atlanta is combat, Florida is a mix of Nascar meets little old lady driving 25 under. I still manage to keep my smartdrive score at 10 or lower running down there by doing exactly what Gtown said. I roll off early and pre slow for the cutoff. Seems to work.

Not sure if it's the same for flatbed but in dry van , we're taking whatever we got, lots of small runs, odd ball stuff. If they're keeping you going, there's a lot of drivers that are sitting right now, count your blessings with it.

Sage advice. I have to keep reminding myself of this when I am empty and waiting on a load. I rarely wait more than 4-5 hours from the start of a day to get a load assignment.m, but sometimes I find myself with plenty of hours left to drive and having to park for a 10. I might have most of a day lost because I drove some to complete a load, and there is nothing until the next day to keep me running. In that scenario, there has so far always been something for me to haul the next day. Like you described, I am usually getting layover on the loads that have more than enough time to get it there. Typically, instead of layover, dispatch will ask me to drop the load somewhere and put me on another load. They keep me running because I have a 100% no service failure rate and a 99% on time delivery rate. I have only refused one load because it was going to require me to run over my clock by as much as 2 hours to get it to delivery on time. I don't mind continuing a load that may have to be rescheduled because of something that happened after I took the load, but I will never accept a load that I can't complete legally, unless a relay plan has already been set up.

Oh Old School if your reading this, hello to you to good sir haha. Tim gave me your message.

Great! I hope he also gave you the 100 dollar bill I sent with him.