Archive for the ‘Trucking’ Category

I found this old picture from when I drove for J.B. Hunt‘s Flatbed Division. I made good money, but just about everything else about that job and this truck was bad. In this photo, I stopped at my cousin’s house just off of the interstate. I was probably looking for someone to feel sorry for me driving this cabover.

J.B. Hunt Flatbed Division Truck. Click to make bigger.

For those, not into trucking, a cab-over beats you to death, but they were much easier to get in and out of tight spots. This cab-over had a stretched out frame to make room for really long pieces on the trailer. This made the truck good for almost nothing, except occasionally hauling long stuff.

J.B. Hunt’s flatbed division has long disappeared, and rightfully so. This job ended when a driver came right out of their school with no experience and backed into the cab so hard it knocked the cab off of the frame, with me in the sleeper! Somehow the company decided his accident was my fault. They said I should have woke up and guided him in and that I should not have did some other things to him after he hit the truck and nearly killed me. Things were just never right with me and this company after that and I moved on. Ahh, the good ole’ days.

Changing times and references can really mess up an old brand name. Super White Power is on the hood of this truck. I’m sure it was brilliant branding back then, today, not so much. They were White trucks and they had power, what could go wrong with branding them Super White Power trucks?

I was late, but still got a few pictures of the antique semi-truck show in Newark, Ohio.

I have more photos from the truck show and trucking and general.

I love to hear complaints about bloggers from the mainstream media. Bloggers are slowly taking a serious bite out their territory and the good ones are making a difference. The Mayor of Newark, Ohio put a full page rant in the newspaper about them, Glenn Beck constantly tries to characterize them as 40 year old virgins in their Mother’s basement, and every other media outlet loathes them in a similar way. Why all the fuss?

All that a Blogger does is the same thing as any writer. Some do it very professionally, while others can barely string a thought together. The only difference is that they give their readers the ability to give immediate feedback. Many are highly educated. They have the ability to specialize in what they write about, where a reporter usually has very little expertise in any one topic. Nobody is chained to a certain blog because there are millions of them. You find the ones you like and you can follow them, and they’re usually free! As soon as a professional writer puts anything on the web were response can be submitted, they’re a blogger too.

Trying to quickly marginalize and characterize your opposition as foolish without merit has turned into a tired effort for the powerful.  My friend Wayne Weisser owns a blog called Life On The Road. He has a large following and corporate sponsorship that he gained AFTER the blog had gained notoriety. The Arrow Trucking Christmas fiasco infuriated him and many of his drivers, so they wrote about it in the blog. This infuriated the American Trucking Association and they requested a phone call.  As you can see in his reply, he denied them the phone call. For truckers, this is a big deal!

The ATA is a lobbying front and nothing more. They lobby for trucking companies to allow unfair treatment to drivers. Their legislation has enabled untold fortunes to be made from the drivers while the drivers work in some of the lowest paying and most difficult conditions of any job in America. Not only have they made life hard for the driver, but they’ve made the roads dangerous for everyone! All the while they have a brilliant PR front to throw off anyone who would say otherwise. Wayne was very wise to stay off of the phone with con men who do nothing but spin words to their favor for a living.

Normally a powerful organization like the ATA can ignore the voice of the drivers. They have the money and power and they can trample anyone who gets in their way. They cannot stop a blogger though and it’s irking the ATA and every other powerful force in our country as we go through these tough times.

If you have something say, go ahead and blog it! You just might end up being part of a solution to something important.

Arrow Trucking “suspended operations” and left about 900 drivers stranded on Christmas Eve. They shut off their fuel cards, which in effect stops a driver’s ability to move past what fuel he has in his truck. Trucks get about 6 mpg, so you’re looking at a cost of about .44/mile to move the truck. Roughly $200 for every 500 miles away from home that driver may be. Should he abandon the truck, it’s a sure thing he will not see his last paycheck and he will not get another driving job in the industry.

Arrow has been around for many years. They have drivers with over 40 years with their company. As the economy has declined, the drivers kept going with the “we’ll recover” mentality. They kept working even though the paychecks were not even worth showing up to work for. Their bank accounts dwindled to nothing. Now here the driver sits with no job and no way home on Christmas Eve. Being a trucker for many years myself, I find this a gut-wrenching thought.

Not only is a Christmas Eve firing bad, but they will not get unemployment benefits for some time. By “suspending operations” Arrow has placed the driver in a position where unemployment benefits will not pay. The company has not filed bankruptcy and the driver is not considered laid off. When they do get benefits, they’ll be calculated off of many months of very low pay. Do you see the situation these hard-working people have been placed?

I have fell victim to the economy and I’ve witnessed others falling one by one. It is sad when it happens to anyone. What I find interesting is that some groups get huge attention, severance packages, favored re-training, and all sorts of benefits while others get next to nothing. Those working the hardest get the least. There’s not much rhyme or reason to it all. It’s just how it is.

We all need to look out for our friends, neighbors, and co-workers in these hard times. Truckers have banded together through OIDDA to get these drivers home. Even though truckers have the worst reputations, they understand hard times and know what to do. I have to question the rest of the country as we all take our hits. We haven’t seen times like these in my lifetime. It is quite clear that the entire country is going to be in a rut for a while and I worry about how people are going to handle the sacrificies that will be demanded of them.

Say a prayer for these folks as you get ready to enjoy your Christmas dinner. Be thankful for what we have and take stock in the things that really matter. Let’s hope for some good solutions and some gained wisdom from these times as we get through them.

Check out the heat pouring from the tops of these cauldrons. Thes things were pretty intense. I had to park right next to them to unload. It was very hot just being around these things. I was waiting for the tarps or me to just start melting. Interesting stuff to see though.

Cauldrons At A Steel Factory Near Chicago

So it’s Friday and I’m in Chicago with no load. I had one, but it cancelled. That’s broker terminology for “we found someone to haul it cheaper”. If you’re stuck in Chicago on a Friday with no load, that means getting back to Ohio isn’t going to happen until late.

I’m tiring of getting in so late and leaving so early on the weekend. Really tired. But, I’ve gotta make the money. The most commonly asked question, “Do I get paid to wait?”. Of course not.

I do take comfort that I don’t have to work at a steel mill. Some of these places are like hell. The heat, noise, dangerous situations, etc. are pretty insanse. You always hear that steel mill workers make good money. Well, there’s a good reason. It would take some getting used to at the least.

Heat Pouring From Cauldrons

I spent some time this week delivering trusses. I still hate them. To much work for not enough pay. The width of them scares me too. I’m not afraid to admit it. If I can’t see all of a load in a mirror, it worries me.

Today I got a relatively easy load. A 35,000 pound lift. I suppose some would call it a crane, but since it doesn’t operate with a cable, technically it’s a lift.

Need A Lift?

If you look in the picture, there is a dock door there. They drove it out of that little door and onto the trailer. It was a very tight fit. The tires were off of the dock plate they were so wide. It was easy to chain down and go with though. The only problem was that all 35,000 pounds sat directly over the drive tires. I was within 300 pounds of being overweight. A little more fuel in the tanks and I would have had to get creative. Getting creative always takes time, risks, and money.

I delivered it safely to Pittsburgh. Easy money.

Here are some more trucking pictures for the truck fans.

I seen this old truck at a truckstop and I couldn’t believe it was still out making money. It’s really cool to see that someone has the talent and ambition to keep one this old going. I couldn’t even make out what type of truck it is. I would guess by the hood emblem that it’s a Peterbuilt, but I’m not sure. It’s before my time.

I had to wonder why they haven’t done a restore to make it look really good. It’s an eye-catcher just the way it is, but check out the window screens on the radiator. I would guess that the parts on it are just the originals that have been cared for.

I need practice, but my new camera can do the night phots well. This was a 4 second exposure, resting on the hood of the truck. With my tripod and a timed shutter release, I could have got this alot sharper.

I’ve always liked the challenge of night photography. It’s good to be back at it. The cheaper cameras I have can do it, but I really needed to be able to use the RAW format to get the effects I was after.

I brought the Fuji S9100 camera out on the road to figure it out. It’s aggravating to learn a new camera, but I wanted to learn to shoot RAW format photos and this one will do it.

RAW format is the exact format right from the camera’s sensor. Normally, the camera’s built in system converts the photo to a JPEG format, and this is fine for most uses. RAW however, keeps all of the information and allows you to control every aspect of the camera setting after you have the photo on the computer. You need special softare that normally comes with the camera or you can buy better converters from 3rd party vendors. The only aspects you cannot control are the mechanical settings like shutter speed, aperature, and ISO (sensitivity) settings.

It’s cool stuff. It took this photo that was in bad shape and made it usable. The downside is that this took a very long time to do. The files are 19mb and everything you do is a slow process. Here’s the picture.

First try at RAW photography. A truck on the highway.

A storm system rolled through Northern Indiana and Ohio and I got to roll with it. Winds were whipping the trucking around pretty good, but it makes the ride interesting. I unloaded zinc ingots and picked up sheet steel. Easy stuff.

There was no time or good place to stop as the sun went down, so I did what I could .