Posts Tagged ‘Logbook’

Wow I can’t believe a whole month has passed since my last post.  It seems like only a few weeks. 

Well it has been a few weeks and very busy ones at that.  I am happy to report that my move to Fastrax Transportation may just be the smartest move I ever made.  It’s just too bad I didn’t get smart sooner.

As they say, better late than never, unless of course you’re talking about the big three; war, death, and taxes.  In those cases never is definitely preferable.

The downside, if there is a downside to employment with Fastrax, is I’ve only been home three days in the last month and even worse than that, I wasn’t home for Marilyn’s birthday this month.  It was an important milestone too.  I won’t tell you how old she is but it rhymes with “fix tea”. Groan.

The upsides to the new job, and there are several, is that I have been able to run a legal logbook, I’ve been able to do the majority of my sleeping at night, and my work days have been spent 10% waiting and 90% driving.  A huge difference from my last employer.

Another big bonus has been the chance to see some of my relatives who I haven’t seen in years.  I had breakfast with my Uncle David Gray in Winnipeg. 89 years young, still the same guy I remember from the last time I saw him 23 years ago.  Then my Aunt Maisie and Uncle Oliver Benson now semi-retired from the farm and living in Ste. Rose du Lac made the hours drive down to meet me for supper at Neepawa.  By the way, the Brahma Restaurant just east of Neepawa on Highway 16 is a pretty good place to eat.  And if you’re in the market for western wear they have a shop for that too.

In Edmonton my brother Allan and his wife Pat who live in Beaumont, made the hour drive through rush hour traffic to join me at the Yellowhead truck stop for pie and coffee and a long chat to catch up on things.  My cousin Hazel and her husband Dave drove in from Spruce Grove to join in the party and to catch up on the family news.  I’m looking forward to many more trips to Manitoba and Alberta as I have a hockey sock full of relatives I haven’t seen in a very long time.

As of this writing I’m back in Winnipeg, having delivered a big load of beer this morning.  I’m sitting at the Flying-J writing this post as my logbook resets so I can pick up a load in Brandon tomorrow and head down to Laredo, TX over the weekend.  Sure beats Jersey and Hunt’s Point any day.

It has been quite some time since my last post to this blog and if I had such a thing as regular readers I apologize. Between a lot of pressures on the job and a lot of other things going on, this blog got sadly neglected. None of it was really a good reason but most certainly a good excuse.
Hopefully, all that will change however, as I have moved my truck to a new company. As of Friday the 19th of February I am officially a driver/broker with Fastrax Transportation out of Hartland, New Brunswick, a division of Day & Ross.
I owe a deep vote of gratitude to Fastrax Broker Manager, Gerry Betts and his very capable assistant Andrea Grant for making the transition painless, if not downright enjoyable.
My previous employer, while acceptable in many aspects and even above average in a few, just didn’t seem capable of allowing me to meet their expectations without breaking the hours of service regulations on a daily basis. To be honest my last few months with them had me almost to the point of burnout.  As an example, I got a $488 logbook fine on my last trip with the previous employer. I hadn’t had a logbook violation in the past 16 years. This one totally attributable to lack of sleep and exhaustion.
Today is Sunday the 21st of February and I’m in Northern Ontario on my way to Portage la Prairie, Manitoba with a load of McCains frozen french fries and pizzas. I had almost forgotten what it was like to drive mostly daylight hours and get a good nights sleep.
Now I’m not one bit afraid of a good days work or a good nights work for that matter. But when I’m expected to do both on a continual basis I’m forced to draw the line, for other people’s safety if not my own.
I truly hope if there are other drivers out there whose employers play fast and loose with their safety and well being that they too will have the common sense and ability to make a change.
Marilyn has been very supportive throughout this transition and is every bit as relieved as I am at the prospect of running legally once more. She doesn’t see me often but when she does she prefers it when I’m not quite so uptight.
Stay tuned to this blog and I’ll keep you posted on how Fastrax proves out on this and other factors. Who knows this may be the company to fit your needs as well.

If any of your decide to put in an application at Fastrax please tell them the GrumpyOlTrucker sent you.

PS. I’ll be posting pics of the truck with the new decal package whenever the weather allows it to be clean again for five minutes.

Let me preface my comments by saying I’m not trying to pick on California.  I chose them as my topic today because 1). I was there this week for the first time in several years.   2)  I was there for 3 days mostly due to having to reset my logbook, then driving more then 300 miles to get my reload.  And maybe 3) Because they are such a sharp contrast to the part of North America I live in, the east coast of Canada.

First you can’t get much more contrast then two coasts more than 3000 miles apart.  Some of the similarities are unremarkable.  There are friendly and not so friendly people on both coasts.  There are criminals and law breakers on both coasts.  Percentage wise crime may even be the same but due to the much larger population in California the incident rate is far greater.

Most of the things I noticed had to do with the environment.

* Open burning of trash and brush.  Not allowed in Nova Scotia except by special permit and only at certain times of the year.

* It was obvious that a huge percentage of vehicles passing me on the streets were big gas guzzling V-8′s.  Most people in the east have long since converted to 6 and 4 cylinder engines.

* No control on emissions from factories and industrial plants.  The air in California stinks almost everywhere.  The stench even crept into my cab with the windows tightly closed.

* Poor visibility almost everywhere even way out in the country.  There seems to be a perpetual haze in the air.  I assume it’s smog but my only experience with that in Canada is around Toronto and Montreal during a weather inversion or when there are forest fires burning somewhere.

* Maybe it’s just a symptom of an older and more crowded part of the country but there seem to be many businesses and properties abandoned and moldering in states of ruin and decay.  Also a lot of useful land just lying unused and weed choked.

On the plus side, I saw many crews out cleaning up garbage along the highway, though why this should still be necessary anywhere in North America in this supposedly enlightened age is beyond me.  I guess there will always be slobs who think it’s all right to just turf it out the window and let someone else pick up after them.

I’m sure there are many more redemptive qualities to California as well but to the casual observer only there for a few days, it seems the negatives jump out at a person much more readily.  I welcome comments from those who would like to point out some of the better qualities or defend against any of my comments here.  Not that defense is a requirement, but California after all calls itself the Golden State.  The only gold I saw was the sun struggling vainly to shine through the smog.