Bentleyville, PA

Another day, another crazy load assignment. This time, though, I have plenty of time to get around. And I'm certainly going to get around: I have a total of nearly 1,000 miles to drive just to get everywhere I need to be! There are three separate places I'm picking up from - two tomorrow, one on Friday - then I deliver down in Georgia either Friday evening or Saturday. I still have to figure out the directions, since most of what Google is coming up with aren't truck routes, leaving me to manually confirm everything using my atlas. At least I can catch up on sleep; the first appointment is at 9AM, though I can get there an hour early, allowing me to catch up on sleep.

There is one thing going on of note, though: the company is going to lower our trucks' speed from 63 to 60, effective July 1. They're estimating that it could save them up to $15 million a year. Also, they're alleging that customers are so focused on being green that they'd rather work with an ecologically-friendly carrier. Personally, I don't like it at all, and not just because I like to drive a little bit faster. For one thing, that 3 mph is often the difference between holding 10th gear and having to drop to 9th while going up a hill; I already notice this in Ohio and Illinois, where the speed limit is lower. Every time I have to rev the engine to downshift, I'm wasting fuel; this would make those shifts more frequent. Also, there are better ways of reducing fuel costs; biodiesel could be very quickly implemented, at least at the operating centers, and would save more money than they claim they'll save by slowing the trucks down. So while I understand the need to save money (and hopefully get better equipment or pay us more), I don't feel this is a very good way of going about it. I plan on stating all this in one of the conference calls they're holding this week; hopefully someone up in operations will think about it.

One more item of interest: a search for news about Schneider turned up this story about a driver who ended up in jail for having pot. The article says "a search of [his] truck," which is slightly ambiguous; it could have been in the cab or in the trailer, since the authorities can search either (or both) at will. This version of the story makes it sound more like he picked it up as a relay and didn't know what was going on. At least, that's what the driver is claiming. Either way, this is not terribly good publicity.