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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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Trip 44 - New IH - Refer ... to Wilmington, NC Trip 44b - Used IH - Refer ... from Wilmington, NC I knew that over the weekend there had been five more cement trucks so I half offered to take one ... if they could send me with someone to help cut the costs coming back ... and yes they had one left. By my next phone call they offered me a run to CA that would pay over $1,000 for four days work ... but before that got firmed up it was given to another driver who could leave NOW (I couldn't leave for 24 hours, which would require a Saturday delivery) ... then my choices were either to Saint Louis or Dallas, both were with other drivers and would require a lot of dead miles ... finally we were back to NC, but with a round trip ... as long as I would share the trip back with two other drivers. All this happened over the course of a couple of hours on Monday ... 6/15/04 - 8 AM dispatch ... I'm a few minutes late and the other driver is waiting ... I have to first take a used truck to our depot and drop off the other driver, then drive another two hours to our customer where I will pickup up my truck. Not a bid fan of these side trips, but today it's not a problem ... This run is just over two days and any extra legs are extra income ... and I have time to fill. Dispatch has said I won't be able to meet the driver until after his run ... if that holds true, I could have up to six hours to wait in NC. We have a new dispatcher, another one ... this one is supposed to only handle inbound runs. Guess that means they expect to get more inbound runs. Don't think our boss would hire another body if he wasn't fairly sure he was going to make money on it ... and one way they are going to make money is by paying us five cents less for inbound / return runs than outbound runs. This 'pay cut' also applies to the inbound runs we have been doing for current customers ... but if it means getting paid $300 for the way home instead of paying $200 should be worth it. D |