Trucking

Which is what trucking is most of the time. Lately though the feasts have been more like snacks and the famines seem like they go on and on. After sitting for two weeks, not finding anything and what was found was not worth taking, I not only get a good load, it’s one I think someone else fell off of. Since I was told, hurry up and get there and the deliveries are saying I’m late, someone committed to this load, then dropped out for whatever reason. Which is fine for me, it’s usually how I get a really good load. After sitting for two weeks, I have two loads back to back. I unload Monday morning in Aurora, CO (a Denver suburb) and reload in Colorado Springs, CO the same day, as soon as I can get there. Apparently the Gold’s Gym in Colorado Springs went under and all of their equipment is being moved to a warehouse in Salt Lake City.

It’s not great pay, but it’s not horrible. From Salt Lake City, I can drive home empty and take a few day off. But you’ve already had two weeks off! Not the same!! Sitting around a truck stop for two weeks, is not quite the same as sitting at home. Just a few days to do laundry, grocery shop, vacuum the truck and make sure my wife hasn’t forgotten what I look like. Besides, I may be waiting for a week for another load anyway. Much better waiting at home than at a truck stop.

Okay, it’s really another day, the same truck stop. This is probably a new record for waiting for a load. I was empty in northern New Jersey the 16th. over the weekend, then a week, then over the holiday weekend, I’m still here.  There were a few possiblities, but none worth taking. I turned one down that loaded in Manhatten and went to Saint Paul over the weekend, but it wasn’t paying enough to deal with tolls and going downtown. I’ve called on a few and am amazed at the offers people expect you to take a load for.

For the weekend, I dropped the trailer and went to a nearby grocery store for supplies, that was another shock. The week was spent driving to a free truck stop, grocery shopping, on the computer and taking Willie for walks around the parking lot. At least the weather has cooperated and I’ve only had to run the generator a few minutes at a time to keep the battery charged. It’s not that the computer is that much of a drain, but I’ll have the radio on and the refrigerator takes a toll on the batteries after awhile.

Even at this one truck stop I’ve moved three times. Sounds sily, but if I’m going to be someplace, I want the perfect parking place. The first time, a reefer trailer pulls right next to me when there are 50 parking places open, some even pull-throughs, this reefer was running and what was the purpose of that??? Just to piss someone off? I moved to the very end, next to a little open grass area to be away from other trucks. Everyone loved to walk their dogs there which made Willie go nuts every time a dog walked by. Then I moved away from other idling trucks and reefers. The weather is getting a little warm, but with all the windows open and a breeze going through, it’s okay without running the truck or the generator.

There are a couple of possibilities for a loads, one to Vermont and the other to Chicago. Not much else and definitely nothing worth taking a loss for.

View Larger Map
I’m trying to not look at the trucking news while I’m sitting here in New Jersey waiting for a load. I’m going to have to move soon because it’s pay to park, but I was trying to stay close to NYC Jersey metro area so I wouldn’t have to drive so far back to the area, but it’s been a few days and I need to start planning on a long, long weekend. The Flying J is about 50 miles away from where I’m at now, which is already 50 miles away from the metro area, but at least at the Flying J I have some restaurant coupons and shower coupons and it’s free to park.

The couple of loads that have come by, haven’t been very much money. The national average for diesel this week is $4.497, my office is saying in Nevada diesel was close to $4.70. At $4.50 a gallon in an average truck getting the average 5.5 mpg it costs $0.82 cents a mile just for fuel. Rates aren’t much higher. The rates I’ve been getting this month have been in the $1.35 ranch. My truck normally get 6.5 mpg that’s $0.69 cents for fuel. So, my rate hasn’t been horrible, but the lack of freight makes up for it. I’m about to start taking some horrible rate just to get back home.

I’m taking the truck to the Volvo dealer and getting it appraised and go from there. Used trucks haven’t been doing too bad because of the overseas market, if they give me an offer to take it and it’s more than what I owe… I’ll have to change the name of this blog.

The trailer payment is almost double and I may be able to lease it to someone or sell it outright, but it’s not as much as the truck payment and by itself, it wouldn’t be so bad and I could take some time to sell it without too much pressure.

What’s bad is that things seem like they are about to turn around. Shippers complain of not having trucks in a certain area or the shipper says they’re desperate, but it’s not bad enough yet for shippers to make them want to pay for the outrageous fuel prices. Maybe in a few more weeks or a few more months enough trucks will be off the road and things will pick up. I’m not sure yet if I want to be one of the ones that are left on the road or even care.

The problem is what to do next. A couple of fields I’ve looked into aren’t doing much better. So, me and Willie are sitting under a thunderstorm in New Jersey, I continue to look at my dispatcher’s email and the Internet Truckstop for loads and working on my websites that are bringing in a little but far from enough right now to make a big difference, but it gives me something to do.

If you’re looking for hosting or a domain name go to Wayne’s Domains to buy your domain names or hosting. The host on that page isn’t the greatest, but in order to be able to get the best deals on domains, I had to offer their hosting. Domains are cheaper than Godaddy with email and all the extras and professional support. I’ve got better hosting available but no page setup for it yet. If you’re interested, just let me know. It’s just like the hosting I have also offers domains, but they’re not as good as the people that I get my domains from. I’ll do another post shortly about the complete package and more.

As proof that most owner operators have no idea what’s really going on - I was listening to one of my evil conservative talk shows and the subject was fuel prices and a trucker calls in. Says, he was an owner operator and had to sell his truck because of fuel prices. But, he’s now a company driver. What he doesn’t realize, is that he’s still driving a truck. The same number of trucks are still buying fuel, he’s just not buying it. He couldn’t afford the fuel but whoever he’s driving for can. The host was a little confused expecting to find a truck driver that couldn’t afford the fuel.

I personally know of two owner operators that wanted to park their trucks and drive for someone else and another one that has. Their trucks are paid for and they can’t afford the fuel prices? But think they can do better driving for someone else. If your truck is paid for, that’s a big expense you don’t have to pay for. Your operating expenses are lower than owners that have truck AND trailer payments. Maintenance on older trucks is an issue, but the maintenance cost I heard from them were still lower than my payments and especially lower than my payments plus repairs.

We are struggling through this, but if my truck was paid for, it would be a lot less stress. From owner operators that have no idea what they’re doing, it’s no wonder companies can take advantage of people wanting to own a truck, from actually ripping them off through leasing programs to nickel and dimeing owners to death. Once you’re an owner operator everyone wants your money. From the panhandler that wants to shine your chrome to people in truck stops hollering like Carnival Barkers wanting to sell you the latest, greatest program to save you money, as long as you spend your money with them. It’s an insane business. Anyone want to buy a truck, cheap?

Things might be picking up a bit. I’ve actually had a couple of trips back to back. Reloading the same day or the next day instead of two or three or more days later. But now I’m in Florida and it’s usually tough to get out of here on a good day, but there are a couple of possibilities so we’ll see. And there was enough money on this trip to be able to deadhead or drive empty back to Georgia if I have to.

I needed a day to recover from this trip anyway. I loaded yesterday it took six hours to load a bunch of office furniture, drove most of the night and had to go around the I-95 closure in Florida because of a wildfire. Woke up early and helped unload and still have blankets to fold. I was going to fold them tonight, but not too motivated and no immediate prospects, so will wake up early while it’s still cool and spend about two hours folding most of my blankets.

I was listening to one of my evil conservative talk shows and the subject was fuel prices and a trucker calls in. Says, he was an owner operator and had to sell his truck because of fuel prices. But, he’s now a company driver. What he doesn’t realize, is that he’s still driving a truck. It’s still buying fuel, he’s just not buying it. He couldn’t afford the fuel but whoever he’s driving for can. The host was a little confused expecting to find a truck driver that couldn’t afford the fuel.

I personally know of two owner operators that wanted to park their trucks and drive for someone else and another one that has. Their trucks are paid for and they can’t afford the fuel prices? But think they can do better driving for someone else. If your truck is paid for, that’s a big expense you don’t have to pay for. Your operating expenses are lower than owners that have truck AND trailer payments. Maintenance on older trucks is an issue, but the maintenance cost I heard from them were still lower than my payments and especially lower than my payments plus repairs.

We are struggling through this, but if my truck was paid for, it would be a lot less stress. From owner operators that have no idea what they’re doing, it’s no wonder companies can take advantage of people wanting to own a truck, from actually ripping them off through leasing programs to nickel and dimeing owners to death. Once you’re an owner operator everyone wants your money. From the panhandler that wants to shine your chrome to people in truck stops hollering like Carnival Barkers wanting to sell you the latest, greatest program to save you money, as long as you spend your money with them. It’s an insane business. Anyone want to buy a truck, cheap?

The last few weeks have actually seemed like things are picking up. I actually had a few loads where I was empty one day and loaded the next. So at least I was kept fairly busy. The pay wasn’t as much as it should have been for $4 a gallon fuel, but it wasn’t horrible. For right now, I’ll settle for “not horrible”. Once things get to the horrible level, I’m parking for awhile.

During the days and days of sitting around waiting for loads and since I’m online most of the time wherever I happen to be parked, I came up with a few ideas of making some spare change and not by hanging out at street corners! I’m going into the Internet Marketing Business. That’s a vague term for making money online. There are so many scams out there, I’ve read them all. But with all of the research I’ve done to help Life on the Road perform better in the search engines and gain traffic I’ve decided to see if I can make more money doing it.

Adventures in Web Hosting

Right now I’ve got about 30 websites I’ve either built or planning to build with plans for many, many more. During all of that, I’ve had to expand my hosting requirements. I’m in the process of moving my websites to, not quite a dedicated server, but close. Because of the plan I have, I can sell the space and bandwidth I’m not using to someone else. I’m connected with the best web host with the best support. Right now, I can match and probably beat any web hosting plan out there. Some web hosts advertise unlimited space and bandwidth, in the real world, if you need an outrageous amount of space and bandwidth, you’re not going to be happy on a shared hosting plan. My plan will be cheap, but realistic. But if you need outrageous space and bandwidth we can work something out.

For anyone that wants to move up to a WordPress website, I will install Wordpress, one theme you choose and some of the essential plugins to expand the functionality of WordPress. Plus assist you in moving your content from your old blog. Billing will be by Paypal so I can save you money by not paying for a merchant account. Billing is secure and professional. Tech support is 24/7 (not by me, but you can contact me if you have questions and don’t need immediate help.)

Get Your Websites and Domains Right Here

Any other type of website or blog can be moved and installed if you really don’t want WordPress. You will have complete cPanel access some of the features will allow you to create databases, email accounts with access to your files and directories with a file manager or FTP.

In order to get cheap domains for myself, I’m going to be able to sell domains also at a discount. I’m not going to spend a lot of time promoting web hosting, I need to concentrate on other things, but the opportunity is there if anyone wants to take advantage of it.

I’m still setting things up to be able to actually have customers but should be done soon. If anyone is interested in cheaper web hosting, help getting started with WordPress, on a less populated, better quality server or have any other requirements for your web site, let me know at the normal contact email.