Sleeperberth Cast

Hurry up and wait! Thats the way of the truck driver as well as the soldier. After hustling to make it from my pick up in PDX to my delivery in Grand Forks, ND by Wednesday so I would not have to sit over Thanksgiving to deliver on Friday, I end up sitting in Fargo waiting to drive to Schuyler, NE to pick up a load going Kentucky bound.

Now, I find it harder and harder to be unproductive and so I got to searching around for plug ins for Firefox. First one I installed as an addition to the many fine ones already installed (I may cover those at a latter date) was Foxmarks which is a Bookmarks Synchronizer and in the same category I installed Bookmark Duplicate Detector.  Foxmarks has become almost a necessity since I now run multiple platforms on the two PC’s that I have in my truck, not to mention my PC’s at home.
You simply sign up to the Foxmarks site and Sync up Baby! BDD is as nearly necessary but I only needed to use it once and on only one OS. I am simply a total bum when it comes to organization.  Extremely lazy, I am. The bookmarks were relatively as humongous a mess as the Sleeperberth Studios.

The final plug in (so far) that I have installed over this Thanksgiving Down Time is Deepest Sender. This is simply a blog extension/add on that works with Blogger/Wordpress/LiveJournal. This will be my first post using the plug in.

Finally, a little side note is, I have finally taken the plunge and upgraded my desktop to IE7. What little time I have spent using it has demonstrated to me that IE has finally matured, yet the power of Open Source still shines with the broad range of plug ins available for use in the Firefox browser. Even if IE7 does start to make development tools available for creating plug ins, which is entirely likely since there is this IE7 plug in site in beta, they continue to march down the path of playing catch up.

Screenshot

Originally uploaded by crosseye_.

Laramie: laying towards the west

Posted straight from my phone with Nakama.

Coeur d’Alene Cruisin’

Posted straight from my phone with Nakama.

Caterpillar Trailer

Originally uploaded by crosseye_.

Swish sent me this picture. A new type of trailer that is capable of hauling two separate containers. Thanks Paul.

The abq trucker

Posted straight from my phone with Nakama.

I had an opportunity to spend a bit of time with Joe Davenport in Albuquerque this afternoon. Here he stands before his mad entertainment control center.

Thanks goes out to Mike Dell of the Benzoid Report, Ham Radio, and Handgunner News Podcasts for this great little Certificate I can hand out to those who fit the qualifications of an honorary trucking podcaster. To earn this reward you will need to podcast, audcast, truckcast, netcast, or essentially send some sort of audio file to the Sleeperberth Studios stating why you think you should be made an honorary trucking podcaster.

It is a joy to be held up at home when truck problems occur. In fact it is in my opinion very good management to be able to schedule downtime for truck repair while taking a break from the daily and somewhat lonely lifestyle that is the very essence of the trucking industry. Yet, when the few days scheduled for maintenance and warranty updates on the truck turn into weeks, it is very difficult to patiently sit back and say to ones self, “Ah, thats no problem. At least I’m at home.”

As has been stated by many other drivers, to much downtime is very detrimental to the state of being for truck drivers. Many are the causes for too much downtime. And some of course are more negative than others. You have downtime due to lack of loads as Wayne mentions and you have your more serious issues that arise like Bill & Kathy experienced. But when it is due to defective design, the truck manufacturer has the responsibility to make certain the customer is happy. That begs the question of what is essential to make the consumer “happy”. If you are a company driver you simply accept the pay that your company contract states is the detention pay which can be anywhere from $50.00-$100.00 a day. That same detention pay is different for both the leased driver and equally different for the O/O which depends solely on the company leased to or the broker he/she is contracted with. It really should be a higher amount but as an independent driver things happen a bit differently. The company I am with has a review board that you have to go before so as to be paid any kind of compensation. If it is not feasible for you to be able to pick up an abandoned truck or one that is unseated (of course these latter are parked at company terminals).

Recent experience has lead me to be skeptical of an adequate recompense based on promises made by customers contracted with a trucking company. The practice is for the trucking company to act as a negotiator for the driver and they are not an adequate representative due to their capitalistic viewpoint coupled with the understandable need to satisfy the stockholders. So the current paradigm is such that the driver who in this case is the financial fly in the ointment is the easily dispensable commodity.

Though Unions have proven to be a more adequate representative for the driver in the past, and still have a good foothold in some aspects of the freight business, there are many factors that lead to the foreseeable demise of its involvement. Events happen that mark an organization as less effective in its power to effect change and as pertains to the Union these events include corruption and ties to organized crime as well as one of the most recent actions that in May 20 of 1999 forced NationsWay Transportation Services to close its doors instead of caving to Union demands concerning Pension agreements, costing roughly 3000 workers to lose their jobs.

Due to the very competitive nature and the differing paradigm that the trucking industry creates, there needs to be a new labor movement that would help to assure good wages for service rendered as well as an allotment for the driver taking that forced vacation not planned for. Possibly a professional negotiator whose stake in the negotiation is to be paid for benefiting both drivers and the trucking companies they driver for. And since most of the labor laws actually preclude drivers (the average driver makes anywhere from $2.00 and hour to $6.00 figures based on the actual time spent on the job yet not considered working) a working model of labor reform is needed.

Until such time as drivers are actually able to bond together in some form of alliance to agree on the formation of such a negotiating force or service, most of us will from time to time have to suffer this downtime curse that has forced the end of many a drivers career prematurely.
[GP:Spokane]

Rolling backwards with TruckerTwotimes Music video.

A brief answer to Benzoid Report and Trucker 2Xs queries.

Posted straight from my phone with Nakama.

A bit nippy

Posted straight from my phone with Nakama. Click to see more.