Let's hear it for the truckers

Yeah we ordered walleye diners the other night. Worked great. Call em up and park outside the door and bring it out to the car. Don’t forget the tip though.

It’s interesting you should bring that up. I was ahead of the curve in that I started having my groceries delivered a few months ago, before this crisis started. Now everyone is trying to get their groceries delivered, and the stores I order from are so swamped that I can’t even schedule delivery from one of the stores I use (Walmart), and the other one (BJ’s club) is scheduling deliveries five days out.

When I was a truck driver, I had no way of knowing where I’d be in five days. Some of the guys who had been driving for decades, and were on dedicated routes could plan like that, but most truckers don’t know where they’re headed after they drop off their next scheduled load. I was lucky if I knew where I’d be making my next pickup when I arrived for my dropoff.

I think going on the road with an actual truck driver might expose you to several realities in the industry of which you don’t seem to be aware.

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That would be an education in realities for a big percentage of the population who has never been on the road or know an over the road truck driver.also you might not believe how many people do not know that there is a state called New Mexico.

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Over the years, quite a few people who work for New Mexico’s state tourism department have reported that they get frequent questions from ignorant people who want to know if they need a passport to enter New Mexico. :dizzy_face:

Those folks certainly wouldn’t have gotten a passing grade in my Geography class or my Civics class.

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I wonder how many people don’t understand if it were not for truck driver’s they could not go to a store or do their weekly grocery shopping? or not even going to a gas station to get gas for the car.

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Truck driving can be a good life as it was for me but it is not for every one like my wife for one we tryed to go on a vacation trip a few time’s by the 2nd or 3rd day out she said it was time to turn around and go home.

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Then they must be an idiot or blind . . . or both

So many times I’ve gotten gas, the tanker truck has been right there . . .

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They are out there I remember during the trucker’s srtike year’s ago people complaing about store’s not having everything they wanted to get and wandered why.

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Or North and South Dakota, or that they are settled. I worked with an old guy (younger than me now) and when I told him I was going to college in South Dakota, he was concerned about the Indians. I assured him, everything was fine now and you didn’t need to carry a rifle, unless you were hunting.

After the Katrina flood, kids were relocated temporarily to Minnesota. It was reported some of these kids had never seen a cow before and had no idea that’s where the milk came from in the grocery store. A friend worked with Red Cross distributing debit cards but some had never seen them before and didn’t know what they were and had never dealt with a bank before. Just sayin’ I guess, don’t assume.

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I heard a story one time I think it was GM but not sure that moved a bunch of office big shot’s out of NYC to Michigan I believe and about 90% of them never had a driver’s license and had to go to driver’s school to learn how to drive I thought it was funny people who worked for a car company for year’s that did not know how to drive.

I had a class once in Dallas and there were a couple guys from NYC. They could drive but they went nuts at the prices for steaks. Couldn’t believe how cheap everything was and had to go to the steak house every night.

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Thing’s like that make me wonder what people who stay in one place all there live’s think abought how thing’s are the rest of the country.

We have three Walmarts within 15 miles of me and you cannot get a full size tractor trailer into their parking lots because of the way the entrances are designed. Their loading docks are the only area you can get a rig into.

I picked up a grocery order Saturday at Walmart, Had to get a time slot at midnight Thursday for Saturday pickup and then pull into one of 6, car sized covered slots where they bring your groceries and put them in your trunk. No way you could get a rig near that area and how would a trucker be able to make a one hour window, two and one half days out?

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Why do you think they have truck stops on major highways yes a lot of truck drivers are health but I worked as a truck mechanic for 45 years I have seen my share of very very unique health truck drivers.

and yes they do a great job we would be lost without them. they are the best people i have known jim

If the national highway system and trucks had not been developed, markets would be located near railroad spurs, there is more than one way to move goods and people.

There are many ghost towns in Nevada that had rail service 100 years ago, that was the primary method of moving goods at that time, the west was settled with very limited truck delivery.

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And now there’s this new technology called GPS and Siri.

Okay, now you’re just throwing stuff out there because you’re getting defensive. I’m trying to teach you something about the trucking industry and you’re missing out on an opportunity to learn something new.

Logistics for a single truck driver cannot be planned in advance. There are too many variables, like how long a driver will have to wait at a stop for the truck to be loaded and unloaded, traffic, weather, etc. Only the top veteran drivers get all drop-and-hook loads where they drop off an empty trailer, pick up a loaded trailer, and be in and out in less than 30 minutes. The rest of the drivers often sit and wait for things that cannot be planned in advance, and that time they sit and wait eats away at their 14 hour clock. (They’re only allowed to be on duty up to 14 hours a day, and only allowed to drive for 11 hours a day. They have to go off duty for 10 hours to reset those clocks.)

Sometimes a driver sits while his manager finds his next load, and most loads only take 1-3 days to deliver. Coast-to-coast loads are often hauled by team drivers where the truck only stops for fuel. Do you think these drivers can know where they’re going to be in five days between the 1-3 hours in which they might schedule a delivery? Do you think they can afford to sit and wait for a grocery delivery if they arrive earlier than they expected? They only make money when the truck is moving.

Lastly, do you always arrive at the time your GPS predicted as your initial ETA? I don’t. Now add the complexity of passing through several cities, some during rush hour with stop-and-go traffic to the mix and you’ll find your GPS ETA even less reliable.

On a 1,000 mile trip, your GPS can’t predict what accidents will slow you down tomorrow, or how long it will take you to buy fuel and shower.

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No I’m not. GPS and Siri is legitimate tools people use when traveling. I do a LOT of business trips. At least I use to. At least once a month. I’m usually not familiar with the city I’m in. And I DEPEND on GPS and Siri. It’s a very common useful tool.

As I’ve said in this forum before, I also use Siri and GPS, and they are great tools. However, they do not resolve the issue with truckers finding a way to stock their trucks with groceries and live a healthy lifestyle.

I love how my iPhone makes travel easier, and if I was still driving a truck, I’d be using it, but this conversation started on the topic of truck drivers arranging grocery deliveries to their trucks, and I’m explaining to you why that is nearly impossible to coordinate due to the current crisis and how the long-haul trucking industry works.

The driver who trained me was a veteran who got mostly FedEx drop-and-hook loads, but that’s only half the equation. After we dropped off our load in Newark, NJ, there wasn’t always a FedEx load for us to take back with us, so our manager back at the terminal would have to schedule another load for the return trip. Sometimes it was another drop-and-hook load, but sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes we hauled giant rolls of paper, which is a PITA, because first you have to sweep your trailer (which they used to pay the drivers to do, but they don’t anymore), and then you have to wait in line to get the trailer inspected to make sure it’s clean enough so nothing is on the floor that can damage the edge of the giant rolls of paper. Then you have to wait in line to get your trailer loaded.

Do you get it? Your business trip planning is nothing like what a truck driver goes though. Every time he has to sit and wait for something, it eats away at his income because he gets paid by the mile, so logistically trying to set aside a 1-3 hour window for a grocery delivery in a particular location is not as easy as you make it out to be.

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