A Million Miles

What exactly is a million miles?  Well here is an example of what the average person's working day is like compared to mine. How many times have you driven to work?  If you’re an average person, it’s every day since you were 18.  Minus some weekends and some holidays.  Basically you’ve left your home to drive to work or go wherever and return home, approximately 35 miles per day for your entire adult life since you earned your driver’s license.  

Every other day, if you live near a major city, there is an accident along your route.  The accident is from a collision or vehicular failure that happens at random on the highway.  At least once a week on your particular route to and from work, school, or a friend’s house, there is some kind of incident on the road involving a wrecked vehicle or two.  

After dealing with this day in and day out, every day, you get the picture that the road is a dangerous place where you manage to survive and make it to work and back successfully.  It becomes robotic after a while.  You know how long it will take you to get to where you need to be and how long it will take you to get back.  Usually you can plan your morning and evening based on the historical time it has taken you in the past.  

Now consider that instead of arriving at work, you never do.  You just keep going all day and never get there.  (Maybe that’s a good thing depending on your job.  LOL)  Then you do it again and again and again.  Day after day after day, week and after week, month after month.  Driving around 700 miles a day endlessly.  700 miles is 20 times more than your average commute per day.  Right now in your average commute you’ll see one accident every other day.  Consider if you times that by 20.  Consider that we cross country truck drivers see thousands of accidents in our careers.  Many of them happen right before our eyes.  In some cases they happen directly to us.  

We battle fatigue, traffic, weather, our health, our equipment, and the latest legal hurdles thrown in our path to see to it that everyone in the country has stuff.  All truckers are inconvenienced by the laws that don’t allow drivers to park in towns overnight.  Some of us handle it better than others.  Some of us thrive on the lifestyle where some only dabble in it and decide it isn’t for them.  The latter is more common.  

So to get to a million miles you must maintain your composure minute by minute, day after day, so on and so on for about a decade.  If that sounds appealing to you then you shouldn’t wait and go get your CDL so you can start racking up the miles.  The trick is to always focus on safety.  It’s not as easy as some people think and as some people make it look.  

In fact when I started trucking, I didn’t fully realize what the others before me had accomplished.  I understood what they did in that they drove a truck, but once you see that it takes tens of thousands of miles of watching, listening, and reacting before you start to get a handle on exactly what the job entails, well it starts to sink in. 

A million miles can go by and a generation will have passed.  Some drivers out here have over 6 million miles under their belt.  Now that’s a lot of miles!

Patriotism

 

If you are going to wave a flag, know what it means, and how it came to be.  Don't just wave a flag because other people are doing so.  In my life, I've had the misfortune of knowing too many sheep-like people who don't bother to actually look into why they love the USA.  They know that they love their country, but they have nothing to compare it to because US citizens really don't leave the USA much. 

One of the reasons I like to travel outside of the USA is to see first hand what else is going on in the world.  Every time I've left the country, I'm reminded of what a great country the USA is.  In comparison to the rest of the planet, the USA remains a promising melting pot of the people of the world.  If you come to my country, all I ask is that you try to appreciate what all went into the creation of this great nation because too many take that for granted.

So I wanted to do a post about the flag of the USA.  Not because the topic is popular or politically correct, but just because my recent travels have reignited the patriotic spirit that will remain a part of me for life.  One of the great things about this nation is our respect for human life.  As citizens we have rights and certain privileges that other nations simply don't have.  You can come to the USA and pursue any legal course that you can handle.

You can build a successful business and amass wealth, or start a charity and help the people of the world, or become an artist who is celebrated around the globe.  In the USA, one thing still remains true and that is the fact that you can literally achieve ANYTHING.

This freedom wasn't just given to us, the people before us had to fight for it.  Today the struggle continues as it will long after I'm gone.  Regardless of what you believe in, the USA will welcome you in.  Why?  Because as long as you apply yourself, you can succeed.

Excerpt from "The New Colossus" inscribed on the Statue Of Liberty

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-Emma Lazarus

So here is a little reminder of what this great nation means to me and how great it is to see our flag.  For when you leave our shores for distant lands and the USA is no longer under your feet, the very next time you see that flag is a thing of beauty.

Here is a brief description of the American flag from Wikipedia.  These two sentences spell out why the flag looks the way it does and yet this small paragraph cannot even begin to go into all of the lives lost so that it could fly above our heads.  That is a humbling thought on its own.

The national flag of the United States of America, often referred to as the American flag, consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton (referred to specifically as the "union") bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars (top and bottom) alternating with rows of five stars. The 50 stars on the flag represent the 50 states of the United States of America and the 13 stripes represent the thirteen British colonies that declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain and became the first states in the Union.




Semper Fidelis

Oh Yeah!!!!!!

2014 And The End Of A Two Year Saga

It's been a while since my last post, and some of that has to do with the busy month or so we've had, but mostly it's the culmination of two whirlwind years.  Salena and I set out to accomplish some pretty lofty goals and I'm happy to report we accomplished them!

We have had two whole years of mostly uninterrupted, steady, lucrative work.  I'd like to extend many thanks to the team at Landstar for their efforts because without them it may have been harder than it was.  I am using the two year reference because my plan to accomplish all of my goals was set in motion in January of 2013.  The end date was December 31st, 2014.  Today.

We had financial, mechanical, strategic, and life goals we were working on.  It's almost surreal that we accomplished every single one of them.  I've said before that goal accomplishment is essential in running a business.  It's imperative to set realistic goals and work toward them daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, and even decennially.

Our business needed to increase its profits, which it did.  Our mechanical goals needed to be such that the truck's maintenance was regularly scheduled and completed.  It was.  Our financial goals were to position our business in such a way that it had the lowest overhead going into 2015, a year in which I am forecasting our highest income.  That has happened as well.

As far as life goals, we were able to structure our life around the business in such a way that prior to this year has been more difficult.  We've been able to help our friends and family with their requests and we have moved forward toward our goals outside of trucking.

Going into 2015 we are poised to enjoy a profitable, successful, and fun year that we're both looking forward to.  We have set new goals and have new challenges on the horizon.  Our business has a few new obstacles and hurdles to deal with, that we'll handle as they come, and we are going to be spending 2015 doing some new things that we have only planned to do, not knowing for sure if it would ever happen.

The easy goals help you accomplish the slightly more difficult goals, which then lead you to accomplishing the even harder goals.  All of these goals and the process of setting goals is essential to having a successful business and often, a successful life.  Although life has a way of disrupting even the easiest of goals, it's still possible to accomplish what you desire, and achieve most of what you set out to do by forging ahead and staying the course.

"Eyes on the prize" is another way of putting it.  2014 has culminated a two year run for us, and one that we will never embark on again.  We have recovered from some loss and came out smelling like roses.  I can't really go into detail on the internet, but I can say that we have achieved far more than simple goal setting.  We have achieved something I don't think anyone who becomes a trucker, ever thinks is possible.

To the readers of this blog, know that I much appreciate your attention.  Feel free to let me know if there is anything I can discuss here which might be of interest to you.  

Happy New Year's Eve everyone and thanks for being a part of our 2014.

Here's to a great 2015! 

Oh Yeah!

Guns In Trucks

Many years ago a bonded carrier could carry a gun.  Today that is no longer the case.  Today the only way you can carry a gun in your truck is if you have a permit in the state that you are carrying the gun in.

I have purchased two shotguns in my life and they were purchased solely for self defense.  One was a 12 gauge and one was a 20 gauge.  It is extremely fortunate that I never used these weapons.  If you are in a remote area and need immediate help, a gun does come in handy.  Protection of life is the most important thing a person can do.  Sometimes, simply the threat of force can ward off even the most ignorant people. 

If people think you are armed, they will most likely stay away if they were intending harm. Perhaps they will think twice if they think that they themselves may end up hurt or dead upon initiating an aggressive act. 

Not so long ago a trucker parked in a vacant lot in South Carolina.  His name was Jason Rivenburg.  He was shot to death in his truck.  Had he had a gun, he could have defended himself.  You would think that truckers, like ranchers who live in remote areas, should be able to protect themselves in remote areas by being able to carry a gun.  The odds that law enforcement can arrive in time are slim to none.

There are many drivers who carry guns out here.  Most of them are either deputies in their home towns, or are permitted to carry guns in the states that they travel through.  I'm not a fan of everyone carrying guns, but some people need them more than others.  In a country with 300 million people that has just about as many guns as there are people, its impossible to ignore the prevalence of gun ownership in our society.

The Turbo

I'm trying to do something with this truck that I've never done before:  Reach one million miles without changing the major components under the hood.  Of course, maintenance is the key.  Everything must be greased on schedule, every filter changed on schedule, and every lubricant must be sampled to check that it's doing what it's supposed to.

Most of the other drivers I talk to will regularly go through component after component.  Wearing everything out far before it should be.  We do about 100,000 miles a year.  And our max speed is 58 MPH.  We will go faster depending on what the customer demands, but on average our loads have enough time to get there at 58 MPH.  We never idle the engine and I mean NEVER!  Idling these engines is death to the internal components.  The turbo is not designed to be run at an idle.  When the engine is idling, the turbo isn't spinning at its optimal rate and the turbo just doesn't handle this for a prolonged period.

The older engines without exhaust gas recirculation handled idling much better then these new emissions compliant engines.  Without a turbo, the engine is useless.  The blades in the turbo can become pitted and the internal parts wear out.  Over time the turbo can fail.  Mine has lasted over 700,000 miles so far and it passes every inspection I throw at it.

Every 100,000 miles, I adjust the overhead valves in the head.  When I get this done, I throw the truck on the dyno.  So far at 700,000 miles, I'm still getting 70% power to the ground.  That's pretty good.  It indicates that the turbo is working and everything is chugging right along.  I could tweak the systems on the truck and tune it for more horsepower, but when the original configuration is tinkered with, it pushes the components to their limits.  This can result in more performance, but at a higher price.

There are aftermarket turbos that would yield more power, but with more wear and tear on the other internal components of the engine.  The battle is on to maintain this truck as it ages.  The last truck we had went to 1,030,000 before it completely failed, but we replaced the engine and ran that engine out another 300,000 miles before we traded it in for a new model.

As with any business its about return on investment. The longer you can successfully run the truck, the more of a return you get.