Profile For Greg M.

My monthly safety score updated today in Motive and I have to say that I impressed myself.

I am normally around 95%, I always lose a few points due to speeding. I am also usually in the top 1-3 drivers in the various groups but this is the first time I was #1 across the board.

Making sure that I save these images because I may not ever see these results again.

If nothing else Dave's experience should be a lesson to everyone to be very thoughtful before letting a CDL go. Most states have an option to self declare to a status that does not require a current DOT physical. Only down side is maybe a slightly higher license renewal fee.

You never know when necessity or desire may drive you to hit the road again.

When my father passed away at 91 his drivers license was still a class A cdl and he still had his Private Pilot License in his wallet. He literally took them both to the grave. I intend to do the same with my CDL.

I say this:

As of September 30, 2023, UPS reported having $7.27 billion in cash and cash equivalents according to their latest public earnings disclosure

That's right...over $7 F'in BILLION DOLLARS

Brett, I'm afraid this isn't the moral outrage you seem to think it is.

I just went out and looked over the Sept 30,2023 quarterly financials for UPS where you got the $7.27B in cash/equivalents . You are exactly right, actually its closer to $7.28B at $7.278B.

The Quarterly Balance Sheet shows their current assets as being $19.251B. That is made up of the $7.278B in cash along with $9.461B in Receivables and $2.967B in other short term investments. Assets however are only one side of the equation.

Looking at the Liabilities section of the report it shows that they have total current liabilities of $15.817B. That $7.28B in cash wasn't even enough to cover half of their current liabilities at the time of the report.

There is a financial analysis tool called the Current Ratio. It is basically Current Assets divided by Current Liabilities. It gives some insight into the financial health of a company. You definitely want the number to be above 1 and closer to 2 is better. Using the numbers for UPS:

$19.251B/$15.817B =1.2.

1.2 is actually on the low end of what you like to see.

I had an interesting “sign of the times” load yesterday. Took a regular customer load from Cincinnati to Columbus with a 5am dispatch. Got empty around 8 and sat waiting for almost 2 hours for a dispatch. When it came it was to go empty back to Cincinnati for a pick up that delivered 7 miles away. Glad I get paid by the hour.

Try uship

I attended the Millis school in Trenton, Ohio in 2017 and was very impressed. I did not end up going solo but it had nothing to do with the school.

I am sure much has changed but the things I liked were the small class size, training pay that was much higher than many other companies and the fact that there was little if any team driving during the training period.

I believe that the merger you are referring to was Millis being bought by Heartland Express in 2019 or 20. Heartland has been on a bit of a buying spree and has purchased several other trucking companies since. They seem to be leaving the new companies to operate somewhat independently so I would not let that bother you.

Christmas season 2020 I worked for a small USPS contractor. One night last trip I get ready to back into my dock when the city horn in the old 2000 Volvo did the same thing. Just started blaring on it's own. Funny thing was that I was right by the area where the USPS employee yard jockeys hung out while waiting for their next jobs. They tended to be pretty grumpy and did not particularly care for non-union contractors.

So here am blowing my horn at them the entire time I'm backing in. One finally came over and wanted to know what my problem was. As I started to explain it finally stopped. Actually got a laugh out of him when I explained it.

Everything worked using the exterior light test function before I left. Also confirmed with yard spotter that they were working when I dropped trailer. Obvious intermittent issue. Shop has a new pigtail for me. 2 trailers so far today working fine.

Were the trailer lights working when you did your pre-trip?

I was the one confused. Defiantly should have had them back. Not sure what I was thinking.

This part confused me. I haven’t pulled a box in several years but in my experience if the load comes pretty far back I would keep the tandems a little further back to try and avoid tandems being overweight like they ended up in your case. Obviously you’re experienced and know what you’re doing..just curious why you moved them so far forward if the load came pretty far back?

Little bit of click bait. Title is basically true but everything worked out ok.

My company operates under the 150 air miles exemption for logging. We don't have e-logs and normally do not fill out paper log books, we do keep a daily trip sheet which has basically all the same info. We are allowed to go beyond 150 miles 8 days out of 30, we just need to fill out a paper log for each of those days.

Today I started out with a trip from Cincinnati to Orrville, Ohio, Google Maps says about 180 air miles. I had done the same trip yesterday so for the second day in a row I started a paper log sheet. Once I got empty I was sent a few miles north to Rittman, Ohio to pickup at a Morton Salt facility.

Anyone who has hauled salt already knows this is where the overweight issue comes from. Bills said 45k. I am in a day cab and I know my empty weight is somewhere around 32k depending on fuel and trailer model so I wasn't concerned about gross weight. The load came pretty far back so I decided that I needed the tandems forward based upon my rough estimate using my suspension gauge.

Get loaded and get onto I76 heading west towards I71 to head home. I am very rarely on 76 but as I'm heading down the ramp it occurs to me that there is a weigh station somewhere around here. I had convinced myself that it was behind me right about the time I see the sign and it is open. Sure enough I get the red arrow and they ask me to come back around and get axle weights. Guess what 78.2 gross, 10.6 steers, 29.8 drives and 37.6 tandems!!! "Sir, please pull around back and I'll be right out."

Officer comes out and shows me the weights and says he will let me fix it but he is going to do a Level 1 inspection. Asks for all my documents and then asks if I drive out of Cincinnati. I say yes and he mentions the distance, apparently our DOT number says that we operate under the 150 rule. I say yes and that I am running a paper log today. I pulled it out and he seemed impressed!

Does the inspection and everything is going great until he is finishing up with the trailer lights, this is an almost brand new 2023 Utility trailer. Turn signals great, brake lights? Nothing. We try a couple times then I get out and fiddle with the pigtail and they finally come on. We decide that it is probably the pigtail. He issues a warning on the trailer and passes the truck and puts on the orange pass sticker.

I slide my tandems and he calls out the weights as I go back over 11K steers, 33.8 drives and 33.4 tandems. Says good to go and have a nice day.

All in all a pretty good result but I was struck by a couple of things:

First was how badly I did at estimating the tandem position. I have probably CAT scaled 2 loads over the last 5 years. Been over scales lots of times with heavy loads and never had an issue.

Second was seeing how smoothly the log situation went. I have always assumed that it would be a big production explaining why I am not running elogs, or logs at all for that matter. My current log book starts in April and has occasional entries up until today. Some times I go weeks without logging then weeks like this one I may log multiple days. I gave him the entire book and when he gave them back he said they looked good.

Final thing was attitude. I was friendly and non confrontational. He was the same and I actually enjoyed the interaction. There was a driver next to me and he kept running his mouth complaining about everything. Needless to say his inspection was going on when mine started and still going on after I left.