Best made plans saga. Again.

While I was out and about Saturday, Krl spread driver envelopes. By this I mean she takes everything out and put the loads in date order for each truck, doing the same with any fuel or cash tickets. She called me, telling me there was a problem with one driver's paperwork. He had failed to turn in one load ticket and had two unloading tickets with the same load number written on them. I told her I would look at them when I got home.

My plan had been to make quick work of this weeks settlements!

I have always encouraged the company drivers to do their paperwork each load, each day. I learned this is the easiest way to keep things straight. I will never forget several years ago when we had trucks running from Lubbock to Oklahoma City. I did my paperwork everyday, loads, fuel, and toll road tickets. We ran this run for about six weeks. On the final night, we off loaded and found a place to get some rest. I quickly finished my paperwork and crawled in the sleeper. Shortly, I felt the truck list and I looked out to find one of the other truck drivers standing on the step looking in. "You'd better get your paperwork in order", he said. I informed him my paperwork was done. As it turned out he had a cowboy hat in a hat rack in the roof of the truck and he had put all his toll road tickets in it, the entire time we were gone. He had quite a mess and while the rest of us slept, he spent his night trying to put things together!

When I got home, I began looking at the problem trip envelope Krl had told me about. It was very evident this driver is not good with record keeping. It is a simple concept, when you receive a load delivery receipt, keep up with it until you unload, then write the delivery number on the unloading ticket. This man couldn't write the correct number from the delivery receipt he had stapled to the unloading ticket! And you could see it in plain view without lifting the front ticket!

When I began building the master billing sheet for the week, I had three stacks for the three trucks on this particular haul. I began entering them in numerical sequence which means one from each stack, and working the three stacks together.

I decided to wait until Sunday afternoon to call the driver with the missing paperwork, but I went ahead and entered all the loads I could and left a line for where I thought the missing load belonged.

Shortly after noon Sunday, my phone rang. It was this driver calling me. "I'm getting ready to go back to my truck", he told me, "I was going to stop by and pick up checks if they are done".

I informed him checks weren't done and the reason why they weren't done. I could tell he wasn't happy and probably thought Krl and I had lost his ticket, but he didn't vocalize it. He said he would look in the truck, but was almost positive the ticket was in his paperwork. I told the driver the load appeared to be a Thursday load, probably the second one, and if I cut the bill off there and put the remaining loads on next weeks bill, none of the drivers would get paid for their final two loads of the week until next week! This does not seem fair that the others who had complete paperwork would be penalized because of this man's poor record keeping, but with the difficulties we have had with the office manager at the seasonal jobsite, I prefer not to complicate things by having an incomplete load.

In a few hours the driver called me, sounding very sheepishly. "I found the missing ticket", he said and that his wife would drop it by on her way home. Turned out it was a Tuesday load!

I don't think the driver realize how much information is on the scale tickets. Of course the carrier is identified, unit number is recorded, and there is a time in and a time out along with gross, tare and net weights.

The driver with the problem paperwork was one load short for the week, and he told me he had over slept. When I was looking through his paperwork I saw he had loaded his second load one day at two o'clock, yet he didn't off load it until three the following morning. He should have unloaded it about five thirty the same day! He became very quiet when I asked him about it.

Truck drivers aren't rocket scientists, that's for sure. Don't get me wrong, there are some good ones out there.

I am beginning to have second thoughts about the bail out and stimulus package. I am hearing of over pays with the first round of bail out money. My thoughts are that we are feeding the wrong end. It looks like in a consumer driven economy, that is where the input needs to be.

I am driving to St. Lawrence today. This should be the third to last trip for me. Since we are going to finish hauling the seed from the flat storage this week, I will drive back there next Monday, and then again the nineteenth for my meeting with the board of directors.

The remainder of my week is Tu-W-Th at the parts store, Friday in the home office.

Have a week!

FATHER, bless this day. I pray for safe travel. I ask that YOU lead me in our search for our next work. YOU are faithful to meet my needs!