#383 Virus Update The Life of an Owner Operator Flatbed Truck Driver

the one thing you hear a lot of people talk about you know the airline industry and the cruise industry the boat industry you know you don't hear anybody talking about the trucking industry and I think a lot of people forget how the stuff gets to the store sometimes all right good morning it's Monday morning I guess I'll give a coronavirus update I guess first thing is Mercer they didn't shut down but all the employees are working from home they've always had the capability to have the coordinators work from home so katie has her own laptop and i still call the same phone number i don't how they do it but i still call the same phone number it goes to katie she can still see everything they've done that to eliminate the spread or the contact of everybody so that's going on and today monday will be the first day of that so we'll see how it goes I'm in Ohio right now and last night or yesterday afternoon Sunday Ohio closed all the restaurants and bars all the sit-down restaurant and bars so I guess it took effect at 9:00 o'clock last night there's a McDonald's across the street from me and I haven't seen anybody go inside and there's a restaurant in the truck stop here I haven't been inside I did go stock up I got about I probably have about two weeks worth of food in here if I need to survive in in the truck so you know it sounds like you know it's Armageddon everything's gonna come crashing down but I think I think it's be okay what I'm concerned about is the transportation industry you know people are going to the grocery stores going to Walmart going to you know you big-box stores well if like Walmart distribution center if everybody in the Walmart distribution center can't come to work nothing gets to Walmart so I'm not too sure oh they did lift the hour of services and there's been a lot of talk on a lot of the Facebook pages and stuff about the hours of service they lifted the hours of service meaning that you don't have to line I should say you don't have to follow the rules you're not constrained to the 14 hour clock you do have to have a 10 hour break so they kind of lifted the the rules which is in my opinion a little odd how come you know it's okay to do it now but when when they need you to drive more anyway I'm not gonna get into that right now but they did lift the rules but it's only four people hauling supplies meaning food you know paper products going to distribution center the stuff for people like me just hauling steel around or anything like that so it's just posed to be and I'm not exactly sure how how it works but they did lift that so anyway that's kind of an update of what's going on personally where I live in Arizona there's not there are no cases in our County yet Teresa has tooken precautions so if if Teresa gets sick by chance I just go home if I get sick out here I'm not too sure what I'm gonna do so we'll figure that out we're gonna watch Freight if Freight slows down and things you know start to slow down and I'm not doing anything then I'm going home I'll go home but you know I just practice safe practices as all you know wash your hands hand sanitizer stuff like that alright so it is Monday morning we loaded we loaded Saturday we got conduit on and we're going to we got four stops today we're gonna try to get them all off we can't start until 7:30 because the the place we have to go to they will not take us till 7:30 and we're only about thirty miles away so we're gonna roll out of here about seven little after 7:00 to get on over there and then see if we can yank all these off we do already have a reload out of Cleveland Ohio going back down to Louisville so we'll load that tomorrow so anyway so anyway that's what's going on that's what's going on so talked in a bit today went good today was the first day of a look all of the coordinators from Mercer working from home I didn't notice any different actually Katie booked me a load so as long as I got booked the load and you know things are going alright for me so we're gonna go pick up tomorrow take it down to Louisville Louisville back up so we're oh we're doing good I stocked up on groceries yesterday or did our Saturday this weekend and then I've decided to kind of change a little bit one thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start taking my own pin inside to fill out paperwork when I have to go to a shipper they want me to sign something instead of using the pin that they have on the shelf there the other thing that I am going to start doing is I bought some disinfectant wipes and I put them like I'll show you real quick so I bought some disinfectant wipes and I put them here and I'm every time I use the keypad for the the to buy fuel I wipe it down and I do use my gloves too but sometimes it it won't register through the gloves so I did put some some wipes in there and this inside I stocked up I went and bought I carry a lot of foods in the truck anyway but I got two cases almost three cases of water some cereal and then over here baby wipes crackers so and then the frigerator is pretty well stocked I got eggs milk salad all kinds of stuff and refrigerator and then in the closet here hang on one second and then in here this is pretty well stocked another box of cereal that's my printer sometimes I have to have a printer and then in here is canned food as you can see the peanut butter some canned food more baby wipes so anyway so I think I'm pretty well stocked up so like like when they when they close the restaurants I was a little nervous that we wouldn't be able to get anything to eat so far what I'm seeing is that you can get it to go you just can't sit down and eat so I'm just gonna kind of keep doing things as normal hopefully you know just keep going at it for a while see what happens I don't think it might slow down a little bit things might change a little bit but I'm not projecting that it just somebody slammed the brakes on and everything come to a screeching halt the one thing real quick the one thing you hear a lot of people talk about you know the airline industry and the cruise industry the boat industry you know you don't hear anybody talking about the trucking industry and I think a lot of people forget how the stuff gets to the store sometimes when I was in Walmart buying my supplies the that I was talking to one of the managers he was scanning the shelves to refill and the shelves were empty and I said how long do you think it would take to restock all these shelves and he says if people stopped buying stuff today it would take about five weeks to to get the shelves restocked so there's there gonna be a lot of work to do once this kind of dies down a little bit because we've got to refill all the shelves at all the stuff people bought so anyway oh that's enough about the corona stuff I worry about my wife aye aye aye aye I would probably contract it first before she would because I have to interact with a lot of different people from all over she's in a little small town and she can really reduce the amount of people that she has to interact with so but but anyway we'll play it by ear oh that's it tomorrow's a busy day so we'll talk to you later thanks for watching you

Channel: SuperTruckerDan

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Id: ltzRbu2lz4Q

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 16 2020