11-9-06 - The Finish Line!
I made it! I crossed the finish line of this long training program. Today I got my own truck. I sign the lease tomorrow, but I started moving into it tonight. It's a 2007 Freightliner Century Class S/T. Only 24 miles on it. Cool!
OK, now a little bit of an update on the past week of so. I left Salt Lake last Friday at about 6 in the morning on a truck with a guy I went through class with. He was so much better as a CAT first seat than the guy I had before. We drove up to Twin Falls, ID to pick up a load of frozen potatoes, (french fries), and headed toward Harrisburg, PA. Happily I can report that there was nothing really to report about our trips this week. We got a message late sunday night when we were in the middle of IL that we were going to be repowering a load in IN going back to Washington. We swapped trailers with the other driver and headed back west again.
We got to our delivery point just north of Portland, OR just 1 hour before the schedualed delivery time. We drove our asses off to get there in time. Our next load was to load about 250 miles away in Kenniwick, WA. The routing that we got on the Qualcom sent us across RT12. Did I mention that it was raining a little bit in WA? Yeah,, just a little bit. Like a south pacific monsoon! We got about 75 miles down RT12 and there was a landslide right across the road and more water flowing across the road than in most rivers. We were bobtailing so it was twice as treacherous. We turned around and got back to I-5 and stopped for the night at a rest area. The next day we got to Kenniwick about 12 hours after our schedualed appointment time. We were rewarded with a $75 late fee charged by the shipper. England covered it because we were late because of weather. We then sat there for about 9 hours before they loaded us. Ouch! I drove for about 6 hours to Boise, ID and went to bed at 6 am. My co-driver drove us to Salt Lake and I got off the truck at about 11am. That was yesterday.
I could have picked out a truck yesterday, but I wanted a new one, so I had to wait. I attended another Defensive Driving class and a few other classes and at about 2pm today I got a phone call to come in and inspect my truck. I did the inspection and tonight started moving my things in. Tomorrow I spend about 3 hours signing the lease paperwork and then hopefully get a load going back to Denver, CO.
I will have some more pictures posted soon!
OK, now a little bit of an update on the past week of so. I left Salt Lake last Friday at about 6 in the morning on a truck with a guy I went through class with. He was so much better as a CAT first seat than the guy I had before. We drove up to Twin Falls, ID to pick up a load of frozen potatoes, (french fries), and headed toward Harrisburg, PA. Happily I can report that there was nothing really to report about our trips this week. We got a message late sunday night when we were in the middle of IL that we were going to be repowering a load in IN going back to Washington. We swapped trailers with the other driver and headed back west again.
We got to our delivery point just north of Portland, OR just 1 hour before the schedualed delivery time. We drove our asses off to get there in time. Our next load was to load about 250 miles away in Kenniwick, WA. The routing that we got on the Qualcom sent us across RT12. Did I mention that it was raining a little bit in WA? Yeah,, just a little bit. Like a south pacific monsoon! We got about 75 miles down RT12 and there was a landslide right across the road and more water flowing across the road than in most rivers. We were bobtailing so it was twice as treacherous. We turned around and got back to I-5 and stopped for the night at a rest area. The next day we got to Kenniwick about 12 hours after our schedualed appointment time. We were rewarded with a $75 late fee charged by the shipper. England covered it because we were late because of weather. We then sat there for about 9 hours before they loaded us. Ouch! I drove for about 6 hours to Boise, ID and went to bed at 6 am. My co-driver drove us to Salt Lake and I got off the truck at about 11am. That was yesterday.
I could have picked out a truck yesterday, but I wanted a new one, so I had to wait. I attended another Defensive Driving class and a few other classes and at about 2pm today I got a phone call to come in and inspect my truck. I did the inspection and tonight started moving my things in. Tomorrow I spend about 3 hours signing the lease paperwork and then hopefully get a load going back to Denver, CO.
I will have some more pictures posted soon!
posted by BigJohn at 9:30 PM
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