A Truck Driver's Journey

Back on the Road

2011-11-21T15:45:00.002-07:00

Well, it's that time. In one week I will be going back over the road and I'm really looking forward to it. It has been a little more than three years since I have been OTR and as much as I enjoy driving locally and seeing the family as much as I do, OTR gives a driver so much more freedom in how the job gets done.

I'll write more about what I have been doing in the time since I last posted here in the coming weeks. I have a lot of good information for new drivers or those considering a driving career. Check back soon!

Deleted my post

2008-06-14T19:58:00.000-06:00

I typed out a good long post about my last week on thr road and somehow deleted it before it posted. There is no "undelete" on the blackberry. Damnit! I'll work on it again tomorrow. Too late now.
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1 week out, 1 week to go!

2008-06-13T18:47:00.001-06:00

Well, I've been out for a week now and it's been a good week.

I left the house on Wednesday morning and went and hooked to my trailer and waited for a load. My DSR (driver service rep.) told me there wasn't much freight in my area, but she would let me know as soon as she had something for me. It didn't take long. At 9 am, I got a load that picked up just 2 miles from where I was parked. The only issues were that it didn't ship until 3 pm. I tried to call the shipper to see if it would be ready sooner, but the phone number listed for them was disconnected. I asked my DSR for a working number, but the number I got was to someones voice mail. I also tried calling 411, but that had no listing for the shipper either. So much for trying to pickup early. I just took a nap and went to the shipper, which happened to be a mattress company at 2:30 pm.

There was a preloaded trailer for me in a pothole filled dirt lot. Yeah! The holes in that lot were HUGE! Even though I went really slow, it didn't matter, things went everywhere in my sleeper.

I got my loaded trailer and headed out of Denver towards Gary, IN. I got up I-76 and across I-80 to a rest area just past North Platt, NE and stopped for the night. I ran into some really heavy rain as I left CO.

Thursday morning I continued east making a stop at the Walmart in Lexington. That's a really truck friendly Walmart. Lots of truck parking.

When I got back in the truck I had a message telling me that I was relaying my load to another driver so he could get home. The relay point was Aurora, NE. I had about 100 miles to go to get there. I got to the Loves truckstop at about 10:15 am and ended up waiting till about 12:30 pm for the relay driver to get there.

We swapped trailers and I ended up getting a load right out of that town going to Lubbock, TX. It was a dog food factory and you could smell it from miles away. Not a bad smell, just a dog food smell.

I was directed to drop my trailer in a row of trailers right across from from where they were doing construction. There was absolutly no way I was going to be able to stick my trailer anywhere on that row. I found a yard driver and asked him what I was supposed to do and he was pretty good about it. He moved a trailer from a spot I could get into so I could use it. Sometimes it pays to just ask someone for help, instead of risking hitting something.

I got my load and headed south through KS and into OK. The rain was incredible. I found out later that there had been some tornados in the area. From what I saw, I believe it.

I delivered the load to a grocery distribution center in Lubbock, TX on Friday afternoon with no issues. It was over 100 degrees there. Ouch!

More to come.

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Background for the past year....

2008-06-09T18:46:00.000-06:00

It's been about a year since I have posted anything here, that's because there really wansn't much to tell about working for Papa John's, at least until now.

Now that I'm not working for Papa John's anymore, and don't have to worry about lossing my job to tell what's going on there, I feel it's my obligation to tell the complete story. This will hopefully be some good info for anyone trying to decide whether to stay an OTR driver or take a local driving job.

I had been with Roehl for about 6 months when I started looking for a local driving job in Denver. I found that Papa John's was hiring "Delivery Specialists" and called them for more info. Now this is not a PJ store, it's the distribution center that makes the dough and delivers the dough and everything else that a PJ store needs to operate to all the stores in CO, NM, (alburqurque area), WY, UT, (northern area), ID, (southern area).

When I called PJ Food Service, that was what the distribution center called itself, I was told to come in and fill out an application. At the time, I was still driving OTR and was in TX. I told them I would be in to fill out an application the next time I was in town. They said that wasn't a problem because it was the beginning of June and they weren't looking to actually hire any drivers until the middle of July.

Why were they hiring drivers? That's a question that every driver looking for a job needs to ask.

I filled out the application in the second week of June 2007 and went back for an interview the last week in June. They hired me for a July 9th start.

The first week at PJ's was orientation. They said all the right things about safety and doiing things the right way. Reality was way different.

Here is a sample of what really happened.

0330 - Wake up and drive to work.

0430 - Get to work and count the truck and do a pre-trip on the truck.

0530 - My partner would start driving us to our first store.

0600 - Our first store. Unload and deliver.

0630 - My partner drives us to our next store.

0645 - Deliver store.

0715 - My partner drives us to the next store.

0730 - Deliver store.

0800 - My partner drives to Pueblo, CO. I get a 1 hour nap.

0915 - Deliver 2 stores in Pueblo.

1045 - My partner drives us to Raton, NM. This gives me another 1 hour nap.

1200 - I start driving in Raton, NM and drive us to Alburqurque. My partner gets a 4 hour nap.

1600 - We start delivering the 10 stores in Alburqurque. This takes about 9 hours.

0100 - My partner, who got a 4 hour nap, now starts driving back towards Denver. I now, having been away working for the past 21 hours, get to take a 4 hour nap.

0500 - I start driving around Raton and get us back to Denver in about 4 hours.

0900 - Back to the terminal and another team of drivers takes the truck to do a local route.

Does anyone see anything wrong with this?

Driving tired is one of the most dangerous things a driver can do. Pretty much the same as driving drunk.

I brought my concerns first to the guy who trained me and he said that this is just how it's done. He told me that the routes can't be done legaly and still get back at a decent time. He even told me that if he had to run legal, he would quit. He said the money just wasn't worth it to stay out any longer.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing! I hated trying to stay awake and drive with such little rest. It scared me silly. Many times I pulled the truck over and slept for a bit because I was just so tired. My partner really didn't like that. It caused us to get back later than he wanted to. Oh well.

I went to my manager with my concerns and he told me that what I said was happening,, wasn't. He didn't want to hear the truth.

I then called Louisville, (PJ's headquarters), and told them my concerns. Instead of resolving the problem in any way, they told the regional manager that I was raising questions about how things were working. Nice. He called me and told me that nothing unsafe was going on. Nice.

I tried one more time to talk to my manager about it and this time he yelled at me saying nothing I said was happening was happening. I gave up. I suggested that he follow an out of town route and see for himself. He said it wasn't his jhob to babysit drivers. Nice.

About a week after that I was given a solo route. I think this was to shut me up about everything I was trying to bring up about how the team routes were running.

I ran solo for about 6 months and then I was put back on a team routem That lasted about 2 months before I couldn't take it anymore and called Roehl about getting my old job back with them.

Roehl hired me back and after a week of orientation I'm happily back on the road with them.

At Roehl, SAFETY is a VALUE!

Having been at a company that was "eyes wide shut" about truly dangerous driving practices, it's great to be back at Roehl!

I plan to keep this blog updated with my daily travels, so be sure to check back often!

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Test Post

2008-06-05T20:22:00.000-06:00

This is a test post from my Blackberry. If everything works the way it should, I should be able to update my blog almost daily.
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John has not disappeared!

2007-09-05T11:59:00.000-06:00

Hey everyone, this is John's wife. He wanted everyone to know that he is alive and well and has just been too busy to blog--so he asked me to let people know what is going on.

We left Roehl because Papa John's offered such a great deal regarding hometime and pay. It's more of a hands on delivery job than just an over the road driving job, but regardless, he's home five nights a week and has better pay.

We have absolutely nothing bad to say about Roehl. They are a good company with decent pay and hometime. It was nice to find a trucking company with ethics (Take note, C.R. England!) But as everyone in the trucking business knows, you move on until you find something that's a perfect fit.

Because Papa John's is sort of a different beast when it comes to trucking, John probably won't be maintaining this blog anymore. He will leave it up for those who want to read about his experience at the beginning, but right now he's moving on. I mean, really, does any one care to hear about how many boxes of sausage and dough he's delivering? :-)

Thanks to everyone for your support and encouragement!

All the best,
Sarah (Big John's Wife)

5-8-07 - I have a story for you!

2007-05-08T07:22:00.000-06:00

I'm really sorry for not writing more here. I have been busy and happy. It's kinda funny that when everything is going well, there doesn't seem to be much to tell. Anyway, I do have a pretty interesting tail to tell from last Thursday.

First, I just want to answer a quick question that was asked in the comment section. The question was do I slip-seat. NO! I have my own truck!

Ok, about last Thursday. I had delivered near Orlando, FL on Wednesday afternoon and stopped in St. Augustine for the night. I drove up to Savanna, GA to pick up on Thursday morning. My shipper was located in the Port Of Georgia. It was a drop-hook, so I thought it was going to be no problem. Well, the directions said that when I got the a certain intersection, I would see the Port Of Georgia and I was to go 200 yards and turn into Gate 5. I got to the intersection and went 200 yards and found myself in the middle of about 300 container trucks. Now I knew something was wrong. I also knew that there was no way for me to get turned around and get out of there. I saw a sign that said Gate 4. Now I definatly knew I was in the wrong place, but there were about 15 lanes with more than 25 trucks in each of them lined up to go through the gate. I just figured the only way to get out was to go in and have the people running the place show me how to get out. I was in Lane 1, on the far right. I got to a scale in the lane, about 150 yards from the checkpoint and I pushed the button on the speaker to try to talk to some one. It took about 5 minutes, but a guy finally came on the speaker and said I was driving a "van" and that this gate was only for containers. Well, I told him that I had figured that out already and just needed to know how to get out. He said I needed to turn around and go back out through Lane 15. I asked him how I was supposed to do that and he said he didn't know, but that was what I needed to do. OK, so at least I knew what I needed to do. Cut across 14 lanes of trucks and just go out Lane 15. This was going to be fun. I started edging my was to the left and after about 10 minutes and pissing off about 20 other drivers I made it to the exit gate. The Police Officer there asked me for my pass. I told him I didn't have one because I never actually got in the gate. He the asked me for my troubld report saying I didn't get in the gate. I told him I didn't get in the gate to get one of those. He then told me I need to go get a trouble report. I asked where I was supposed to get on of those and he said at the gate. I asked him if I was supposed to go get in line again just to get to the gate to get a trouble report to get out. He looked at me in a confused way and told me to just go! I got out of Gate 4 and found that Gate 5 was up the street on the right about 1/8 of a mile. I got in there with no problem and was directed to a dropyard about 1 mile away. Interesting that I passed the other side of Gate 4 on my way to the drop. They could have let me in there, but I guess it really made a difference what gate I went in.

I found the dropyard, if that's what you want to call it. It was a huge dust pit with hundreds of trailers just parked every which way. I pulled up to a shack and a guy wanted to look at my empty to be sure it was clean and told me to slide my tandems all the way back before dropping my trailer. That was not fun at all. I was in a hole and the wheels just spun even with the differential lock in. What a pain in the ass! The entire dropyard was a dusty, hole ridden mess. I finally got the tandems back and stuffed the trailer back in one of the only empty slots there was. Not that there was any order to the dropyard. I found the loaded trailer I was supposed to pick up and it was nicely wedged against another trailer so I couldn't get to the landing gear crank. That was inportant because the right landing gear was in a hole causing the trailer to lean so much that when I tried to back under it, my drive wheels got stuck! So now I'm stuck under the trailer and I can't get to the crank to get unstuck. I found a yard driver and explained that he needed to move the trailer that was up against mine so I could crank the gear down and get unstuck. He looked at me like I was crazy. I explained it again and he finally moved the other trailer anout 3 inches. Gee, Thanks! I crawled under the trailers and got mine cranked up enough to get lout, but in the process, smashed my thumb. Damn! It was hot, humid, smokey, (from the wild fires), and I was a dusty mess.

I finally got out of the port after 2 hours of messing around. Just goes to show that drop & hook can sometimes be a real pain in the butt!

4-22-07 - Hometime and Lawn Mowing

2007-04-22T08:07:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been a long time since I've had the chance to write here. I spent 5 weeks on the road and now I'm home for a week. I cancaled my internet access from the truck stops because it's pretty expensive and not very reliable. Maybe I'll get one of those broadband cards for my laptop.

I left Denver on March 20th. The load I got was a bit different than most I haul. I had to pickup behind an office tower. There was no loading dock and I had to back through the parking lot around to the back of the building. They load was used filing cabinets. The load was hand-loaded by about 10 guys that didn't really look that happy to be hauling over a thousand cabinets down a freight elevator and up a ramp into a truck.

The loading took about 4 hours. It was a nice day, so I didn't mind too much. I had to deliver the load in Chicago on the morning of March 22nd. I had a day and a half to get it there. No problem.

On Thursday morning I found the delivery address. Yuck! It was a warehouse on the edge of a residential neighborhood. To get there, I think I rolled over several curbs and made alot of early morning commuters mad. Oh well. I squeezed into the tiny dock and they had me unloaded in about 2 hours. I like that.

I got out of there by 11:00am and started towards my next load. I was picking up a load of bicycles in southern IL. I got there by 4:00pm, but they wouldn't load me until 6:30pm. I got loaded pretty quickly, but I was out of hours for the day, so I found an abandoned warehouse with a large empty parking lot and put it to bed for the night.

My load was going to central FL, so I hit the road early the next morning and drove all day down through KY, and TN and into GA.

When I got to northern GA, I met my trainer from CR England for a late lunch. It was good to see him. He's still training for CRE. He's been with the company for 14 years, so he figures he'll just stick it out there for a few more years and then retire. I rolled south to the southern part of GA and stopped for the night.

My delivery was for around 11:00am on Saturday. I got there about an hour early and droped my trailer at the Walmart Dist. center and grabbed an empty. I got a load out of Perry, GA about an hour after I stopped and headed that way. I drove halfway to Perry and stopped for the day. My load didn't pick up until Sunday the 25th, so I stopped and got a shower and a good meal. On Sunday, I drove about 3 hours to Perry and got a preloaded trailer full of cardboard boxes and headed northeast through GA towards SC. I stopped at a nice rest area in northern SC for the night. On Monday the 26th I drove hard north through NC, VA, MD and into PA where I had to deliver on Tuesday. I stopped near Johnstown, PA and spent the night with some relatives I have in PA. It was a good chance to get laundry done and a good meal.

I delivered in Johnstown early on the 27th and got a load that had me deadhead to Mogodore, OH to get a relay load going to Bedford, PA. Back and forth across the Turnpike.

My next load was from Westminster, MD to a paper plant near Lynchburg, VA. I picked up in the afternoon and drove until late in the evening to deliver. The traffic around Washington, DC sucked! I hit the area at the perfect time. Evening rush hour. Yuck! I ended up on a four-lane highway with trafic lights all along it for my drive south to Lynchburg. YUCK Again! The plant I was going to was in the middle of nowhere. The roads around it seemed to all have "No Truck" signs on them. The directions they gave took me down a tiny little road. It was rainy and dark and there were at least 2 bridges I went under that said 13'5. That's an inch shorter that what I'm tall. The measurment must have been wrong, because I made it under them, very slowly. I got the delivery done finally and just stayed there for the night.

More to come tomorrow. It takes a while to get caught up!

3-15-07 - Thursday - Running Hard!

2007-03-15T18:29:00.000-06:00

Wow! It's been over 3 weeks since I have had a chance to update this blog. I will try to be more diligent in my attention to it.

I'm at the Bosselman's in Grand Island, NE this evening. I have until Saturday morning to deliver to a Walmart DC in Cheyenne, WY.

I started my lattest run last Monday by delivering to the Denver Pepsi distributor. My appointment was for 7:00 am. I didn't get to a door until 9:00 am. Oh well. I finally got unloaded and drove about 5 miles to pick up a load of pallets going to Whiteriver. I usually take the pallets to Whiteriver and get a load of baking soda going back to Denver. It's a good run that gets me about 480 miles for the day. Well, there was no load of baking soda waiting for me, instead my next load was out of Clearfield, UT. I got about half way towards UT and put it to bed in a little town just inside the UT border. There really wasn't a truckstop or rest area, I just stopped in a parking lot.

I got up on Tuesday morning really early. I usually try to start my day at about 6:00 am, but I needed to get about 150 miles out of the way and get to the customer by 7:00 am. I got up and started driving at about 3:30 am. OUCH! The pickup was pretty easy after I found the place. It was hidden in an huge industrial park and all the buildings looked the same and the street names and addresses really didn't make alot of sense. I did find the customer and they got me loaded in about 45 minutes.

I headed East and got to a truck parking area just east of Cheyenne, WY. Interesting note, I was on the phone with a guy I went to CDL school with. He is still driving for CR England, but is about to quit and find another company. He is getting further and further behind on his lease. Sucks to be an CRE driver.

I got over to my delivery in Smithton, PA on Friday at 12 noon. I dropped and went looking for an empty. They didn't have one. They had plenty of Roehl trailers, they just weren't unloaded. I counted at least three plus the one I brought. The customer just didn't have them unloaded.

I have family about 20 minutes from where I delivered, so I told my dispatcher that I would check back the next day for an empty. She was ok with that and it gave me a day to visit and hang out with my relatives.

On Saturday I again looked for an empty, but there still wasn't one. I called the weekend crew at Roehl and they sent me to another customer on the other side of Pittsburgh to look for one. There wasn't one there either. This was becoming really OLD! They finally just sent me bobtailing to Mogadore, OH to get my next load.

I picked up my next load at the Modagore, OH dropyard. I had to take it up to Westfield, MA. I had until monday to get there. I did most of my driving on Saturday and just rested on Sunday. It was the day that daylight savings time started, so it was good to have a day to get the body right with the clock.

On Monday morning I drove the last 20 miles to the delivery customer. I got there an hour early for my 9:30 am appointment. Well, they told me my appointment wasn't until 10:30 am. WHAT?!? They sent me away and told me to come back in an hour. Damn. There wasn't anywhere to go near the customer to just sit. They said I couldn't sit on their property. I drove around to the other side of their building, where the guards couldn't see me and waited. What's the worst that could happen. They could tell me to leave again. They never found me. I went back to the guard shack and finally got a door and got unloaded.

My next load was out of Ayer, MA. I had about 2 hours of drive time to get there and I had to be there in 1 hour. I called my dispatcher and she fixed the times. It really didn't matter. It was a preloaded trailer. I drop and hooked and headed south. I got down through MA, CT, and most of the way through NY on I-84 before I stopped and parked it for the night.

I drove West all day on Tuesday and Wednesday and stopped Wednesday evening in Concordia, MO. This morning I drove the last 125 miles to the customer in Lawrence, KS and delivered at 7:30 am. After I got unloaded I drove about 40 miles to the Kansas City drop yard and waited until about 12 noon for the trailer I was picking up to get there. I got the trailer and drove over here to the Bosselman's Pilot in Grand Island, NE.

I should be home by Saturday at Noon. Ahhh, a few days to do nothing around the house!

2-26-07 - Monday - Down in Tampa,,,

2007-02-26T17:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm in Tampa today. I delivered this morning and I leave out of here for Atlanta tomorrow. I ran out of hours, so I get to relax for a day.

I started out if Denver last Monday. I went up to Whiteriver, CO to get a load of baking soda. That's when the fun began. I didn't really read the load assignment closely. That was my fault. I got to Rifle, CO and called the shipper to let them know I was about an hour away. They said it would be ready when I got there. Well, I got there after an hour drive up the little two lane road into the mountains to Whiteriver and they said they had no record of a load for me. What??? I called my DM and we tried all kinds of load numbers, bill of lading numbers and PO numbers. Nothing. Then the guy at the warehouse asked if I was sure my load wasn't at the Rifle warehouse. The WHAT? I had no idea they had a warehouse in Rifle. I went back and pulled up the load on the Qualcomm and what do you know? The load was at the Rifle warehouse. I jumped in the truck and drove the hour back down to Rifle and of course, I drove right by the warehouse. Damn! I had to go about 2 miles out of the way to get back to it. Once I got to the warehouse, because it was President's Day, there was no one there. I saw the only Roehl trailer there and checked to see if it was the one I was getting. It was. I dropped and hooked the new trailer and then saw the sign that said the shipper wanted the trailers left with the doors open and swept out. The trailer I dropped was fairly clean, but it did need a little sweep out. They didn't want trailers swept out on the ground, but they didn't have a dumpster either. Guess what? Yup, the ground got it. Oh well.

The load I picked up was 44,000 lbs of baking soda. I usually weigh the truck before I hit the road, but there was no scale there and I didn't know where one was before I was going to hit the DOT scale near Denver. I did my best to guess where to put the tandems and got rolling.

I got to Denver with no issues from the DOT scale and parked it for the night and went to the house by 8:30 pm.

Tuesday I headed east. I had to take the load to Chicago by Thursday morning. The run across going east was uneventful. I stopped Wednesday afternoon about 30 miles south of Chicago. I got up at 3:30 am Thursday morning and headed up the road to the exit that the Qualcomm directions told me to and about 2 blocks off the highway I was looking at a bridge that was lower than my eye level. I backed up and went down another block and found the street that the customer was off of. The customer was on 42nd St. That's what the Qualcomm said. I passed 42nd Pl. and again came to a bridge that was only about 12'4". I called the customer and what do you know, they are on 42nd Pl. I love Qualcomm directions. NOT! I backed up about 6 blocks and turned down the right street and got to the customer about 5 am. Ontime. I sat at the dock waiting to be unloaded until 6 am and watched as 2 other trucks came and went. I got a bit impatient and went in to the dock area to find out why I was just being left to wait. Funny. As soon as I asked why I was being ignored, I got unloaded in 5 minutes. Go figure. I left the customer and in morning rush hour drove over to the Roehl terminal in Gary, IN.

They did a PM on my truck and replaced the passenger side windshield. It was cracked all the way across. While I was waiting I drove two other drivers to the South Bend IN airport. When I got back my truck was fixed and I headed out with a load to Omaha, NE.

The load to Omaha went well. I delivered to the customer and thought I would be getting a load heading back towards Denver. I ended up with a load from Muscatine, IA to Tampa, FL. I called and found that my DM was out of the office. That's probably why I went to FL and not to Denver. Oh well, it's really good miles. I headed east towards the shipper and stopped in DesMoines, IA for the night.

Saturday morning I headed to the shipper and ran into serious icing. My truck had about 2 inches of ice all over the front of it. The ice lasted until I got into southern IL.

At the end my driving day on Saturday, I stopped for fuel at a Loves near Mt. Vernon, IL and found that it was not open. They had a fire and everything was shut down. I ended up going back up the road about 10 miles to a TA and getting fuel there and then findinga rest area to stop for the night. That was a run around I really didn't need at the end of a long driving day.

Sunday was an even longer driving day. I got from southern IL to Ocalla, FL. This mornng I drove the last 135 miles to deliver. I had to help unload this load. I logged it so I would get paid. I was out of hours for the week so I found the closest TA and parked it.

Here are some pictures I took over the past months,,,

I'm not sure this is what the scale is really for!

This is what happens when a truck backs into another truck at a truck stop. OUCH!

This guy must be really bored. I saw him parked next to me and he's painting his tires with what looks to be "White Out" or some kind of house paint. He's using a little brush. He really needs a load!

2-18-07 - Sunday - Loving My Hometime!

2007-02-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

I havn't written in a few weeks, so I figure I will update the blog this morning. My truck was fixed on Tuesday the 6th and I headed out on a really good trip going east to get some miles on Wednesday. I ran some birdseed to Dallas, TX and then went up to Fayettsville, AR to get another load and took it to St. Louis and relayed it to another driver. I then got a load going back to Denver that delivered a day after I got there.

I have been mostly running between Denver and Whiteriver, CO. I'm home at least 4 nights a week and it's been working out that I'm home every other weekend. Good miles and good pay.

I did have quite the adventure last Wednesday coming back over Vail and Loveland Pass. It was late in the day and there was a ton of snow and ice on the roads. They didn't have the chain law in effect yet, so I ran it as best I could. Really slow and careful!

Other than that, driving for Roehl have been pleasantly uneventful. I have the time at home to get some projects around the house done, and I drive enough to get a good paycheck.

2-3-07 - Saturday - Broken Truck,,,

2007-02-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

Yup. My truck is a sick puppy. I started out yesterday, Friday, to go up to Wyoming to get a load of sugar and after I picked up my trailer and started up the entrance ramp to I-25, my truck decided that it wouldn't go any faster that 25 mph. It was about -5 degrees and there was 6-8 inches of snow on the road, but that really shouldn't have affected the truck. I got pulled over and almost instantly one of the courtesy patrols was behind me. The guy said I needed to get off the road. I understood and he told me that there was a parking lot just off of the next exit. I struggled to get there and called the Breakdown line at Roehl to explaining the situation.

I told the guy on the line that the truck wouldn't go any faster that 25 mph and that it was acting like the computer was shutting it down. He told me I had a clogged fuel filter and I needed to replace it. I really didn't think that that was the problem. I know what a truck feels like when the fuel filter is getting clogged, and this wasn't it. Then they wanted me to open the radiator cap and visually look to see that there was coolant in it. I could see by the sight gauge that the coolant level was ok, but I did what they wanted me to do. That was fun. Opening the radiator cap when it was at operating temperature.

Finally they let me drop my trailer at the Sapp Bros. and take the truck to the local International dealer. That's where it is now. I'm on some unplanned "hometime", and the truck will be fixed by Monday. Hopefully. I'm not making any money for these few days, but it's nice to have some time at the house.

1-29-07 - Monday - Rolling right along,,,

2007-01-29T21:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a bit since my last post, so I'll try to get everything caught up tonight.

Let's see. Last Tuesday I delivered to the local Toro distributor here in Denver. I got there at 7:00am, just like the directions said to do. Hmmm, interesting. they don't open until 8:00am. I guess the directions are a bit outdated. Anyway, I got docked and unloaded by about 9:30am. Not bad. Next I got direction to pick up a load of pallets at a pallet maker and take them up to a baking soda mine in Rifle, CO. I picked up a loaded trailer and headed up over I-70. It's only about 185 miles to the exit at Rifle, but it's also just about straight up. It took me about 5 hours to get to the Rifle exit and another hour to get the last 40 miles up into the mountains on a small ice and snow covered road to the customer. I got there at about 4:00pm. The sun was low on the horizon and the ice was pretty much a perfect glaze on the road and at the customer. I had to get a running start to get the trailer backed up against their dock. It was up a small incline and the compacted snow and ice made it really hard to get up. I did get docked and then unhooked and drove through about 6 inches of fresh snow to the back of the mine processing building to get an empty trailer to get loaded with 44,000 lbs. of baking soda to haul back to Denver.

I was finally loaded and ready to roll out of the customer at about 6:00pm. I decided that I was going to get back to I-70 before I parked it for the night. There was a Walmart Supercenter there and I wanted to do some shopping. The little two lane dirt road that ran about 10 miles back to where the pavement started again was ok. The dirt had absorbed alot of the melting ice water, so it was ok to drive on. When I hit the last 30 miles of small two lane paved road back to I-70, that was really slippery!

I got back to the Walmart and parked it for the night. There were signs that said "NO TRUCKS", but I just pulled in and parked next to the other trucks ignoring the signs.

I have to tell you that the best thing about my new truck is that I have a DirecTV receiver in it. I put it in when I was home for a few days last week and I love it. All I have to do is find South in the sky and spend about 5 minutes aiming the satellite dish and I have a zillion channels of TV. So much better than hoping for some local broadcast station.

On Wednesday morning I got up at about 5:00am and started driving East to Denver. I got there mid-morning and went to the Pallet company where I had been told to go by my Driver Manager to drop the load of baking soda. When I got there, the owner of the pallet company wanted to know what I was doing. I told him and he said he didn't have any extra room for any dropped trailers that weren't customers. I called my DM and told him this and was told to take the load to the Sapp Brothers truck stop and meet the relay driver. That's fine, but I was a bit irritated that I had to reconnect to the trailer and drag it some place else. I get paid to drive. Paid by the mile, not by the hook and unhook!

I got the load relayed to the other driver and got the empty from him. The next load I had was out of Sterling, CO. That's about 2 hours NorthEast up I-76. I hauled ass out of Denver and got the the customer at about 3:00pm. It turned out I was hauling sugar. They got me loaded pretty quick and I headed to a feed mill about 1/4 mile away to scale the load. Before I even weighed, I knew I was going to be heavy on my drives, so I tried sliding my tandems. No go. That's right. The old trailer I had was not going to let me slide the tandems. I beat on the the locking pins with my hammer and got really dirty fiddling with the pneumatic retracting mechanism, but it didn't matter, they weren't going to move. Oh well. I drove onto the scale and to my delight, I was just legal by about 400 lbs. on my drives. Cool!

I hit the road on some small county roads and back roads working my way down to I-70 so I could head East to Poteau, OK. I made it to Burlington, CO and stopped for the night.

Thursday was for driving. I pretty much just drove all day to Webbers Falls, OK. That was about 60 miles from my delivery point and also my refueling point. I fueled up and got the free shower that I got from Roehl buying 150 gallons of fuel. The shower felt so good! When you are on the road as a solo driver and you aren't lumping freight, you really only need to shower once every 3 days or so. Just be sure you shower before you go home to see your wife or husband. They probably wouldn't understand.

Friday morning I followed the GPS to Poteau, OK. This is a small town with a big bakery facility in it. I guess that's why they needed the sugar. I got docked and unloaded by 8:30am and was headed to Kansas City, KS to the Roehl drop yard there to relay a load back to Denver, CO! Cool!

On the way to to Kansas City I wanted to get my "trips" scanned before 11:30am cst so I would get paid for them by the following Wednesday. I needed to find a Pilot on the way. I tried faxing them and the fax number didn't work. Darn! I thought I found one in Fayettsville, AR, but I got off at the wrong exit and ended up wasting about 30 minutes driving down a 4 lane stop light ridden, shopping center infested road! I finally found the Pilot, thanks to my GPS, and got my "trips" scanned. Scanning is easier is there is a place to do it. I really didn't mind dropping the TriPac envelopes to get paid with CRE. Oh well, just something else to get used to. Did I mention that anything is better than CRE!

I got to Kansas City, KS at about 4:30pm and found the drop yard easily with the directions provided. The trailer I was looking for was there and I got it and headed West on I-70. I got to Junction City, KS and put it to bed for the night. There was a good Chinese Buffet restaurant there, so I had to help myself.

Saturday I raced back to Denver and was there at 3:00pm. My delivery didn't have to deliver until Monday at 8:00am. Oh, what's that? Yes, more home time, and still getting really good miles!

Monday I got up and did the delivery thing at the Toro distributor again. I was second in line, so I didn't get unloaded and clear until about 10:00am. Next I was to go to the Purina factory and grab a load and relay it to Fountain, CO. The only problem was that the load assignment didn't have an address to Purina. It just said Denver. That doesn't work. I finally got directions from my DM and picked up the load and ran it the 88 miles to Fountain, CO. When I got there I found that it was a typical grocery distribution warehouse. My appointment was at 2:30pm. I got there at 1:30pm. I got a door at 2:15pm and was unloaded at 3:00pm. OK, that's all well and good, but unloaded doesn't mean done. They have to "receive" what was unloaded. OK, so receive the stuff already! I didn't get out of there until about 4:30pm, and that was only after being very persistent about the need for me to get moving. I only had 2 pallets on the truck and one of them was only half loaded. Seriously, 4 hours to get it unloaded and counted.

I was to go back to the Pallet company in Denver and get a load going back out to the baking soda mine at 8:00pm, but I called the pallet company and they said the load going to the baking soda mine wasn't going to be ready until 3:00pm on Tuesday. I called my after hours service reps. and told them. They told me to hold tight till tomorrow morning when my DM would be in and figure it out. Fine with me. I dropped the trailer I had about a block from the pallet company and went home! I love this job!

So I'm home and it's time to get a good nights sleep before I go back to the crazyness of driving.

If you aren't reading this at:

http://a-truckers-journey.blogspot.com/

Your should be!

1-21-07 - Sunday - Snow!

2007-01-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

I really hate snow. I looked out the window this morning and we have more snow on the ground. I'm ready for Spring.

Time to go shovel the driveway.

1-20-07 - Saturday - Hometime

2007-01-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

I got home last night at about 6:30pm. It's so good to be home after only being out for 2 weeks.

I left Marshfield at about 10:00am on Thursday morning and headed about 2 hours south to Baraboo, WI to pick up a load of lawn equipment from a warehouse there. I found it with no problem even with out my GPS. I will have that from here on out. I left it at my house because I didn't want anyone with sticky fingers to steal it while I was at orientation. I picked up the loaded trailer and headed south on I39. I stopped at a rest area and called my fleet manager as I was told to. We talked for about 30 minutes about what he expected from me and his policys. He also pushed the delivery date for the load I'm on out to Tuesday so I could have 3 days at home. Cool!

I got to a rest stop about 50 miles east of Des Moines, IA and stopped for the night. I don't have any of my stuff in my truck right now, so there was no TV to watch and no cold drinks from the fridge. Not much at all, so I just went to bed.

Friday I started driving at 5:00am and stopped only once for fuel and a short break. I got to Denver at about 4:30pm. Long day of driving and used all my drive time, but I'm home.

I dropped the trailer at the local Sapp Bros. and locked the 5th wheel and put a huge lock on the trailer doors. I then drove the 20 minutes to my house that took me about 45 in the friday evening rush hour traffic. I'm thinking that I might just leave the entire truck parked at the truckstop in the future and just have my wife pick me up. Much easier.

Today, Saturday, I'm going to clean the truck out and move my stuff in. Make it home. Well, as much as it can be. I deliver tuesday morning, so I have 3 days to relax and not think about driving.

1-17-07 - Wednesday - Got My Truck!

2007-01-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a few days since I have written here, so here is an update. I was supposed to leave Friday evening. That didn't happen. My mentor lives here in Marshfield, so he decided to spend the night at home and we left on Saturday morning. I did get a hotel room and a van to use from Roehl that night, so it wasn't that bad.

Saturday we left from Marshfield and drove about 1 hour away to pick up a trailer that was load at a customer. The trailers I was pulling during this time with my mentor were curtain-side trailers. That's pretty much like a flat bed with a top and curtains along the sides. That means that anything loaded on it needs to be straped down. Pain in the ass.

We got the loaded trailer and I started driving. We got to Gary, IN around 3:00pm. Roehl has a terminal there. My mentor wanted to show it to me. I drove until late in the evening and got to around 50 miles from the KY border. I tried to sleep as best I could as my mentor drove for a few hours, well, it was more like 1 1/2 hours and he stopped. I didn't mind. I can't sleep very well when the truck is moving. That's why I drive SOLO! I could never team drive.

On Sunday morning, my mentor drove for anout 4 hours and I took over driving at around 10:00am. I drove us all the way to Charleston, SC where our delivery was. We got there on Sunday evening and the delivery wasn't until Monday morning, so we parked at a Super Walmart and got some dinner and called it a day.

Monday morning we drove about 5 minutes to our delivery customer and got there at about 7:00am. We were on time for the delivery, but the customer said they wouldn't be ready to unload us until 9:00am. I laid down and tried to get some more rest. They finally unloaded us and after closing the curtains on the trailer were finally on our way to our next pick up point.

We drove to Lugoff, SC, whih is near Columbia, SC and got loaded. Not much, just 4 big axles for heavy equipment. Again, we had to srap everything down and close the curtains. I like pulling vans. Simple. Open the doors and back up to a dock. Easy! None of the messing with straps and tie-downs.

We got lunch and a shower at the Flying-J in Columbia and I started driving. I got us all the way up past Lexington, KY before calling it quits at about 10:30pm.

Just a side note. It was about 8 degrees when we started this trip in Marshfield, WI, and it was in the 70's in SC. You have to be prepared for all kinds of weather and temperatures.

Tuesday morning we were in Gary, IN again. My mentor had driven most of the night to get us there. That meant that I had tried to sleep. But I didn't get much. I started driving at around 8:30am and we got into Marshfield late in the afternoon. My mentor wanted to go home for the night, so I got a bunk room and tried to catch up on some sleep.

We left at 3:00am for Owattana, MN to deliver our load. I was driving. Yuck. I don't like driving in the middle of the night. My body wants to sleep, no matter how much rest I get before I get going. Oh well. I did ok and we got to the delivery point in about 4 hours. We did the delivery thing. Unstrap, curtains, ect. Our pickup was from the same customer, but it wasn't going to be ready until 2:00pm. We went to a truck stop and I went to sleep for a few hours.

At 2:00pm we picked up again from the customer. Straping, curtains, ect!!! I hate flat bed work! I didn't drive back, I rode and got my stuff packed. At 6:00pm we got back into Marshfield and I got off the truck! I'm so glad. I like SOLO! Not team.

Roehl assigned me a truck so I could start moving my stuff into it. It's an International. I have never driven an International. It's a little bigger than the Freightliners I'm used to, but that's cool. It has about 186,000 miles on it and that's not bad for an over-the-road truck. I just hope it has good power to get up and over the mountains I'll be driving in out in CO.

Well, it's bedtime for me now. I've been up since 2:30am. I got the 3 hour nap, but I'm still beat. I already have a load to pickup tomorrow at around 9:45am. It's going to Denver!!! Homeward bound!

1-12-07- Friday - Almost out of here,,

2007-01-12T09:09:00.000-07:00

Today I got over to the Roehl terminal after another free breakfast at Perkins and at bout 8:00am my mentor called me. He told me we were headed to North Carolina for a Monday delivery. He lives right here in Marshfield and said we would get going at about 7:00pm. So I have the whole day to wait. I got a bunk room and I'm probably going to try to get some sleep. I figure if I get some good sleep, I will be able to drive tonight if he wants me to.

I'll try to keep the blog updated as much as I can. I'll be on the road for the next 7 days, so the postings here might be every couple of days instead of everyday.

Well, time for some rest now.

1-11-07 - Thursday - Still in Marshfield

2007-01-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

I'm still in Marshfield. I got up this morning and checked out of the Super 8 and drove over to the Roehl terminal. We stopped at the Perkins for a free breakfast and then spent the morning waiting to get picked up by our mentors. At noon we were still waiting and eating some cheese curds and pasta salad for lunch. After lunch we were still waiting. By 3:00pm we called the fleet manager and I found out that my mentor was still in MN. We asked what we should do and they sent us back to the Super 8 for another night. Oh well. At least I'm getting paid.

I really am ready to get rolling. The sooner I get this 6-7 day mentor program done, the sooner I can get my own truck and head back towards Denver.

Just a quick observation. There was a guy here going through orientation with us who went home today. He decided that he didn't want to drive for Roehl. That's fine, but his reason was a bit childish in my opinion. He was a very experienced driver who lives in Ohio. He talked to a recruiter who, he says, told him he wouldn't do ANY driving in the northeast. He didn't want to do any inner city driving in New York or any of the other big cities in the east. He didn't get this in writing, and who knows if he misunderstood his recruiter. Well, Roehl was ready to issue him his truck and had even issued him his locks and other gear. Yesterday, they put him in a rental car to drive to the terminal in Akron, OH. He got half way there and they called him and told him to come back to Marshfield to get his truck. I admit that he did get a little bit of a run around, but that's what this industry is about sometimes. So anyway, he got back here to Marshfield and said that his driver manager told him he would have to run to the east and to the cities he didn't want to run to. He got pissed and told Roehl that he wasn't going to work for them and he was going home. He got a ticket on Greyhound and was on a 19 hour ride home. Now, why would you come all the way to Marshfield, WI and think that you would be GUARANTEED not to drive to a certain place. That's not how this industry works.

That's my rant about that. Have reasonable expectations and understand that everything will not work out and things will not be perfectly what you hope for.

1-10-07 - Time for a Nap!

2007-01-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

Today we went over to the Roehl terminal and most of the others either went with their trainers or got rental cars to go back to their home terminals. Today another group of drivers started orientation. Mondays and Wednesdays they start driver orientation. Anyway, at 8:00am one of the orientation managers told me and 2 others to go ahead and go back to the hotel and be back tomorrow. My mentor driver will be in Marshfield tomorrow. I went back to the hotel and took a long nap. Nice!

Also, they gave us 3 meal vouchers and put us on the payroll. Great! I'll take $100 and three meals to wait. Time to get some dinner now. I hope by this time tomorrow I'm rolling down the road getting my mentor time done. It should be 5-7 days.

1-9-07 - The Van Driver

2007-01-09T15:24:00.000-07:00

That's me. The van driver. Oh well. Today we finished orientation and got all the rest of the employment paperwork done. We got our payroll and other important things taken care of also. I got a $3000 signing bonus. Cool! It gets paid out over the course of about 120,000 miles, but it's money I'm happy to get.

It was REALLY COLD here today. REALLY COLD! What am I saying, it's Wisconsin in winter. Of course it's going to be COLD!

Tomorrow I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be doing. I was told this afternoon that I wouldn't be leaving until Thursday to go out with a mentor for 5-7 days before I get my own truck. Some of the others are leaving tomorrow. It's ok. I'll just relax at the hotel for another day. Not my choice. Just how things happened. Maybe I'll take my camera over to Roehl tomorrow.

1-8-07 - Orientation

2007-01-08T16:30:00.000-07:00

I'm in Marshfield, WI now going through orientation for Roelh. It is such a difference than my experience at CRE. Roehl is paying for my room at a Super 8 hotel, they also provide a really good catered lunch and a dinner voucher for the Perkins here for $8.50. A good deal all around.

Today I met about 7 other drivers in the hotel lobby at 7:00am. We rode in a van over to Roehl and started by filling out some employment paperwork and getting a physical and drug test. At about 8:00am I took the driving test which was driving around for about 20 minutes and backing up once.

They served us lunch and the afternoon was a class on the Roehl driving philosophy. We got back to the hotel at about 5:00pm.

Just a side note. I did my best trying to avoid the orientation instructors eyes when he was looking for someone to drive the van, but it didn't matter, I ended up getting picked to drive it. Oh well.

Time for some dinner now. Tomorrow is going to be more classes and paperwork. By Wednesday I should be going out with a mentor for 5-7 days and then I get my truck. I'm really looking foward to getting my truck and heading back toward Denver!

1-6-07 - On the Road to Another Job!

2007-01-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick update for everyone following my story. I'm in Grand Island, NE tonight. I picked up my rental car at DIA, (Denver International Airport), at 1100 am today and headed out on I-76 to I-80 and made it about 370 miles into NE.

I'm on my way to Marshfield, WI, so I have about 10 hours of driving to do tomorrow. When I stopped, I first stopped at the Holiday Inn Express and they told me the rate for the night was $76. I drove away as fast as I could and about 1/4 mile away was the Motel 6 at the Bosselman Travel Center. They only wanted $39 for the night and the hotel was brand new. I got a room there and turned on some good Discovery Channel. I love Dirty Jobs! The show, not in real life!

I'm going to get some sleep and hit the road early tomorrow morning.

FYI - I'm working on a message board for anyone interested in trucking and I'm going to try get forums set up for as many trucking companies as I can. This will give anyone interested in the trucking industry a one-stop place to get the low down on as many companys as possible.

1-1-07 - Hometime and so many changes,,,

2007-01-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

OK, it's been almost a month since I have updated this blog. That was not on purpose, but the lack of a good internet connection and how busy I was, made it really hard to keep this updated. That will change soon!

OK, here's the deal, I'm not with CR England anymore. I was not making very much money and I never got home. I always said I would tell the truth about my experiences and I won't stop that now. I had a really good attitude about the leasing program from the time I started at CRE. The idea of being a company driver at .26 cents a mile was nuts, so I naturally was attracted to the leasing program that CRE offered. I'm not going to bad talk the company. I'm not here to do that. I'm only going to tell it like it was. Just like I have since the beginning.

CRE is a great place to get your CDL. I really believe that. They never taught me anything but the safest way to operate the equipment. That said, I'm not sure about their leasing program. I mean, it would work if I got the miles. I only got over 3000 miles one week in the 6 that I drove for CRE. I didn't just take it laying down either. I let the manager of the DM's know that I couldn't survive on the 2200 average weekly that I was driving. I got a few good trips, but I never could get ahead. I know there will be some out there that will say "I told you so.", but I don't care. I did my best and never turned down a load or was ever late.

OK, it's been several weeks since my last blog entry, so I don't remember all the specifics, but here is everything in a nutshell. I ran back east to Philadelphia and New Jersy. Great! Good miles! Now the downer. The toll roads across PA cost me over $150.00. That isn't reimbursed. That's alot of cash out my pocket to get a load going east. I'll drive anywhere. I don't care about driving east or northeast. I just don't want to PAY for it!

I met my parents in western PA for lunch on my way back west. That was probably the only good thing about running across the PA turnpike and having to pay for it out of pocket and no reimbursment. Anyway, had a good visit with my parents and got back west to just west of Columbus, OH.

My load at the time was going to east central IL. I can't even remember the exact town, but I got it there and then ran up to Chicago to pick up a load of Shampoo going to Dollar General Stores in southern OK. About that time I started calling around and looking for another job.

I really had no intention of not continuing with CRE. I started this career with intention of just doing the driving thing that I liked so much and not worrying about the details. I figured everything would work out in the end, no problem. That's fine if you have no bills or obligations.

Wow, I though I lost everything I typed. Computers can be so frustrating. Anyway I contacted a company that would pay me .32 cents a mile and let me buy medical coverage for my family for about $212.00 a month. That's less that half the cost for an IC for CRE. They also guaranteed me hometime of about 3 - 4 days for every 17 days on the road. How could I resist. I did the right thing and told my DM that the load I was on would be my last for CRE.

The big screw-you was yet to come. I got to south central OK and was ready to deliver at 9:30 am in the morning. I even got there a few hours early. Then the people at Dollar General told me that the appointment for my load wasn't until 9:30 pm! What??? That's 12 hours from now. I told my DM and he said there wasn't anything he could do, I would just have to sit there. That was total comfirmation that I had done the right thing by finding other employment. As an IC, sitting for 12 hours is suicide for the weekly paycheck.

I got the load delivered at 9:30pm and the next morning I headed straight for home in Denver, CO. I stopped in western Kansas. The snow was crazy. I got home the next evening and instantly got stuck in the snow about 50 feet from where I was trying to park my truck. I really hate snow!

A guy with a frontend loader came along and pulled me out. I offered to pay him a bit for his trouble, but he just said "Merry Christmas, go enjoy your family", and drove off. What a great holiday gift!

I spent Christmas at home and on the following Tuesday drove the truck back to Salt Lake City and turned it in on Wednesday. I'm glad to be out from under that obligation. I wanted to post my pay statements so everyone could see what exactly the miles were and what the pay ended up being, but CRE instantly deleted my account on the CRE website to allow me to see anything. Oh well. I will say that the miles I was getting were no where near what was needed to suceed.

I got hired by another company that will have me home every 7-10 days for 2-3 days and they pay "practical miles", that's what the truck actually rolls, not the map miles zip to zip. Starting at .32 cents per mile and the health plan for family is only $53 a week. The CRE IC health plan totaled over $500 a month!

So, anyway, I leave for orientation with Reohl Transportation on Saturday. It will take me 2 days to drive up to Marshfield, WI where their headquarters is, but the cool thing is that they are getting me rental car and paying my hotel on my way up there. It's a better feeling already.

As with everything I have written so far, I will be true to what has happened and keep it real. I'm not going to badmouth CRE. I just found a better opportunity. If anyone wants to pump my brain about my 4 month experience with CRE, please email me at skyviper73@yahoo.com and I will try to reply asap. Understand that I will be on the road alot, but I will do my best to respond.

That's what's up. A new job at a new company. I'll actually see my family without costing myself tons of money by parking the truck for a few days. I'm looking foward to the new year and a new direction. I'll keep the blog going as best I can. The good, the bad, everything!

12-6-06 - Wednesday - Haulin' Broccoli

2006-12-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been over a week since I have had an internet connection that was decent enough to do more than check email. Well anyway, I'm in Little Rock, AR tonight. I got a good dinner and I get some good reception on the TV, so it's a good evening.

To bring you up to date on the past week, it started on wednesday on my way out of Grand Island, NE. I ran on all the little country back roads going south. Very pretty country. As the sun was setting I got to Tucumcari, NM. About the same time that I got to NM, it started snowing like crazy. By the time I got just 15 more miles down the road, it was really coming down. They closed I-40 and I ended up parking it for the night. I woke thursday morning and did my best to crawl down I-40. I hit US 54 south and again started my crawl south.

It was slow going for the first several hours. At about noon, the snow on the road turned to slush and then to just wet roads and then finally to just beautiful dry roads and sunshine.

I delivered in El Paso and parked it for the night. A few words about the delivery. I got there at about 2:00 pm and ended up waiting till about 5:00pm to start getting unloaded and they were done by about 6:30pm. The door I had to back into was crazy too. It was on a strange angle and there was another building straight across from it. Pain in the ass.

Friday I woke up and waited for a load. By 10:00 I still didn't have a load. My DM, (driver manager), sent me on a deadhead trip, (a trip with no load), up to Friona, TX. I started out of El Paso and got about 20 miles before I got another message from my DM to go ahead and go directly to Laredo, TX. OK, so I turned around and headed towards Laredo. I got about 150 miles across I-10 and my DM sent me yet another message. I was to go up to Friona to get a load of meat from Excel meats going to El Paso. I guess he didn't really know what was up. Anyway, I dialed up Friona on the GPS and got to within about an hour of Friona and stopped at a truck stop on some back TX road with about 5 spots for semi's. I squeezed in and put it to bed for the night.

Saturday I loaded at about 11:00am at the Excel meat plant in Friona. I wasn't schedualed to load till 11:00pm, but I got there and they were ready. You never know, sometimes things go right.

I drove down to Big Springs, TX and stopped at the TA there. The trailer I picked up was a bit damaged. The mud flap bracket on the right side of the trailer was bent down so badly that the mud flap was dragging the ground. I didn't want to risk getting stopped by the police, so I stopped at the TA to get it fixed. Because it's a problem with the trailer, I don't have to pay for it.

On sunday I got down to Encinal, TX, about 10 miles from where I was to deliver at 3:00am monday morning. I delivered with no problem and waited for a reload. By 3:pm monday afternoon I told my DM I would be waiting at the Pilot truckstop about 10 miles away. I didn't get a load until 2:00pm on tuesday afternoon. Ouch! I got my 34 hour restart to reset my working hours, but sitting like that isn't good.

My load was from Laredo to Bells, TN. I grabbed the loaded trailer from the CRE drop yard in Laredo and got up to close to San Antonio before I stopped. I grabbed a shower at the Loves and watched some TV.

Today I drove about 600+ miles to Little Rock, AR and stopped at a Petro and ate dinner and again enjoyed some network TV. Tomorrow I expect to get up at about 6:00am and drive the last 3 hours to my delivery. I will be asking for a reload before I deliver with the hope of keeping rolling.

Below are some pictures from the past week.

Farm country in Nebraska

Small town Nebraska

Strike One! Pickup truck in the ditch,,,

Strike 2, horse trailer in the ditch,,,

Fair weather in south New Mexico!

11-28-06 - Tuesday - In a cave!

2006-11-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

Today I delivered in a cave. That's right. I got up at 3:00am and drove about 35 miles down to Kansas City and found the delivery customer. It was a cold storage facility in an industrial park called "Subtropolis". The worlds largest underground industrial complex. Miles and miles of roads underground and warehouses and offices. I found out that the entire complex is an old lime stone mine.

Anyway, I got my delivery done and by 8:00am I was waiting for another load. About an hour later I got my load assignment. I was to pick up in Schuyler, NE and run a load of meat to El Paso, TX. I got to Schuyler at about 2:00pm and was on the way by 3:00pm. I stopped in Grand Island and put it to bed for the night.

Below are some pictures I shot recently.

The clear blue sky in Utah a few days go.

The Rocky mountains in Utah.

My truck docked in the underground.

This is a view of the roads underground.

One of the many entrances to the underground.

11-27-06 - Monday - It's all about the weather!

2006-11-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

The weather the past few days has been good, bad, and ugly. I picked up from the customer in Tacoma, WA on Friday morning. I got 24,000lbs of shrimp cocktail rings with cocktail sauce. Yummy! Unfortunatly, I have to haul the load, not eat it.

I got as far as the Blue Mountains in Oregon and put it to bed for the night. When I woke up, there was about 8 inches of snow piled around the truck and on the roads. I did my best to clean the snow off the hood of the truck and crawled up the road. It was about 530 am and there wasn't much traffic on I-84, but the trucks I did see had their chains on. I was already pretty much up the mountain, so I just pushed through it at about 20 mph.

Later in the day after I got down towards Boise, ID, the weather really cleared up. I cruised down through Utah and into Wyoming before stopping for the night. I stopped in Ft. Bridger and got a shower and watched some local TV.

A word about TV in the truck. The truck has some sort of built in TV antenna that has a connection behind where the TV goes. Usually, I can tune in something. After I get to my house next time, I hope to rig something that will hold my spare DirecTV antenna. Untill then, I will deal with broadcast TV.

Sunday I made good time. Blazing across Wyoming and into Nebraska. I got to about 25 miles from where I was planning to stop in Grand Island, NE and traffic came to a halt. The road had been wet and possible icy. Well, it was very icy for the cars that crashed on the bridge near exit 291. We all sat there for about 2 hours while emergency crews cleared the road. Unplanned delays, gotta love it.

I had a good dinner and a goodnights sleep in Grand Island, NE. Monday I headed out and the roads were still pretty slick so it was slow going untill I got a bit further south. I stopped in St. Joseph, MO and called the customer in Kansas City to see if I could deliver early. That wasn't happening. They only take deliveries from 6-9 in the morning. I parked it and found some local TV to watch and got connected to the internet.

I'm going to get some good sleep now. I have to get up way early tomorrow.

11-23-06 - Thursday - Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm spending this day of giving thanks in Tacoma, WA. It's really rainy here. I think I saw the Ark floating by. Seriously. It's soooooo wet and rainy here.

I delivered the load to Puyallup, WA last night. I got there at 8:30pm and was told that they didn't open till 10:00pm. The guard told me that I couldn't et into the yard till 9:30pm. I asked where I was supposed to go with my truck and she told me she thought there was a bar about a mile down the road that she had seen some trucks parked at. I really thought that was crazy. Oh well. I drove about 100 yards down the road and found an empty parking lot next to a office/industrial park and slide in there for about an hour.

At 9:30pm I went back to the customer and the guard let me in and sent me to door #64. The last door on one side of a 150 yard building. I parked and walked to the other end of the building where the receiving office was. I got there and was second in line to check in. OK, I then realized that I had left my silly little guard issued ID badge that the security guard gave me, back in the truck. Damn. I asked the other driver there if I neede it. He said yes, they will ask for it when they check me in. Oh well. I walked back to door #64 in the pouring rain and got my silly little guard issued ID badge from my truck. I got back to the receiving office and was now about number 8 in line. Damn. OK, I finally got up to the window and gave the receiving clerk there my paperwork for the load. She spent a few minutes looking at my paperwork and told me to move my truck to door #117. Damn. I hate doing the truck shuffle! Why? I mean, why would I be sent to one door, just to be sent to another one. This feels like I'm back in the Army! Crazy!

I backed into door #117 and went into the dock area to find the lumpers, (people that unload the trucks). I found the guy that was in charge of the lumpers and waited in line to talk to him about the cost to unload the 12,000lbs that I was hauling. After waiting about 25 minutes I got to the guy and asked him how much it would cost. He told me $50.00. No problem. I raced back to my truck to request from CR England the info to fill out the check to pay the guy. I waited about 15 minutes and got the codes and numbers to fill out the check and ran back to the dock.

I got back to the lumper guy in time to wait in line again for another 20 minutes. I paid the lumper guy and went back to my truck to wait. At about 1:30am my light went green on my dock door and I went in to the dock to get my paperwork. Long time to wait to get 7 pallets unloaded. Oh well.

I found my way to the local "Flying J" truck stop, but as you can imagine, at 2:00am, it's packed and no parking spaces available. I found a Travelodge Hotel near the truck nstop that had a parking space for a truck. I got a room for 2 nights and put it to bed for my 34 hour restart.

Below are some pictures from the past week.

This is my truck. Truck 92714!

This is my truck in front of my house.

Here in Jackson, WY delivering some beer.

A view of the mountains above my pickup point in Ogden, UT.

More to come next week!

11-20-06 - Monday - Snow, Ice & More!

2006-11-20T22:03:00.000-07:00

I left out of Denver and grabbed a load from the Budwieser brewery in Ft. Collins going up to Jackson, WY. No problem. The load assignment didn't say anything about needing loadlocks. The Budwieser people seemed to think they were pretty important. I bummed 2 of them off of another driver and all was good. I was really heavy comming out of the customer and spent about 45 minutes sliding the tandems back and forth. The drive up to Jackson was pretty uneventful. There were 70 mile an hour wind gusts going across i-80, so it was slow going. I put it to bed somewhere along a small two lane road in upper WY. It was already looking pretty snowy, but the next morning when I headed up the road for the last 100 mile to the customer, it was nice a slick. Packed snow and ice on the little two lane mountain road. Fun, Fun FUN! NOT!

I made the drop and headed towards the second drop in Twin Falls, ID and found out along the way that the customer for that drop didn't want the delivery until Monday. That was three long days away. My DM had me stop where I was and wait till he could figure something out. He had me bring the last of the beer load back to Salt Lake and then grab a load out of Ogden in the morning. I spent the night at the SLC yard and got the Ogden load going to Phoenix the next morning.

Saturday was a beautiful day. I had the load and headed south. The Grand Canyon area is so amazing. I figure as long as I'm riding all over the country, I might as well try to enjoy the scenery.

I stopped for the night in Tuba, AZ. Cool name. It was dark when I got there and Dark when I left, so I have no idea what it actually look like there.

I got to the customer in Tolleson, AZ, which is right in Phoenix, at about 9:45 am. My appointment was for 3:00 pm. I begged them to take me early so I could get on to my next load before it got too late. Well, they got me into a door at about 12 noon. I paid the $140 lumper fee, (England reimburses all lumper fees), and waited while they unloaded me. I didn't get out of there until 5:00 pm. OUCH! I fueled as quick as I could and raced down to Casa Grande to pick up my next load.

I got the load of nutritional supplements and put it to bed for the night just west of Phoenix. The load is only 12000 lbs., so I'm making really good fuel economy. Saving money and running a long trip up to a customer just south of Tacoma, WA.

Can't upload pictures from here, I'll upload them as soon as I'm not on the road trying to do everything wirelessly at a truckstop.

11-14-06 - Tuesday - Chores

2006-11-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

Chores! Yup. That's how it works. I did my share of chores today, but that's ok. While I was at driver training and OTR training and CAT training, my wife bought a beautiful new house here in the Denver area and we have been spending the past few days getting it ready to move into. This morning I was busy breaking down boxs and stuffing packing material into one big box. Our furniture and other household stuff just arrived from Germany, where I was last stationed in the Army, about 10 days ago, so it's been a busy time getting the house back to a little likeness of normal.

I did take some pictures of the outside of my truck this morning when the sun was shinning and I will have them posted as soon as I download them off of my camera. My camera is in the truck right now and it's cold as hell outside, so I will get it tomorrow and upload them. Also, as per a request I got, I will take some pictures of the sleeper and cab and post them too. Give me a few days.

I will also post a picture of what's left of my TV. That's right, the careful and considerate government contracted movers destroyed my TV. It's actually really amazing how destroyed it is. I mean, it's in a zillion pieces. Pictures to come.

I should get some sleep now. I have to be up at 730am to wait for the phone comapny to come hook up service at my new house. They will be there between 8am and 530pm. That's a huge window. I wonder if I told them I would be there between 8am and 530pm and they could just wait for me to get there, if that would work? Probably not. I am at their mercy. I also have DirecTV coming tomorrow to get the TV thing setup for my wife. I want to get everything setup as much as possible before I hit the road again on Thursday.

That's all for now.

11-14-06 - Tuesday - Answers!

2006-11-14T00:19:00.000-07:00

It's really late here now, or early, I'm not sure which. I was just reading some of the comments about this blog and I'm going to try to answer some of them while I'm at home with a good internet connection.

~john said...

"Hey does CRE pay a driver referral bonus?"

The answer is yes. But, I would only personaly refer a person that I believed would be a good potential driver. There is so much that is involved in being a sucessful professional driver, I would only want to steer a good candidiate into the profession. But, to answer the question as clearly as possible, England has a very good recruiting program that rewards drivers that find other good drivers to join the England team.

devildice said...

"I even spoke to one CRE driver about 3 weeks ago at a TA about it and he also confirmed it was almost impossible to stay ahead.

I am assuming that you also crunched the numbers and everything worked out other wise you would not be signing a lease. So my question to you is......how can you do it? What is the secret?"

OK, there are many drivers at England. Many thousand to tell the truth and each one will have his or her own experience. If a driver is willing to never turn down a load and do whatever the Driver Manager asks of them, they wil be sucessful. England wants it's lease operators to be sucessful. England doesn't make money unless the drivers do.

There are some drivers that spend alot of time sitting in truck stops waiting for a GOOD load or spending too much time at home there are many ways to fail, there is only one way to be sucessful. The secret, do the right thing! It's your business, treat it as such. Being sucessful or not is entirly dependant on you the driver.

I hope this answered some questions. I will keep blogging as much as I can. I believe that the more information that is presented to potential drivers the better. There are so many misconceptions and driver tales out there, I hope to be the voice of truth. Driving is a great job, as long as the expections are realistic.

Two more days of home time and it's back on the road for me!

11-12-06 - Sunday - Home Time!!

2006-11-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

I'm home! For the first time in about 2 1/2 months, I'm home for a few days. Actually I'll be home for about 5 days and it's great. I miss my wife and son so much, it's absolutly wonderful being home!

I went through the lease signing process on friday afternoon. It took from 12 noon till about 5 pm. Long afternoon and it seemed to drag on forever. We all just wanted our permit books and to get on the road. I was one of the lucky ones. I got a load going home to Denver friday evening.

After the long drawn out afternoon of signing papers I got out of Salt Lake with a K-Mart load to Brighton, CO and hit I-80 east at about 630pm. I drove until about midnight and stopped in Rawlins, WY for the evening. I delivered in Brighton on Saturday, but not after getting lost in farm country in Colorado looking for the K-Mart distribution center.

I have my GPS navigation system and CB now and am in the process of installing them in the truck. I will never be lost again and that is good for a number of reasons. Being lost and off-route is dangerious and it costs money for the independant contractor in the way of fuel and time. Never again!

For now I'm happy to be home and I'll be on the road again on November 16th. As happy as I am to be home, I'm looking foward to running hard and bringing in some good money before Christmas.

I'll get some pictures up on here soon of my new truck. Look for me and give me a wave, I'm in England truck 92741!

11-9-06 - The Finish Line!

2006-11-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

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!

11-2-06 - Thursday - On the road again,

2006-11-02T09:57:00.000-07:00

I should be getting back on the road this afternoon. The guy I'm going out with is leasing his truck today so hopefully by late this afternoon we will have a load and get going. I'm not going to take everything that I took with me before. I figure I will only be out for about 6 days max so I don't need to bring everything. That said, something will probably go wrong and I'm be screwed with out my boots and other stuff I'm leaving back here in my car. Oh well, we will see.

I will try to get to an internet connection sometime later this week, but if not, I should be back here by next Wednesday at the latest, Tuesday evening would be even better and I'll be able to update the Blog and check my email at that time.

11-1-06 - Wednesday - Gotta Go Back Out,,,

2006-11-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Salt Lake City now. My screwball CAT first seat told me that I was ready for my lease and dropped me off in Dallas, TX yesterday. I could have waited for a truck to take me back to Salt Lake, but I decided that I wasn't going to waste time waiting for that or a ride on the Grey Dog, (Greyhound Bus), so I got a flight out of Dallas, TX to Salt Lake last night. I went to CRE this morning and found out that I still needed about 7 days in the CAT program. Ouch! I thought I was done. Oh well.

First, a little detail about the past day or so. We left out of Denver Sunday afternoon and I drove out east on 70 and then south on 287 towards Dallas. I got to within about 150 miles of our first of two deliveries on this trip by about 1100 pm. I went to bed and my First Seat drove the rest of the way. Well, at about 0330 he woke me up and was asking me to help him with directions to the delivery point. We had directions on the Qualcom to the customer, but they weren't very clear. They were perfectly clear when you looked at the map. I struggled to wake up and did a little map reading, (something he could have done if he wasn't busy asking me to help him), and found the correct routing. We were only about 20 miles out of the way, thank goodness. So much for a good nights sleep. I napped for a bit while the first half of our meat load was unloaded, but it wasn't good sleep. At about 900 am I started driving again.

We stopped a few times on the way down to our second drop in San Antonio and I used the direction on the Qualcom and a call to the customer to find the customer. It was even dark, and in the middle of an industrial park. I found it. It's amazing how easy this job is if you have half a brain. My co-driver was in the sleeper watching TV. I didn't bother him to help me find the place, I just used my half a brain and had no problem.

We ended up parking on the street outside the customer for the night. The customer didn't take any early deliveries. Oh well. That's how it happens sometimes. I did get a good nights sleep.

A side note now. My co-driver got a call from his ex-girlfriend that he has two children with ages 18 months and 3 years. Turns out that after being separated for about 6 months, they want to get back together. Another little detail, his ex-girlfriend is 5 months pregnant with someone elses baby. Wierd. He was on the phone with her for hours.

I woke at about 530 am when the dock manager came around to all the parked trucks to line us up and assign us dock doors. My co-driver woke me up by telling me I had to back up into the dock because he was too tired to back the truck. I told him it wasn't my turn to drive. He bitched some more, but I didn't change my tune. I was in the middle of my 10 hours of rest. He bitched some more. I didn't care. I went back to sleep and listened as my co-driver scraped the trailer landing gear on the bump in the driveway leading to the docks. I had seen this bump with scrapes and chunks out of it the previous evening and told him about it. He would need to go over it at an angle to avoid scraping the landing gear on it. He didn't listen. I don't care.

On Tuesday morning my co-driver decided that he wanted to go home to Oklohoma to get his girlfriend. He told me I was ready to lease a truck and that I could catch a ride out of Dallas to Salt Lake on another truck or maybe a bus. I elected to fly instead. That's how I got back here to Salt Lake City.

I was sure to tell CRE about how scary it was to ride with my co-driver. Tailgating, speeding, space management, and a total lack of driving sense. They said that the previous second seat driver with him had said the same thing and had even stated that he thought he was "going to die". My only concern is that CRE sent me out with him after hearing this. Serious concern. I guess they waited to hear it from two drivers so they could see that it was not just a personality conflict, it was a real issue. They told me that he was now not "elligible" for a second seat CAT. At least no one else will be subjected to the near death experience that I was. My only continuing concern is that he is on the road driving and so is my family and to that extent so is everyone elses. I hope he doesn't hurt anyone.

So here I am. Tomorrow I'm going to meet a friend at 200 pm at CRE and we will get on the road. The guy I am going to finish my second seat CAT time with was in my initial training class but he got finished a bit earlier than I did because he had previous experience. I like and trust him, so it should be a good 6 or 7 days. I hope we just get a load going east and then another one going west again. That should get me back to Sal Lake to lease my truck next week sometime. So close, yet so far. I am really looking foward to getting out on my own.

Time to relax and get ready for tomorrow.

10-29-06 - Sunday - Back HOME!!!

2006-10-29T09:16:00.000-07:00

I am back home in Denver! That's right. It's only for a day because our load dowesn't have to be in Dallas until Monday morning, but this is the first time I have been home in 8 weeks.

To recap the week, my CAT first seat picked me up in Mira Loma, CA on Satruday morning and we picked up a load going to Salt Lake City. My first seat CAT is a 22 year old driver that has been leasing his truck for about 2 months. He sort of knows what he is doing, but it's kind of like we are dumb and dumber running the truck. He doesn't follow the CRE policies too much which is frustrating to me because as a new driver I am pretty much by the book. I want to do things the right way before I start cutting corners. So the week has been pretty tense for me as I try to keep my mouth shut about doing things right and not blowing things off. I only have about one more week on the truck with him, so I think I can make it. He says he will try to drop me off in Salt Lake City by Friday or Saturday. That would be great. Then I can lease my own truck and start rolling and making my own money. Right now I'm only making 11 cents a mile for all the miles the truck is rolling. Not much, but it's the experience that matters. Well, enough about that.

We got to Salt Lake City late Saturday night and dropped our trailer and picked up another one going to Rock Island, IL. I started driving about 0300 Sunday morning in western WY on I-80. It was fine for about 65 miles then we hit fog, then a little ice on the road, then alot of black ice and other slippery stuff on the road. YUCK! We sat for about an hour while a flipped over semi truck was cleared from the road and then slowly made our way down the road. At Larimie, WY, the roads cleared up nicely and it was smooth running from there on. I hit the bunk after my driving shift and when I woke we were at our delivery point. We didn't have a reload yet, so we both rested till morning when we got a load out of Wenona, IL. It was about an hour and a half run down to Wenona and when we got there we picked up our load going to Hershey, PA. It was a load of chocolate or something. We ran through Chicago and I got a shower along the way. We were running pretty much ahead of schedual, so when I stopped driving at 2300, we just parked it and we both slept till morning. My co-driver drove all day tuesday to our delivery point and then I started driving to our reload point that was only about 20 miles away in another town near Hershey, PA. The problem was that the directions we got took us through the town itself. Bad, very BAD! We should have stayed on the highway, but we followed the Qualcom directions. We had to go under a bridge that was only 13'6". There was probably only about a hairs clearence. When we did get to the pickup point the guard at the gate wouldn't let us in with the trailer we had. It smelled like onions and garlic. I guess Hersheys doesn't want their chocolate smelling like that. So I had to drive about 12 miles down the road to a truck washout place and then go back to the customer. OK, the truck got washed out, but it still smelled and they wouldn't take it. Back to the truck wash and this time we put our own soap in the trailer before they sprayed it out. The customer finally let us in with the trailer and we picked up and I drove down I-81 to where I-40 intersects with it and we headed west. I stopped driving at about 0700 and gladly went to bed.

OK, now the interesting part. We were in western Arkansas when we got a message to go to Miami, OK and trade loads with another driver. I was driving and it was about 2200 when we got the message to trade loads. We got some directions that made it seem like it wasn't that far away, but it took about 4 hours to get to where they were supposed to be. We exited at the exit that we were told to, but the other truck wasn't there. We drove around for over an hour in the middle of the night in a tiny OK town. Finally we say a CRE truck at a rest area on the highway near the exit we got off at. We were behind the rest area with about 200 yards of field between us and the rest area. The highway was a toll road, so we weren't going to get back on it and try to circle around to get to the rest area, it was over 30 miles to the next exit to turn around. So, I grabbed my flashlight and took off through the field. I bang on the truck for about 5 minutes before they woke up and I told them to meet us at the Super 8 motel near where we were off the highway. They had their CB turned off, they weren't answering the Qualcom calls we were making to them, and they didn't give dispatch their cell phone number. Dumb, very dumb.

We got the load from them and headed to Phoenix, AZ. They got our load going to Redlands, CA. I drove for a while longer and it was time for bed. What a night. I started driving again in Alberquerqe, NM and took us to Phoenix. It was uneventful. We got to Phoenix at about 0300 in the morning and dropped our trailer and grabbed an empty one. We didn't get a reload till morning and it was to trade trailers with another driver in Phoenix and head to Loveland, CO. We did that and headed back where we came from up the 76 and across the 40 to Alberqureqe, NM. Between the two of us driving, we hit Loveland, CO at 0800 in the morning on Saturday. Our pick up was at Ft. Morgan and it was going to Dallas. It has plenty of time to get there, so we decided to overnight in Denver. That's how I got home. I have about 5 hours left here with my family, so I'm going to get visit with them some more. I hope to be back here in a week and half or so with my own truck for some much needed home time.

10-20-06 - Friday - Solo Qualified!

2006-10-20T16:05:00.000-06:00

Today I took the driving test for upgrade and got a 96%. Yesterday I took the general knowlege test and the trip planning test. I got a 90% on the GK test and missed one on the trip planning. Nothing was hard, just information recall. I'm now solo qualified. Only one more step to be on my own.

So now I'm waiting in the hotel for my CAT 1st seat to call me and tell me when he is going to pick me up. I have about 21 more days of driving with the CAT 1st seat and then I can get back to the CRE facility in Salt Lake to lease a truck and get on the road working for myself.

When I'm with the CAT I get 11 cents per truck mile. Not bad, but I want to drive for myself to get the 35 cents per mile that I would as a solo lease operator after paying expenses.

Not much else to report now. I'm just going to try to get some rest and hopefully I will get a call from my CAT sometime this evening.

10-18-06 - Wednesday - Upgrade!!!!!!!

2006-10-18T23:11:00.000-06:00

OK, I'm in Ontario, CA now and tomorrow I start the solo upgrade process. My Trainer dropped me off today at the Mira Loma, CA CRE facility at about 11:00 local time and the shuttle to the Rodeway Inn near the twin TA truck stops picked me up at 1315. The upgrade coordinator told me to come back tomorrow at 0700. He said he usually has about 5 upgrade students, but right now he is working with 16, including me. CRE provides a room at the Rodeway Inn for all upgrade students. They provide a bed in a double occupancy room. I am kind of a privacy freak, and don't like the idea of being stuck in a room with someone I don't know, so I got a single room. They have decent free wireless internet and it's just nice to be by myself. I'm going to be a great solo driver.

The trip back west was interesting in the beginning. We picked up in Chatanogga, TN at a chicken processing plant. I can tell you that the smell was very "interesting" there. By that I mean it smelled like dead chicken mixed with cooking chicken. A very strange combination. I think I'll skip the chicken nuggets next time I'm at a fast food place.

We got out of TN and hit the heavy rain and wind from the gulf coast storms. That was fun to drive through,,,, NOT! I didn't have any problems though. I found out later that my trainer used my driving out of Chatanogga, TN as my final driving test. He didn't tell me that until today when he dropped me off. He said I did a "very good" job, and I was a safe driver. That's cool. What was even better is that he didn't tell me when he was evaluating me. That let me just drive and not get nervious about it being a test. Since I'm not with him anymore, I want to say that Andy Fechner was a great trainer. Anyone that gets him as a trainer is very lucky.

Now, let me try uploading some pictures. I'm at a good internet facility, so this should work. The first shots are from 9-30-06 when we had a blow out on CA 101. The last two pictures are from our Salinas, CA pickup point.

This is a shot of us along the side of CA 101 waiting for Road Service.

A shot of our blown out tire.

Another shot of our blown out tire.

This is a field of some green leafy stuff behind our truck in Salinas, CA. We hauled this stuff back east. I don't know what it is, but the pickers were loading it into the bins that we hauled.

This is a shot of our pick-up point in Salinas, CA. We waited here for HOURS for our load!

10-15-06 - Sunday - Waiting for a load,,,

2006-10-15T14:55:00.000-06:00

It's Sunday afternoon and we delivered our load to Atlanta this morning. Now we are about 100 miles up the road and our pickup isn't until tomorrow afternoon. Our trip east was pretty uneventful. There were some pretty serious rain showers, but other than that it was just another drive.

We are picking up in Chatanugga, TN tomorrow then we head back west to Modesto, CA. I will be dropped off at the Mira Loma, CA CR England facility to take my upgrade tests.

For now it's time to get some relaxing time in. The past few days have been hard driving and not much rest.

10-12-06 - Thursday - Back in Salinas

2006-10-12T11:56:00.000-06:00

I'm back in Salinas, CA waiting for another load of vegies to haul east. This time we are hauling the load to Atlanta, GA.

Since Monday we have made really good time on the west bound run. We left out of Fremont, IN at about 0230 and my trainer went to bed at about 0700. I drove from the western part of IL through to just west of Grand Island, NE on I-80. It was a long, but not too hard day. There was a bit of rain and wind, but nothing too bad. I hit the sleeper and tried my best to sleep. It's an aquired art to try to sleep in a bouncing truck. At 0430 my trainer had had enough and it was my turn to drive again. I drove from Little America, WY through to exit 85 in NV. About 595 miles. The day began in the dark as I ran the "Three Sisters" hills in WY and through Parleys Canyon down into Salt Lake City. We stopped for fuel in West Valley at the CRE yard and again headed west. On the radio, (XM), I listened to the unfolding events in NYC concerning the small plane that hit a building. At least it was something interesting to listen to. At about 1500 my trainer took over the driving and by the early evening we were in the bay area. We hit our delivery at about 0930. We dropped and hooked and got out of there. We stopped for the night at Gilroy, CA. The Garlic Capitol of the World. YES, the entire area smelled like garlic. It was nice to get a full nights sleep without the truck bouncing all over the place. I feel very well rested today.

We got showers this morning at the Pilot in Salinas and now we are waiting a while befor going over to the customer. Our schedualed pickup time is 2130 so we have some time to kill. Last friday when we had that appointment out of here, they didn't load us until 0330 the next morning. OUCH! That sucked!

Also, so good news. I should be off this truck by next wednesday if everything goes well. I have been with my trainer for about 3 weeks and I'm ready for my upgrade certification. For upgrade certification I have to take a driving test, a backing test and two written tests. One on general knowledge and one on trip planning. I found out that I will be going to the CRE facility in Mira Loma, CA for this certification. My car is in West Valley, UT. Grrrrrr. I guess I see my car again in a few weeks after I do my time with the CAT first seat.

I downloaded the pictures from my camera of the blow-out we had a few weeks ago. I tried to upload them, but the internet connection here at the Pilot is acting wierd. Maybe I'll get them posted when I get to another internet connection site. Sorry

10-9-06 - Monday - Heading West again,,,

2006-10-09T17:31:00.001-06:00

It's monday evening and I'm in eastern Indiana waiting for our load out to Haywood, CA. . Friday was kind of a replay of the same thing. We got to Salinas at 1530 for our2130 load and didn't get loaded until 0330 saturday morning. That seems to be a big thing with this driving thing. Waiting and driving like crazy to get back on schedual. We got from Salinas, CA to Franklin Park, IL real quick. We each drove about 650 miles a shift and got there at about 0230 monday morning.

Now we are waiting for our load going back to CA. Should get it by about 0230 tuesday and then we head west. I'm starting my driving shift at 0730 tomorrow morning and should drive all day. That should put us somewhere in the middle of NE on I-80.

That's all for now.

10-9-06 - Monday - Heading West again,,,

2006-10-09T17:31:00.000-06:00

10-6-06 - Friday - Need to Get Going

2006-10-06T09:49:00.000-06:00

I have to say that sitting for any amount of time seems strange. I feel like I need to get rolling again. It was nice to ave the night in a hotel and relax, but it's time to get going.

It's about 1000 and I'm waiting for my trainer to pick me up. I have the first shift of driving today, so I will be driving up to our pickup in Salinas.

That's all for now. Time to drive.

10-5-06 - Thursday - A Day Off

2006-10-06T09:46:00.000-06:00

Today we spent the morning doing laundry and relaxing. We found out that we don't have to pick up in Salinas untill Friday evening at 2130. That givs us alot of time to burn. My trainer dropped me a local hotel for the night and will pick me up tomorrow morning to drive up to Salinas. It's nice to sleep in a REAL bed and take a nice long shower.

10-4-06 - Wednesday - It's all kinds of HOT!

2006-10-06T09:40:00.000-06:00

Phoenix is HOT! It's October and it's 101 degrees. That's nuts. We drove to Flagstaff and headed south to Phoenix, getting to our delivery customer at about 1500. It was so hot. We dropped and hooked as quick as we could. To top it all off, the A/C in the truck decided that this was the best time to stop working. 101 Degrees and the A/C takes a dump! Damn!

Luckly the A/C started working again as soon as we got about 25 miles west of that horrid place. I hate HOT!

We headed west towards our next pick up in Salinas, CA. Along the way we will be stopping in the small CA town that my trainer lives in to do laundry.

Time for me to get some sleep. Tomorrow should be pretty relaxing.

10-3-06 - Tuesday - Through the States

2006-10-06T09:36:00.000-06:00

Today is really just another day like most of the others. I drove from just outside Chicago to just inside the TX border east of Amerrillo. It was a pleasently uneventful day filled with rolling hills and listning to the XM radio. If you don't have a satilite radio, get one before you go on the road. It makes the hours fly by!

10-2-06 - Monday - Monsoon!

2006-10-05T18:43:00.000-06:00

Rain. No, not just rain, A LOT OF RAIN! That's what we drove through today!

I started driving at about 1000 in the morning and by 1800 we were rolling in the the Chicago area. It started raining a little bit and it really didn't seem to be that serious. Ten minutes later the sky was falling. Traffic was crawling and the rain was coming down so hard the roads were flooding and cars were stalling out on the interstate. We just kept grinding along and once we hit the surface streets we ended up sitting for about 1 1/2 hours until the police and fire department opened our street. Only the big trucks were allowed through. The water was so deep it was washing into stores and homes along the route.

We finally got to our delivery customer and dropped our trailer. Then we had to drive across town to pickup our load going back west.

We got our load at 0100 bound for Phoenix, AZ. I slept and my trainer drove us out of the city. I can tell you, driving in bad weather makes you VERY tired!

10-1-06 - Sunday - Back in West Valley

2006-10-05T18:17:00.000-06:00

I woke Sunday morning and we were rolling into Utah. We fueled up and stopped in the CRE yard in West Valley to pick up another spare tire to replace the one Road Service used to repair our blow out.

I drove us out of Salt Lake City and up over Parleys Canyon. I drove through Wyoming and into Nebraska. At 0100 it was time for me to get some sleep.

Just some side notes. As an apprentice at CRE you have to complete 4 Training Modules. These are a se of 10 booklets that have driver training and CRE policys. After each module you have to complete a multiple choice test on the Qualcom. Then you have to call your training coordinator to check in. The training coordinator will ask some questions about the module you have just completed to be sure you actually learned what you are supposed to learn.

I got my modules done and have completed the Qualcom tests. Tomorrow I have to call my TC. Once the TC is satisfied that I have learned what I need to, he will pay me $75 per module complete. More on pay later.

9-30-06 - Saturday - Blow Out!

2006-10-05T18:04:00.000-06:00

Saturday morning we got going from the Pilot we were staying at and got over to our pickup point. We got our load of vegies and headed out of Salinas. We were only about an hour up the road towards Sacramento and BANG!

That's about it. I guided the truck onto the shoulder and we did some checking and found that the right front inner tandem tire had blow out and thrown the retread. Sitting on the side on the road is not fun, but it's part of the job.

About 45 minutes later Road Service arrived and replaced the tire. We were on the way again by about 1645.

The rest of the days driving was uneventful. I drove over Donner Pass and down into Nevada on I-80. My trainer took over around 2200.

I will post some pictures of the blown tire here soon.

9-29-06 - Friday - Staying Clean,,,,

2006-09-29T20:44:00.000-06:00

This morning at 0830 we delivered our load of 40,000 lbs of chocolate to the customer and drove about 75 miles to a Pilot in Salinas. Our next load doesn't go out till 1530 Saturday afternoon. We have about 24 hours to wait.

Now, a word for anyone reading this that doesn't know how exactly drivers get cleaned up while on the road, here is how it works. When you buy at least 50 gallons of fuel at a truck stop, you get a free shower. Whenever we fuel, we usually put in at least 150 gallons and that's about twice every three days. So we always have free showers. Truck stop showers are just a large full bathroom that is cleaned by a cleaning crew between every user. It's not fancy, but it's usually clean and servicable.

I got my shower this afternoon and we tuned in some local TV for a few hours. It's nice to be able to watch some sitcoms and relax without the truck moving. Also, as long as we stop at Pilot truck stops, I have access to the internet. That's when I will be updating this blog. Probably every few days.

Time to get a good nights sleep with the truck not moving. I have a feeling I'm going to be driving from about 1600 till 2330 tomorrow evening, so I want a good rest.

9-28-06 - Thursday - Back in West Valley...

2006-09-29T16:44:00.000-06:00

Today we pulled into CRE's West Valley (Salt Lake), UT facility at 0630. My trainer got a haircut at 0900 and the trailer maintence shop was busy with our trailer brakes until 1500. Wow, what a long day of waiting around.

At 1515 we got on the road headed towards Stockton, CA for our morning delivery. We had about 790 miles to cover. I knocked out about 470 miles by 2300 and it was time for me to get some sleep. The drive wasn't bad. Good weather, but I have to say, driving into the setting sun isn't fun at all. Ouch, burned eyeballs!

Tomorrow, California.

9-27-06 - Wednesday - Westward Bound

2006-09-28T08:41:00.000-06:00

Woke this morning at about 0630 and we were somewhere in Nebraska. My trainer slept a bit last night, so he is going to drive till 1100. I'm going to take over from there. I figure I might try to get some more rest, or maybe do some studying.

I got alot of my modules done , in the book at least. I still need to enter them in the Qualcom to get credit for them. I entered one, I'll enter the rest later.

Today I started driving in Lexington, NE. The same place we had been on Monday, only this time we are going west. We spent some time at the military vehicle museum and made a stop at Walmart, then it was on the road. I drove for about 7 1/2 hours straight and we finally stopped at Wamsutter, WY. A really big Loves truck stop there. That was it for the day. My trainer drove for a few more hours into the night and when I woke in the morning, we were only 40 miles outside Salt Lake City. We are going to stop there for a few hours and then do the last 700 or so miles to CA for delivery Friday morning.

9-26-06 - Tuesday - Chicago!

2006-09-28T08:40:00.000-06:00

At 0400 we arrived in Franklin Park, IL. I got up to see what was happening and my trainer had me back up to the dock at Fresh Express. We then found another trailer and hooked up to it. We didn't have a load assignment yet, so we both got some sleep until about 0900. We got a load assignment. We are to go about 320 miles to St. Louis, MO to pick up a trailer at Conway and then take it to someplace in California near San Francisco.

On the road. We got rolling with me driving and about 60 miles outside St. Louis we stopped for fuel. We got to the St. Louis pickup at about 1545 and were rolling out of there by 1600 with 40500 lbs. of candy in our trailer. We made tracks for a Pilot truck stop about 50 miles outside Kansas City to get showers and some dinner.

We got to the Pilot at about 2000. Time to shower, eat and then get to bed. I drove about 510 miles today.

9-25-06 - Monday - It's Cold in Wyoming!

2006-09-28T08:23:00.000-06:00

I woke up Monday morning and we were someplace in WY. It's cold here now. About 30 degrees outside. Brrrrr! I started driving at 09:00 and drove all day. Nothing much eventful to report. It was a beautiful, sunny autume day. My trainer has XM Satilite radio so there's always something to listen to. He also has a GPS navigation system with a large color display and a womans voice telling you where to turn and how far it is to the next turn or stop. Cool. Did I mention he also has a lizard living in a box on the dashboard. He catches grasshoppers when we stop to feed "Mr. Lizard Man".

We stopped at a rest area and then at another Walmart. Before the Walmart we spent some of our break time at roadside museum of old militart vehicles. Interesting. Back on the road and we made a fuel stop and at 1900 we stopped and it was time for me to go into the sleeper. We were just inside the IL border. I think I drove something like 545 miles today.

9-24-06 - Sunday - Waiting for my ride...

2006-09-28T08:19:00.000-06:00

Today was spent waiting in the CRE parking lot for my trainer to pick me up. He was coming in from somewhere in CA where he picked up on Saturday night. At 18:00 he got to the CRE yard and dropped off the student he had for the past three weeks. I got my stuff loaded and we left at about 20:00.

Our load is going to Franklin Park, IL. It's a 32,000 lb. load of vegitables. Probably not much spinach in there, after all the worries about the e-coli that was found in spinach a week or so ago.

My trainer seems pretty cool. Patient and knowlegable. He was the CRE Company Driver of the year in 2004, but I havn't told him I know this and he hasn't said anything about it. He's not really the kind of guy to say much about himself. He has been a company driver for CRE for 14 years and has over 2,000,000 safe miles. I think I'm with a good trainer.

We headed east out of Salt Lake City on 80 up through Parley's Canyon. He told me to go to bed. No argument here. Just a note, it takes some time to get used to trying to sleep in the back of a truck that's BoUnCiNg down the highway. LOL

About an hour later we stopped at a Walmart to get drinks and some food. My trainer has a microwave in the truck, but his refrigerator is broken. That means coolers with ice. It's ok. I got some microwavable meals and bottled water.

Back on the road and I'm again trying to get some sleep.

9-23-06 - Saturday - Congratulations!!!

2006-09-23T16:53:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to my Sister! Today was her wedding. I'm very sorry that I couldn't be there, but I'm sure it was a beautiful ceremony. She got married at a gorgeous lake in Pennsylvania. My best wishes to her and her husband.

Myself, I'm just doing one last load of laundry and packing for my departure tomorrow. College football on TV right now. I am watching Alabama and Arkansas. Tiffin, the kicker for Alabama is 1 of 4 and also a missed extra point. I have never seen anything like it. Final score Ark. 24 Alabama 23. Crazy game.

Tomorrow, on the road!

9-22-06 - Friday - Graduated !!!!

2006-09-22T21:23:00.000-06:00

Today was the day everyone in my class has been waiting for. We started at 7:00 am and did a bit more trip planning training and then we went over the material for the final test. Nothing is hard, it just requires a little studying and paying attention in class.

We took the final and waited till 11:15 for our graduation presentation. Dean England, the grandson of C.R. England came into our class and talked to us a bit about the companies principles and expectations. It was really great to have a member of the England family come hand out our certificates of completion.

Just a side note. Not to blow my own horn or anything, but Dean England gave me my Top Gun award today also. That just means I did the best on the tests given in classroom out of ll the other students. It was a nice "pat on the back" for my studying.

My "Top Gun" Patch

As soon as we graduated I went to payroll and got my ComData card so I can start collecting my pay. They also issued our fuel cards and setup direct deposit. The next stop was to go to the "placement coordinator" to get setup to go out with an OTR trainer.

At 1:00 pm I got my assignment. I'm leaving Salt Lake City on Sunday evening with my trainer. This is actually pretty good. I get Saturday and part of Sunday off. That's time to work on the training modules that I have to complete in the three weeks I'm going to be training on the truck.

I feel pretty comfortable with the way things are right now. The weeks to follow will will be an interesting few weeks. I talked to my trainer on the phone tonight. He said he would meet me Sunday afternoon.

That's my day. Tomorrow will be a nice reprieve before going on the road for 3 weeks. Now is time to watch some TV and relax!

9-21-06 - Thursday - The Evening Is Good!

2006-09-21T19:24:00.000-06:00

Got the laundry done! Survivor is on TV and I'm pumped to get on the road as soon as I can! I so tired of this hotel room. Motovation is the key to surviving away from my family. I can't worry about the little things. Tomorrow is going to be a GREAT day!

9-21-06 - Thursday - Almost There!

2006-09-21T17:54:00.000-06:00

Today was filled with more orientation classes. Not much more to say about the morning. It started at 7:00 am and we broke for lunch at 11:00 am.

Back at classroom at 12:00 noon we learned about the Qualcom system and trip planning. This lasted till about 3:45 pm.

I know that wasn't a very exciting blog entry, but it was as exciting as the day was.

I'm a bit more motovated about tomorrow. Tomorrow we graduate and get assigned our OTR trainers. I could be on the road at this time tomorrow. That would be really good!

Tomorrow I will have some pictures of our graduation and hopefully a good plan on what will be going on in the next week. I will post again when I can!

9-20-06 - Wednesday - Paperwork!

2006-09-20T21:58:00.000-06:00

Today was the first day of our orientation. We met at 7:00 am in a classroom. The students that didn't pass the CDL driving test went back out with the evaluators to re-take the test. The rest of us spent about 45 minutes going over CRE's accidents from the past year. Lessons learned.

The rest of the morning was for those that passed the driving test to go down to DLD to get their UT CDL. I got mine yesterday, so I went home (to my hotel), and caught a nap till 11:00 am.

At 11:00 am we met in the theater for a "lease briefing". It was brief alright. We were there for about 10 minutes and then sent to lunch. The experienced drivers stayed to get all the info, but us newbie's got sent to lunch. Oh well.

After lunch at 1:00 pm we actually started the orientation. Videos about taxes and brake adjustment. Lots of paperwork and more paperwork. This lasted until about 4:30 pm.

After dinner I elected to go ahead and stay for the Defensive Driving course that is required to get on the road with a trainer. The course is offered every evening, so it's up to us to decide when we take it. We just have to do it before we go on the road.

The class lasted until 9:00 pm. I'm home now and getting my thoughts gathered. I figure tomorrow evening I will do a load of laundry in anticipation of graduation on Friday and possibly leaving that evening or Saturday. I just want to be ready.

Below is a class picture. Most of us are in it. Some are not. Some in the picture didn't make it throught the driving test and will be in next weeks class. I'm the one wearing a RED sweatshirt.

Click the pic to enlarge.

Tomorrow is more orientation. One more day closer to getting on the road!

9-19-06 - Tuesday - Passed the BIG Test!

2006-09-19T18:13:00.000-06:00

The day started early as usual. We met in the hall outside the classrooms at 7:00 am. Once there we waited for our driving evaluators to be assigned. We were assigned an instructor that wasn't our own. The instructors here are "third party certified". That means that they can officially administer the Utah CDL driving test. The only condition is that you don't get the same instructor that was your instructor for the past week.

After we were devided up, it was time to take the test. Lucky me. The instructor gave me the truck key and said I was first. I went out the the truck an started it and got the heater going. After about a 15 minute wait the instructor showed up and we got going.

I was really nervous. I did my best to just concentrate on driving the truck and not worrying about it being a test. I survived it and about 40 minutes of nerve racking driving later I was done. I passed. The test allows you to get 24 points aginst you for a varity of infraction as judged by the evaluator. I got 17. That's fine with me. I passed!

I passed. Yup. I didn't realize what an acconplishment that was. I found out later that the other two students that had the evaluator I had didn't pass. Ooops. I also found out that about half of our class didn't pass. It's ok. They will have another shot at it tomorrow. As long as you aren't SCARY behind the wheel, you will probably get another chance to pass the test.

This afternoon started at 12:00 noon. It was time for the final written test for CRE. It was a four part test. Part one was 50 questions multiple choice. Part two was gauge identification and operating ranges. Part three was a log book entry that we had to find errors on. The forth and last part was essay answer. No part of it was hard if you pay attention in class. The testament to this is that all this truck stuff is pretty new to me and I got 100% on the final. Pay attention in class, study, and it is no problem.

After class myself and three of my clasmates that passed the driving test went down to the Utah Driver's License Division and got our full CDL licenses. Finally!

Below I have posted some pictures from our classroom.

This is a transmission.

This is a cut-away of a transmission.

This is what happens when you "pop" the clutch. Oooo, twisted drive shaft.

Or a broken drive shaft. Costly!

This is a truck brake system layed out on a board. Fully functional. Cool!

More to come tomorrow!

9-18-06 - Monday - Lost a Friend

2006-09-18T16:52:00.000-06:00

No, no one died. But it was kind of surreal.

We started the day at 7:00 am at the truck. This is our last day of driving practice before our CDL driving test tomorrow. There were three of us in the truck with the instructor as usual. The same three that had been set up together last Monday. The woman who was with us drove first. She had been having problems and got some remedial driver training over the weekend. It showed. She still struggles a little bit, but she will be a driver. Yes, she will be a driver.

Next my other truck partner drove. He did fine. A bit rough like all of us, but he will have no problem passing the CDL driving test.

I drove last. That's good because I got to watch my other two truck partners drive first. Today was kind of a dry run of the CDL driving test that we will be taking tomorrow. I did ok. I feel comfortable with everything. I didn't hit any curbs, but my instructor did mention that a hair probably wouldn't fit between the curb and my trailer tires, (tandems), during two of my turns. Again, I say, I didn't hit a curb. It was close, but no curb. HA! I also lost the gears on the up hill stop. Just like my driving partners.

Ok, now to the sad news. The guy driving partner I had in the truck with me was told to go talk to someone in recruiting when we got back from driving. When I got back for our afternoon class session he was nowhere to be found. Turns out CRE found something in his past driving record that he failed to disclose. I guess that was it for him. I feel really bad for him. He was trying so hard and studying his butt off. Lesson here. Be up front about EVERYTHING!

The afternoon class session was a review of the written test tomorrow afternoon. This is a company test, not a CDL test, but it is a good idea to nail it. I have a 98% class average and I'm hoping not to lower it too much with this final test. It will be pretty hard to screw it up. Our instructor went over everything in detail. No excuses.

I'm going to go study a bit for the test and then it's time for some football! Go Steelers!

9-17-06 - Sunday - Required Viewing

2006-09-17T15:41:00.000-06:00

This morning we met in the theater at CRE at 9:00 am to watch those oh so fun videos on sexual harassment, fatigue, legal aid and a powerpoint presentation on topping the vehicles. It really wasn't that bad. The videos were about 10 years old, but if you could get past that it was just another required class.

It pretty much boiled down to this. Don't sexually harass anyone. Don't drive fatigued. Manage your sleep. Never admit wrong doing by just paying a citation. Always fight it. No matter what. If you have any question about whether your vehicle will fit under something, get out and look!

The entire thing only lasted about 2 1/2 hours. The rest of the day we were off.

Tomorrow we meet at 7:00 am at our truck for one last day of driving practice before the CDL driving test. Our instructor told us that we would probably only get about 1/2 hour behind the wheel. It's just to get us back into the driving thing after being off for the weekend.

I feel fairly confident about my driving. I figure if I can survive my instructor, I can survive the test. But, that's still two days away. For now I'm going to just enjoy some football on TV and maybe eat some dinner.

9-16-06 - Saturday - Update

2006-09-16T22:09:00.000-06:00

I took the picture below early this evening. It snowed in the mountains today. The temperature dropped through the floor and it was a beautiful Fall day. I love Fall!

Snow on the mountain tops!

9-16-06 - Saturday - Time to do Nothing

2006-09-16T09:49:00.000-06:00

It's Saturday morning and it's nice to have a little reprieve from the training cycle. Today is the only day in the three week course that has nothing planned at CRE for us to do.

I'm going to get a little shopping done and if I see anything interesting here in Salt Lake City that I can find, I will shoot some pictures of it.

For now, it's time to do nothing!

9-15-06 - Friday - It's FRIDAY!!!!!!!!

2006-09-15T15:41:00.000-06:00

Yes! Finally, the last day of the 11 day training marathon. We have had our heads crammed with so much information in the past week and a half, it's nice to be looking at a day off on Saturday.

Today we met at our truck at 7:00 am and got on the road immediately. One of my classmates drove first, so I sat in the sleeper and listened and learned. That's what you do when you aren't driving. The sleeper compartment is NOT for sleeping during training.

I drove second today. I think I did ok. No major problems. I need to plan ahead more and react less. That's important when you are driving 80,000 lbs. I hit a curb or two and miss a downshift once. Not bad for 2 hours of driving.

The last of my classmates to drive is have a little difficultly grasping the shifting thing. We all have our difficulties, but the trick is to correct them as best you can and listen to everything the instructor says and try your best to do exactly that. It's ok. She will have some more time tomorrow on our day off to practice, but it really is up to her to make the changes and adjustments to her driving to accomplish the goal of learning to drive the truck.

I'm going to enjoy my evening now. It's so nice to not have to get up at 5:300 am. I will so enjoy my day off. It's going to be cool and cloudy and rainy. How perfect after I got sunburned on the backing range last Saturday. Gotta love the weather!

9-14-06 - Thursday - Driving in the Mountains

2006-09-14T19:24:00.000-06:00

Today was great! We started at 7:00 am by taking the pre-trip CDL test. I got an 89%. Not the best, but I'll take it. The two other drivers in my truck had to retake their backing test this morning. They both passed.

At about 11:15 am we finally got on the road. I was the first to drive. That's good and bad. It's bad because as a driver you don't get the advantage of watching others working on the skills as they drive and our instructors coments on them. The good thing about going first is that you get your drive time out of the way and can relax the rest of the day.

We started out heading east towards the mountains. Up, Up, and UP some more! I did ok. I feel more comfortable with the "shifting thing". Now I just have to concentrate on all the other aspects of driving a big truck. The trafic checks, watching rpm's, maintining space, controling speed, and yes traffic checks. Did I say that twice? Yes, you can't do too many traffic checks.

I did my driving thing. I made it up and down again. The truck really isn't that hard to control when you know HOW to control it.

We stopped at a truck stop east of Salt Lake City near where the Winter Olympics were held a few years ago. Beautiful country.

Below I have posted some pictures of our day.

Look At this beautiful sunrise at CRE Salt Lake City!

This is our truck at sunrise and my two classmates waiting to get going.

This is just another view of our truck this morning.

OK, it's really small, but in the middle of this picture if you squint you can see the ski jump used in the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

Our truck parked in the mountains. (driver switch time)

One of my classmates at the wheel.

How pretty are these mountains?

The road we will travel. (later in the day)

I hope you enjoyed the visual. I'm going to get some sleep now. Tomorrow we will be doing some city and highway driving.

9-13-06 - Wednesday - Moving Right Along

2006-09-13T17:15:00.000-06:00

Passed! That's right. Passed the backing test. That's not a big deal if you know how to back a semi, but, I learned to do it in a few days. I passed with only 7 points against me. Drivers are allowed 16 points, so I was so relieved when I was able to get it right.

Now, tonight I only have to study for the pre-trip inspection test that is tomorrow.

Tomorrow is also the day we are going mountain driving. There are some beautiful mountains around here and I'm really looking foward to the drive.

Now it's time to relax! Tonight is mine. I'll be recharged after an evening for myself.

P.S. - I'm bringing my camera to the mounatins so check back tomorrow for some pictures!

9-11-06 & 9-12-06 - Monday & Tuesday - On The Road

2006-09-12T22:35:00.000-06:00

Wow. Sorry for not post yesterday. I'm absolutly beat. It's Tuesday night and tomorrow is our backing test. Finally!

Monday was spent in class in the morning learning more on log keeping and then a lesson on turns. In the afternoon we met our driving instructors for the road portion of our training. I was matched with "Bill", (not a real name). There were three of us assigned to Bill's truck. That's pretty good. Less students in a truck means more wheel time.

Monday in the truck on the road was rough for all three of us. Bill drove the truck out to a long road near the Great Salt Lake and we drove back and forth up and down about an 8 mile stretch of it.

I can tell you that learning to double-clutch is challenging. I have no problem with shifting a manual transmission in a car, but this truck kicked my butt on Monday. I acomplished the task, but there was alot of jerky starts and slightly hard stops.

After the afternoon drive in the truck we spent until 9:30 pm doing backing practice.

Tuesday was about the same. Class in the morning with a couple videos on safety and driving skills. Then we got a test on what we just watched. I took notes and we were allowed to use any hand written notes on the test. I got a 100%.

The afternoon was filled with more road driving. Today we worked on our turning and shifting. I did SO much BETTER than yesterday. I'm not completly comfortable with gthe shifting thing, but I have a clue and it doesn't intimidate me so much.

This evening we had another shot at practicing our backing. I think I have it nailed down. I feel comfortable with my backing. No promises, but I'm pretty sure I will probably pass no problem.

I'm hitting the sack now. I should try to be a little rested for tomorrow.

Did I mention that I'm really happy this is the last of the late nights at school. SO HAPPY!

9-10-06 - Sunday - More Backing

2006-09-10T22:26:00.000-06:00

This will be another short entry. Sorry. I am SO TIRED! It's 10:30 pm and I just got home about 30 minutes ago. We spent the entire day again today practicing backing. We learned and practiced blind-side parallel parking and alley dock parking. I did pretty well with them. Some in our class are having problems, but the instructors are helping them and they are making progress.

I have some homework to do tonight also. I have to finish doing my log and some matching questions about our pre-trip inspections. It's sleep time now though.

9/9/2006 - Saturday - Backing Practice ALL Day!

2006-09-09T22:35:00.000-06:00

That's right. We spent all day backing. From 7:00 am till 9:00 pm. We practiced straight line backing and parallel parking. I'm beat. I hit both manuvers within standards. That means I wasn't anywhere near perfect, but I adaquatly performed the manuvers.

This is a short entry because I'm so tired. I want to be rested for tomorrow so I'm off to bed now. I will take my camera to the range to tomorrow to get some pictures of what is going on.

9/8/2006 - Friday - It's a long day!

2006-09-08T23:00:00.000-06:00

It's been a long day. Wow. We learned alot and did so much.

The day started promptly at 7:00 am. It's Driver Log day! We spent the morning learning how to keep a proper and legal driver logbook. It was a dry subject but the instructor was good at keeping things light and everyone interested. I had a RedBull so I was awake at least till 9:00 am.

At this time the financial people came in and everyone signs their loan papers. Quick and easy.

More logbook work and discussion. A quick lunch and now we are back in the classroom at 12:30 pm watching a PowerPoint presention on backing.

Backing. Hmmm. I hav backed tractor-trailers in the Army, but these are a little bigger and I'm going to have to wait and see how it goes.

We went outside to the backing range and our instructor demonstrated the four manuvers that we will have to perform for the CDL test. Straight back, a paralel manuver, and a alley backing manuver. We were sent to dinner at 4:00 pm and used the time catch a quick catnap because we were back on the backing range at 6:00 pm.

We spend the evening practinging our pre-trip inspections. This lasts till 10:00 pm. I have some pictures below of this evening exercise.

This is a pic of some of our trucks lined up getting inspected.

Getting dirty and doing the inspection!

Just a picture of one of our training trucks.

I'm going to bed now. Sooooo tired. I have to get up in about 5 hours, it's off to bed for me!

9/7/2006 - Thursday - Test Day!!!!

2006-09-07T18:42:00.000-06:00

Today was test day. We have only been here in school for 3 days and we were off to the Utah DMV to take our tests for the Learner Permit CDL.

The day began with a 7:00 am start in the classroom. Instead of reviewing for the test we learned about pre-trip inspections. Studying is a personal responcibility here. Anyway, we got a really good picture presentation on doing the inspection and then we went out to a truck and trailer as a class and watched a demonstration on unhooking and hooking the trailer from the tractor. Our instructor is really good at getting the information and how-to across.

Around 10:30 am we started going over "Combinations", this is one of the three sections of the CDL test we need to know. After we did that, our instructor went over some of the questions that might be on our tests that we hadn't studied yet.

Ooooo, almost 15 of us on the first shuttle bus getting to the DMV and it's lunch time for the state employees. There was ONE DMV clerk working until 1:00 pm. That meant that of all of us that got here at 11:30 am, the first student to get in to take a test was at 1:15 pm. Things started moving a little faster after that and I was in by 2:15 pm.

The test was pretty much like what we learned. There were some wierd questions, but mostly the hardest thing was getting over my nerves. It took me about 45 minutes to complete the general knowledge, combination, and air brake tests. That's 50, 20 and 25 questions. I turned in my answer sheet and I was very relieved to have PASSED! They told me I scored in the 90's. I didn't get any specifics, but I didn't care. I PASSED! Whahoo!!

In truth it really wasn't that hard with all the help and assistance that England does to help you study and learn.

That's all for today at school. We have some homework to do about pre-trip inspections, but other that that, this is our last free evening for several days.

I got back to my room at 3:45 pm and started getting my homework done. Nothing hard, just learning about the pre-trip inspection.

The Steelers are on TV tonight. Awsome! I grew up near Pittsburgh and have been a Steelers and Pirates fan all my life. The Steelers have been a bit easier to watch than the Pirates. Oh well.

22:30 pm - The Steelers won! Sorry Dolphin fans, I'll always be rooting for the Steelers.

Tomorrow we will be a LONG day Our schedule will run from 7:00 am till 10:00 pm. That's because we will be in class all day and we start our backing practice tomorrow evening. From what the schedule says we will be on this same time schedule thru Tuesday. Five LONG days, but when we are done, we will know how to back up those big trucks!

That's all for now. More after the world goes around another time!

*More pictures tomorrow, I Promise!*

9/6/2006 - Wednesday - How long have I been here?

2006-09-06T18:29:00.000-06:00

Today I got up at 6:05 am. I was pushing it because I was up so late last night. By the time I got out the door it was 6:30 am. I wanted to get to England by 6:45 am because they told us that "Early is on-time and on-time is late". Hearing that and also knowing that this is really a 3 week job interview, I drove like a man possesed and got there at 6:44 am. The traffic was so much worse than yesterday. What a difference a half an hour makes.

I got my seat and promptly at 7:00 they closed the doors. They took roll and as I looked around I noticed that there were quite a few people missing from the original group that was here yesterday. I got to talking to some of the others around me and found out that several people left last night after the Pre-Employment Interview, (Interrogation). Oooo,, that sucks.

As soon as roll was taken they collected our 100 question homework assignment. They said this was the first graded assignment and counted towards our class average. More on that later.

A few people wandered in late and were quietly asked why they were late. From what I understand from some of the students who are a week or two ahead of us, England keeps track of things like coming late and how you behave and conduct yourself in class. They do truly use the training process as an interview for the job. Some of the people I talked to said that you would come into class in the morning and someone you were talkikng to yesterday was just gone. Lesson: Be on time. Do your assignments. Don't argue with instructors. Don't think that you know anything. You must learn the England way!

OK, so all the paperwork I filled out last night, the w-4, driving history, information sheet, and about 25 other forms have been turned in. Now we are getting a briefing from the Safety Department. An hour and a half later that exciting experience was over. I hope you see my sarcasm in that. It was at this time that students that were not paying for the training upfront signed the loan paperwork for their training. I'm paying up front. You save about $1500 by paying upfront. This doesn't mean you have to have cash for it. You can pay with a credit card. I havn't done too much research on this, but I think you could probably pay off the credit card after a few months of driving and not over the 3+ years at $55 - $75 per week that the 18% financing that is offered works out to. If you can finiance it yourself either in cash or otherwise, it's probably a better deal. Just some thoughts.

OK, now a really COOL thing. At 11:00 am we were sent to a classroom and given a Dominos Pizza lunch. They must have had 40 pizzas there and they weren't cheese pizzas, they were loaded! This was when the driving instructors were introduced. They chatted and ate pizza with us. Pretty cool.

12:00 pm - The tests that we turned in this morning, the 100 question Utah cdl test, were returned to us. I got a 94%. Sweet. Ok, here's the kicker. It really didn't count towards the class average. They told a little fibb. It was just a homework assignment that didn't matter. Or did it? Right now I'm not sure what the school or company are looking at.

It really is nice to be in a classroom now with a table and chair and not just an auditorium. We went over the General Knowledge 100 question homework test and that took until 2:00 pm. I feel pretty comfortable with the material. I only missed 6 out of 100 and having gone over it with our classroom instructor who took the time to answer everyones questions and explain everything. He was knowlegable, patient and fair. Jim gets an A+ in my book so far as an instructor.

14:30 pm - We learned about air brake systems for the next hour. There is a working mock-up of a trucks air brake system in our classroom. Cool! It's LOUD and gives a great visual of how the system works.

On another note, I just want to set the picture of our class. We have a married couple in their 50's, a mother & daughter team, a bunch of guys like myself in our 30's, some young women, some young men, some older experienced drivers that havn't driven in a while, and a few total wierdos!

OK, we went over our practice air brake tests and then took a real test on the subject. Now, there is no reason anyone should get anything less that 100% on this. Here's why. The test was EXACTLY like the practice test down to the word. On top of that, instead of having 4 multiple choice answers to choose from, they only had 3. So Easy! I got a 100%. No excuses.

We got out of school at about 5:15 pm so I have a nice evening ahead of me. I'll do a little studying and watch some tv. Tomrrow we have a section on pre-trip inspections in the morning and then a little more studying an at 11:00 am off to the Utah DMV for testing and get our Learners Utah CDL.

On road to the future! Eyes on the Prize!

*Sorry for mixing military 24 hour time and regular time, old habits mixing with new.*

9/5/2006 - Tuesday - The First Day At CR England

2006-09-06T00:51:00.000-06:00

I's LATE! Really! It's about 12:45 am Wednesday morning. I have to get up at 6:00 am, so thisd might be a short posting.

I spent the evening doing my "homework". OK, first, from the start. I got up at 5:30 am to get ready and drive from my hotel to the England facility and be there by 6:45 am. I will be getting up a little later tomorrow. Salt Lake City traffic really isn't that bad. I'm used to Denver and San Diego traffic.

Well, there are 32 people here in the autorium right now. That's not that big a class from what I've been told. We got big manilla envelopes full of all sorts of goodies. The biggest bundle of fun in it was the "homework". A 100 question test on the Utah CDL manual. It was open book, but that didn't make it easy. Lots of looking up things to verify them. That was tonights project.

Ok, we got a little "Welcome" to CR England form several different people. They had munchies and donuts and bottled drinks set out for everyone. MMmmm,, fat food. I'm lucky that I don't have a sweet tooth.

A person from the orentation staff went over everything that was in our envelopes and told us hat we had untill 9:00 am tomorrow to get it all filled out and done. It was also mentioned that the 100 question open book test on the Utah CDL manual would be due at 7:00am tomorrow. No excuses. Great. To add to the fun as I was looking through the paperwork, I noticed a 51 question test on the F.M.C.S.R., (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations), stuck in the middle of it. OUCH! They gave us the book, but that's alot.

Next we were herded into the hall and lined up outside the Whizz Quiz office, (Drug Testing). I was ready. REALLY! Twenty ounces of water and a bottle of juice and I was gunning for the fences. I danced in the hall for about 25 minutes and then took the test. Whew.

Then it was over next door to the Doctor to get the DOT physical. All is good. Easy little thing. Eyes, blood pressure, and a little look over by the doctor.

That's it for the morning. I went back to my hotel and talked with the wife for a bit then started filling out the paperwork that was standard. w-4, ect...

Back in the aurotium at 12:30 pm. They gave us a short briefing about the interview that we were about to go though. It used to be called the "Integrity Interview", now it's called the "Pre-Employment Interview". Guess they were scaring too many applicants away. It's simple. If you didn't lie on your application, you have nothing to worry about. If you did, well, they probably found out about it in the time since you applied and the time you got to the training facility.

I spent the afternoon doing the F.M.C.S.R. test. My last name begins with a letter really deep in the alphabet, and since they were going in ABC order,, I had some time. I finally got into the interview at 6:40 pm. OUCH! It took about 3 min. Well at least I got one test done.

I got back to my hotel around 7:50 pm and got to work on my CDL open book test that is due tomorrow morning. It's done and It's definitaly time to get some sleep now.

I'm really concerned about my wife. She got a severe migrane headache today and had to goto the hospital. I hate not being there for her. She is the love of my life, but I know that I'm doing what has to be done for our family. I love driving and we will be set for life in just a few years time. Eyes on the PRIZE!

*Tired beyond anything, not responcible for typo's*

9/4/2006 - Monday - The Day Between

2006-09-03T21:56:00.000-06:00

It's Monday evening and I had a long relaxing day. I did my best to celebrate Labor Day. Whatever that means. I did go out and have an interesting experience at WalMart. My mission was to buy an inexpensive digital camera to use for this blog.

OK, so I wlk up to the photo counter and pick out a camera. I try to get the attention of one of the clerks working there but they seem to be ignoring me. Finally got their attention and they told me that they had lost the key to the glass cabinet that the camera I wanted was in. WHAT? I want to spend money on a camera and they can't open the cabinet. This is crazy. I asked for a manager and they called one. The manager never showed up. The clerks told me that they turned in the key last night to the night manager and he took it home. I asked if that meant they just wern't going to sell anything today and they just looked at me with kind of blank looks. Really WIERD!

I ended up at an Office Depot and got a pretty good deal on a camera, so I should be able to post some visuals of my experiences.

I drove from where I'm staying over to the CRE headquarters where I will be training. It took about 10 min. and when I got there there were alot of drivers and driver trainees just hanging around. There was no training today, so alot of hanging out.

I have been studying my Utah CDL manual and watching TV this afternoon and evening. Lots on TV about Steve Irwin "The Crocodile Hunter" being killed yesterday. Apparently got stuck by a Stingray. Sad.

This is a view of the front of CR England's Headquarters

I am planning on leaving for training at 6:15 am tomorrow. Ouch, that's early, considering I have been on a month and a half vacation.

That's all for now. Time to relax and get some sleep.

This is the view from my hotel room. Just thought it was interesting.

9/3/2006 - Sunday - The Journey Begins

2006-09-03T21:09:00.000-06:00

First, a quick introduction to this Blog. I will be documenting my journey from ex-soldier, (my most recent prior occupation), through my hopeful career as a profession truck driver on the roads of America.

I will try to be a specific a possible and as revealing as well. I know that many reading this blog will be either experienced drivers that are courious to see what my experiences will be like and compare them to their own, or some readers will be interested in learning about the trucking industry and what it's really like to be part of this experience.

I'll keep it simple for today. I departed Centennial, Colorado yesterday evening for my drive to Salt Lake City to begin drivers training. I spent last night in Rawlins, WY and arrived here in Salt Lake today around 2:00 pm. I got myself checked into a local extended-stay hotel and made tracks for the nearest Walmart Super-Center. I got my provisions and setteled into my small studio hotel room. I could have elected to stay in the schools 6 man rooms for free, but I think that I would much rather have my own room and time for myself, even if I'm paying for it myself. I figure once I go on the road with my trainer I won't have much time to myself.

The trucking school I'm attending is CR England. (here-after referred to as CRE) I will be as true to my experiences as possible. I will relay what I'm doing and what is happening as true to life as I can. I will change the names of specific individuals to preserve their privacy.

All that stuff said, let me tell you what's going on right now. I'm a disabled veteran of the US Army and I'm embarking on a new adventure driving a commercial truck on the great roads of the USA! Right now, I have two days until my training starts. Monday is Labor Day, I start Tuesday.

I'm just watching some TV (about the events of 9-11-2001), and studying the Utah CLD driver's handbook. My recruiter suggested that it would be in my best interest to study this and I'm doing everything I'm told right now.

Wow, only a little over a day and I already miss my wife and 3 year old son. This is going to be the hardest part of this job.