Honestly, my first few months with central have been pretty good. I've had some trouble with my trailers. Twice my tandems wouldn't slide due to stuck pins and I had 2 reefers quit on me. One was while I was under a load and the other one caused me to not be able to pick up the good load that I was supposed to get. Other than that my tractor has been pretty good. Only problems I have had was my main air hose to my trailer broke once and my egr valve went out on me a week ago. But I got a free hotel room and needed a 34 hour restart anyway so I didn't mind.

Onto my dispatcher. He's pretty good. He gets me good loads and he's a laid back guy but sometimes he seems dumber than a ton of bricks. I was 3 trucks away from that I-80 40 vehicle pileup a couple of weeks ago on Elk Mountain in Wyoming with a truck with a hazmat load (or so I was told) on fire a few trucks back and here he is asking me if I can get to 130 or anything. I told him A# 130 isn't a legal truck route and B# I can't move my truck anywhere. However, I think my night dispatcher told me, basically, that they have to ask if there is anyway we can get moving even if we tell them that we can't go anywhere before they ask us. So it might not be his fault for seeming retarded sometimes.

I have 3 night dispatchers, I think. One is a jerk who I try not to talk to if I don't have two. Another is pretty cool and jokes around a lot if he knows I am driving when he's there. And another I have never talked to until the other night when he for some retarded reason sent me a message telling me to call him even though I had sent my qc message saying that I was done and then the dude changes my load that's supposed to take me straight home but instead gives me a load going to texas. I'm eating breakfast in Indianapolis when my regular dispatcher calls me asking if I had checked my qualcomm and i said no and he informs me that I'm supposed to be picking up a load in Cincinatti at 6 but first I gotta drop my trailer in Louisville. I asked him where it was going and he said Texas. I told him forget that I'm supposed to be going home tomorrow and the only reason why I didn't care about me being home a day late with my last load was because it was literally dropping me off in my home town. Put me back on that load. He said he couldn't but that he would have me drop my load in St. Louis and grab an empty and I could deadhead home from St. Louis. Well, their St. Louis dropyard is a Thermoking and there weren't any empty trailers so I ended up bobtailing home and getting home at about 4:30 AM.

I know I've said a lot of negative but I was just venting. Like I said, my dispatcher gets me loads and that's all I care about and he gets me home within a day of when i ask for it. I've never had any problems getting anything fixed on my truck except at the SLC terminal. I swear none of those freaking inspection people speak any english unless you get there in the early morning hours. Which I have since learned that that's when I'm going to show up there. It took them 15 hours to replace the bar that holds my muffler and spare tire in place. Which made me late for my drop. But whatever. I told them I needed it done by four if they can't get it done don't bother. I get there at 4 and of course it's not done. I bet that if I could have just gone to a petro or TA it would have been done in 45 minutes. Bottom line is that Central is a great company to start out with and if you wanna be owner ops they are getting in their first shipment of Pete 379's next month.

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Quite a few of there trailers are slightly out of alignment on the tandom rails....
ok....more than slight.

If you can get the handle to stay out/up (depending on the trailer) you just have to rock it a little, and the pins will pop in.
If this does not work I have a 2 lb hammer in the truck. It usually gets the job done.

Are the engines in the new Petes as small (400HP) as the ones in the KW's? What model Peterbuilt? 389? Long hood, or the 387's like Werner's?

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