uhhh- if you are on a 10-day orientation, you are either a school grad already, or should have SOME experience with a rig. I think, I'll go with local experience in a rig - no logging.

WS should have given you a little book entitled "Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations". Some call this the DOT book, others simply the FMCSR. Just about everything you need to know about the legal side of truck driving is answered in that book.

The short of it is, you are allowed to drive 11 hours before you are required to take a break. You have to complete that 11 hours inside of 14 hours. Your break is 10 hours long.

There are caveats, modifications, and special circumstances, but that's the gist of it. Grab your DOT book and look at section 395 for starters

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Democrats should just stop pretending and own up to the fact that they are full-bore dyed in the wool socialists.

Didn't you attend a private driving school. The hours of service should have been covered very well in class as should your log book experience. Best of luck with Watkins/Shepard.

This takes place anytime you sit for 34+ hours, without moving. Or when you run out of hours, and need a reset.


You could get 13 hours a day, provided you had a 10 break at the 11 hour mark. Just not all at once

70 hours in 7 days or less is very easily down, once you get caught in the loop. Then you'll need that reset.

Once you're out on the road. You'll find differant routes and loads allow for differant hours of running. While you need to maximize the number of hours per day, you'll have many varibles that will effect those hours.

Overall, you can run as many as legal. That's it.

Take your time. Stay legal. And the rest will come.

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Insuring polititions fear that
which goes bump in the night.
Seek out their personal homes
and family members. -- SU 83
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After leaving the road for a year to drive local I am going to give Watkins and Shepard a try. I drove for Crete for a while and that was not bad. I came home for a year and drove locally. Local work is a huge drag. I put in 14 hours a day 6 days a week (but only 10 of those hours each day was working). Would come home, eat dinner, and go straight to bed. My day off was spent recovering from the numerous injuries I got driving unsafe trucks with a lot of broken things on them. The money wasn't so great either. Anyway, wish me luck.

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Ride Captain Ride

You'll like the guys/gals at the Denver terminal. If you can adjust to how they (w&s) do things, you'll be fine.

Don't expect miracles though IE every other day at home. You'll be at the center of a lot of freight, that has to move. You'll also be surrounded by a lot of drivers making the rotation through CO, or are trying to get home.

I have my issues with W&S. But I still love my job, and this company. If you come in with low expectations, the only way to go is up

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Insuring polititions fear that
which goes bump in the night.
Seek out their personal homes
and family members. -- SU 83
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I am eyeballing W/S and/or Conway/CFI as well. I have 10 years experience, but have been out of the truck for about 7 years, so I will have to start all over with the 30 day school. I live in the Phoenix, AZ area, and am looking to run OTR. I won't need much home time so my biggest concern is down time on the road. Any info on W/S from the Arizona point of view would be great.

I remember my days at Schneider and Swift where I would spend 8 hours driving the load, then 12 hours getting unloaded, or hand unloading it myself, then being put on a "hot load" that winds up taking them 8 hours to load on my truck and is expected to be delivered 600 miles away, 10 hours from then...and here I was needing to shut down for 8 hours (10 now days?) and hadn't slept in like 32 hours.

I just won't run like that ever again and am trying to find a company I can hire on with and stay with, that is not going to try to kill me out there like Swift/Schneider did. I like to run hard and long, but if my company allows shippers and receivers to delay me for hours and hours, back to back...I can not run all night to make it back up....whether I log that 8 hour hand unload time in the sleeper or not.

I think either will do you just fine.

As you can tell from my post, I'm biased. I drove for CFI, and in the end hated it after almost 3 years.

I've been with W/S for just over a year now. They have their moments too. But nothing like CFI. Give me 2 more years...check back

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Insuring polititions fear that
which goes bump in the night.
Seek out their personal homes
and family members. -- SU 83
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Can you tell me anything about the Arizona terminal? Is it a real terminal or just a drop yard type thing? Any clue on the type of freight or primary areas I would likely be running from here?

I don't really have much holding me here any more either though...so if it stinks running out of here, I could easily go to Montana for training and just never come back, lol. Buy me a little cabin in the woods up there...hell yeah.

I would call Phoenix a drop yard. Although they do have docks, office ect. It's a pain to get your trailer dropped there at times.

Where or how you would run out of there. Would depend on the type of job you requested. OTR, Regional, or local.

I wouldn't mind running OTR out of there. Regional would be questionable for me. I dislike running CA.

If you ran regional, I'm sure you would cover the 11 state regional area.

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Insuring polititions fear that
which goes bump in the night.
Seek out their personal homes
and family members. -- SU 83
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I had thought that W/S only ran east of the Mississippi River...Apparently I was mistaken. Thank you for a great post. Can you tell us some information on teaming? Would that involve tailgating furniture too? Do you use a dolly for most of the tailgating or lug it yourself?