Just about done with orientation. Almost time to roll!

Update time! Here I sit in South Kentucky bound for Madison, GA with a 14500 pound load of aluminum in a bunch of different sized boxes that I had to scratch my head at for a while before figuring it was as secured as it was gonna get!

I scored a 2014 Cascadia with 65k miles on it. It's an automatic and has the drivecam (meh) and OnGuard "collision avoidance system." Here's my initial review of the truck:

First, the size of the interior. I wasn't kidding about seating a family of four in here. I can stand up, do jumping jacks and a backflip off the top bunk. I'm thinking about removing the passenger seat and installing a bathroom or a jacuzzi, maybe put some nice bay windows on the bunk and a kitchenette where the shelves on the passenger side are right now. It is HUGE. And for its size, it turns on a dime, only slightly worse than the Volvos my last company had. I have two weeks worth of crap in here and it still looks empty. It's bigger than my first apartment! To put it succinctly, it's big.

But how does it drive?

Last company was slip-seat and I occasionally got to drive a Volvo automatic. Those things would jump and jerk on the start and knock over skids in the trailer, then have no idea when to shift going up a hill. They roll backwards from a stop and whine when you give it a little gas to move forward. Blah! This Freightliner is definitely a step up. It takes off and shifts nice and smooth, if a tad slow on the start than I'd like. If it can't figure out when to shift, I can play with the little paddle on the steering column and tell it to shift when I want it to. It keeps my MPG up and does an all around fair job of driving. Solid B+ on the automatic transmission.

OnGuard. Collision avoidance system. Last company had a couple and they would not shut up. I hated them. Beeping all the time, picking up road signs and bridges and being a nightmare in heavy traffic. In the Freightliner, though, all the options are unlocked. I can turn the volume down or off entirely. It only picks up other vehicles, and only in my lane. It tells me how far they are ahead of me up to 500-600 feet and how fast they're going. I clocked one guy at 82 in a 55 earlier! If cruise control is on and I come up behind someone going slower, it adjusts the cc to match speed. When a car lost control on 76 after getting my first load and spun out in to the median divider and then in to the middle lane, it knew something was going on and beeped. If I hadn't seen it coming (which I did) it still would have alerted me in time to avoid running the poor guy over. This system is loads better than whatever my last company was trying to do with theirs. A+ for OnGuard.

The ride is good, but was confusing at first. I know they call 'em "Freightshakers" for a reason. If not for the little oddity that it took me a day to figure out, I'd rate the ride right up there with the Volvos. When I got going down the road, I noticed a peculiar jerking sensation from time to time, like the truck was being yanked backwards a little. At first, I thought "oh no, my tarp is now a parachute!" But I actually did a half decent job of tarping my first load, so that wasn't it. Then I started noticing it was always two jerks in quick succession. Then I figured out it was the trailer spread axles hitting bumps. Weird. I never felt it in Volvos. Still, easy A for the ride.

So, how'd my first two days go?

Not bad. There were minor problems: Apparently they didn't like my banks routing number so my first check will be on the commdata card... Hopefully the right one, because there was also a little mix up and I had the wrong card number in the system and was getting an error at the pump on my first fueling attempt. Fortunately, it was easy enough to resolve and only took about 10 minutes of calling the after hours folks to fix.

My first load was a bit of a mess of aluminum stuff in boxes at various different heights and widths and lengths, but it only took me 4 hours to strap and tarp. Yeah, yeah. Slow new guy. But at least I did it start to finish non stop. I'll get faster, I promise! My DM, Ryan, cleared me to stop by the house in Cbus on my way to Madison, GA. As short a run as it is, I was able to spend Friday night and a good portion of Saturday at home. Even got to have dinner with the girlfriend before headed out! I did about half the drive today and I'll be at the receiver tomorrow night for a Monday morning unload.

So far, I'm pretty pleased. I'm not intimidated by the difficulty of securing and tarping and the pay is good. Hopefully I can get a little faster about securing and tarping before it winds up making me miss an unload and I have to sit for a night when I could be moving. But I'm sure they know we aren't going to be the fastest in the world in our first few weeks/months. It'll come with practice.

And now time for bed. More to come!