Thursday was a real short day for me. We just drove a load of waste water from our tank wash to the disposal facility where they gravity unloaded it. Then we spotted and picked up a few empty tanks at plants and other tank washes in the area. Started at 8 AM and finished up around 2 PM for a short day.

Friday I came in and drove with a different guy since my trainer is on vacation the rest of the year. He is a 30 year driver whose father was a driver and he does local work now. This was the first time I had been in a truck with a guy who shifts gears without using the clutch. Real smooth driver. I learned a lot watching him. Things were real slow. After picking up some tanks from tank washes we took a drive around some small back roads around the terminal. Lots of gear changes, right and left turns that were tight. Just a little more seat time for me that was more than the highway driving we do so much. You learn more about the gear box doing that than cruising on the highway. Finished the day picking up the paint load again.

I talked to the terminal manager and I will probably be going to the Kingsport training school the week of Jan 21. He gave me the option of taking the week of Christmas off (unpaid of course) and since it was a three day work week I took him up on it. I will start back Jan 31 and will have 3 more weeks with my trainer before going to the School.

All in all I must say my training experience with Superior Carriers has been great. I have learned a lot and have not had to sleep in a truck with another person. Its pretty much averaged between 40-50 hours per week working also. I have been paid 100 per day and they even added $53 to my last check for attending a 2 hour safety meeting at 5:30 on a Friday where they fed us. Can't complain about that.

Thanks for the update. Finished first week of school and enjoyed it. Straight backing,crossovers w/straight backing and a tatste of blind side paralell parking.We following the upper classman doing pretrip daily, then time with instructor and pretrip. Hooking & unhooking service and emergency lines. as well as observed coupling & uncoupling. Next week,short week doing coupling,uncoupling, blindside and some straight backing again. I should get xtra time once my class is doing general knowledge classwork because I go my permit on my own b4 school. Happy Holidays Enjoy the week off.

Just found out from Dispatch I start back at 6:00 AM Monday with a 7:00AM delivery 30 miles up the road. Looks like another day of local work. I sure hope they send us out OTR soon.

Yesterday was as I expected. 4 trips 30-40 minutes each dropping and hooking trailers locally mostly at Procter and Gamble. I am expected to handle all the paperwork now. Its a bit confusing. Almost hit something for the first time yesterday. I hooked to a tank that was tight up against another one to the blindside. My wheels were cut slightly to the right. As I was pulling out I was checking the trailer brakes with the trolly and not looking in my right mirror. Had Ed not yelled I would have clipped the fender of the other tank with the ladder of mine. Learned a valuable lesson yesterday. Always watch all your mirrors coming out of a hole and wait until you are out to check the trailer brakes. Later we picked up another load of glue to cap around an 11 hour day.

Off today. Happy New Year! 5:00 AM start Wed and I can sense that it is about to get a lot busier. 2.5 more weeks and then I go to the school in Kingsport Tn.

Nothing wrong with doing a brake check where you were, you just have to pay attention to what's going on. So you learned a very valuable lesson.
(Many people have to hear the crash before they learn what you did- present company included)

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Interesting day today. We started out around 6:15 AM with a load of a soap like substance used to make deodorant. We had a 9:00 AM appointment and were right on time. The road was mostly 2 lane running east into the sunset. Very hard to see at times. That made for a rough ride with the surge as I had to keep slowing down due to decreased visibility due to the sun.

Once we got to the plant they sent us around back to a brand new looking unloading area. It had a place where you could pull through and there were several pipes and pumping systems to unload the tank. We were told to pull through and stop the back of the tank by one particular intake pipe. That is when it got interesting. At the front and back of this unloading area there were elevated areas like speed bumps only wider. The area in the middle was lower. As I pulled over the first one I hear this scraping sound and had an OH S*** moment as I looked right and left in the mirrors to see what I had hit. I got out and the landing gear was scraping the top of the first "speed bump". I tried to back up and the truck wouldn't move. We said a few choice words and talked about ways to solve this problem. Then the plant worker who was going to unload us came out and told us the second speed bump was lower than the first one and that if we pulled on through we would be able to get out. Fortunately we were able to scrape our way forward and get off it but not without spinning the tires and working the truck a good bit. I went back and looked at the concrete on top of the rise we were stuck on and there were a bunch of scrape marks where people had done the same thing before. If I ever go there again I will back in from the other side.

Tomorrow I am going to drive a loaded tank back from Charleston West Virginia. First time loaded coming down mountains. It will be a long day with an early start.... 4:15 AM.

Always nice when some goober gets you into a bind. Looks like after the 1st truck had problem they would grind or jackhammer out enough to fix the bump. But that would make sense. Sounds like you are getting all the bad out of the way early in your tanker career. Keep up the good posts.

GREAT JOB WSYROB, KEEP EM COMING, I HOPE TO GET ON AFTER SCHOOL.

I think I'm scheduled to go school in kingsport on 21st as well. I've been training in Baltimore doing local work & they're puttin me in at the comfort inn each night. I just did couple of days hauling neodol at unilever & now starting the dry bulk stuff with a blower on Monday. At home now for the weekend. This tanker stuff is sure is different, I feel like a ragdoll when driving this liquid.

Cool I will be there then for sure. Look forward to meeting you.

I have never driven anything else loaded so I don't know the difference. Drove a load of something non hazmat from Dow in Charleston WVa today. Really pushes you down the hills. I found the surge actually helped me time my braking intervals. Brake a little, let up on the brake, wait for the bump in the back then brake a little more. I sure like driving in the mountains better than local around town. I took it from Beckley to the yard down I77 through Fancy Gap. Nice road and beautiful scenery.

Another nice surprise awaited me once we got back to the yard. I wasn't expecting a pay check this week since I took last week off. Superior paid me 2 vacation days for last week. The vacation days paid me more than my training rate.