Diary of a New Tanker Driver - Comcar CTL

Well, day one of week two with a new trainer, and let me say I feel much better about the whole thing. We started the day again at 0400, hooked up the trailer, and did an air off. It was much more basic than the complicated air off my old trainer had to do. This made sense. I still don't enjoy donning hazmat gear in freezing weather, but who does?

He actually showed me how to do things such as the paperwork and explained everything he was doing - a big departure from last week, where my trainer basically only had me drive and didn't teach me anything else about what he was doing.

I hope I didn't come across as too much of a whiner in my previous post. I realized that there would be some loading and unloading involved, but last week it seemed we did more of that than actual driving. I also realize that our financial situation played a large part in my attitude, and still does. After all, we're still about broke. But hopefully that's going to change.

And thanks to chaplainkerry for the encouraging words.

 

For the past two days, I've encountered a problem I didn't anticipate.

I have difficulty hooking up the air hose.

Although I am a golfer, my hand strength is notoriously poor. We unload first thing in the morning at a place that has a very, and for me I mean very, tough air hose to hook up. My trainer even struggles with it, but he's a strong young guy and can do it. I simply cannot hook up this air hose to the tank. I cannot twist it at all. He showed me a couple of techniques for doing it, but they did not help. Making matters worse, this morning it was 25° in Savannah and the customer's unloading hose, about 10' long, was totally frozen. The way we have to position the tanker, I simply did not have the strength to get the hose in position to get it on the customer's intake - and I could barely get it on the tank in the first place. My trainer then hooked it up, again with great difficulty. He then said my inability to hook up hoses is a problem and may cause me to fail training.

Not sure what to think about all this.

 

All right, let me explain about the hose. It's not that it was too heavy - it was frozen solid and it had almost zero pliability. The way it was angled, once it was hooked up to the customer's intake (or whatever the correct term is), you had to put some muscle into it in order to line it up properly with the tanker's discharge...and I just couldn't do it.

Anyway...

Second week of training and first week of "real" training complete. (My trainer last week basically had me just drive the truck and that was it.). As far as the issue with the air hose and 3" hose, today it was much warmer and I had no issues at all. So that's good news. Also, you have to understand that this is a completely foreign environment to me as I've never spent hardly any time around any industrial sites in my life except for the two summers I worked in the Hoosier Racing Tire factory in my hometown.

Being a golf pro is frankly somewhat of a soft life, so this is somewhat of a culture shock to me, in addition to getting up at 3:00 in the morning. However, this is slowly beginning to feel more normal. I won't be completely comfortable for quite a while; some people thrive on constant change, others on routine. I've always been more of a routine kind of person.

As far as the air off procedure, I understand it and more importantly, the why and how and the logic behind it. My trainer's truck doesn't have pump capability, so I'm heading out of town next week to receive that training.

As for my trainer this week, he also knows his stuff and I thought he taught me well. He liked my attitude and also my emphasis on safety. He does strictly local runs (was originally regional but didn't like being away from home even one night), and driving is a small portion of what he does. He spends probably half the day loading and unloading. The places we went, they did the loading for us and the unloading, we had to do all by ourselves. Same as last week; no one unloaded for us. He also shared with me what he gets paid, and regularly takes home...yes, nets...over $900 a week, and most of the time it's over $1,000. So looking forward to making some decent money has me very motivated to do this career well. I'm not sure I would want to be a local driver with the way it's structured, but home every night and off one or two days each weekend does have its appeal.

CTL now starts off new OTR drivers at 45¢ per mile and if I'm reading what they gave me accurately, a guarantee of $1,125 per week as long as I pick up and deliver on time and don't turn down any loads. At the end of one year the rate is 50¢. This seems to be a very attractive pay package and they're hiring, so I'm not sure why more driver aren't busting down the doors trying to work there.