Elliott Truck Line

Elliott Truck Line is a smaller tanker company based in Vinita, OK with about 50 trucks and over 100 trailers. They haul pneumatic tankers and liquid tankers. See below for what types of stuff they haul in particular. Elliott was founded in 1946 by Vince Elliott with just one truck. Eventually, Custom Commodities purchased Elliott Truck Line in 2009. They run almost exclusively Peterbilt 389s with 13 speeds and inverters. All trucks have disc brakes and most trailers in the fleet have disc brakes as well. All trucks have adaptive cruise and collision avoidance, lane departure warning, and outward and driver facing cameras. The recruiter said all they have are 389s, but I have personally seen 579s on their yard as well. There were only a couple and they had the really small flat top sleepers (I think they're 44"?) so probably not used for OTR. I also confirmed with the terminal manager that I will be driving a 389. Not that I have anything against 579s, but the coffin sleeper is definitely not gonna work. They have OTR all 48 states, regional, and I believe local but don't quote me on that. I'll be doing OTR all 48 states.

I originally posted a comment on another thread about starting at Elliott Truck Line, but decided it was probably better to have a dedicated thread for me to talk about the company. I'll copy paste my other post and then update the thread as I go through their training and start driving for them.

My comment from Sunday:
Checked in to the Holiday Inn Express in Vinita this evening and I'll be starting training at Elliott tomorrow. The training is 5 days (M-F) and I didn't think to ask about the exact hours, but when I talked to the trainer earlier he said he'll pick me up at 8am tomorrow. The recruiter had me start some online training before going to the in-person training and the online training has to be completed before the in-person training is complete, or I won't be able to head out with a truck.

I have a tanker endorsement, but I do not have hazmat. According to their website they haul activated carbon, flour, salt, sugar, wax, feed ingredients, fertilizers, hazardous waste, sand/proppants, acids, and plastic pellets. The recruiter didn't mention a lot of these, but it's a lot of stuff to list over the phone I guess. Maybe they don't haul some of that stuff anymore and the website wasn't updated. That being said, I will need a hazmat endorsement for some of these things and she said they will start the process of getting my hazmat as well as a TWIC card during training and they will also pay for both. This was convenient for me because I could leave my other company and get started at Elliott right away. The online training includes some hazmat training and I'm assuming there will be plenty of hazmat training in-person, but I've also been studying hazmat on my own just so I can be sure to pass the test when the time comes.

Once all the training is completed and I'm assigned a truck, they will send me directly home so I can load up everything I need into my truck. I didn't ask for this and I like that I didn't have to. I'll be OTR all 48 and I won't take much home time so I do plan to keep a lot of stuff with me in the truck.

 

As it turns out, the terminal manager of the Vinita terminal himself is training me this week. He picked me up from the hotel at about 8am today and we headed over to the terminal just down the street. Most of the day was spent doing paperwork; reading and signing a bunch of stuff and taking a couple tests. Since he's the terminal manager, he was in and out of the room quite a bit, mostly out, while I was doing the paperwork and I actually kind of liked that since I could focus on getting it all done in silence without getting distracted. He also scheduled to get the TWIC card and hazmat process started tomorrow morning in Tulsa. The company not only pays for the cost of obtaining the TWIC card and hazmat endorsement, but you also get $200 just for getting a TWIC card. They give you half when you get it and half a year later. If I were to get a passport, which is not mandatory at this company, you get the same bonus for that.

For lunch we went to a local Italian restaurant on the company's dollar and it was pretty good. Not too long after lunch a different guy took me for a road test (don't remember his name, I'm bad with names) and we drove to a Love's where he had me park in a spot. After I parked, we headed back to the terminal. He seemed satisfied, as I would hope after driving for 3 years, lol.

I completed a bit more paperwork and at about 3:30 the terminal manager said I could go back to the hotel and do some more of the online training - which I would like to add gives you a $320 bonus just for completing it. He didn't take me back to the hotel, instead they have a pickup you can drive so you can go and get dinner while you're at the hotel. I'll be heading back to the terminal tomorrow at about 8am and then from there we'll head straight to Tulsa for the TWIC and hazmat.

As a side note, I'd actually like to edit the first post on this thread to give a little info about Elliott Truck Line so make sure to scroll back to the first post if you didn't see it already.

 

I forgot to mention that the training is $160 per day.

 

Yeah I like Doug. He's a good guy.

 

Today Doug and I went to Tulsa and got my fingerprints done for the TWIC card and hazmat endorsement. After that, he drove us to the tank wash in Tulsa where Elliott gets a lot of their trailers washed out and showed me around. Then, he drove to Holly, a refinery where Elliott picks up a lot of their loads, and showed me where they load lube oil then also showed me where they load wax.

We drove back to Vinita and after getting lunch he showed me how to write a trip sheet and how to accept loads on the qualcomm, since it's slightly different than other companies I've worked for. Other companies used the messaging system for arrived at shipper, loaded etc. but Elliott uses an app on the qualcomm called workflow which I've never used before. It seems to make more sense to use that rather than sending messages, but I digress. He also showed me how to use Vector, the app we use to scan in paperwork on our phones. I watched a video on the Smith System and answered some questions in the Smith System handbook he gave me.

After that Doug said that tomorrow I'll be riding with another driver to Claremore where he will be delivering a load of Carbon to show me how that works. Apparently carbon has a little more to it than most things you would haul in a pneumatic tanker. I can't really explain it, but it sounds pretty complicated. I'll be meeting that driver at the terminal at 6:45am tomorrow.

 

Well I wanted to update this thread daily during my training, but I just never got around to it for the last couple days.

I rode with the other driver to Claremore on Wednesday morning and it turned out to be carbon powder which is basically a normal pneumatic load and not one of the complicated ones where water is involved. Carbon powder is unloaded just like any other powder-like substance you would haul in a pneumatic tanker, using a blower to pressurize the tank and send air + the product through the line out the back of the trailer. Granular carbon is a whole other ball game. It involves filling the tank with water and using tank pressure but instead of line air you use water to unload a carbon-water slurry. This is used for water filtration so it would end up mixed with water anyways.

Enough about carbon. After that load we went back to the terminal where Doug the terminal manager trained me on liquids. He has a water tank filled with salt water and a tanker trailer parked next to it specifically for liquid training. He showed me how to load the liquid from the water tank into the trailer with a pump then by simply switching the hoses on the pump I unloaded the trailer back into the water tank. Not all of Elliott's trucks have liquid pumps however, so he showed me an alternative way of unloading liquids without using a liquid pump. Their trucks and trailers are equipped with chicago fittings so that you can hook up the truck's air system with a hose directly to the tanker. You pressurize the tank for a while and then open the valves. The air pressure inside the tank pushes the liquid out of the tank. Very interesting and I never imagined you could use the truck's compressor to unload liquids like that.

On Thursday when I returned to the terminal Doug had me try loading/unloading the tanker myself to see how I could do without his assistance. I didn't have too much trouble with it and that concluded my liquid training. Doug is a fantastic trainer and I really learned a lot from him. The only training left is for me to go pick up a liquid load where another Elliott driver is picking up going to the same destination so he can train me on how to load/unload in the real world. The same goes with the carbon changeouts, but more on that later.

I don't think I had much else to do Thursday, but I might be forgetting something. The truck they were preparing for me was almost done that afternoon (it was getting a new blower) but it was drivable so they had me drive it to the hotel to load my stuff up since I had to check out Friday morning. I was set to pick up a granular carbon load the next day going to Lacrosse, WI for a changeout on Monday morning and I will be accompanied by another driver who has an identical load going to the same place so he can train me on that. But when I let them know my AC wasn't working they told me to take a different truck to go pick up my load and they would work on the AC first thing in the morning.

Today I drove the spare truck to Pryor to pick up my carbon load and another driver followed me to pick up the identical load and train me on the procedures for picking up at Cabot in Pryor. Once I got back they had me drop my trailer, take another trailer over to get a load that was going to Kansas City, and drop it back in Vinita for someone else to take it later. If there's anything Elliott knows, it's logistics, for sure. By the time I got back and dropped the second trailer my truck was almost done. I got some lunch, finished up the last bit of paperwork I needed then they asked if I wanted my truck washed now or if I wanted to take it to a truck wash later. I figured what the hell might as well wash it now while it's here. The washout guy washed my truck and he really took his time. I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean he actually cleaned it really well unlike the Blue Beacons. Now that I got my nice shiny truck it turns out it needed a federal inspection. No big deal, there's a Speedco just down the road in Big Cabin at the new Love's. Doug told me to go ahead and get a drive tire replaced as well because it looked a bit sketchy, and I kinda agreed. Once that was done I was free to go home until Sunday morning. Then I'll head to Wisconsin with the load I already picked up this morning. I would have done that, but I only had 27 minutes left on my 14 after the tire change and inspection. So I'm staying at Love's tonight and I'll just head home in the morning.

 

It's a 2016 with 407k miles. I should be trading it for a new one in about 30k-40k miles apparently.