Running With Watkins & Shepard

My initial thinking about WS was the same...until I hired on with Colonial Freight System ( a good company by the way). I spent 3 weeks with a lease operator who let me back into a dock twice, and only drove the interstate at night while he slept. I requested a new "trainer" who was near termination because of three preventables in the span of two months. He asked me to do a pre trip prior to my first driving session with him. I found the left rear trailer tandem missing six lug nuts from a tire repair he had done a few days ago! After a week with him, I said no way am I going to spend another four weeks.

I called WS and they sent me to Conover for a five day orientation and Tim approved me to go solo. They can tell whose going to be ok and whose not.

Best of luck to you!

 

Nope, no trailers here at WS. A 10 day orientation and away you go...they have a pretty rigorous training program that weeds out the people who couldn't handle it on their own. It's mostly a confidence issue. They can tell if you can handle it or not. Then there are the guys (or gals) who decide for themselves that they don't want to be out there without a safety net and go somewhere else. It works, though as WS has a great team of people out here, and as you probably know by now, we are more like a family.

Heh, I've been there. If it had been my first or second run I probably would've gotten lost as well. It doesn't help that the plant isn't even on the actual street that the address is... I've learned to google map every pick up and delivery to get a lay out of the land, so I was fairly certain of where it was....isn't that a nice little turn to get into and out of there onto US30? Oh, and were you lucky enough to actually have someone in the little scalehouse around back? The shipping guy tells me, oh yeah, it gives axle weight! I drove up on it, had to get out and look inside only to find out it only gives gross..I then backed off the scale and rolled each axle on separately and had to keep hopping out and running to the window and writing down the combined weights and then pulling off and doing a little math to figure out the individual weights... fun times
Just curious, did you load go to a DC in Sacramento? Mine did, and it was a cluster the whole time...only 1 guy in the guard shack, and he had trucks lined up going in and coming out and it took me forever to get out as he was on his lunch break when I wanted to leave....

 

Sorry Warp but that was too funny.

 

Boy, can't slip anything past you sharp guys....

I did notice at a later time the error in my typing, but alas, was on a 34 and couldn't do the work to fix it...LOL

 

Hi Bear, nice to meet you.

I'll kick in my 2 cents because you answered my post, but it's these other drivers that can really give you the specific details, but here's my take.

I've been following the exploits of Chris, Warpdrvr, Cagetrucker, Deserted1, just to name a few. They have all posted how they do spend seat time with a trainer but just not in an OTR scenario. The folks at W/S have to determine very quickly if you can be safe on the road and get the job done. Their 10 day training program packs in a lot of information. You have to be confident and resourceful. There's no hand holding. If you can't make the cut you go home. But the word is that they're nice people and they will work with you if you have potential.

If your interested, talk to Chris, or any of the other W/S drivers. I'm sure they can give you plenty of info.

 

Hi Chris
What's on the agenda today? Truck hopefully fixed? Get a loaner or what?

Still mulling that HOG ride -it's not you!!! Just call me dipped in batter and deep fried!