My first solo run horror story.......

Ok, here is my story of my first solo run...............

I am new, and not much experience at all. I ran team with a friend for a few weeks from Chicago to L.A after getting my CDL.

So I was offered a job running short hauls (out 3-4 days, home 3-4 days) average 2k miles at .42 cpm. I figure this would be a good start for me, good pay for a rookie - not overbearing hours or days.

So, first run boss tells me he has a truck broken down in Atlanta so another driver will meet me at the yard with his truck and my truck hooked up to it, and we will drive together from Chicago to Atlanta and tow my truck down there. When we get there, I will then take my truck, hook up to the trailer of the broken truck, get the load, and bring it back. The other driver will then hook up to the disabled truck and tow it back to Chicago.

I meet the other driver, he gets out of the truck and is a little skinny guy who speaks broken english, very hard to understand. He is dirty, and is acting like he has been smoking crack, all jittery and jumpy. He smells, and has not obviously showered in weeks.

I grab my bags and jump in the truck, and am immediately aghast. The truck on the inside smells like ###, and looks like a garbage can. There is garbage, clothes, paper, everything strewn all over the inside of the tractor. The bed is piled high with all sorts of ####. I wanted to get out and run, but this was my first day on a new job, and I figured what the hell, its only 14 hours to Atlanta.

We hit the road, and he is talking and I am not understanding anything he is saying. After about 20 minutes I finally understand that he wants me to drive, so I get behind the wheel and roll out. After about an hour while on I65 South, I notice the air dam and spoilers and violently shaking and look like they are about to come off, so I stop on the side of the road and put my flashers on.

Crackhead gets out and uses an old seat belt and some twine to tie together the spoilers and air dam better. I tell him that isn't secure enough and not going to hold at 65mph down the freeway, he says something to the effect of "jess eet ees fine, drive"

So, within 10 miles I notice the drivers side spoiler of the truck we are towing backwards is flapping loose, and pull over again. Now it is hanging by a string so I just bent it off. Crackhead reties the other spoiler and airdams. 5 miles later, the passenger spoiler blows completely off going down the road. I could have killed someone and am totally shaken at this point, pulled into a truck stop grabbed my bags and was ready to just walk. Crackhead says dont quit, and finally removes the last 2 pieces after buying a ratchet set from the truck stop.

I figure nothing else can break now, all the pieces are either blown off or taken off now.

I continue down the road, only stopping to fuel and use the restroom. After about 10 hours of me doing all the driving at about 10pm, I pull into a truck stop and tell crackhead to finish the drive to Atlanta because I am about out of hours. He says that the place with the broken truck is not open until 8am and we are 4 hours ahead of schedule, so lets just get some sleep for a bit, and he will hit the road around 3am. Sounds fine to me, I wouldnt be able to sleep with captain red bull driving anyways.

I finally fall asleep, and wake up with the sun in my eyes. I get up and look at my watch, it is 8am, we are still at the truck stop 4 hours from our pick up. I am MAD. I am supposed to pick up a load today around noon, and realize that is not going to happen. Crackhead gets up and says "ok, just drive" - I tell him no, I drove all the way here, we both are getting paid, you drive to atlanta. I figured I could save my hours for heading back after hopefully getting the load late.

Crackhead drives maybe 10 miles while I am in the cab on my laptop, when I feel him slow down and then stop, we are now in a rest area. I just keep up on my laptop, and after 5 minutes realize this guy hasnt left the truck, so I look up front and he is laying over the steering wheel. I asked him what the hell he was doing, he said he didnt feel good. So now I am REALLY PISSED, we are WAY behind schedule. So I said get out of the seat, I will just drive.

So now I drive the 4+ hours to the broke down truck. At this point I made the entire run, while this stinky loser was blowing his nose and tossing his snot rags on the floor of his truck. At one point he went to lay back down in the cab on my bed and pillow, and I stopped the truck and told him to get his sick stinky ### off of my stuff.

I make it to the truck, and am relieved to get out of his nasty semi. As he starts unhitching my truck which was in tow, I get in it to put my stuff in it and see that my truck looks as awful on the inside as the one I just got out of, seems stinky had my truck last also. So as he is unhitching, I am cleaning the crap out of this truck getting his stink and mess out.

Finally, on my own and the truck relatively clean - dispatch sends me to where the trailer is = 1 hour away. So I bobtail over to where the trailer is, hook it up to my cab and dispatch gives me the address for the pick up: 3 hours away. At this time it is now 3pm in Atlanta, and the shipper is only open until 4. Now I cant pick up until tomorrow..........

I am now under a 1/4 tank of fuel and stop to fill up - give the lady my fuel card and she turns on the pump. After fueling up I go back inside and the lady tells me they dont accept my fuel card and to pay another way. What other way ? ? ? Why did you take my card and turn the pump on ? ? Luckily I was able to contact my boss and he paid over the phone with his personal credit card.

I get to a truck stop 25 miles from my destination, and park it for the night. Big storm in Atlanta that night, I was woken up at 1am by water dripping on my head in the bottom bunk. Seems that the glass is missing for the window on the top bunk. Great.

I get up, and get to the shipper by 8am, pick up my load and am ready to hit the road back around 9:30 am. Dispatch informs me that my load is going to Valparaiso Indiana, and I have a dock appointment for 8am. I am 2 hours South of Atlanta - a 16 hour run. Ok - I know I am new and a lot of you guys drive illegal all the time, but being new, I get tired after 10 hours driving. So now my first solo run I realize I am going to have to cheat my logs somehow and make it.

I drive hard and stop for fuel. I go inside and my fuel card now doesn't work - it is coming up inactive. I call dispatch - they are closed. I call the boss - no answer. I am low on fuel. I go crazy at this point and just blow up the owners phone until he finally texts me that he will take care of it. After 1 hour the card works and am able to fill up.

After 30 minutes more of driving, I notice my fuel is lower then it should be. I pull off and notice my fuel cap is missing on one of the tanks. Either I forgot to put it on, or someone stole it, I really dont know. So now, I use rags and rubber bands and create a makeshift fuel cap.

I drive, I am out of hours, and tired. I push it all the way to Indy - but at this point am exhausted, totally driving bogus on my logs and need sleep. I pull into a rest area and park. I look at the gps and see that if I sleep for only 4 hours, I can wake up and make my appointment on time.

After 4 hours of sleep which felt like 1, I get up and drive. I make it on time to my appointment, my log book I may as well just put "write me a ticket and put me out of service" on the page because it is just so obviously bad with no way in hell to fix.

It was at this point that I realized that my docking skills are on par with a 1 year olds walking skills. I just for the life of me couldnt get the #### truck into the dock. finally after 30 minutes I got the trailer into it.

After getting unloaded, I brought the truck back to the office, turned in the keys and the paperwork and hauled home 30 minutes away and passed out on my sofa.

I am so stressed from the trip, that 1 day later as I write this here - I still cannot seem to relax.