My Experience as a Line Haul Driver

Wednesday

Got back to the terminal around 5:45pm, we fueled, found our Trailer (53') and left at 7pm. This time i drove first up to South Hill, VA. We sat there for a little bit again waiting for our trailer then i did the switch. Then my trainer drove us back to charlotte. We got back around 4am and worked on the dock until 7am.

Thursday

Got to the terminal at 5:45pm, didnt have a fuel card so they gave me one but they couldnt get it activated, they argued with Fuel Dept in HQ for 15 min before they gave up, they had the 1st shift guy that drives the truck i was going to use give me his fuel card so i could fuel. Then i got a run to Burlington, NC about 2 hours, 110 miles took a 42' trailer up there . Got to the terminal there, put my trailer in a door, grabbed an MT (53') and headed back to Charlotte. Got back around 12:30am and worked the dock until 5am then i went home





What i've learned: I THOUGHT the trucks here were governed at 62mph.....NO WAY! they all do 70-90mph, except for one old one we have that only does 65 Sure is nice blowing UPS's doors off for a change

I also learned that even a sterling Daycab is better then an International (trainer drove a Internation Eagle with a Sleeper, yesterday i drove a Sterling Day Cab)


And Autos suck even more then i thought (trainer has a 2 pedal Auto) He can keep that truck







American Trucker

 

my shift starts at 7pm everynight, and we can work up to the end of our 14 (so 9am for me) because we still need 10 off before we can work again and if we work past 9 it'll push our start time back makeing us late on our runs.

The dock is just unloading and reloading freight from trucks. We have a cross dock, a 200 door open dock, so trailers come in and we take the stuff off and put it on other trailers. The amount of time you spend on the dock depends on how much freight there is, last night is was busy until 4am then we just had 1 more truck left and at 5 the day shift dock guys come in so we left.




American Trucker