Really? New co-driver

Just starting out in trucking fresh about 7 months. Started out with a new co-driver and we got along great, we were both in the same age group so we caught on to stuff pretty quick and knew how to work the system out and everything. Me and my first co-driver did not start out together right away due to logistics issues or whatever, so when I left company orientation I was on my own literally. I had to learn pretty quick and that I did do. Long story short me and my 1st co-driver finally got to rolling together and got use to how our company ran teams and we ran, and the company ran us ragged and I loved it. Then my 1st co-driver quite....grrrrr I was solo for about a month and had a family member riding with me when my company sent me a nice little qualcomm message saying, "Oh your getting a new co-driver", really?????

Yes I was upset at it the fact that I was getting a complete stranger on my truck and also that the company had allowed me to pick-up a passenger when they set me up with a passenger. (It was underlying issues with why they put me with another co-driver). Now they send me to Little Rock to the terminal to pick up my new co-driver, get there send my cousin off to where he needs to go and then meet my new co-driver. Come to find out he doesn't feel comfortable and he wants to go back out on the road. Really????? I had requested hometime for the weekend previous, but since I had to pick-up another co-driver and those dates got canned, but since he wasn't ready I requested another load going home, and they honored that. God worked it out because my oldest brother had come home and I did not find this out until a couple days prior so we kinda had a mini family reunion.

I finally get back on the road and they send me back down to Arkansas to pick up my new co-driver. I call him and come to find out he's at corporate headquaters....really????? Get to corporate and I had to sit a whole weekend and 2 business days because he was not yet ready. Really?????? So I just rolled on with the punches, finally my co-driver enters the truck, we're 25 years apart, come to find out I know some of his family (just great) they're good people. So we get to rolling and it's a rough start because he is still new and that's understandable because I was there just a few months prior, and then he doesn't like me turning the truck off (I am against unnecessary idling), and he's still getting use to directions. So on a run down to Laredo and coming back home for hometime he gets sick, we solider on and get him home for hometime finally. After we get back on the road that's when things go down hill really????? I have a personality where I can just about work with anybody, but when you start making my job difficult that's when it gets harder.

So we get a run to Cali and they give us a time to pick up the load, and the load is not ready for another 8 hours....I am sleep deprived but I have to be up and be a human Tom Tom because he doesn't know where he is going...so I decide to go back and get some sleep. He gets out the truck and goes talk to the dock people and comes back and starts fussing and stuff "why we gotta sit here, and I wanna go see some stuff, when people say what you go see in Cali, all I can say is a ########## dock and on and on", so I just walked away from that. Next thing we get down to Florida and he meets up with family who also drives and has been driving for 30 + years (got total respect for that) and his family and he gives him a few pointers and some of it is misinformation becomes annoying at times. So we get a load and he wants to spend time with his family and that's fine, we get to the truck stop and then he remembers, "oh we gotta transflow" (I had remembered, but at this point I was fed up) then he explodes about not getting the paperwork scanned, and I am thinking to myself, you either want to site see or transflow? Then after that we leave there the next day and I tranflow long story short they add the run to the pay check (after all this fuss). So we get to going, he is trailing his family member and I am trying to get sleep because I have to do third shift driving. He drives through Atlanta not jumping on 285 thankfully law enforcement wasn't on it that night, I take over and we go. We get the load to Indy.

We have time to sit in Indy and then we head back out on Monday, we leave out and he gets to talking and I am in the sleeper listening but observing, the first interchange we need to get off on he misses (wrong turn #1) then we get to our next turn off and misses the exit again (wrong turn #2) we finally make it to our shipper and I am sitting in the front because I have been there before. (I have made mistakes before and have missed turns but not so many in one day) we leave shipper and go and cat scale. We're 50 lbs over on the trailer tires and my co-driver wants to make a big stink about that "well I heard other drivers say that DOT is not going to say nothing if it's 50 lbs over", I still insist we reweigh after I adjust the tandems and we did. We get to going and I stay up for a couple hours because we had to take US hwys and state hwys. We get to the Columbus area and he gets off at the wrong intersection again (his excuse construction) (wrong turn #3) so I get up go out and see that we are on I-70 and I get my trusty atlas and get us routed again, he's trying to get off at a place that we don't need to be at "I am here I got you just keep going" and we keep going and I get us back on course. Oh did I mentioned he doesn't know how to read a map. I rely on GPS but I also use company directions and my atlas. We get further down the road and I try to get sleep and I hear him call my name and he is saying oh I dun f****ed up now (wrong turn #4) after that I was fed up and I had him go to the nearest truck stop over in Jackson, OH, made him park and I went to sleep.

I get up about 3 am and left out and got us to where we needed to go. We get to our destination and then the conversation about GPS comes up, he says "That Rand McNally GPS gets you to where you gotta go" I said, "you never want to rely on GPS because it leads wrong rather it be a car or truck GPS", he comes back with a sharp reply of "how you know you only been out here 7 months" and I just laugh inside because he answered his own silly remark. So we get to our next destination and he starts to drive. OH great here we go again, for some odd reason he doesn't read sings and this has been ongoing for the couple months we have been on the road, and then he wants to start the argument of the cat scale. "Well what if I am driving and I guess the weight right and I know it's right then I shouldn't have to waste my money on a cat scale". This argument came about because we had two of the same loads just one coming from a place that we had to go back to again. My response "well what if you guess wrong? And I start driving and the scale house is open, who is going to get the ticket?" That settled that argument right there, even if you have the same load the trailers may weigh out different and the load my be loaded different.

As we continue down the road we get to our first fuel stop (wrong turn #5) and I was wondering why he was sitting at the stop sign, I am sitting there wondering what he is going to do...meanwhile there's a big yellow sign saying trucks are restricted to turn left unless they are getting back on the highway and a sign in front of the truck stop saying truck entrance to the right. I tell him that he is clear on the right and he turns left...then he chews me out "you see me about to make a mistake you should stop me, I don't be making mistakes just to be making them" and I tell him "I told you were clear to turn right which I thought you were gonna do". We go back up the highway about 10 miles and have to turn around and do it all over again. Really??????? Call my Driver Manager the next morning and tell him the situation and what does he say? "does he have a GPS?" Really??????

Are trucking companies becoming that desperate to hire truck drivers that do not pay attention to surroundings or signs? I know that I am not perfect and have made mistakes but, if you can't navigate yourself in a truck then you got problems. I ended up having to take off from work because of medical stuff and the first day that I called and told him, he got dispatched and messed up and missed two loads, being stuck in Chicago all day. He's had it rough for the last few weeks, but he cursed himself, I was trying to teach him and didn't know that my health would go on the fritz. Well praying that he makes...he already dosen't know that he has to pay a $580 dollar tow bill because he got stuck. You can't do a turn around on a narrow road.