THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

Ditto the verizon with a phone and hot spot set up, it helps looking at the mobile app on a smart phone.

 

Now THAT'S FUNNY!

 

I have an air card from sprint. Been using the same air card for 7yrs, unlimited air time.

 

Yeah, and sometimes that crap gets dangerous. Here's a video from my dash cam a few nights back. This driver was completely out of his mind, and he had me so angry that some bad thoughts were going through my mind too.

Below the video is the full story, same as posted on Youtube.



This is a video taken from my dash camera on I-40 just west of Nashville on the night of March 14, 2014. The driver of the truck shown in this video most definitely has a road rage problem. Since he appeared to be an independent operator, there was no safety department to send this video to, but you can be sure I would have if it were a possibility. Here is the back story:

I was traveling eastbound on I-40 at exactly 70 mph. I had been running my cruise control at this speed ever since I left the Memphis 55 mph speed zone. I came up behind this truck, who was moving at a slower speed, I assumed at the time he was conserving fuel. I was running 70 because I had a very light load.

My truck is equipped with an OnGuard collision system which shoots radar out in front of the truck at a range of about 600 feet, and it tells me what speed the vehicle in front of me is traveling. As I approached this truck, the system displayed that he was driving at 64 mph. After getting closer to him, within about 2 truck lengths, I moved into the left lane to pass. I sped up slightly so as to pass as quickly as possible.

As my tractor reached about the middle point on his trailer, he speeds up and matches my speed, forcing me to stay in the left lane. I slow down a bit, move back over behind him, assuming that he has now chosen to travel at 70 mph. About 10 seconds after I do this, he hits his brakes and slows back down to 64. I attempt to pass him again, with the same exact result. Every time I slowed down and moved back behind him, he hit his brakes and slowed down too.

After performing this little dance with him two more times, for a total of four, I tried a fifth time. This time, when I tried to pass, he swerved over, cut me off, and slowed down, with his range in front of me being 24 feet according to the OnGuard. I slow down to avoid a collision, and then he slows down even more - this is where the video begins here. I immediately swerved over to the right lane and to try to pass again, and when I do this, he intentionally tries to blind me and cause an accident, as you can see. I just backed off and let him go on ahead, because he is obviously out of his mind, or possibly drunk or on drugs.

 

I know this is from a couple pages back, but I wanted to comment. In general, Moosc is right when it comes to lease purchases. They're really designed to rip off drivers, and they don't care how many times that truck changes hands.

However, on the Choice program, if a driver doesn't succeed, he only has himself to blame. The freight is there. Some of it pays crap rates, but quite a bit of it pays well. You have to be willing to run at company truck speeds to save fuel. Yes, my payment is insanely high, but I also have bad credit and had no down payment. It would be no different than if I bought a vehicle from some tote-the-note place. BUT, this vehicle can make me money, assuming I am smart about it.

Right this minute, I am sitting at home, spending the night here while rolling through with a load. I'm not taking 3 days off, just passing through. If you're going to start off as an O/O, hometime costs money, a lot of it. When you've been doing it for a couple years and have some cash saved up, then you can take 3 days off at a time. But forget about that when starting out. It's the same as if you started any other business - that business is going to demand every waking hour you have for at least the first year.

Now, I'm looking at the load board right now. For an example, I searched for freight for the next two days within 999 miles of Fort Worth, TX. Just to see how much is out there. The results came back with 2,375 loads. So, if someone says they don't have freight, they're completely full of it. Out of those loads, over 900 of them are paying more than $1.80 per mile. And this is March, before the really busy time of the year for freight has even begun.

If you can't make money with that kind of setup, you're doing something wrong. I have two people that serve as my contact points with Schneider when I have a question or things go wrong. Otherwise, I do not deal with the company. No one forces me to do anything.

Am I getting rich? No, of course not. But I am making at least what I was as a company driver while running a LOT less miles. I took home over $2000 a couple weeks back after running 3200 miles. Taking home about $1200 this week for running 2600 miles.

I've had a couple paperwork snafus and such which caused me to have two weeks where I took home nothing. But I got huge checks the next week. And as irritated as I was, those snafus were technically my fault, as much as I hate to admit it. Bad execution of business on my part.

By going with the Choice program, you eliminate the number one problem with lease purchases: answering to a dispatcher. If I'm sitting for a day somewhere and not making anything, that is all on me. I don't have to argue with someone to turn down a load... if I don't like it, I just don't book it. Schneider Choice is what lease purchases SHOULD be. Yes, the payments are way too high, but they ARE taking a big risk letting someone with bad credit drive away from the OC with a 6 figure piece of equipment with no down payment.

Like one of the instructors at the Charlotte OC said... "If you aren't making any money on the Choice program, go into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and give that SOB dispatcher a piece of your mind."

 

Have you checked your headlight level? It seemed that even when he was way out in front of you I was still seeing your headlights reflected on his trailer. I've talked to people before that use back up lights on people behind them, typically they do it when a driver behind them is high beaming them or their lights are so high and bright that they are blinding the truck in front.... just curious.

 

I am planning to get this checked as soon as I can spare some time. I'm less angry now than I was when this happened, because after I got through Nashville and got on some smaller roads, I noticed that almost EVERY vehicle was flashing their brights at me. A couple days before this happened, I was at a customer whose lot made the grand canyon look like a pothole. I'm wondering now if I shook the lights loose or something.

But after this night, people weren't flashing me anymore, although I was mainly driving on the interstate until a couple nights ago. On a two lane back road, I was getting flashed again. So now I'm thinking that something is wrong with my light alignment. I checked under the hood to see if I could fix it myself, but I am not finding ANYTHING that could be used to adjust the headlights, so I'm at a loss. I guess I'm going to have to go to Freightliner and have them look at it. I really can't afford to be down a couple days waiting in line though.

I got pulled over two nights ago in Illinois at 11:30pm for a random roadside inspection. I asked the officer about it, and he said they looked a little bright, but he assumed that it was because it was a brand new truck and the lenses were still clear. So I really don't know.

That doesn't excuse his road rage behavior by not letting me pass, and blinding me like that is much more likely to cause an accident, because any driver can adjust their mirrors if someone's lights are too bright. Or, he could've just told me on the CB. But either way, I couldn't do anything about it while moving other than turn my headlights off, which I wasn't going to do.

 

On the 587 I was driving there was a small hole on the left of each outside lense. You pushed a torx in there and turned it and the lights went up and down. get in front of a wall at night if your truck has those, and you can adjust it down. Then stand out in front of the truck across a parking lot, and you'll know if your blinding.
This has a picture of it...

http://www.overdriveonline.com/how-to-aim-headlights/

 

@CaptainX, you said everything I wanted to say. I don't agree with lease purchases, but if I was to go into a lease. The choice program is where I would go. I have ran into 3 IC's that completed there lease with SNI.

 

What did they do after lease completion???? Refinance thru SNI or give the truck back???