Swift Flatbed Division... ?!

Well I am on my mentors truck. Sexy ### Peterbilt. He is an owner op. Only serious downside is that he runs dry van. Better than sitting on my ### and not getting my hours done so I can upgrade. I have an experienced flatbed guy I am thinking of teaming with anyway so it should be good either way.

He is going to run me how I want to run as well. Told me to go ahead and wake up in the morning and log an hour for a pretrial because I get paid by the hour, then to go to the Target distributor and we will pick up a preloaded trailer. Then run until my 30, then run until my clock has 15. Pull over and log a 15 minute on duty post trip and he will drive his last hours off his 14 for the day and we will park. Dude said #### it, he will make money either way, so I may as well be paid for my time and along the way he will explain how to run differently to maximize the clock when I am being paid miles rather than hourly.

A bit nervous about driving a 13 speed, as all I have ever driven is a 10 speed. Also his truck isn't governed at 62. We can do 70 fully loaded.

First load leaves noon tomorrow for Utah. So out of the frying pan and into the fire. Be snow and mountains on my first day off.

 

I will put it this way... The coordinator told us to hurry back from our mentorship so we can be flatbed mentors lol.

I was told there are 9 flatbed mentors. Only 1 of 9 New students who went flatbed got a flatbed mentor and he is the dude I am going to team with. So far it took a lot longer to get to the consignee than we thought. We were routed out toward Flagstaff, but not before 5 hours on duty waiting at the shipper. Finally we left and it was all 6 and 8.5 percent grades and switch backs. #### that was a trial by fire. And the biggest buck I have ever seen lept out in front of me. Close enough to almost count the points on his rack.

And so our drop and hook became a live unload... 3 hours after our 14 runs out. 5 hours waiting at the shipper. 10 hours at the consignee. When we opened the trailer to bump the dock a bunch of #### fell out and broke. Then some lady came out screaming that only she was supposed to break the seal. How the #### can we bump a dock and grab an mt trailer when we can't move?

Planners wouldn't let us repower the load. So thankfully my mentor is an owner op and can just go line 5, move this #### and climb back in the sleeper. What a bunch of ####ing #### man. Welcome to truck parking.