Starting life again from the bottom

Cars are made of steel.
Ever seen a semi after a rollover?
You'll want to stay planted in your seat if you fall asleep run off the road,blow a tire etc..

 

The WIA \ WPIA grant is good advice. I remember 20yr ago when my brother was applying for that same thing. He was able to get funded for Heavy Equipment Operator school and then a 2 week add on at the end for Truck Driving School. He was overwhelmed with the application and I remember telling him to just complete one aspect of it every day and then put it down. Wasn't but a couple weeks and he had the thing submitted and then shortly after was approved. The grant paid for his travel and the tuition as well as living expenses during the school which was a 90day or so if I recall correctly. They even helped with a couple repairs to his vehicle that came up during his training. It's a great program and I would recommend looking into it seriously. At the end of it all my brother didn't start operating equipment but has been a truck driver ever since. He has made solid money after the first year or so and has been able to find work pretty much wherever and whenever. Good luck to you with it, and just forget about the seatbelt argument.....it's the law, put it on every time you are in a vehicle.

 

I will respectfully disagree with driving a truck is easy a monkey can do it. I've seen plenty of people get cut or leave on their own while I was at school because it isn't easy. You might have 30 years under your belt that's why it's easy to you. Do I think parts of it is easy to me like shifting which believe it or not some people just can't get especially double clutching and down shifting. Backing is not easy either to me but I will get better.
Buttonhook and jughandle tight turns do you think any monkey can do without taking out a light pole?

One of our instructors said none of this is hard it's just different. I somewhat agree but there is definitely skill needed in this.

 

I did not take any offense, the monkey part comes from the idea that robot trucks will do our driving someday, Over my dead body.

I value all truckers, regardless of how much or how little experience. It has been my first hand experience with trainees that people will have certain things that will become a hard truth when conditions are right in trucking. It might be a good thing or show as a liability.

My spouse to this day cannot stand walls. Even in a car, I do her driving for her on our US 67 with the walls particularly at night. Way back in 2001 Armarillo had construction for about 60 odd miles to the NM Line. Part of that construction east bound featured a 3 foot edge of the pavement drop off on the right. About 5 inches from the steer. From that day to this, I think it hurt the spouse to hold the rig with me asleep in the back to a extremely for her, a fine tolerance at which she would be a breath or a heartbeat from losing that whole thing over that drop off. It required too much of her to hold it steady and she would cry. But she stayed in the fight, particularly when it got either windy or icy sometimes as a good Marine should.

Because of HOS limitations I did not take the truck into Armarillo when she came up her turn to drive there. It took years for her to understand that whatever happened good or bad, happened. We move on. She did good, nothing bad happened. Afterall considering the rockies, Donner, Cabbage etc on Ice her first winter she did well. I don't think too many trainees got to do the things she did.

But my penance is to take her and her car down between the walls to this day when we have to go to Little Rock for one reason or another. Even though we both are not rolling in a semi anymore for a variety of very good reasons.

I have my weaknesses too. Believe it or not. There are certain things I wont do despite a life time of doing it. With that thought in mind, any trucker actually doing it has my respect. It's not for me.

Finally but not least, in the old iron days you had a cab full of gauges, all of which told you something, and together they write a story in real time how that tractor is doing. If it's doing well in the pre computer days you heard that music of the engine.

Today's computer trucks are reduced to a set of three gauges maybe, a insistent qualcomm filling up with demanding needy messages from on high and any number of micromanaging things directed at the next generation of truckers. I do not like that at all. This constant dumbing down if you please, so that a monkey might drive a while and do well.

 

I agree on the dumbing down and in my opinion the hos and elogs are part of that. I don't need a computer to basically tell me my limits of when I should take a break or sleep. My brain tells me that already. I just drove back home from school a 17 hour total trip. At one point I was real tired and had a split second micro sleep behind the wheel so I said f this and pulled off at the next rest stop and took a power nap. I didn't need a machine to tell me that. But the dummies out there keep driving exhausted like that are the ones who created the hos and elogs. Do stupid things win stupid prizes and your prize is elogs.

 

I attended Swift training and I thought their CDL training school was excellent.
They do not send you to the DMV if you are not ready.
The only people I know who failed was due to their own fault or one particular DMV tester that is very very very tough and does unexpected and sometimes says unprofessional things while you test that distract you.

 

Let me give you another point of view on the HOS and ELOGS.

20 years ago, we did the 14 and 10. There was Local and Long Haul. A long haul trucker would run 1000 miles a day and be home on the weekend. Every weekend. The teamsters were the ones running 8.5 hours a day. That was part of their contract. Well, 8.5 hours can not compete with 14, can it? And they had 62 mph day cab cab overs. UPS went on strike and got faster trucks, a few of the others went out of business and Roadway and Yellow combined yet still don’t have the market that they once did.

So they throw all of this talk around about safety and HOS. It actually was an attempt to “level the playing field.” They throw stats and figures around. I believe it was Covenant that started the Dumb and Dumber program. 20 years ago, Covenant was the big boy on the block outside of the Teamsters.

“What’s the ‘Dumb and Dumber ‘ program, Six?”

That’s when you have a student driver riding with a trainer that is a rookie himself. Anyways, they do the Dumb and Dumber, and put a brand new driver in a lease purchase deal and pay him $.90/mile and he has to work like a demon in heat to make a paycheck. Or they force two drivers to run team in a truck, but pay both of them less than what they paid a long haul driver 30 years ago. If these companies could haul freight for $.90-$1/mile SAFELY, do you think that they would push rookie company drivers so hard to pay for their job?

This is how the big companies got around the teamsters attempt to level the field. It has absolutely nothing to do with safety.

“But Six, only a moron would do something like that, work for peanuts, run really hard and not make any money...”

And they cater to morons. The biggest hurdle is the drug testing. Not saying people that do drugs are morons. But the people that they are catering to are 30 years of age and have N E V E R in their lives done anything other than smoke weed and play video games. If you are 30 years of age and are getting your first job, YOU ARE A MORON. And so now, you look around and you see a bunch of extremely wimpy, fat, nasty guys in the industry. They go into a driving school because it’s ‘just sitting there holding a steering wheel’, get a sunshine injection from a recruiter and end up in some hellhole called CR England or Werner. They knew it was crappy before they signed up but they do it because it requires no effort. The recruiters are probably trained to look for neckbeards and tell them about how they can get respect.

So, which is actually safer...the 14 and 10 and drivers home on the weekend, or the Dumb and Dumber with an APU and TVs and inverters for video games in the truck stuck out on the road for months at a time?

 

I’ll admit, I did like the 14 and 10. You could do it to it any way you wanted. As long as you didn’t go over 14 on duty. Catch a nap. Get up and drive, stop and eat. No matter what, you could cover the miles. Get home for the weekend, chase mama around the bedroom, take the family out to eat, lounge around all day Sunday. Monday, fire up the rig and run the roads.

Now, I run straight through. I can go 11 hours nonstop. It’s quite easy for the old school 14 hour guys. Day night, whatever. Not as much fun tho. They used to have the girls on the CB calling out the daily specials. You go riding down the road, hear the menu, figure that sounds really good, pull in and park, eat like a king for about $6 go back to the truck, catch a power nap and let the food digest, then hammer out of there....

You know what...come to think if it...even tho I still enjoy what I do, trucking does suck compared to 20 years ago.