Experiences

driving by terrible accident scenes. seeing lots of blood on the ground, and blood soaked sheets. seeing a crushed METAL hard hat, seeing a human body scattered all over the highway.

sad fact of a truckers life. some of us see those things often, some are lucky to only see pictures on a website, which often enough, the gore is deleted.

i can never erase what i have seen, and i wish what i had seen, no one else does in thier lifetime.

which made me say to my family more than a few times, "if i KNOW with in a nano second that i am going to die, by the hands of a moron out here, i am taking HIS LIFE away as well."

as way too many times, those morons either survive or take off, after of course they facebooked what they did, and laugh thier butts off.

 

Life is too short for me to stay in any career that I hate. I enjoy OTR, but then again I'm an o/o with no kids. There are many company drivers doing OTR and very happy, they just knew to think outside the box and not drive for the mega fleets.

It takes effort to find a good paying gig in this industry, to find and prepare good healthy food in your truck. Effort that most are not willing to make ( in whichever industry.) I've never worked for a mega, but when I first started out 7 years ago, that was the common theme. You gotta pay your dues for a year, blah blah blah. F that, I started my career in foodservice, graduated to LTL and then ownership.

Think for yourself and don't follow the herd.

 

Personally I like to see more wives, especially the young nubile ones, left at home for long periods of time.

 

I have a very simple school for you about ice.

Get out of your truck, walk, to the truckstop building. Take note of the ice under you. If you are old ice, gritty like pebbles and not falling down on your butt, your truck will "Feel" the same going down the road within limits.

It has to do with ground pressure per inch imposed by your foot against the ground versus the amount of it imposed by 18 wheels of whatever load you have on. The science is beyond me. But my test is simple. If you can walk to and from the truckstop without falling down or slipping too much throwing out a knee or spilling that coffee etc. You should be fine. particularly if the sun is out and everything is dripping.

Now if it's smooth and somewhat wet real thinlike and you cannot take a step from your cab without your foot going out?

STAY PUT. Wait for the melt. Or better yet snow. Or sleet to cover that up and make it something worth walking on or driving on.

The weather forecasting online is gazillions to the Nth detail, you should not have any issue understanding where the icing is in whatever area you are at the moment out there and what's coming.

I spent one night in a intersection near Plumrose bacon shipper in NE Miss. That was a all out ice storm. Gale force winds would shove the whole empty 18 wheeler a inch closer to a 3 foot ditch 5 foot away. It's a toss up if morning came and I have been blown into the ditch and need a recovery vehicle or I can possibly maybe get downhill into that gate without tearing down half mile of fencing. Then uphill to the dock.

I spent the 9 hours in the bunk feeling that whole rig slide a fraction of the inch a few times a hour as the winds and ice howled. I rested, but I did not sleep.

 

You know, when I read these responses, this is why I tell a lot of new drivers to stay out of the truck stop. This was told me in my rookie year. I come across a lot of people who are unhappy in the truck stop. Misery loves company, and when you get around other unhappy people, it's a friendly reminder about how unhappy one is. When an older driver told me that "trucking is what you make of it" I find that to be the most true words of wisdom out here.

 

Another way of putting it is keeping that left door shut. You don't need the truckstop for much of anything except fuel and showers etc because you already have food, fluids and what not to taste in storage aboard your rig. Just getting into and out of certain truckstops depending on time of day and location is really costly in time better spent in being 50 more miles down the road.

 

I can beat that. Got home Thursday night so I could get my Jeep inspected and the exhaust system repaired on Friday (March 31) which happened to be Good Friday. Before I walked away from the dispatch window I was asked if I would be ready to roll Saturday afternoon with a load to Florida for Monday morning.

Since Friday was Good Friday, that of course meant that Sunday was Easter Sunday.

Yes, they wanted this husband, father, and grandfather to leave out Saturday as soon as my 34 was up and miss the Easter holiday with the family. I laughed and said no. Of course that didn't make me popular with dispatch that day, but I was NOT coming off hometime the day before the holiday and missing that day with my family.

 

I can do a little better. Consider this.

I had family in Indy who we have not visited in ages. SO I set up to where I dropped trailer in a good spot and bobtailed to visit on time off for three days in Indy. We had a good time.

Mr Grump dispatch says you ready to go now? We are waiting on you.

My big mouth "Yea sure, let's go. Nephew had a great time."

Never again did I see Indy with that outfit. You do not tell dispatch a #### thing about your family outside what is absolutely necessary. Such as Im ready to get loaded or no I am not loading until a date etc.

FFE was a little twisted. The recruiter moonlighting as dispatch would call my home as my tractor is cranking while warming to temperature and building air. 11PM at night. "You moving yet? This trailer needs to be out of here, yer late." (Im not late, #### thing needs picking up at 8 am... I need 4 hours.) The neighbors were good. Because it would be 6 months before they are disturbed again like that.

 

Besides all the things already mentioned, like destruction of your personal life, ruined relationships and weariness my greatest challenge is controlling my temper. I inherited a hot head from my Father. I also have a mixed bag ethnic heritage that adds to that. I'm terribly susceptible to road rage, a dangerous trait for a professional driver.

I count to ten a lot. And pray.

 

Loneliness........I lasted 5 years running full blown OTR. Since '05 I have used my CDL to earn a living WITHOUT living in a box. I did manage to run like a banshee for that 5 years though and got off the road completely debt free