Remember your first load solo?

Yep first load out I picked up in Urbana,OH and took it to New York City in Brooklyn. Talk about nervous as hell! I had never been east of Ohio before then but it all went good and I have not looked back since. You just need to remember to not get in a hurry and ask if your not sure. Getting in a hurry will get you in trouble. You being a woman will have no problem getting help out here, now a man on the other hand won't always be so fortunate. DON"T trust your GPS to route through towns especially in big cities or out east. I see drivers all the time who hit bridges tress ones way streets you name it because they do everything that gps tells them to do. Get a MOTOR CARRIER ATLAS and learn to use it properly. Nothing wrong with a GPS to help figure out the best route to to get from City A to City B but always double check it with your atlas. If your company is known for bad directions ALWAYS call the receiver for yourself and ask for the shipping department to get your own directions from them. If the receivers # is not on your bills or your company won't give you their # then call information and get it yourself. After a few loads on your own you will start to feel more at ease and the longer you are out here it will become natural to you. Good Luck

 

i compare the first solo load to getting laid for the first time. you're scared beyond belief, nervous, worried, all of that, and there's no way to possibly avoid it. it's happening! much like when i got laid for the first time, "holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!" was going through my mind non-stop. upon hooking up to the trailer, i forgot to check for the california kingpin setting. after i had gotten to the bottom of cajon pass, i got a red light on my pre-pass, thought nothing of it, rolled across the pad, and was told to move over and park it. turned out i was 2ft over length. a couple of months later, i paid the $182 fine. oh yeah, the truck's water manifold was also busted and the jakes didn't work all that well.

like sex, it gets better with more practice/experience. yeah, that's my comparison and i'll stick to it. it's something that the majority out there can understand.

 

Im hearing ya on all that. I reckon from shunting and city driving you probably covered all the driving bases.

My first load was from Ireland to Holland with a load of Dell computers outa Limerick. No trainer beforehand, just handed the keys and told where to go to pick up the load, got loaded by 1am and then had to drive in the pissing rain to dublin for the ferry to England. Drove from Holyhead in Wales to Ramsgate for another ferry to Belgium and thats where the real fun started. Sitting waiting in line to drive on the ferry and wondering what the hold up is. When i get in sight of the ramp to the ferry the hold up becomes clear. As its an old ferry you have to u turn and reverse onto it over the ramp, wait it gets better, once your on the bottom deck you then have to reverse to the side of the boat to reverse up another ramp to the top deck. Well i shat myself watching all these other trucks making it look easy, knowing full well it would not be easy for me. About 30 minute later with a lot of help from the crew i was in position finally. Met another guy on the boat who was headed to the same town, he waited for me on the road out of Ostend and we ran to Holland together.

My third run was to the centre of the old section of Prague, got arrested in customs on the border between Germany and Cheq for having a bent needle on the tachograph (not my doing) 10 hour later i got let go with the warning that if the judge didn't like my explanation i would be jailed next time they saw me. Got to the receiver which was on a cobblestone street with a truck width reverse into a yard over a busy tram line with a lot of tourists mincing around. However then got a 36 hour break to go check out prague, hooked up with a canadian guy and had a great night out. Kinda got that run on a dedicated basis for 6 months as the other guys hated the customs ########, i just loved the night out in Prague every week.

Spent a lot of time talking to drivers in truck stops and asking questions, lot of them had notebooks with directions to all the receivers they had been to, very helpful.

 

I sure do. My very first load was a cereal load out of Atlanta going to H-Town. I was nervous and excited but I delivered safely and on time.

 

One of the great moments in my life was my first solo in a plane. And my first solo load for Werner. Not so much that I felt like I accomplished anything, but that I was so happy to get out of that fat ### trainers truck! hahahaha. It was a load of Nabisco products from Portland, OR to Helana, MT. Then I went home for four days.

 

My first load was a Home Depot run that had a few stops (3 I think), JIT load right out of the gate going to the Atwater area of California I believe. Nothing really interesting except that they handed me a run that required me to do a split sleeper to deliver, which was insanely annoying.

My next one was a bit more interesting... load going to Seattle to relay to Canada and snowing like mad over the pass and my truck had no jakes and the cruise wouldn't work, thank you Volvo for putting a weak spring on the clutch. Welcome to trucking 101. If you ever have a Volvo and the jakes and cruise don't work, put your foot under the clutch and pick up on it and see if they start working.

Meh, for the most part I had a pretty laid back experience running solo. Now running teams... I had my co-driver fly under a bridge that had a 13'6" clearance. Thank god the trailer was loaded pretty heavy.