New to Team Driving

You gotta have a thick skin and be a 'people person' to run team. Two drivers living in a closet size truck can be stressful.

 

Remember, you're a team. That means being willing to be woken up to help with things they might need help with. For example, when the president was in a city one time, they closed most roads to the airport. It required rerouting in real time to make the delivery. In the middle of the city, it can be a challenge to find an easy place to pull over for map reading.
Unless the upper bunk has a net, you'll both be swapping out bedding. I tend to use the top bunk for resets and such, but it still means having a plan for bedding.
The driver is king of the cab. Their music, their temp, their time. The other driver can go to the bunk and close the curtain and have it his way back there. That doesn't give you an excuse to be a jerk about it. Headsets can help the co-driver get their much needed sleep. Phone calls and music are much quieter when the driver uses a one eared headset. If theres a disagreement, save it for when you're stopped.
The driver is responsible for making sure their truck is functional, fueled, scaled, etc. Dont count that the other guy did it right.
Try to take a few minutes to debrief the last shift, including weather, traffic, contact from fleet, next fuel stop, if known.
Be an effective team. Work together. Make use of each others skills. One may be better with paperwork, and the other better at cooking, for example.

 

Your bed will be still be prewarmed from your codriver. Ha ha. It not easy running team, just no privacy and you both living in the truck 24/7 rolling down the road. Sleeping in a moving truck takes time to get used to. I was a trainer for a little bit and not everyone change clothes everyday or shower everyday. Clean socks everyday is kinda important when living in a truck or some foot power for sneakers.

 

You will commit your soul to God and your Arse to the dummkoft holding the wheel struggling to stay off that groove on the shoulder all night or all day.

You two are going to be the besties or you two will be killing one another making for the worst of workplace conflicts.

One trainer I was with we were a effective team by the end of the first week. However if anything was a problem with the radio. He loved his heavy metal and I take my unshackeled program. So there he is in the bunk listening to the enternal drone of the radio.

What are you kid? A christian.

I am a hellion, how do we fix the radio? Well the tractor had a 4 speaker system, bunk has it's own controls and cab as well so when one of us drove we just used the forward pair. The back was off and provided a relative quiet.

The one other thing we did was wake the hell up now when you were given a massive 50 pound brake application over 5 seconds. Today's computer trucks would love that very much...

Food has a lot to your success or failure as a team. If you two ate a meal that did not agree with both of you... the flatuence of the very bad situation will be very excessive. One bad day we had all the vents open and windows open and even the upper sleeper windows. It was still not enough. took the bodies about a day to clear that out.

There is a common question between teams.

"Where are we at?"

"###### if I know"

And dispatch does make a mistake now and then with Teams. Expensive time consuming very money losing mistakes all around now and then. Example we were in salinas got fuel, working on dinner. Message came in emergency go to Americold to load right away in town. So we went.

Then we were told to wait.

84 hours later having burned just about all our fuel and getting ready to have a local dealer deliver by tanker 400 more gallons we were told to load. We got the 400 gallons in half a hour later. The paycheck on that run was about a thousand miles. Not worth it. A epic mismanagement of a team.

 

Like prison but smaller, no restroom or yard time, but with all the possibilities of still getting your wig split and your cheeks busted. Have fun!

 

Yeah guys in prison have more to plus a toilet and sink. Ha ha

 

One thing I never had a problem with was sleeping in a moving truck. I just get into my jammies, put in earbuds with some good sleeping music, and I’m off before I have time to close my eyes all the way.

what I can’t do is sleep though rumble strips. Nuts.