Indian River

I looked into being a trainer myself at one point. As far as driving with a trainer in their truck - it's strictly for new hires with less than 12 months experience. There is training for the pump division, but that's like half a day and it's all at the terminal. They just park an empty trailer next to a trailer full of water, show you what to do, and then you pump the water from one trailer to the other and back.

 

I got no tank training at all, even when I asked about it I was told that we don't load or unload so there was no need for training. That was over 4 years ago so I don't know if that is still the case.

I do know that there have been occasions where I was required to vent the top hatch or had to assist a customer that was having trouble hooking up etc. That's where YouTube came to the rescue.

There was also an instance where I succumbed to peer pressure "you Indian River drivers just sit in the tractor while everyone else jumps out and helps"

So I go back there, hook up the unloading hose, open the valve and dumped a bunch of milk into the wash line because the hoses had not been switched over on the plant pumps. Luckily the dairy plant guy caught it in time and didn't seem to care too much, but things could have gone really badly and it would have been no one's fault but my own.

These days I don't do anything the company hasn't authorized me to do. If random strangers think that's me being lazy, oh well.

 

Any trucker that can drive a manual have my full respect, tried in CDL, one of the hardest thing I have ever tried to learn, even though the didn't give us much time to learn it, but still, congrats and good luck man.

 

I'm not really worrying the roads, well, snow and ice is different lol... I'm more worrying about the shipper and customer, like I don't want to get lost in the shipper/customer not knowing where to go and stuff, especially at night, like today, I went to shipper for the first time at a farm in Quincy, FL, GOT STUCK!!! LMAO!! Having a trainer would give me a sense of how things are done overthere at least for the first few shipper/Customer you guys have. Especially I know you guys go to freaking NEW York and Maryland, these two makes me super nervous lol. I don't really consider myself OTR yet since the furthest West I've been too is Texas, so you understand how going to California for the first time by myself would feel.

 

That's a bummer...

 

just take it slow and you'll be ok. use google maps before getting to shippers and receivers and zoom in to see the layout. It helps.

 

Also if your load info has directions or instructions, read them. They can be very useful sometimes. Plus, you might find a customer that requires you to scale empty at a truck stop before going in. There's a place in Salt Lake that we do this.

 

I've been driving now for 33 years, and this post jogged some memories for me. Back when I started, we didn't have Google Maps with satellite views or GPS units. The road atlas was our friend, and when we got close to a location we were delivering to we looked for those awful, folding city maps that they sold at truckstops. Then, of course was the phone call (on a pay phone as we didn't have cell phones then) to the shipper/receiver for directions to the facility.

Trucking is so easy these days...

 

Well, maybe it's not easy for everybody.