Andrew's Trucking Journey Continues

Lol..

 

Christmas Week on the Road – Sometimes the Smart Move Is Parking It!

Quick Christmas week update from the road… Made a quick up-and-back run into Central Cali trying to be home by Christmas Eve — had good intentions and a full thermos.

Mother Nature had other plans.
Flooding rain, high winds, and coming back south the I-15 looked like a Christmas obstacle course: heavy traffic, standing water, mudslides, and accidents stacked like dominoes. Could I have pushed it? Sure.
Did I? Nope.

Parked it above the hill, called it a night, and decided we’ll roll home Christmas morning instead.

Sometimes the best driving decision is knowing when not to drive.
Wishing everyone out there a Merry Christmas — stay safe, stay dry, and may your next load be smooth and your parking spot plentiful.... Merry Christmas!

 

Happy New Year from the “liquid sunshine” state

Back up here in Oregon getting waterboarded through the windshield
Heat’s off thanks to an exhaust leak, window cracked, jacket on… and the bunk heater running like it’s trying to save morale.

Not ideal, but it’s doable — and hey, at least I’m not in the worst of winter. Truck’s been in the shop a couple times, hoping third time’s the charm and we’ll get it fixed for good.

That’s trucking. Adapt, improvise, keep rolling.

Wishing everyone a safe, warm, and profitable New Year out there. Keep the shiny side up!

 

Oh yeah I know those cost owe too well! What you have to do is fuel in California and Washington believe it or not it's a lot cheaper. They don't charge state tax, but they nail us truckers cuz they monitor every mile we drive in their state. I'm not owner op anymore so it don't matter to me.

 

Got this from our company group on Facebook.

THE REAL RESULTS OF FORCING OUT THE VETERANS AND ALL INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS.

This isn’t a warning — it’s the bill coming due.

They forced out the veterans and replaced them with a conveyor belt of cheap, disposable labor pumped out of CDL mills faster than the ink could dry on the plastic.

They gutted the standard.
They gutted the pride.
They gutted the entire culture of trucking…
and then acted confused when everything went straight into the ditch.

Here’s the truth nobody in the industry office wants to say out loud:

THE NON-DOMICILED CDL PIPELINE CHANGED EVERYTHING

Regulators opened the door for states to hand out CDLs to anybody just passing through — no roots, no long-term intention to live here — and turned it into a revolving door of licenses.

Why?

Cheap. Labor. Supply.
That’s the whole game.

CDL MILLS CRANKED OUT DRIVERS LIKE FACTORY PARTS

Half the training schools weren’t teaching trucking —
they were printing tuition checks.

Drivers walked out with a CDL…
but no road knowledge, no mentorship, no understanding of the code, and no chance in hell of filling the shoes of the old-timers who kept this industry alive for decades.

That’s not training.
That’s volume-based licensing.

LANGUAGE BARRIERS THE INDUSTRY IGNORED

Instead of investing in real training and safety, the system said: “Throw them in a truck — someone will figure it out.”

You can’t communicate at a scale that keeps the roads safe?
Doesn’t matter.
As long as the truck moves, the freight moves, the money moves.

That’s what the suits cared about.

THE ABUSE WASN’T THE DRIVERS — IT WAS THE SYSTEM USING THEM

They weren’t building skilled drivers.
They were building expendable workers.

Cheap enough to replace.
Uninformed enough not to push back.
Conditioned enough to accept abuse the veterans would’ve burned the building down over.

Dispatch pushovers.
Lease-purchase victims.
Bottom-of-the-barrel CPM wages.

A workforce engineered to stay silent.

AND NOW THEY'RE SHOCKED AT THE RESULTS?

Out-of-service numbers exploding

Accidents climbing

Equipment destroyed

Turnover at historic highs

Brokers laughing all the way to the bank

Safety ratings in the toilet

Old-school drivers fed up and checking out

This isn’t an accident.

This is what happens when you push out the foundation and replace it with a bargain-bin labor pool built on:
non-domiciled loopholes, CDL mills, regulatory shortcuts, and a corporate appetite for cheap bodies.

The veterans didn’t fail the industry.
The industry failed the veterans — and everyone else.

Now the whole #### thing is choking on its own decisions.

And the punch in the throat?

It’s the sound of the industry realizing:

You can’t run a nation on the backs of people you refuse to respect —
and you can’t replace veterans with shortcuts and expect anything but chaos.

- The Driver’s Side -
Wayne Campbell ✝️

 

Ran the I-5 through Oregon and back this week — nonstop rain, wipers on high, coffee doing the heavy lifting.

Pulled over, stepped out of the truck, and boom… double rainbow like the road saying, “Yeah, it was rough — but you made it.”

Miles got turned, freight got delivered, and for a minute the rain paid me back with a view.

That’s trucking.
Keep the shiny side up and the wipers working lol..

 

This week kicked off the way trucking weeks love to start… truck in the shop on day one finally getting the exhaust leak fixed, turn out to be the EGR valve..

Once I finally got rolling, I had a load going to Spokane and a winter storm sitting out there waiting. Instead of driving into it, I did what we really get paid for — watched it, planned it, and drove around it. Slipped in, got it delivered, and somehow timed it right between the snowflakes lol.

After delivery they sent me to grab a returns load from our drop yard and head back. Of course it wouldn’t be trucking without a glitch — my electronic hour keeper decided to steal some of my drive time. Unbeknownst to me it froze and when I stopped to take a break It kept me on the drive line. I just shut it down, and restarted to get it going again. Still had enough to make it, but it turned into one of those “down to the wire on the 70” kind of days.

All in all though, pretty decent week. Up and back, freight moved, avoided some serious delays, and made it home safe. Can’t really complain.

Hope everyone out there had a good one too. Stay safe and keep the shiny side up.

 

Kicking off the week with a load headed to Oregon. Southern California is giving us that fake winter again — almost 70° at 7am. Felt more like a spring morning than January.

Started the day right though — had a couple chips in my windshield and they knocked out a full replacement while I was on my 34, so no complaints there.

Funny timing too… Ashley sent out a survey a while back asking for suggestions. One thing I mentioned was the shop needing more mechanics, because every time you ask for something it’s always “we’re slammed,” and it ends up eating into reset time. Lately I’ve been seeing several new mechanics and even an assistant manager around the shop. Don’t know if the survey had anything to do with it, but either way, it was definitely needed.

Hammer down and pointed toward Portland. We’ll see what this week decides to throw at me.

Stay safe out there.