Nightmare OTR first assignment...help pls

This is normal OTR trucking. I am a bit suprised he did not have more training before his first trip. Did he not ask questions, leaving them to assume that he knew what he was doing, or did he have a "here is the keys, now go" type of training.

It is not unusual to sit 10-12 hours to be loaded or unloaded. Food is almost never around where you load and unload. Some companies won't even let a driver use their bathrooms, much less let them into the break area. That is why you always have a few days of food and drink with you. There will be days when there is no food available for one reason or another.

The dispatchers want freight moved, and most have never been on a truck, probably have never seen inside a truck, but will tell you everything you need to know about operating a truck. They want freight moved, period. They don't want to be annoyed with things like wait times, how to fuel, where to eat.

He should have gotten a booklet on how to operate the qualcomm. It would show all the macros, how to free forum, and such. If he is computer literate at all he should be able to figure it out.

There is a lot of stress the first few trips, and having someone give you a hard time only adds to the stress. I remember my first trip, both the first regional, and the first long distance, which was with my own truck. It seems like yesterday, even though it was over 32 years ago. It was stressful, but I stayed with it.

On my first trip the truck could not be cut off because it would not restart, the heater fan would quit until you beat on the heater box, and finally I had to leave the truck beside the road and hitch hike 45 miles because a fuel line broke and fuel started coming around the shifter into the floorboard (cabover truck), and I had only eaten once in two days.

I had just delivered 22 stops of furniture, having before only driven a tractor trailer appx 200 miles in my life. I had only backed up once in an open field, and had no idea what the freight looked like on my trailer, or how to unload it.

The owner handed me a stack of bills and said go, I'll see you when you get back. Plus, I was only 19.

Trucking is hard on newbies. Heck, it's hard on old guys too. The question is, is he willing to stick it out, or is OTR trucking not what he was meant to do.

It will get better, but there will also be days when today looks like a walk in the park.

 

I have driven local LTL and truckload. The local shippers and receivers get to know you, and are usually glad to see you. The OTR shippers and receivers look at you as an interruption of their time.

This will take some getting used to. An OTR driver usually gets no respect or kindness from anyone. There are exceptions, but he is in a totally different world of trucking, one that a local driver can not imagine.

 

I have to echo everything Stranger said.

He'll pretty much be on his own from the sounds of it. Feast or famine. OTR is tough on someone who is not fully prepared for it, and few really are.

Advise him to always carry some snacks and drinks...always. Not a real healthy diet for sure. But it beats the **** out of going hungry.

Operating the Qual Com if that is what he has. He can simply press "create message", then use the plus or minus key to scroll through the availiable forms. The free form is usually blank in all areas. He has to press send when done, then Y to confirm the send.

Reading a message, press next message, then use the up and down arrows to scroll through the entire message, some messages are rather lengthy, so he'll need to make sure he got it all. Addresses are waaaaay down in the sent messages usually.

Some companies send all messages to preset mail boxes, others like the one I drive for, require that I actually send it to a specific person. He'll have to check that one out himself.

All in all, if he can stick it out. He'll be okay. Personally, I would call the SOB's everytime I had even a simple question. They would either assist me, or they would have their phone lines tied up for 24 hours a day.

If he can figure the QC out, send them a free form message stating that very thing....24 hrs a day via phone until he knows what the #### is going on.

I would say, his first mistake was NOT calling for a new arrival time, and a new appointment time for his other pick-up. While I've been known to push a load on through. I've also been known to go to bed on a load, after being detained for a ridiculous amount of time.

 

does he use a Qualcomm, MobilMax or a Driver Tech? for satlite communications? each one is set up different and its different to retrive messages on each one espically the MobilMax Alther, if he has that you have to press the yellow button on the bottom right side together with the down arrow key to scroll down messages... USX didnt tell me that it took me a week to lean how to read the rest of all my messages