USX drivers...how's your day??

Hello everyone hope your weekend have been great! I'm sitting in Dallas for the day. It would be great to meet you all if you are here. My number is (501) 744-8504. Looking forward to meeting you all some day soon.

 

How is my day?....well pretty awesome now that I have selected a start date for schooling

Hey Guys...just keeping you posted (as promised) with an update. It is looking like I will be starting my CDL schooling on August 27th or September 10th at the latest. I did look into waiting till I move to TN, but based on many factors...doing the schooling here in CA first will make things easier given my timeline.

Not looking forward to doing all the residency and transferring of my license from CA to TN, but I have two months to take care of it after my move to TN in November before starting with USX...so although a pain in the butt (according to some) I will have the time to go thru the process.

The school apparently has a dedicated recruiter for USX that does all the pre-hire stuff (before I put down my cash to the school) to make sure I will have a job after I graduate and get moved to TN. Assuming I pass orientation of course....which I will with all the great "heads up" provided here by others. I will definitely come FULLY PREPARED with every single document they might ask me for. I also have started a work out routine to build up some flexibility and strength for the physical tests.

I'm not overweight but do need to tone up a bit. How do I know?....well I went to my local gym to ask if I could hold 70lbs...OMG....I thought my arms were going to detach...are you guys sure its 70lbs we (OTR drivers) have to lift?.....LOL. I don't know how I'm going to lift that up to a 4 or 5 foot shelf...I mean I'm only 5'7" to begin with. Oh well others have done it...including women that are probably shorter than me.....so just gives me confidence that I will be fine . I have just never been very strong in my upper body...more in my legs.

One last note....I did confirm that USX does allow up to 18 months after CDL schooling to be hired on without any kind of refresher course. I asked three different recruiters and they all said the same thing...so it must be correct. This works real well for me due to the time between graduating and being able to start with USX 3 months later. Still....I am going to ask the USX recruiter during the pre-hire process just to make absolutely sure about that policy.

The Diceman

 

OTR candidates lift 40 lbs if memory serves. 70 lbs. is for the folks going to the dedicated fleets.

 

Everyone in my orientation did 70lbs regardless of OTR or dedicated, the same goes for my girlfriend's group, including the women.

Hi, Dice...sounds like you're still dotting I's and crossing T's, everything will be fine for you.

 

Okay, what do you guys think about this?

Our weekend has been a little slow by any standards for a team. Two loads each around 800 miles.

We are empty now and just got a PP for tomorrow. Another 800 mile load, with pick up and delivery times that a solo driver could do. Also, I have been to this shipper before and it kinda sucks.

Am I out of line to refuse this load and have dispatch tell the planners that if we have to sit until tomorrow that we would rather wait for a "team" load?

I have never turned down a load, but I really dislike this one for multiple reasons, the fact that its a solo driver run on a Monday being the biggest one.

 

Just took a closer look at the PP.

32 miles MT, 851 miles total, 0700 load time with an 1800 delivery the next evening.

It's not loading at the place I originally thought, but it still doesn't seem like a team should be touching it.

 

You have to accept the load. You can try to call for another and you can also try to get it repowered, deliver early or drop at a terminal/drop yard. Never refuse a load without a very good/valid reason. (ie. out of hours, breakdown or sick)

 

Students do 70 because it's not certain yet if your OTR or dedicated so you do the hardest of the two to be covered.
first seat hires do 40 for OTR and 70 for dedicated.

 

We had the same deal with W/E dispatch. We had a 2500 mile
Lined up by our FM to take us through the weekend. Well our Dallas pick up
Turned into a full day wait for the load. Of course we lose our 2500 mile run
But are given a multi stop pick up load going 600 miles. Told them that this is
A team truck! We will start it then call our fm in the morning to ask why we are getting
A solo run?? we still will have over 6k miles for the week, but could have done much more.

 

Well we made a run from moline IL to salt lake city. FedEx hazmat load. First hazmat load so that was cool! They gave us a ton of time to get it here. So much time that we delivered 27 hours early! Lol. And that was without really trying hard. Gave ourselves a little time to stop at the worlds largest truck stop on route 80 there and browse around and get some lunch. Didn't have a pre plan or anything for when we got out here even though we asked our FM to line us up something so we didn't get stuck here. But it worked out alright cause we both are running real low on hours and needed to get some laundry done and needed a little time to relax and take a breather. I got till tmw at around 130 till my 34 is up and I got a call a few hours ago asking if we could repower a truck over in Wyoming. I said sure no problem but I needed to finish up my reset first or we weren't going to make it very far. They said no problem just get to it by 5pm tmw. Sounds good to me! 2300 mile load with 5 stops. Never had a load with so many stops before. Haven't gotten to order info yet so idk where or who any of it's going to. All I know is we're ending up in NJ with it. But at least we got a good mile run and got some laundry and some rest and a few movies on the laptop in! Hope everyone else gets some good loads to kick off the week!