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

Hey ADK, we just took a load by i80 truck stop
and stopped for fuel in Salt lake cty. Load ended up
in west Sac. Had good miles last week.

 

Nice ATL! I like running across 80. You can click off alot of miles in a day and the road is in way better shape than most other highways. We had a run out to phoneix last week and then back to Ohio that was the longest one. Second longest one was from Dover to MO. Which Was easily a solo run but o well this week is looking better for miles at least I hope lol.

 

Running I-80 from St. Louis to SLC. I know I-70 for the first part. I-80 is great.

 

Thanks, Craig.

That's exactly what I figured, so we accepted the load and decided to not worry about it. We just took a little break and went to the movies last night then grabbed it first thing this morning.

When we got the bills, I noticed that it said delivery between 0700 and 1400 fcfs, not at 1800 like the load info said. So, we're just going to run it over there for 1st thing in the am and see what shakes out for the rest of the week.

We will be sitting at 4500 miles for the week on Tuesday morning so unless we get another short one that we can get done before payroll cut off, that will probably be it. We would have liked a few more miles this week, but that's how it goes I guess.

Hopefully we can put together something good next week before our HT on the 16th.

 

Thanks for all the feedback on the lifting weight requirement during the physical test at orientation. It sounds like 40 lbs is the weight lifting requirement for OTR and 70 lbs for dedicated...that makes sense to me given the different workload of each. This is one of the BIG reasons I have no interest in doing "Dedicated" at all.

The only reason I can think of that "all" must lift 70 lbs is not because they don't know what you will be doing (OTR or Dedicated)...but rather they don't know who your trainer will be and therefore if they will be an OTR or Dedicated driver. I say this because I have read some posts where the student does get assigned a Dedicated driver as their trainer. I know USX tries to avoid this as their are elements of OTR driving you would not get a chance to practice doing, but it does happen.

So what I don't understand is you seem to say they do not know what you will be doing. I just assumed by that point (orientation) they would know that all I want to do is OTR....period and nothing else. They will also know that I will be driving team with my friend by then which according to you would only have to lift 40 lbs as a first seat hire during his orientation given he has been driving for 12 years.

I guess I will just have to ask a few recruiters and see what they say & will report back my findings. I of course would still prefer to deal with 40 or even 50 lbs....but still have my sights set on 70 for now.

The Diceman

 

I totally understand what your saying and it makes perfect sense to me. A few students in my class tried to push that argument that they where OTR so why do they need to do 70lb. My personal experience is this though. I was never asked or told anything about a dedicated route before I got to orientation. I assumed all students had to do OTR. So at orientation I asked what did I need to do to switch over to dedicated so I could avoid the 8 weeks of team driving. They told me to call my recruiter and see if they have an account in my area and I could switch. Now, had I done the OTR physical that first day and then switched to dedicated the second day, I would have to come back to orientation on a Monday or Wednesday when they do the physicals which would delay starting.
So doing the harder of the two makes more sense so in case you switch to dedicated during your training, it's only a matter of 30 more hours of training and not needing a new physical that you may not pass. (not you personally, speaking in general)

 

I really wish that I could get on here and have some good news once in a while, but of coarse that is not the case again.

We showed up to our delivery at 0700 because we were told it was 0700-1400 fcfs only to be told we had to go back up the road 10 miles and wait at some little truck stop and then come back at 1800.

FML.

We had a PP loading today about 20 miles away that was going to the Chicago area for Wednesday morning, another solo driver run no less, but better than nothing. I talked to our FM and he told us that it was preloaded so the late pickup shouldn't matter because we could still make the delivery. I also took this time to express to hime the fact that we would really like to see some team loads soon or otherwise one of us might as well just stay at home. He assured me that he was going to try to make that happen for us.

A few minutes later our PP got cancelled so I got my hopes up and waited for a PP more suited to a team operation. And we waited, and waited... After several hours we finally get a PP and I thought things were looking up until I looked at it, this one loads 115 miles from here and also goes to the Chicago area but this one doesn't load until tomorrow afternoon.

FML again.

I really try to be optimistic about things, but my patience is starting to run a little thin.

778 miles between Tuesday morning and Thursday is not going to work for us and something needs to change soon because we haven't done a single thing since last Friday that I couldn't have done on my own.

 

Jeremy, it is time to get your fleet owner involved. Call the main number, tell them you do not want to be transferred and ask for the name and ext number of your fleet owner, then ask to be transferred

 

Thanks again, Craig.

We did find out that this next load is d&h on both ends and is supposed to deliver asap after p/u. The p/u time is listed as tomorrow afternoon, but the order info included the trailer number that it is supposed to be loaded on so we are heading to the shipper to see if it is ready now.

I'm going to give it another couple of days and see what happens before I make a call. Even if we don't get rolling on this until tomorrow and deliver late tomorrow night or early Thursday morning, a couple of decent runs can make for a good week.

I don't want to call in crying just yet because we've really only been on the team board for 2 weeks and we were in the shop for half of one of them. I know that its bound to happen once in a while, so I wouldn't even be complaining this early in the game about these 800 mile runs, but they at least need to get them happening back to back instead of us sitting around for 10-15 hours every day waiting to pick up or deliver.

 

Hello everyone, I am new to this site and new to trucking. I just got my CDL A yesterday after spending the past 4 weeks (160 Hours) in school at Smith & Solomon in Dupont, PA. I have been looking at a lot of companies and US Express has really seemed to grab my interest. I applied to them on Sunday and my application has been accpeted and is being processed. Everything I have read so far it appears that US Express is a good company to work for, especially for being fresh out of school with my CDL.

I do have some questions, first being how long does the training actually take? I read it is 150, if that is the case does it mean I can run 70/8 and do my 34hr reset and then do the samething again, then tack on the last 10hrs? Another question is after reading many of the posts here, can I go solo or will I be forced into team driving? I would prefer driving solo, but I am not one to refuse anything that will give me income. Also, what are the odds that I will end up with a automatic instead of a 10 speed? I understand of course that I would first have to be hired by US Express for any of this to be possible.

Any answers to these questions would be great, I am mainly looking at US Express and Roehl as who I would prefer to work for. Thanks again in advance.