Hirschbach New England Water Route

Hello all,

I'm new to blogging and forums, but wanted to share my experiences with Hirschback motor lines. I've been on the road with them for about a month now.

To establish background: I transitioned in to trucking after 10 years in Emergency Medical services. For my first year and a half out of CDL school, I drove TT and box for a lobster company in southern Maine. I was their first class A driver, so my "experience" was mostly self-taught trial and error. Mercifully, I did something right in a past life and earned a good run of karma. That is to say, I managed not to wreck or run amok of the law during the earlier mentioned trial and error phase of my career.

The seasonal nature of the seafood industry was crippling my finances, so I went job seeking. Ultimately, Hirschbach picked me up for their New England dedicated route. For the most part I haul water out of Maine and deliver throughout New England as well as NY, NJ, PA area. Sometimes I backhaul random dry van loads on the way to Maine for more water, but often, I'm running back empty. The pay rate is on a sliding scale based on the total (loaded and MT) miles of the dispatched run. I am quite happy with my weekly takehome, and could definitely be earning more if I so chose, but I have a young family, so I sacrifice some pay for home time. The water route has it's own dispatchers (2) and they are excellent about scheduling. To their credit, they have also been quite patient and helpful as I went through my "teething phase".

For the "water" route, they are now conducting their training in Springfield, MA instead of East Dubuque, IL. I was in the second class at the new orientation hub. In full truth, the orientation was, at times, a little jumpy. There were stretches of time where we would be doing nothing, and wondering what was going on. Plans would be made on the fly and changed just as quickly. My read on this was it was merely a matter of them working out the kinks at the new location, and I've had opportunity to observe other orientation classes since which have run much better.

I would love to answer any questions anyone may have, and I will endeavour to update this thread as often as my schedule will permit. If you see unit 22140 on the road, please feel free to pop over and talk to me personally too!

Stay safe,
Daniel

 

Roger that Condo. I am a straight up professional kind of guy. Any observations I post, while obviously not being totally objective, as that is humanly impossible, will be as fair and accurate as possible. If I should consider posting something about an adverse incident, it would only be for the purpose of educating other readers so that 1. They may avoid such a similar incident. Or 2. So that I may benefit from the insight of other members of the trucking community. And even then, the publication would be presented as objectively and professionaly as possible with a focus on not slandering any person (s) or companies involved, and with attention paid to not violating anybody else's privacy or the privacy of any company.

I figure I'll likely give my DM a heads up to pass up the chain anyway.

Be safe definitely carries multiple connotations on the net
Daniel

 

Hello again,

Until I get to a WiFi hotspot, I will be updating from my android. So, these posts will be brief and may be less than perfectly edited.

In the interest of my thumbs and bandwith, I won't cover the stuff you can easily find on the website, but I want to drop some anecdotes from time to time about things which I have found to be noteworthy.

My cab is a 2012 International ProStar+. Due to the short hauls and the heavy loads, water cabs use a shorter sleeper berth. It has a single twin size bunk and the provided mattress is quite comfortable. I'm 6' and 320 and I sleep better in my bunk than in my home bed. The cab is equipped with an APU which runs climate control off batteries, only starting the engine when the batteries run low. In my cab, it seems to crank up at about the 10 hour mark. Hirschbach equiped the vehicle with an inverter. Dont know the specs right off the bat, but I do know we had the option of trading out our passenger seat for a fridge, so I assume that may speak to the inverter's performance capabilities.I can tell you the heater definitely works.

When I received my cab, I did my initial inspection and found it was due for it's annual inspection and that one of the brakes on the steer axle was shot. The maintenance crew at springfield imediately rectified both matters. I have had to bring my unit in to springfield for repais and PM on a few occasions, and the mechanics there are excellent. They keep a very well stocked shop and can fabricate repairs and replacement parts when necessary too.

I will briefly add one other positive. I have a wife who is disabled and two young children. I also just recently lost my grandfather rather abruptly. My DM has been well above and beyond when it comes to getting me home for crisis management, or even just to give the wife and kids a hug in passing.

That being said, my thumbs are about to fall off. Signing out for now.

Stay safe
Daniel

 

Definitely agree on the heavy part. Prior to hirschbach, my experience was in EMS and then a mom and pop seafood company, so based on that, I've found the pay satisfactory. While, yes we don't haul much back to Maine, the pay is the same whether loaded, empty, or bobtailing. When we go down to NY-PA area, we usually have some sort of brokered load that will go to Mass or NH fwiw.