Freightliner vs. International

TYVM everyone, from all of this accumulated wisdom, I gather that he just needs more practice, which he is going to get. The driver that he rode around with this week said he is improving. My son tends to be critical of himself, but he told me this morning that he realizes himself that he is improving. He is supposed to do the entire run tonight by himself (with the other driver just observing). He is very determined to do well so I'm sure the learning curve will be relatively fast and manageable.

He'll be on his own next week. I told him there are some things in the workplace that you can't fix, like stupid, lazy, bad attitude, dishonesty, the world owes me a living, etc. Those are unwanted gifts that just keep on giving. The need for a little more practice to get the finer points of the job down should be fixable in a pretty brief period of time. I was reading the Walmart thread, and even those world class drivers have an adjustment period when new. The manager who hired him has 20 years of experience and started as a driver himself, so I'm taking the fact that he took a chance on a relatively inexperienced driver and hired my son as a vote of confidence by someone who is objective and knows what he is doing. Fingers crossed for my son but I'm expecting good things.

 

Thank you. I cannot blame your mother for that, I am sure she is right, it is a dangerous profession and she loves you and wants you to be safe.

Since I'm not brain dead :-0 I have many of the same concerns that your mom has. I'm not going to make this a long drawn-out message, but my son was medically disabled for 10 years due to a benign brain tumor and started making a miraculous recovery at the end of 2015. Based on many things that have happened over the past years (long story and won't go into here), I am 100% convinced that my son is exactly where God has put him, and being where God has put you is a perfect recipe for everything good in this world, regardless of how unfavorable it may look to you or me from the outside.

Honestly, on my own steam, I have a zero for 2 batting average when it comes to my children. My oldest son was such a problem in his late teen years that we ultimately felt we had no choice but to insist that he leave our house. Although husband and I spent many hours crying and praying for him, I was personally unable to envision a future that did not involve death on the street at a young age or an extensive stay in jail.

That son is now a happily married (over 10 years) regional bank manager with a wonderful wife and 2 great kids. He is on the board of several community organizations including a battered women's shelter where he volunteers and cooks breakfast regularly.

Can you tell I am proud of him and grateful ?

And now my youngest son (I have 3) is a truck driver. If you had told me this was going to happen 2 years ago I would have said it was impossible. In fact, that's what I privately thought to myself when he brought home the stuff that you have to memorize to get your CDL from trucking school. But I resolved to support him and give the whole thing to God, and that if he had to fall off the bike then that is what would have to happen, because I would be doing him no favors by trying to protect him from the world.

My husband and I did our best to try to raise our sons right, but my ability to keep a positive outlook on all of this has little to do with my own personal qualities and everything to do with God . I am still somewhat trying to wrap my mind around the emotional impact of my youngest son's recovery and re-engagement with the world.

 

Replying to this thread with an update on his first solo week. He is in a kind of unusual hybrid position; he is working for an LTL company and his primary job is what I'm going to call "short hop" line hauls between terminals in the same region. He is being paid by the hour rather than by the mile. I think they had to set it up that way because no one would have taken that kind of lower mileage job, if it was paid on mileage. But it does seem to me to be ideal for someone like my son with only 3 months of experience to get a lot of practice in a relatively safe way. In addition the terminal manager is letting him do yard jockey work on the side for extra hours after his regular job and will also be letting him do forklift work at some point if he wants, the manager said he is going to train him on the various aspects of the whole business and then if he wants to go straight linehaul in 6 months he can. My son told me the terminal manager said it is against company policy to have someone with less than a year experience doing straight linehaul exclusively.

So the manager was happy with my son because he did all of his runs in good time. My son told the manager that he thought he might occasionally be able to fit in another nightly run in the same time before running out his clock, and the manager smiled

2 mishaps during the week - while yard jockeying my son had trouble uncoupling and something collapsed, I think he may have said it was the landing gear, but I could be wrong about the name of the part. My son was sure he had caused a disaster and was going to be fired, went and sat in his car and called me. I told him to go in and talk to the manager and find out either way (one of those "the truth shall make you free" and "God has not given us a spirit of fear" moments). It turned out that the part was already broken and everyone knew that and no one was upset/he was not in trouble and had done nothing wrong. That was when the manager told him he was happy with his performance doing the runs timely.

Then he was sent to a different terminal and one of his tires overheated and caught fire just as he was pulling into the yard. I think he may have said it was the drive tire, I'm not sure. A couple of the yard jockeys ran over and extinguished it when the saw the smoke. Once again my son was second guessing himself about having left the brake on (although he said he did not believe he had left the brake on, and if he had done so, he would have immediately felt the drag while driving). The mechanic at the terminal said there was no flat spot on the tire and the brake thing (sorry, you all probably know what that was) wasn't damaged or hot, so it was not that the brake was left on, the incident was due to a mechanical problem rather than something my son did. They kept the truck out of service for the moment and they are taking things apart to find out what actually caused the problem.

And then last night, he drove through monsoons in a rented replacement truck and one of the wiper blades flew off! He white-knuckled it back to the terminal through sheets of rain

So my son just left for his last night of the week. What a first solo week - monsoons! Flaming tires! Other than that he had a pretty good week overall and the shifting is going really, really well, he's starting to feel like a pro with that.

I think my son is still a little shell shocked from his first 3 month job, where the atmosphere was that you were eaten for lunch for the smallest infraction. Thankfully the new job seems to have a different atmosphere (basically, you have to perform but no one is looking to cut you off at the knees. Overall people seem pretty nice). I told him I though it would be appropriate to start having more confidence in himself. He said he doesn't want to turn in to an arrogant #######, and I told him there is a middle ground - he needs to be objective and honest but more reasonable in how he sees himself.

Can any of you comment on the flaming tire thing, can you confirm that it's plausible that there was some mechanical problem and there was nothing my son could have reasonably done to prevent it? Honestly, if it had not been raining that night and if he had not been pulling into the terminal when it occurred, there would have likely been a lot more damage. I hate to think of it, but the truck might very well have caught fire. I think Someone may have been watching over him again (as usual). Thank you!

 

Thank you, you were spot on. It turns out that the wheel bearings were leaking. What my son told me this morning about how they finally figured that out was a lot more detailed than this - I think they fixed the parts that were melted by the fire and when they drove the truck the same problem reoccurred - not the fire, they didn't let it come to that, but the brake drum heating up which led to the fire. And then when they were diagnosing that they found out that the bearings were malfunctioning. I hope that makes sense.