a few random questions

What is this 36 hour break you speak of? Maybe you are thinking of a 34 hour reset?

 

1. If you hit a low bridge, you will most likely have a police escort out of where you are. Use the time while you're waiting for them to pack your stuff since some companies are known to toss you out of the truck almost immediately.

2. Tankers catch less wind and flatbeds would vary by the shape of their load.

3. 34 hour reset (it's 36 hours for Canadian HOS) is your time. There is no rule preventing the company from bugging you though. You also don't "get" a 34 hour break each week. As long as you keep your hours below 70 in 8 days you can run forever with no days off.

4. You are only required to take one 30 min break in the first 8 hours of your shift, and no, 11 hours is no big deal. Canadian HOS allows 13 consecutive with no breaks and we are no more unsafe.

5. Teams are governed by the same HOS as other drivers. There is a somewhat confusing provision allowing splitting of sleeper birth for teams, but it isn't worth it IMO. The truck runs basically 24 hours a day.

6. I felt comfortable pretty much right away. Ask lots of questions and don't hit anything.

7. Backing up will be a work in progress and some days it's easy as pie and other days you couldn't hit the ocean from the beach. Turn the CB off if being made fun of bothers you.

8. I didn't get a home every week job out of school and the miles totally sucked too. They played favourites with a certain few drivers and the rest of us "normies" were left to fight over the crap loads left over. I was doing maybe 2000 mi a week and making .30/mi.

9. Yes and yes. The load securement/tarping makes flatbed more challenging than backing a van or reefer into a door and eating lunch. Also, I have a few friends who haul equipment on flattened and they have to load them on the trailer themselves. I have NO idea how to operate a huge excavator, a backhoe, a bulldozer, steam rollers and dozen of different farm tractors.

The shifting fluid in a tanker makes stopping and cornering very different from a dry van. When you try to stop all of the liquid pushes up against the back of the truck, as ditto for sloshing side to side. Add in the hazmat and loading/unloading process, and it is a different world from OTR dry van.

Hope this helps,

 

My dispatch does not provide us with directions to customers. Sometimes we have a phone number for the customer, but it's on us to figure out where we are going.

 

If you hit a bridge, regardless of why you hit the bridge, you are most likely fired.

The only possible exception would be if they are paving and the asphalt is raised higher so the height on the bridge is wrong. But you would have to be the first truck to go under it, since we are (basically) all the same height/width.

Sometimes there are detours when accidents/construction close the highways. Some states are better than other for detour signs. I have never worked for a company that held our hands to the point that they would give us directions or route us. Trip planning has always been squarely my responsibility. That includes finding fuel stops and places to pull over for breaks, not running roads that are prohibited to trucks, etc.

 

Regardless of where or who your directions come from, YOU, the driver, are responsible for your routing. Check your route the best you can and always keep in mind that low clearance bridges will not always be listed in your truckers atlas, especially inside city limits, such as Chicago.

 

Unless you were on a bridge, you would have find a driveway/parking lot and block the road to back into it and turn around. Bridges and truck routes are signed and marked...

A bigger concern is missing turns and having to navigate a different exit or street to where you're headed. Google maps is extremely useful in these situations, also for scoping out truck entrances and parking lot orientation.