Abandon Trainee

That's the point. You're assuming the best, others the worst. We don't know, but the best advice we can give guys starting out is to thine own self be true. Be dedicated to self improvement and assisit in all the honorable aspects of life.

 

Yes....and then there are thousands more poor people that drive a clunker for a car, still have a box tv, and they have the cheap phone....you only speak of what you see, that doesn't mean that's everyone. Some people make bad decisions I have acknowledge that. My point is, that it's not all that make bad decisions. They do the best they can with what they have. Ive seen both types, but I can't say all poor people are one way or the other.

 

Obama phone

 

Ive considered it. Take about 6 days and thus the limitations of water and cargo in harness on the back etc comes into play. Time of year and so on also all factors into it.

When I was younger I occasionally did 8 miles to work each way walking and doing a 8 hour shift on my feet at the gas station. Later on when a friends car went down bad, we would put away 20 miles in a 5 to 6 hour period walking home. Riding a bike 20 miles is just warming up, when getting into about 40 to 70 mile days you are putting in some time to make it happen round trip.

200 miles. Not too bad if you hae the physical ability and the necessary food, fluids and so on to make it happen while maintaining a reasonable pace. It is not something that is normal for most people not accustomed to Military service or certain situations in life. I would also be very careful about the condition of the feet. Lances, bactine and a couple of other necessary medical disinfectants and pain sprays would be necessary as well as a number of dressing wound covering material if necessary. You probably will go through a pair of good quality walking shoes or boots for sure, they must already be broken in very good before you try something like this.

When I was around 14 I was introduced to long distance running, then 1,2 and three mile. I was not a good runner, just painfully slow. I think it was around a 7:10 mile, 1440 for two miles and I don't even wanna see the stopwatch for the third mile. It's closer to 30 minutes. I have had a couple rivals that were very good people and showed they can take me on during formal races at those distances. Two in particular. It just about killed them, but when you want something and you have not yet passed out or broke something trying to get it done you are going to get it.

A few years later I was running with a former Marine on 5 and 9 mile courses and I think we exclusively used Reeboks in those days specifically for that problem. 5 miles aint too bad. But when you approach 9 miles running that's pretty much all i can stand. Now if we were walking we can put that away in about 4 hours if the temperature worked out to 70 or so.

Some of the mental thinking in endurance for the long haul came into play for trucking. When you put away a thousand miles straight through and cannot stop for about another 1600 it can put things a little bit off in the mind, body and spirit sometimes. Essentially doing the work of two truckers team by yourself without any sleeping or stopping unless you absolutely have to for fuel and only for maybe 15 minutes at most. Any longer you begin to literally just think "Eff this" and find a fat sofa in the TV room or something. You are literally quitting then. (Never mind the HOS in those days, Im reaching way back long before computer anything. When the boss says that load has to be there and nothing protecting you then you are effed. Either through the DOT that will put you OOS, fine you more than you make and so on or you run off the mountain because you cannot keep awake. And you will find you have a whole eternity to sleep.

Fast forward to today, I consider that kind of thinking in those early days some of the most abusive things you can possibly create among truckers in any given company fleet. If they wont get it there on the other side of the world by tomorrow morning? Fire em. DOT and FMCSA enforcement for bad HOS situations truly were a paper tiger. If you said anything, you were fired and maybe treated more badly for creating a problem. (Or exposing one rather) before the days of the internet.

That is why I stand tall now when someone worried about being late 10 minutes on a simple two day 800 mile run. If they know they are going to be late, call it in and get a new appt time before you arrive. Most especially. And when the HOS says you stop and get some sleep even if you are a hour from customer? By heaven you stop and go to bed. The HOS is the HOS. It is much easier to defend your position when you are running legally.

 

I drive a junker tahoe that is on it's third engine having survived the recent Cash for junker program (That involves pouring a form of glass beads into the engine with the oil drained out of it. Then allowing the engine to run until it quits running after melting those beads into a essentially a solid glass block crreating a locked up dead engine forever.) It's not a junker junker having plenty of shop attention to fix this and that as time goes by. But it is nice not to have a computer stuffed vehicle telling you do this do that do something else fix me etc. (Such BS...)

My Phone is a smart phone, it has a retail value of literally 25 dollars. (I paid 20 for the last one free and clear. Then 6.99 a month for service averaging cash) My current phone is essentially free provided I stay within the rules of that particular service contract. Since I am deaf, it has no value to me in voice calls and I text thousands per month (Unlimited) and the crappy seriously bad internet on it does work when I need it to wherever. But it is not my first choice. In addition I have to install and managed 4 applications, strictly to defend the phone against spam calls, spam texts and random drug dealing kinds of texts from strangers etc. In short if you are not on my contact list that has been validated such as my doctor, you are not getting through to ring the phone at all. It's a shame I have to use software and technology out the wazoo to minimize the crap that floods these phones day and night filtering to only about two or three people who actually matter and require my attention when they text. In short compared to the awesome cell phone service nationally and into Canada in trucking that we paid 100 dollars a month on contracts for then and compared to what they are doing and evolving now for free... it's pretty good but also not so good. Ive decided that the phone is nice but it's getting to where it's a liability now. A risk not worth maintaining in today's society determined to lend me 10,000 dollars from a nigerian prince with a text link. I am not that stupid. But apparently enough have been to make it worthwhile for the scammers, spammers and thieves to continue these kinds of underground attacks against those who don't know better.

My ex she holds on to a flip phone. It is getting approximately 200 minutes of spam calls and endures about 500 spam texts per week. Now we simply list whoever tries to call as a spammer (Do not call list does nothing absoluletely effing nothing) or texts as one gets thrown into a contact list with one word spam. And when it shows up as spam the phone is allowed to drain the battery ringing. There is a second identical phone with it's fresh battery ready to pop into the first one.

Sure we can add spam blocking at the carrier level so none of that goes through, but it's another 3.00 to 9.00 a month in fees please. We don't think so. It's stupid. When you want more money for what is becoming essential then what we must have at some point in our life time is a complete and utter collapse of basic phone calling. Spammers are burying phones in text offers now rather than making robo calls. Currently there is no defense what so ever against them legally other than to make bleating complaints to the states atty office. When 1 million people a month complains to the state, they need thousands to process each one. (YAY Maga jobs anyone?) At this point I think the criminals are actually winning.

We have talked about eliminating phones entirely. We live close enough that two way radio is a option. Or two old CB radios on base station antennas off a 12 volt inverter from the wall. Breaker 2 you got yer ears on Coffeepot? Sure do, pick it up and kick it back to me Coffeecup. and we will go from there.

I remember a time where the most technology was a broadcasting off the AM radio downtown with good sound quality versus a large color tv for the picture quality of the ball games. Phone was a rotary model off copper wiring. (Parts of alabama still is on copper by law until the last of the aging residents pass away, then they are converted)

There was no internet then. What you had learned and retained was what you had. And that's it. There was always room for learning.

In the end I think all of this wonderful computer stuff will somehow be our downfall as a Society. I don't know how it will fail to continue to function as it does now, even with all the unwelcome wasteful efforts of spammers, trolls and scammers etc. What is scarier to me is that the younger generation, you take away all of the electronics and the effects they suffer within half a day is very close to if not equal to the physical and mental impact of a addict deprived of his or her favorite drug of choice.

 

We did.

 

Your Tahoe made it to 3 Motors, that's pretty impressive. The vehicles I drive have never been luxury in any form or fashion. In fact when I bought the Altima, that was the first car that I ever had that had air haha. I always manage to buy cash cars, then I don't have to deal with the payment. I just need things to do what they're supposed to do, I don't do much care about appearance. I more care about function. I held on to my flip phone for the longest. The only reason I replaced it, was because I sat on it while it was open by mistake

 

As long as you understand that NO ONE can help a person who is unwilling to invest in themselves.

40 years ago, Sally Struthers was thin, and she started doing those commercials about starving kids. Back then, there was 10 million of them. Sally got fat and decades later, in the same country, there's 25 million starving kids. If you feed all 25 million, in 15 years, there will be 50 million. Obviously, dumping money into these areas is not the thing to do. Now, you would think that if you were once starving and in abject poverty that you would make absolutely sure that your own kids wouldn't suffer such a fate, right? But what happens when adults refuse to be responsible? There isn't enough resources in the world to cover people who choose to be irresponsible.

 

That particular vehicle is not loved to be honest. Ive owned a range of vehicles in my life time and all of them were appreciated and loved. This one is more of a step child that is demanding, needy and constantly throwing a fit. However there is this ideal that in Trucking everything has to be maintained, to make sure it is not broken. If a toggle got broke, it got fixed asap. (With metal toggles not the cheap plastic crap that breaks.... Ive learned to go to certain truckstops with big basement shops full of wonderful products. I'll spend a few dollars and replace the cheap company plastic crap.

Because of that ethic I have some more work to do on that tahoe. It's strictly a town car. I can probably take it to little rock if i had to but it's not a enjoyable drive for a variety of reasons. One of which is I have to maintain enough money on hand (About 500 so far and counting) capable of having a tow to the home shop 24/7 at a moment's notice. I have break down insurance but I don't know my limits on that. I am working with my agent to learn more.

I think the biggest reason I bought the vehicle is for my spine. The roads in our area are seriously bad and Ive had my spine on fire after driving what is supposed to be a very comfortable 4 door buick of a medium to high end model and when I drive this truck on that bad road I don't have that back pain. So I try to keep up my morale and stay on it taking care of it where possible. My Mechanic has a very similar truck to mine, but his is a pickup body while mine was a SUV but everything else is identical if not the exact parts.

The previous owner had it down the the river in Helena Miss for years as a sort of a canoe carrier and a music box thumping away with their culture music down there. The first three months of that darn truck is following every wire, big and small and pulling all that does not absolutely belong on that vehicle. Then I had to run the entire fuse box and find running shorts. Took about a year but I found pretty much all the shorts. Next up is braking and sparkplug wires plus coil. (Think the new coil will help the engine stay awake at idle. She just pulls 500 RPM and wants to sleep rather than hold 1000 or say 700 when warmed up.) So something with a bigger spark and wires to deliver it should help.

I do add stabil gas treatment because I only put in about 3 gallons every 4 months or so. I don't want the tank to get gummy and the associated fuel system to also get gummy. There is another octane booster I put in once every 5 months and splash some extra gas for a runabout so she can get up and run, blow that carbon out of there.

I understand your form and function. If anyone would do it it will be me. Although I don't mind a touch of nice here and there where it's functional. (Ha....) It has been very advantegous to run with ADESA a number of years throwing cars and trucks around the lot or up and down the road. You can get a very good understanding of what are generally (Within reason) decent vehicles either new or used and you seriously get a idea of wide range of vehicle makes and models that are crappy. And Im sorry that we allow these ... crappy products to be bought and sold here in America. makes me ashamed. I think what really gets me is as a trucker accustomed to nicer things in a big rig such as Airride etc common people driving what they think is a nice new car but actually a crate that will fall apart in 9 months. (Sister had a Kia that did just that. first it was a 100 dollar front end work, turned into a 1000 dollar nightmare that progressed to where it's undrivable in a few weeks. and repairs would have exceeded the value)

By the same token my step father had a nice wagon, a big old Buick with a 500 in it he sent that thing to the junker yard because in his mind if I got the car gratis and then paid 500 dollars to replace the bad power steering (That was all that was wrong with it) it would have been more than what the car was worth. Im just sorry that hardheaded tightwad never had a converstation with me to see if I had 500 dollars (Yes) to fix and title the #### thing with tags and so on.(Yes to all) before he called up the tow man to come junk it for a couple hundred dollars scrap weight.

That's one vehicle that got away. But at the same time, it would have sat so much with me gone trucking. SO... I don't stress about it. You could unload a whole tractor worth of everything and load into that wagon and go home.