Con Way Truckload

October 1, 2012 I will be 56 years old. I have never driven a truck. I hope one day to learn.

I currently work as a retail clerk. I have been doing so since April 17, 2007. I am trying to stick it out till April 17, 2017 to make the 10 year employment history to put on an application, providing that I do not get terminated or laid off.

I had been living in Wichita KS from 8/23/1996 to 10/9/2006, before returning to my home state of Connecticut to help my 2 sisters care for our elderly mother. She passed away September 30th. 2007. I remained in Connecticut till January 2009 helping my 2 sisters settle our deceased parents estate. I eventually returned to Wichita KS January 14, 2009.

In the mean time, I am using the waiting time to get my body into much better physical shape. I have already lost about 30 lbs. I have about another 15 to 20 lbs. to go. I am also working on other things as really trying to get my blood pressure down to decent levels without the use of medications. I have yet to take any.

I am trying to make sure that my sugar levels are really in check. I am trying to avoid diabetes. It does run in my family, along with heart disease and cancer. Before my mother passed away, she was on 4 shots of insulin a day. She also had 3 major open heart surgeries in a 13 year period.

I am slowly, but surly, changing a lot of my eating eating habits. It can be difficult, but NOT impossible. I also realize that stringent D.O.T. health and fitness standards must be met.

I have never been arrested or convicted of any felonies or misdemeanors at all. As years go by, I try very hard to be careful who I associate with, along with staying out of trouble as much as possible.

I do have parking tickets, speeding tickets, failure to yield right of way, and passing a school bus with red flashing lights on my record. My last ticket was back in 2007. My last accident was back in 2010. The driver ran a stop sign right into me. I was not at fault on this particular accident. However, there have been 2 prior accidents that I was at fault. One was back in 1995, the other was around 2000, not sure of exact date.

I have been diligently trying to clean up my credit record. I have been steadily paying off every bill and debt that I ever owed. I am also going over my credit report to make sure everything is accurate and up to date. I am seriously trying to get all my personal affairs in order.

I have never married, and have never fathered any children. I went back to make absolutely sure about this to avoid having to worry about any child support payments and wage garnishments. KNOCK ON WOOD, none should ever occur.

I have never smoked or taken drugs. What little drinking that I ever did, I gave up many years ago. If I do go to a bar with some people, I will only order a soda or juice. I have never had a DUI or a DWI. The risks and penalties are too much to bear.

I am hoping to be able to get off the ground in the next several years to become an over the road truck driver, PREFERABLY SOLO.

I have no close family ties in the Midwest. Both of my 2 sisters live about 1500 miles away from me, one in Connecticut, the other in New York. As mentioned earlier, both of my parents are deceased, along with all 4 of my grandparents. I only have 1 aunt and 1 uncle left, ages 87 and 92 respectively. I also have a few cousins left. Unfortunately, so many of my relatives have passed away.

As a possible potential truck driver, I do not have the stresses of having to worry about family issues if I am far away from home.

I live in a 1 bedroom apartment, therefore, do not have to worry about maintaining a house or the yard that goes with it.

Many recruiters and truck drivers alike have told me that it is extremely important to have a clear head and try to be as stress free as possible if I do eventually go into truck driving, that a truck driver must have all their concentration and energies on both their driving and getting to their destinations both safely and on time.

I realize that there is an incredible amount of regulations from the federal government that must be followed to avoid losing ones CDL license and/or getting fired from the trucking company that a driver works for.

This is why I am currently doing a lot of the things that I am doing, not only for my own health, safety and well being, but too also to prepare to start complying with regulations that a truck driver must comply with.

 

I suspect if fuel prices continue to rise, you may just find trucks begin to get turned down to 62 mph, just for that exact reason. From the drivers that don't care.Nowhere in the rule book does it say you have to run 62, but that's where the bean counters feel the trucks get the best mpg's. You can run foot to the floor 65 mph all you want, but don't maintain fleet average mpg's, then I'm sure you can blame your new fleet manager when he or she has something to say about it.

 

My MPG is a 6.6 driver. Blaming the fleet manager? I don't know where you get that assumption from. Pretty ignorant statement. All I said was I don't care for it. All I am worried about is the safety of me and others on the road, and getting that load there on time.

 

Please explain to me how running 62 in comparison to 65 changes your safety? You're going to be safer at a slower speed as it does alter your breaking distance, and in an emergency every inch/second counts.

 

I've never once have said I ran 65mph. Everyone knows slower is safer. 65mph is not very fast anyways. All I have said was that I dont like the fact you could potentially lose your job over fuel mileage and I don't agree with it. Super singles are a pain in the neck and save very little fuel. They are unsafe as well as the tag axle.

 

2 years and you think you have the industry figured out now? Super singles when maintained accurately are no more/less dangerous than running duals. They do present more of a challenge when running in certain weather conditions that a driver should be able to adjust to no matter what the equipment they are running. The tag axle can be a pain in the arse, but if you're losing traction you should have been a driver and known you needed to shut down instead of a steering wheel holder that doesn't understand safe operation.

If you don't like the company speed limit, and feel it is so unjust to ask a driver to understand fuel prices are the largest factor in operating expenses which can be controlled I suggest you go try and run your own company for a while. The fuel surcharge is based on 6mpg. In order to make more money for the company, which means the company stays positive it is the duty of the driver to be conservative. Further,, with good mileage we can afford to lower our rates, which means more business we can competitively bargain for against other large carriers.

Keep whining without any understanding of the logistics of an OTR trucking business, you sound like the boys who I kept running to in the terminals who would turn down runs because they were "too tight", "too much spare time", "not long enough" etc...

 

Not ignorant, just been around the block enough times, hung out in enough terminals to see the type.Typically there is more to the story, the Paul Harvey as they say.Quite possible you have found yourself in the crosshairs of fleet manager.But reading the underlying tone of initial thread, I'd guess you might have put yourself in that position.Typically your given verbal warning or 2 b4 the write ups.I'd think if I was written up, I'd open up a better line of communication, take.some responsibility.Confirm verbally how much time off, and when due back.This outfit is pretty good about giving extra, but it has to be hashed out from the git go.The false bravado of not caring about the.audit (ps you should, It's your time off), "firing your fleet manager" or refusing to sign and tearing up the write up...did yah.Does that attitude carry over when dealing with fleet manager?They used to do a matrix with drivers and fleet managers, try to line up with similar personality types.Sometime its easy enough, people clash, what's the saying, it takes 2 to tango.I hope you and your new fleet manager mesh.

 

Was never given a verbal. I did confirm it with West Memphis. Apparently they don't matter when it comes to that.

 

Why shouldn't you lose your job if can't maintain mpg's.I'm not so sure they are on a firing rampage over it.If a person isnt maintaining fleet average, they are spoken to, given additional training, evaluated, long before firing comes up.Sometimes it is mechanical, sometimes its idle time, dwell time between loads, etc.That's why they run it on a 3 month average.All that info is on the employees portal.Oh yeah, just note, I am not a fan of tag axles, or super singles either.Again, its their equipment, nobody is forcing you to drive it.Matter of fact, they want you to shut down if conditions warrant.

 

The whole issue with the home time goes like this for me. When you send in your request time off from the QC, you put the amount of days you want. Like this last time I put 3. If you don't have that time to take they should let you know during the 7 day period they have to get you home. One would assume they have that many days if no one says anything. Like in my situation that is what happened. I gave the keys to West Memphis to start my home time. They ask me how many days are you taking? I tell them 3 they say okay. That's how this whole issue came about. I come back I have a write up. Correct me if I'm wrong here but I see this as a problem. Like my FM tried to explain to me because I told him all of this, his response was.. " You can put 99 days on that and it's not gonna matter". Pretty idiotic statement if you ask me. The ops managers told me different than that they were actually in agreement with me. It's just like you said though next time I should check for myself.

You are right no one is forcing me to drive it. The MPG thing is a policy and I cannot do anything but accept it. 6.25 is not hard to average.