Could someone give me a day in the life of a truck driver?

98% boredom
1% sheer terror
1% #$&% you can't even imagine

 

There's different kinds of drivers on here.
My life, in one day:
Get up at 4:57 am.
Take shower, get dressed, drive the 22 minute drive to work.
Open up shop - turn off the alarm, log into the computer system and sign in for the day.
Go through the computer system and see what deliveries have to be made.
Print out the tickets for those deliveries and go pull the orders, palletize them and load them onto my truck.
Strap the truck, do the pre-trip, come back in the shop. By then, the other driver is there and the warehouse worker. Print out my reports, and then do the credit card sales report from the previous day (they have dumped me with a lot of responsiblities since starting to work there that have nothing to do with the trucking industry - but I don't mind, it's a stepping stone to getting more pay and a better position in the company). When all of my shop duties are fulfilled, the truck is loaded and I'm ready to go - well, I go! Sometimes I'm out for an hour, other times I'm out for 10 hours. Just depends on how long it takes at each site to get unloaded. Sites I go to consist almost entirely of construction sites, the product I am delivering is installed in the ground either before anything is built or during the building process or both.

Some days I don't drive at all - today was one of them. I spent the entire day doing projects around the yard. Other days I don't do deliveries, instead, I go around to all the vendors where we obtain our products to resell and do pickups.

Whatever the case, when I get back to the yard and the truck is parked for the day, I do the cash sales reports, and other computer related activities and also look into the system to see what is in there for tomorrow. Usually at least one or two deliveries are in there and the order can be pulled in advance. Just the same, the salesmen dump deliveries in there after we all go home and they have to be pulled in the morning.

Now, in my former life, I was an OTR driver, if that's what you're looking for. That life is gone, and I don't miss it. In the 80's, which is when I did most of my OTR stuff, and early 90's too, I was working up to 24 hour shifts. A minimum day would be 14 hours. I pretty much didn't do much of anything legal, not too many people I knew did, either. That was before CDL's and a lot of federal regs that make it more difficult to get away with such things, as well as technology. I was a driving fool, admittedly, and didn't care about the long hours. Each load was a challenge - how fast can I get there, get it off the truck, and get another load dispatched? How long could I force myself to keep my eyes open? What methods could I invent to keep myself awake?

Hallucinations, hearing sounds in my head like the sound of meat cooking in a frying pan, being so tired I couldn't sleep was part of the daily routine. I cheated on log books, and no-one cared one way or the other. I had several log books, actually, always did. I learned the routes around scales and would drive over-gross. The trucks I drove in those days had no governors - I would get in a line of other trucks and we would go WAY over the speed limit. In many states, at the time anyway, troopers wouldn't bother us. My "favorite" is I-10 between El Paso and San Antonio. I would frequently form part of a line of trucks going at least 100 mph and there was no slowing down until the city limits of San Antonio.

I don't think there's much of that going on now-a-days, but I do think there are a lot of tired drivers out there, and frankly, it's just part of the life. I've had more than my share of waiting to get loaded, unloaded, wait wait wait. If you don't have patience, you're either going to get some, in a hurry, or you're going to quit, cause' you are going to do a LOT of waiting. 5 minutes or 10 hours, you'll get your share of it. I still get these situations where you are told to put your truck into a place where it "can't fit". You are a truck driver, a miracle worker, MAKE IT FIT, or so these people think. My record backing distance was almost a mile in length. Long story, but the only way in and out of the place was a one lane road with no place to turn around at the dumpsite.

Not too long ago, I delivered a of heavy iron pipe to a construction site. When I got there, the construction guy says he'll take it off right "here". But then, he starts looking up at the nearby mountain, and finally asks me if I can take it "up there". He's pointing at this mountain. "Up WHERE?"
"Well, don't you see that trackhoe up there? We really need this pipe up there where that trackhoe is, it's going to take a long time for our loader to take all of this up there".

I can't see anything. To me, it's just a mountain. There isn't anything up there that I can see, just giant boulders. He continues to point at this ghost trackhoe. I start squinting. I finally see this yellow object, far up in the distance, that looks so small, it's barely visible. It turns out that thing is a giant trackhoe (excavator), it's up on that mountain digging trenches, and they are putting in the infrastructure to start building houses up there. When I drove up there in that guy's pickup, it was a one lane (barely) "road", dirt, with several places that had turns where I wondered if a semi could navigate around it without dropping off the side of the mountain. The grade was at least 10%, probably much steeper, just couldn't tell. It was fun, I got that truck up there, they unloaded the thing, and then told me I was the first semi up that grade, and that there were bets amongst the contractors as to whether a semi actually could make it up there.

Anyway, got a little sidetracked, but the life of a trucker can be a different thing every day. For me, when I was doing OTR, I always just loved to look at the different scenery as it changed from state to state. Some states you go into, it seems like you cross the state line and the entire scenery and landscape changes instantly, some strange stuff. I don't know that anyone could or even would want to do this now, but I used to divert off the Interstates as much as I could. Interstate Highways, after you've been driving them for years and years, all start looking the same after a while.

No matter what happens, IMO, you've got to try and take the positive, light view and side of things and let the small stuff just float on by. You get stuck somewhere, get out of that stinking truck and walk around, do something to divert your attention. Oh, that's right, you need to sleep, well, go to bed!

 

You tell your story good TroopeRat I enjoyed reading it.

 

so much for my interest in trucking

 

I'v done it!!

 

God, how I do miss the ol days sometimes. It's more like a job now. There was freedom once, even when I was starting though it was on it's way out but I was independant.
I have many memories of running bulk spuds in excess of 100k from MI to GA and never seeing the interstate. Or running yuma AZ to Detroit in a day and a half as a solo act.
oops, I hope logs doesn't see this thread she will be a whoopin all the old timers for giving the newbies ideas

 

Read Daytona45's Have to Start Somewhere thread and our Starting School Tomorrow thread. They will give you lots of info not only during school but on our OTR adventures as well.

 

I also worked punishing jobs for many years, but had a regular schedule for the last nine years before I retired. So, I will relate the typical day of an older truck driver working "banker's hours" on a dedicated run. I would arrive at the terminal about 6:30 a.m. There is no set starting time or time clock. My starting time was based on my estimate of the work day, and whether I got tied up on the Internet before leaving the house. I kept my own truck key, so there was no need to enter the garage. I would place my thermos, lunch cooler and canvas tote bag (tools, log book clip board, CB) into the tractor. Then I would unplug the block heater before entering the truck and starting the engine. Notice that I did not check anything under the hood (so, shoot me!). As the engine was warming up, I would enter the mileage, start my log, and hook up the CB. We had CBs stolen at our terminal last year, so I never left mine in the truck. After I started my paperwork, I pulled the tractor out of the parking spot and backed my car into it.

Within 10 minutes of arriving at the terminal, I would bobtail to the shipper two miles away. Swiping my pass card, I would enter the shipper's plant and evaluate what trailers had to be switched out of the dock. Usually, the dock foreman had not arrived, so I would do what I thought was necesssary based on their manifests. My employer agreed to switch foreign trailers if we had a "damage release" letter from another trucking company. So, there was dropping and hooking, and snow shoveling on this job. Fresh snow had to be cleared from beneath the nose of each trailer before hooking the tractor. The shipper has an outdoor truck well; and I carried a shovel and pail of grit in my day-cab tractor. Sanding a potential slick spot was easier than trying to melt ice with the tires while pulling loads upgrade out of the truck well. As for my outbound load, it was always a double-drop. That is, I pulled my load out, dropped it, hooked to an empty and docked it, and re-hooked to my outbound trailer. Only then did I inspect anything. I checked the coupling, lights, tires and leaf springs while listening for air leaks. I also used the gauges to check for air leaks. About this time, the shipper's foreman would check with me by cell phone.

By 8:00 a.m., I had filled out a delivery receipt using blank forms that I carried in the tractor. We did not use a regulation Bill of Lading, and were actually contracted to the consignee. I was hauling scrap paper from a printing plant. The loads weighed between 25,000 lbs and 49,000 lbs. There was no state scale enroute, and my destination was a recycling center 80 miles away. When I arrived at the destination, I would drive onto their scale passing through their radiation detector. The scale clerk and I would exchange greetings on their CB channel as she watched my truck on her security monitor. Our empty weights were on file, so a net weight could be calculated; and I would reach out for the weigh ticket dispensed at the scale. After dropping the loaded trailer in their bull pen, I would staple the weigh ticket to my delivery receipt and the shipper's manifest, and place them in a folder on their counter. I would attach a note if the shipper needed extra return pallets and bundles of gaylord boxes on the next "empty" trailer. I would hook to my return trailer and inspect the tires, lights and springs. There was no paperwork returned to the shipper or carrier, no signatures necessary. At 10:00 a.m., I would tune to National Public Radio and listen to the Diane Rehm Show. I would phone another shipper about a back-haul if, in my judgment, they were about due to have product destined to one of our customers. I would eat lunch while driving back to the shipper, and that completed half of my typical day. Before doing the same thing all over again, I would contact my dispatcher with the company cell phone in case she wanted me to cover an impromptu load from another shipper. Once a week, I would stop at a Penske yard for fuel. That would be the only time the hood was tilted or the windows washed, and I would sit behind the wheel and watch them work.

Typically, by 4:00 p.m. I would have bobtailed back to our terminal. It was my practice to turn in my paperwork in person although it could have been deposited in the terminal's mailbox. I would receive instructions about the following day's schedule, but usually each day started with another load of scrap paper and the usual trailer switching at the shipper. There was very little face-to-face contact with management or supervisors (carrier, shipper or consignee) on that job; and always I preferred jobs like that one. By 4:30 p.m., I would be home again. My policy is that if you paid for a home, you should be there to enjoy it!.

 

I will use yesterday as an example of a typical day. Note I am currently a team driver with my spouse.

We wake up at 0700 eastern time parked at the Pilot in Jamestown Nm. It is 0500 local time so we are able to get in and shower together without waiting.

We have breakfast (made by Kim) on the truck. A bowl of cereal, a bagel, and a cold glass of Orange juice. All were purchased at home grocery store and stored in truck for use during the week. Kim goes to the back and lays down (she will drive later).

I tune my satellite radio into channel 147 and listen to "The loading Dock" (a radio program aimed at truckers and the trucking industry) and then hit the road.

I am on the road by 0800 (est) 0600 (mst). I then drive 39 miles to the Arizona state line. A few miles inside AZ I pull into the weigh station and present my registration and ifta to the lady in the shack. She glances at it and waves me on.

About 3 hours later I stop at the Pilot in Bellemont Az for a bathroom break and to stretch our legs. We decide to buy lunch at Subway and use our frequent fueler card to pay the tab. Total time for stop is just under 30 minutes. Time is 1130 (est) 0930 (pst).

Kim takes over driving and drives about 6 hours while I stretch out in the back and catch a nap.

We stop at the Pilot in Hesperia Ca around 1745 (est) 1445 (pst) She fuels up the truck in about 15 minutes and we continue on to our destination in Montebello Ca about a 2 hour drive with traffic. We arive at 2000 (est) 1700 (pst).

We drop our loaded trailer and hook up to a new one, preloaded for the return trip back east. We decide to park for 2 hours so I may show a straight 10 hr break and to wait out the traffic rush. We both have laptops so we are able to entertain ourselves and the 2 hours fly by.

I show a pretrip inspection for the new trailer while she fills out a post trip inspection report for our drop trailer. We are back on the road by 2230 (est) 1930 (pst). I drive out of California and stop at the Pilot in Lake Havasu city Az about a 5 hour trip and it is now 0330 (est) and 0130 (mst).

Our total mileage for the day is 920. We will sleep at Lake Havasu City Az for a few hours and get up for a shower and breakfast and Kim will start driving while I go back to sleep.

As you can see team driving is a whole lot of miles and not much happening other than the ground passing underneath. Lots of scenery across the desert and the hills through Arizona and Nm but you will see them from the cab of a speeding truck.

 

Thanks guys. The previous 2 posts were interesting and full of useful information.

Anyone care to detail an average solo OTR day?

Thanks again........