Day by day adventures of a new solo OTR driver

Just go ahead and say it, probably the same thing that half these shippers and receivers think when I come up to them, "what the heck does this skinny redneck kid want"? LOL

You know I was bored at a shipper one day so I made a little video of the inside of my truck. Haven't had a place with bandwidth fast enough to upload it though... I'll get around to it soon, and if not, I'll at least try to get you some pictures. This Cascadia is a really comfortable truck, I'm very happy with it.

So, I guess support shift decided that they didn't want to deal with finding me an empty and updating my workflow last night. I sent in the request before I left the shipper. Nothing updated. Sent it again before I went to bed. Woke up at 3am when it finally cooled off enough I felt the truck shudder as the ambient temp sensor cut the engine off. Checked it again. STILL didn't update. Sent it AGAIN. Finally, by the time I had to wake up someone DID THEIR JOB and updated the workflow so I could a. make my new assignment active, and b. get any empty trailer.

You know, you would think with all the technology out there Schneider would actually have any idea WHERE their trailers were. Why couldn't they see that there wasn't an empty at my last stop? Well, needless to say, there must have not been any empties nearby, because the first four hours and 200 miles of my day was spent going WAY out of my way to go pick up an empty. Finally found it in the middle of a Walmart parking lot, was expecting a Walmart DC, but hey, at least it was there. Paid miles are paid miles so that's OK I guess.

So, back to the shipper in the middle of Akron, OH. Little paper recycling company I guess, wedged in the middle of some railroad tracks. Missed their entrance, went all the way to the bottom of the hill, and had to call to find out where I was supposed to go in. Finally got in there and after getting out of the absolute gridlock of the parking area, which was basically a mexican standoff with trucks, got my information and found my trailer. Paper bales, not rolls as I expected. Strapped in my bales to prepare them for the extreme acceleration they would experience with my 64MPH Schneider truck (LOL YEAH RIGHT) and headed off.

Just a tip to anyone that goes there and is still new at driving: DO NOT BE AFRAID TO USE FIRST GEAR. Coming out of this shipper there is an extremely steep hill and you stop at the light and feel like you are in a space shuttle about to launch off into the sky. Ever seen a driveshaft get pretzeled by 1550ft/lbs of torque? No? Well, just go ahead and start in second gear here and you'll find out real fast.

Just got to my fuel stop, a Pilot that was apparently engineered by a moron who decided that trailers should just hang out into the middle of the entrance while they wait to pull up and fuel. Half of the fuel islands you can't even reach because the next guy's trailer is blocking it off. So, rather than try to fight my way in I just parked, made a sandwich, and am gonna take a quick nap and hope it clears out.

I won't be able to make my delivery tonight due to the 200 mile trailer search earlier. I got a message today about how I'm going to be routed through an OC to do the new HOS training. I'll try to do it on my laptop tonight and just get it out of the way. Should have done it when I was in Gary, didn't even think about it then.

Well, nap time... then hopefully fuel and then another 3-4 hours of driving depending on where I can find a stopping point.

Until next time...

 

So, I made it to my D&H delivery at Kimberly-Clark in Owensboro, KY late morning today. I really like going to this place, especially after you get past Louisville. Its a real quiet, nice relaxing drive. Gave the guard my paperwork, now they have you drive up on the scale, then DROP your loaded trailer on the scale, drive the tractor off, then drive back under it. Kind of a PITA with a Schneider tractor where you can't dump your airbags manually... had to get out and crank up the trailer a little more in order to squeeze back under it because my air suspension hadn't dumped far enough yet. Other trucks were waiting so I didn't want to just sit there for 5 minutes, lol. After the grumpy (but not really, he just acts it) old guard gave me "the look" and said "Now, I know we had a discussion about removing this lock earlier" I ran out, removed my lock, came back in and he let me go drop my trailer. I get a kick out of this guy, last time I was there I couldn't do anything right, I made a comment about it as I left and I think I finally got him to laugh a bit.

Dropped my loaded trailer, got my straps out, and went to the shipping office to get my empty assignment. Of course, I get assigned the total-piece-of-crap empty that I saw on the way in, in my head going "please please please not that one".

After checking it over, I was able to conclude that yes, it was indeed a piece of crap.

But, it would have to work.

I had a preassignment that had a familiar looking address, looked it up on Google Maps and confirmed I had been there before. Domtar Paper Co in Hawesville, KY. Decent shipper, had me in and out real quick last time. Head off the 30 or so mile trip to Domtar, get there, check in, guard almost makes me leave and come back because she thought I was way too early, then realized she was looking at the wrong shipment. Swept my empty at the cleanout area, then got a door assignment shortly afterwards.

So, here is where the fun starts with this trailer. 1 of the pins on the tandem slides has a bent arm so it doesn't lock. That's OK, running with 3 of 4 is legal (or so I've been told by Schneider). So, I get out and try to slide the tandems. Jerk it around a bit, just won't budge. Get out and look, and oh great, now a second pin has broken free of the release mechanism. So, grab my screwdriver and jam it up in the spring and rip the spring out. Problem solved. For now... still gotta make it legal again though before I can leave...

Then I back up to the dock and the lights all go out on the trailer. Great. Play around with the cord, nothing. Try my usual "wrap the plug in a walmart bag and shove it in the socket" trick. Still nothing. I didn't have any contact cleaner or degreaser with me, but I did have some aluminum wheel cleaner. "Removes built-up dirt and grease" it says. CLOSE ENOUGH. Spray it all over my cord and the pins in the socket. It foams up and cleans stuff out a bit. Try again, after a few tries wiggling the cord around got the lights to come back on. Try the bag trick once more to hold it in a position where they stay on, and hey... one problem solved.

Sat for about an hour before they started loading because I arrived right at lunch time. However, after lunch, they had me loaded in no time.

Slide my tandems to a spot where I figure they should be, then had to figure out how to get the spring back in to keep the pin locked. Fought with it for about 10 minutes, ended up using vice grips to hold the release lever ALL the way out, putting the spring in at an angle, then using a screwdriver as a wedge to slide the spring up and over the part of the release arm that pokes through and it was catching on. Managed to get it all the way in, it pushed the pin out hey, 3 of 4 pins locked in.

I scaled on the way out, luckily my guess as to where the tandems should be was perfect and I had almost all the weight that I could legally run on the trailer and some room on my tractor to fill my fuel tanks and not be overweight.

After following the Qualcomms "LOL THIS MIGHT BE LEGAL BUT HANG ON TIGHT YOU'RE GOING FOR A WILD RIDE" route that cut across Kentucky, I finally made it to my fuel stop tonight. Man, one stretch of that run... never again. 55MPH speed limit on a road that had lanes that were about 2 steer tire widths wider than my truck. Absolutely no room for error. Add to that no paved shoulder, and no shoulder for that matter, just mailboxes and a ditch. Yeah, that was a white knuckle ride with paper rolls. Then some idiot decided to pass me. You couldn't have fit a toothpick between my trailer and his car. But, made it successfully with no hard brake and no roll events, so hey, what I can say, I guess we saved Schneider some fuel on that run, only cost a couple years of my life, huh. Just remember, when the sign shows a curve ahead and says 25MPH... it ###### sure means it.

So, tomorrow I have a little over 300 miles to go. Headed just inside South Carolina with this load and then have a routing point to the Charlotte OC so I can do my HOS training there. I'll probably leave my NAT pushed out until the morning of the 30th and run kind of a short day tomorrow, then I can stay at the OC tomorrow night. Need to drive my pickup truck, haven't started it in about 2 months. Poor Cummins probably isn't too happy about all that sitting. I'll also take this trailer to the shop and tell them it needs to be bushed and set. Pushed in a bush and set on fire. Maybe they'll fix the pins and it could use some new brake shoes on the rear axle too.

All things considered not a bad day, 450 miles... Hopefully I'll get a good run out of the OC, but with it being the weekend crew and my DBL not there to watch out for my loads, it'll probably mean a Northeast run out of Charlotte.