E.W. Wylie has it all!!

I know right..?? I'VE noticed their "tough enough" ads all over the place..I would jump(?) though through a couple of hoops on fire if I would have a chance to date a couple of chicks in the ad..(front row) 1 and 2 from the right.....Would be enough of a bonus for me..

Seriously..I wrote to one on linkedin as she looked to be one of the girls in the ad recruiting drivers to ask how she felt about that...Guess she ain't gonna go out with me....WTH?? Really...I did..Kinda/sorta hurt my feelings....

Forgot...Just funnin..Good Luck to you all starting there...And do let me know if the recruiters are as hot as they look in the Internet ads...LOL

 

They told me that I will be picking up my truck here in ND and then I will get a load going back home to san Antonio. There was no way I was able to fit clothes and truck stuff in a duffle bag for a plane trip. Yes you can take the truck home.

 

03/30/14- EW Wylie paid for my plane ticket from san antonio texas to ND. Flight went okay. I had a 2 hour lay over in denver. I was so tired that I fell asleep and didn't even feel it when the plane lift off from denver to Fargo. The plane was a little late arriving after 1300. After I pick up my bags the cab called me to let me know that they were outside! LOL! Arrived at the hotel called the Kelly Inn. I got a white welcome bag with water, snacks, and a letter with orientation info. Later on I learnt that I was supposed to get a 10 dollar card from subway at the time I checked in. Oh well. I'm glad I had packed some food with me. The hotel rooms don't have any microwaves. There is a microwave and a coffee machine near the check in desk. The kelly inn has an indoor pool, 2 hot spa's, and a small work out room. There is also a bar/restaurant inside the hotel called O'Kelly's. If you don't want that you can order chinese or pizza. Breakfast is from 0600-1000. Oh yeah and all rooms are non-smoking.

03/31/14-You'll get pick up at 0730 from the breakfast room by Jim. Jim also is the Orientation teacher. I got good vibes from him so far. We got all the books and stuff that you get from Orientation including 420 page cargo securement book, 2 company tee shirts, a hat or a beanie cap, and a safety vest. We signed paperwork, had our intros and then we got the tour of the place. The class is really small just me and another guy who has 28 years of flatbed experience. After the tour, we got to look at the different flatbed trailers. I'm coming from van so I have no experience. Then we went inside to learn about load limits, tiedowns, FMCSA cargo securement rules. I'm glad the class is small because I was kind of overwhelmed. Both my classmate and Jim was helpful in explaining most of the stuff. We couldn't actually practice any securement today because a blizzard was coming in and the weather got too bad. It's currently 14 degrees with like 4 inches of snow on the ground. Tomorrow is the DOT Physical.

 

04/01/14-DOT physicals. Drug test is urine. They did this first thing after breakfast so be careful about using the bathroom right away. If you pee too early and can't produce enough for a sample they'll have you sign a "bladder shy" form and they will give you bottles of 16oz of spring water and have about 3 hours to gave a sample. The physical was the usual DOT stuff. The additional flatbed testing was lifting a box of 70 pounds from a desk to the floor and back again, then they add 10 pounds and you had to lift it from the desk to a shelf almost above your head and then back down. I struggled a little bit on this one but figured out quickly that holding the box and lifting from the bottom was easier than trying to hold it from the side and then lifting. Then they had me walk up a ladder and then back down. The last test was push and pull a cart filled with 90 pounds on carpet. The cart had no wheels and you first had to pull the cart to the edge of the carpet and then push it back two times. I got a little bit of a workout. I'm female and this test wasn't as bad as I thought. I got a bit of a workout which I was glad for.
After the physical we went back to the orientation room for payroll. You turned over your SS card, TWIC card, and Driver License at this time for them to make copies. Info about pay: You get paid twice a month. Cash advances are $150 bucks a week max. In order to get paid you have to turn in your statements by 2pm monday or it has to wait the next pay period. Since I'm going to be Texas regional I'll get paid 27% of the load which equals to about .41 cpm. The OTR drivers are paid CPM and I think .14 is per diem by default. You can't opt out of per diem. I don't have the pay sheet in front of me so I'll post the rest of that info tomorrow. After Payroll we went to the corporate office building for benefits. Health insurance for a single person is a little over $175.00. Dental is about $35.00 a month. and vision is a little over $8.00 a month. They also have 401K, life insurance, ect. You can choose for them to take out the benefits before or after taxes. The same with the 401k. The benefits kick in after 90 days. Once the benefits kick in you can't change your mind until you have a life changing event or until the next enrollment period. If you can find cheaper insurance I advise you to do so. After benefits we went back to the orientation building to learn about E.W. Wylie's fuel Optimization/Bonus Scorecard. It's a lot of info and I don't have the paper in front of me so I'll tell what I remember. 98% of fueling is at pilot/flying j. You have to make at least 80% of your fuel stops for your bonus. Your bonus is based on a points system. You have so many areas you can get your bonus on but I won't know how good it is until I actually see it in action for myself. Anyway, after that we was on E-logs. They have the MCP100, Hands On, and People Net. My truck is going to have the People Net system. My only classmate is going to have the MCP100 in his truck. We got a preview of our assigned trucks. They were downstairs in the garage getting worked on and detailed. Both of our trucks are going to be red Macks. They assured me that the trucks will be completely clean with new mattresses and the works. Thank goodness! I have no idea what Macks are like and this will be interesting come road test time.
That's all for today. Tomorrrow is breakfast with the bosses, Driver manager intro, and the stuff we didn't get to do yesterday because of the blizzard.

 

04/02/14- We had breakfast with the "important folks". Then we met the recruiters after that was accident and workman's comp overview. Basically we was told what EW whats you to do after an accident. Then it was off to the shop to meet the maintenance folks and truck inventory. You went over the check list of all of the stuff that went with your truck. I'm new to flatbedding and in my opinion you get more than enough stuff to start. You also get the trucking basics like coolant, oil, fuses, belts (for engine), fuel filter and so on. I never driven a Mack truck so I asked a lot of questions about the truck and where certain parts under the hood were. My truck is a 2010. I was told that the older trucks are sent to texas for the regional fleet. If you are OTR most likely you are going to get a newer truck 2012-2015. My truck doesn't have an APU or a bunk heater, but it has an 1500Watt inverter. I was told that I was going to have to idle the truck for heat or A/C. From what I was told they expect you to be "reasonable" about idling if you don't have an APU (we'll see about it). I also found out they pay for one truck wash a month at blue beacon. The truck was in the shop since yesterday. They are doing all the maintenance stuff as well as detailing the truck. I love the fact they give the drivers a new, REAL Mattress. After that it was load securement: Tarping. The load we was tarping was PVC pipes which was in bundles of two about 13 feet high. Since my only class mate already had experience guess who had to climb up there and tarp the load? lol. It was wet, cold, and slippery. I had no problem with the height but I found out that wearing steel toed boots with no insulation is no fun. After half my feet went numb that's when I started to get nervous because I couldn't feel the pipe under my feet and was worried about falling. I ended up tarping the other half of the load on me knees. I'm glad I'm texas regional and not 48. If everything works out one day I'll buy some insulated boots in the future. Tomorrow just might be the moment of truth because it's road testing day, safety videos and meet your driver Manager.

 

100 years ago when a fella named Wayne I think gave the road test there all one did was drive around the block basically (albeit a big block) and back it in somewhere in the almost empty back row at the "J". You'll do just fine tomorrow.

"Driver Manager". For some reason that title always cracks me up.

 

I have always liked the looks of the Mack. I'd love to hear how it drives. And dont forget to change your profile info... You're not an 'EX' trucker anymore!

 

04/03/14-The End: Videos and road test day. Good thing that the road test was done in our assigned trucks so that we can notice any kind of issues. My class mate when on his road test first while I watched 5 videos. When he came back it was my turn. First thing I noticed was I had to sit higher in a Mack truck to see more over the hood, even though the hood of the Mack truck appears to be shorter. When the truck was on high idle via cruise control button to cancel the idle cut-off, it sounds weird, like as if it was about to sneeze and then changed it's mind (the mechs are going to take a look at it). After hooking up to a 53 foot flatbed step deck, I was on my way. The Mack was a 10-gear manual transmission. It had that well worn feel, so I had to be a little bit more gentle when turning. As with the power it felt "normal". I really won't know how well the truck does until I actually get a load and start going on hills and stuff. Fargo is pretty much flat. My shifting fell back to rookie levels with some gear grinding, as I tried to find the perfect RPM's to shift. In a Mack it felt like it was between 13-15000ish but I didn't want to keep looking at the gauges. So I started to shift through the gears one at the time for a while instead of skipping them like I used to. I found out through the tester that you can start in 4th gear in this truck. I tried it a few times but I didn't feel right doing it, so I stuck to starting in 2nd. Usually I can tell by the sound when to shift gears but I was split between shifting and pulling this flat bed. The tester said he liked where I was shifting at, so I guess I wasn't shifting that bad. The tester saw that I was double clutching, and asked me if I knew how to float the gears. I told him that I used to do it but Schneider told me that was a no-no. I didn't do it anymore and forgot how. The flat bed itself felt and looked to be longer than it actually was. Plus there was snow on the ground and at times everything seemed to blend in together. I ended up turning a little bit wide on some streets. On the plus side I can see behind me (hee hee)! After driving on the highway for a while we went to flying J. Then I had to park the truck. The snow on the ground made things extra interesting, but enough of the yellow line was present for me to use as a guild. It was a little bit difficult to get the trailer parallel to that yellow line because it kept wanting to go the other way. On the good side I didn't have to jump out the truck every 2 seconds to see if I was going to hit the truck next to me. After 5 minutes I got it in there. A whole lot faster than I would of done in a van trailer in the same tight spot. Then it was back on the highway and back to the yard. After dropping the trailer we all had lunch and then my classmate and I got our ETF fuel cards, and the passwords for our E-log systems. Then I talked to my Driver Manager in Humble Tx over the phone. He sound like a nice guy. Since I don't have any flatbed experience, I'm going to be teamed up with an experience driver on loads to help me out. I'm either going to pick up the driver at humble to go with me on loads (to pick up) or meet the driver at a customer location who also has a load there. That's nice I'm not being thrown out there to the wolves. This kind of boost my confidence in a way. I know when I do my first load it's going to be obvious that I'm new because I'm not going to try to secure the load as fast as the experienced guys. The only thing I'm worried about at this point is those chain binders and my tarps. Since the mechs will be looking at my truck tomorrow, I'm going to work on some more load securement. The the class is just going to be me because my classmate is going to get his first load tomorrow. I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't leave until monday.

 

.....True! I didn't want to jinx myself...

 

04/04/14- First Load: More load securement practice for me. My truck idle issues were looked at. After they reset the codes the truck is running A LOT BETTER. I was told that I could stay to monday if I wanted to for more practice. After about four hours of attaching webbing and chain in the cold, I felt I was ready for my first load. Load securement is a whole lot easier than learning how to drive a truck. It's the physical stuff that makes flat bedding tough in my opinion. My first load is caterpillar stuff going to morton IL. I had to use chains and it had to be tarped. Arrrrrgh! The load was on a 48 foot trailer with those fixed single axles/tandems in the back. It took about 3 hours for me to tarp this load. Plus it was cold with ice/snow/melt water everywhere. If I had any regrets at that moment it was that I should of did this later in the spring. Oh well. It's not over until the load is delivered.