From School to Superior Carriers

I just started training with them 2 weeks ago. Check out the Company DAC reports under Superior here. I started a thread about my experiences with them.

 

Thursday and Friday last week we did a lot of moving empty tanks around to plants where they can be loaded and bringing others back to the yard. Each day we dropped or hooked 8 tanks or so. This is much harder work than OTR work. Lots of climbing on top of the tank and cranking landing gear. Also don't get into tank work because you think you will back less. Lots of these chemical plants are tight with odd angles that you have to get close to. Friday we had a safety meeting. They talked about a couple of recent incidents and initiated discussions about how they could have been prevented. I also found it interesting that Superior has had 5 roll over accidents this year. They normally average 10-12 per year so that is getting better.

Third Week

Started this morning about 6:15 and delivered a hazmat load of resin to a paint company. This one because its flammable had to be pumped off. Fortunately the guy at the plant had a pump set up so we didn't have to use the one on the truck and deal with all the hoses. It took us an hour to get started because the guy at the plant had a safety meeting. Took about 3 hours to drain the tank. This afternoon we bobtailed 30 miles and picked and brought it back to the yard. We then hooked to our load for tomorrow morning and pretripped the trailer. A couple of the tires didn't look quite right so we had the shop check them out. We had 2 damaged tires that they replaced with new ones. Glad to see that since this will be my load to pull in the morning. I have pulled 2 full tanks about 20 miles twice but this will be my longest trip yet with a full tank.

 

I am in my third week of training with Superior Carriers. I got my CDL from a Sage school before that. If you have a year of driving experience the rules may be a little different. You will be paid hourly instead of the $100 per day training pay that I am getting. If you want to work out of Baltimore you should give them a call. You will need to be close to the terminal since you cannot take the trucks home.

 

Today went well. We took a load up to Roanoke Rapids NC to a paper mill. This was the farthest I have ever driven a loaded tank. I did fine but boy is it a different animal than empty. Had to put the accelerator on the floor numerous times to pull hills. The trip took about 3.5 hours and around 1/3 was 2 lane roads with several small towns. We did an air unload and ran into a small problem. The loading bay was up a slight hill. After we unloaded and looked in the dome lid we had too much product left in the tank. We had to pull the truck up, use a second hose and jack up the landing gear on a couple of 4x4's we found to get enough height to get most of the product off. It took us around 3 hours to unload since we basically did it twice.