From School to Superior Carriers

Monday 1/21

Left around 6:30 AM Monday and drove up to Kingsport. Got here around 10:00 AM and found out my trainer had a doctors appointment so I just hung out in the drivers lounge until he got there around 11:30. This terminal is much bigger than High Point so I got to meet a bunch of drivers. I really like the guy i am training with up here. His truck only has 136K miles on it so it drives a lot different from the one in High Point. Biggest difference is how quiet it is. I was used to listening for the engine rev on the upshifts. Also this trainer teaches slip shifting. He only wants me to use the clutch when I take it out of gear not going in. It really did make shifting easier and smoother. We went over to a paper mill and air unloaded some yellow liquid that literally smells like ####. That afternoon they didn't have a load for us so we went into a conference room and went line for line over travel orders and how to fill them out. I had been doing them for a few weeks so I already knew most of it. It was nice to know why things were done a certain way and the conference room was more conducive to type of learning than a truck cab is. That afternoon we just sort of hung out and talked to other drivers for the last couple of hours of the day.

Tuesday 1/22

Got there at 8:00 and we went over to Eastman. This is one of the largest chemical plants in the country. Its huge. Watched a safety video, got carded in then we loaded some ammonium hydroxide. Nasty stuff. This plant does all the work for you. You pull in the gate and immediately go to a bay where they check you trailer. Then you go to the scales. After that they send you to a loading bay and they load you. Then back to the scales. Before you can leave you have to go back into the bay and they check the trailer again before you leave. Nice people throughout and very professional. Really active surge with this product. Mt trainer told me he has had experienced drivers that had always pulled vans quit after pulling this product back to the yard.

Drove the tank back to the yard and dropped it. Went to lunch then they sent us bobtail back to Eastman to pick up a 5 compartment tank and load the last compartment. This one was in a real tight part of the plant so my trainer drove while we were between the scales and backed it into the bay. Drove it back to the yard and dropped it.

Then we went and picked up the "training trailer" from a welding shop that was repairing it. Its a 3 compartment tank with a section cut out of the back and a plexiglass window installed. We filled one compartment up with water. My trainer is teaching at the school tomorrow so I guess I will see this part twice. They are going to air off the water to the other tank on the trailer then pump it back to the first one. They have some special clear hoses. Should be interesting.

All in all this has been an easy week so far. Starting at 8 done by 5 and staying in a nice hotel 5 minutes from the yard. Sure beats dropping and hooking 9 trailers a day in Greensboro.

 

Yes they do. Hiring is 100% driven from the terminal level. You also must live within 2 hours drive from a terminal to work for them. No one takes a truck home. Since you have been to the web site pull up the terminal page closest to you and call the terminal manager. Set up an interview and go see him. Dress business casual as they are picky about who they hire and want professional looking people. They also want career minded individuals. If you have had a lot of jobs the past few years you are less likely to get hired. Also if you go to a school make sure its one from which they will hire you. I went to a Sage school. Start the hazmat process when you get your CDL permit. You will have to have the tanker and hazmat endorsements. I waited until after I had my CDL to get finger printed and it cost me a couple of weeks before I could start training. Good luck. Its been a great company to start with so far for me. Good people throughout.

 

Wed 1/23

Today was a pretty slow day. All I did was sit in on the training class. Didn't do any driving at all. I learned a lot though in both the classroom and at the training trailer. They have all the caps and valves from trailers taken apart and they pass them around. You actually learn how they work and why they are there. They also tell you things that can go wrong and how to work around them. I had never used the pump on the truck so that process was educational.

Tomorrow is going to be a really long day. We are going to run a load of DMT from Columbia SC to Kingsport. Its a plasticizer product that is shipped at over 300 degrees F. Supposed to be real active in the tank and our route is I-26 through the mountains. I am going to do all the driving so it should give me a good feel for what a good run is like. My trainer said he would do this run all day every day as it pays the driver over $300. He is scheduled to run 4 through Sunday. Thats a pretty good paycheck.

 

Thursday 1/24

Great day. Left the yard around 6:45 AM. My trainer and I agreed that he would drive down to Columbia and I would drive the load back. I have gotten to drive empty trailers a lot doing local work. The loaded ones I have less experience on. Also when we left it was snowing and I26 between Kingsport Tn and Columbia SC is pretty mountainous. Once we got a few miles down the road he got a call on his cell phone. There were nine drivers running the exact same load as us and 2 had left before us. They called to let us know that the NC side of Sam's Gap was a sheet of ice and a bunch of trucks were sitting at the top waiting it out. The first guy down made it going about 15 mph in a low gear. It was raining and about 28. As we drove up the mountain we talked to a few drivers on the CB and decided to make a go of it. Only felt it slide once. My trainer was using the Jake and he set it to a lower setting(less braking effect). We went down between 10-15 MPH in 5th gear and didn't have any trouble. Didn't touch the brake pedal once. It was smooth sailing the rest of the way to Columbia.

We got loaded in about 45 minutes. The load was DMT. Its loaded at 340 degrees and we don't touch it either loading or unloading. The guys that do look like spacemen wearing full body hot suits. Its a real active load that will bump you pretty good if you aren't smooth in your driving. I actually got bumped less on this load than on any I have pulled. I think its because I started slip shifting using the clutch only to take the truck out of gear. One less clutch engagement meant one less bump from the liquid. I made pretty good time and we made it back to Kingsport by 6:15. Weather was good. Just blowing snow over the mountains and lots of salt on the road. I didn't stay to make the delivery since I was driving home that night and its about 3 hours. Very good experience today. I am glad that my first experience with Ice in the mountains was with a trainer and not solo.

Friday

I was back at my home terminal and just loaded a couple of tanks of waste water. Just drove around the yard a little. Had another safety meeting that evening. It was pretty much identical to the one we had in December. Looking forward to the extra $50 that brings home. Going back to Kingsport Monday to run with a different trainer. Should be an interesting week.

 

Monday 1/28

Got up around 6 AM and drove to Kingsport. Got there a little before 10:00 AM and met the trainer I will be with all week. He is a nice guy who does nothing but local work, no OTR. Went over to Eastman and loaded two trailers. Pretty short trips both times. This guy has a real old truck. It rattles so bad above 50 MPH that they won't let it go OTR. Took a while to get used to shifting it as the transmission gear patterns are wider and not as tight as the truck I drove last week. I am getting much better and rarely scratch gears anymore. Can't wait to get my own truck so I only have to know one transmission. We also spent the afternoon at the training trailer airing off and pumping a load for practice. This was better than last week because me and another student actually did the work rather than watching the trainer do it.

Tuesday 1/29

Met my trainer around 7:45 AM and we sat around the yard waiting for some tank wash waste water test results to come back so we can take a load over to Eastman for disposal. Spent about an hour BSing on the CB with another driver whose DMT load got canceled last night so he just went to bed in the truck. This guy was a character sitting in the truck with his shirt off. Hooked to our waste water load and delivered it around 9:45. I backed it in the hole. It was a pretty straight shot but still took me a couple of pull ups to get it in the hole. Once we got back to the yard we took a drive bobtail through some 2 lane back roads then went to lunch.

Once we got back we had about an hour so I hooked to the trailer we were going to load at 2:30 and spent it backing into several holes between tanks on the yard. Helped a little I think. I got it in there without hitting anything. Went back over to Eastman to load an Acid load. Took around 3 hours before we got back to the yard. Lots of waiting for paperwork and other trucks to finish loading. Good productive day overall.

 

I take the hazmat class next week and will learn more. Standard issue is a hard hat, full face shield, full body pvc suit, goggles rubber gloves and boots and escape respirator. The really nasty stuff is almost always customer load and unload. All we do then is back into the hole and sit in the truck or company break room. At Eastman they do everything even check the caps and seals on the top of the trailer. Most of the worse chemicals are dedicated routes. This company even hauls the space shuttle fuel. It goes under military escort.