Going owner op with Werner

I guess I don't have much ground for comparison. I drove some kind of a loaner Kenworth, a t660 type thing, around Texas for a couple of weeks. Or maybe it was a similar Peterbilt. You know, the type where the sleeper and the cab are two different bits sort of glued together haphazardly. The ride was so bad that my terrified dog didn't want to go back into that thing. The sleeper part of the cab was moving freely independently of the front part, the rubber seals squealing. If it had rained I probably could have realized my dream of having a shower in the truck. And that mechanical clutch... Why do they even have that still? On the other hand, it was a slutty loaner truck from a Werner shop so that might explain it.

The only other things I've driven was a couple of Pro Stars, completely unreliable lemons, but at least somewhat comfortable. They tracked better than Freightliners. Freightliner seem to lose alignment very quickly and start drifting if all the tires are not exactly the same. The Pro Stars seems more resistant to that.

And the CDL school trucks, the less said about those the better. We couldn't use most of them to learn the pre-trip because they would fail the air test.

I heard Volvos have a very nice ride, but they are too expensive to fix.

Anyway, what kind of Kenworth do you have? Is it one of those old-school square nose types?

 

Thanks for the heads up, I will have to look into that.

 

I definitely felt like I needed to get checked after that truck

 

Yes, that is absolutely the ultimate goal, once I fully own my own truck. Once I get to that point all kinds of interesting possibilities open up.

Since I'm not there yet, here I'm asking whether the Werner owner operator program it's a good stepping stone towards that, sort of like owner op with training wheels.

 

That's the key, though. Knowing whether that older truck was indeed cared for lovingly by somebody or a lemon being sold because the owner got sick of dealing with its issues. Or a sloppy owner op who was neglecting maintenance because of money issues before finally going bankrupt and selling it. These last two seem more likely, since an independent owner op with an older well-cared-for reliable truck is gonna just keep driving it instead of selling it.

With the fleet at least it's a fair chance that it's a good reliable truck that's just on the market because it's driver decided to go to another company are the fleet decided to sell it because it's getting close to that 500,000 warranty expiration price drop. Seems like a crap shoot either way honestly.

It's easier if you come from a family of Truckers and can buy an older one from a trustworthy uncle, but I come from a family of computer programmers and know literally no truckers in real life.