Good Night From II

I'm out of Lancaster.

 

houstank...yeah, my trailer was pretty high. i'm wondering if the yard dogs crank the jackstand down more b4 the lower it? seems way to high for a driver to do. this is the first time i been overweight here. done quite of few loads outta here. mine has always been d/h and already loaded. didnt take them long at all to fix it. ran to ta in ontario to double check weight and since i tcalled it, needed a scale tix anyways. was pretty close to their scale

 

The trailer might be high if it was dropped on uneven ground.

 

I think the forklift drivers at Van Nuys crank them up so they can get maximum speed backing out of the trailer.

Taking a 10 at the Morongo casino just east of the Banning scales. On the second day with my new trainee, who's demonstrated a need to stop at least every 90 minutes for "relief" and dawdling at every stop. Yesterday's run from Jurupa Valley to Tracy took 16 hours on my clock, but I super singled it because of the storm and getting caught in clusterous traffic before 5:00 am right after getting on the 210 in the downpour.

After our Tracy delivery we got a reposition down to Wheeler Ridge at the base of the Grapevine. I talked to another Swift driver out of Lathrop and he said his DM told him 30 Swift trucks were repositioned from the mid San Juaqin Valley down to Wheeler Ridge.

About noon we got a load picking up in Rancho Dominguez headed to Phoenix. Traffic came to a crawl on I-5 and it took us three hours to run the 100 miles from Wheeler Ridge to Rancho Dominguez to our drop and hook.

Then the fun began.

This was a supplier for Marshall's, my old dedicated account. I knew my trainee was in for a real challenge for his second real world back. The yard is TIGHT, so tight the rookie yard dog took 15 minutes to get a trailer into a slot and blocked us from finishing our back. Another 15 minutes of goaling and we then got ours in the slot...

... but that's not the half of it.

For some reason the young lady at the guard shack seemed to be enjoying holding up half a dozen truckers with incompetence and flirting, to the tremendous annoyance of the entire bunch. It took 30 minutes to check in to drop our trailer, then we had to come back to the guard shack and go through a 45 minute delay getting our release numbers verified before going to hook to our trailer, then came back to the gate and waited another 45 minutes for final incompetence to ensue. Together with the tight yard to drop and then hook it tools us almost four hours!!!

Instead of getting onward into at least just short of the border, being late at night on a Saturday and knowing the truck stops east of here would be jammed, I opted to stop short for the day at the Morongo. This trainee is definitely not capable of stopping ANYWHERE there aren't modern flush toilets and restaurant meals readily available. I've tried coaching him that in order to be successful you have to be willing to run out your miles and be capable of being self sufficient out in the middle of nowhere (where you get better sleep anyway) but that seems to be falling on deaf ears so far.

His backing seems to be pretty good. A typical graduate of the Fontana academy, his driving skills are SUPER tentative and he doesn't yet have shifting down (preferring holding the stick in neutral and going for the all out Mike Tyson roundhouse for the gear) or the concept of keeping a steady throttle. In other words, I'll have him whipped into shape within a few days.

 

time for you to introduce him to the lovely chain of stores called Walmart
I keep enough food in my truck at all times to survive over a week if I had to, I cant even remember the last time I slept at a truck stop, I prefer rest areas or behind a store since they seem to be more quiet plus you have less issues with possible driving incidents in my opinion of someone backing into you etc. I learnt quickly on my own to be efficient and supplied, my mentor lived on protein bars and food from the truck stops so I did not learn that part from him, I learnt the hard way shutting down somewhere for 3 days with only vending machines close by.

 

Think I'm gonna custom cut some 2x4s when I'm back in Houston for hometime. Good tip!!

LEPTON--sounds like you have your work cut out for you. He definitely needs to fix his potty break cycle.

 

Backing up onto a couple of 4x4s will raise the truck enough to grab the trailer. Or so I've been told; I've yet to do it personally.

 

Last winter some dimbulb planner tried to get me to reposition from Fresno to the Pilot in Castaic, a move I flat refused to do. Wheeler Ridge makes a lot more sense as I've never had any trouble finding a parking place (in Wheeler Ridge) as compared to Castaic, where I've given up stopping as I've never been able to find a parking place .