Hometime

I have a coleman electric cooler , works well for my needs. No micro but if you get one it needs to be small like 700 watts or less or the gfi pops on the inverter . Small appliances work well big ones do not, I lived in North Phoenix also .

 

Very Helpful Cannon. I'll keep that in mind as gather supplies.

Always good to hear from a fellow Cactus Native.

 

Sorry to dig this one up i was researching truck companies and got to looking at melton. I was going to go with prime but backed out to attend CDL school through the VA on my own and pick a good company. I live in MA and i too am in the national guard until Nov of next year. I just read you would drive for 3 weeks come home do your 2 day guard duty and then go back out? did i read correctly that wouldn't work for anyone with obligations,kids or family because you would never ever see them literally working 365 days a year. Would they let you go home for your home time before your drill day? say on a wed-fri or thur-fri?

 

I'm in the national guard in Texas as a medic. I worked with Schneider National for two years but I quit in dec because doing both drill and truck driving was draining and I decided to finish the rest of my NG contract and then get back into truck driving. Schneider did their best to get me home on time , but often I had to give them a shove to do so, and almost most of the time I'll 1. get home the night before, which left me tired the next day because I have to wake up at 4am and drive an hour to get to drill 2. I had to go over my hours to make it home (this only happened 4 times) 3. Twice I threatened to bobtail 800 miles if they didn't get me home. Schneider gave me a rental car in these cases. It wasn't as bad the first year, but in the second year Schneider changed a lot of things. Which affected the loads. Before I left Schneider, I considered other companies (including Melton) that might have different accounts, so I'll be able to get home at a reasonable time and not go through all that stress. But I decided not to, because recruiters will say anything, and I don't want to limit what companies I can apply to because one of them TMC, right out told me that I was going to miss some drills. Which I was glad for their honesty. Since I have two years of driving experience I can take off from driving for a year and come backhand not have to do everything all over again. I have a few years before my TWIC, and HAZMAT expires and I can do a DOT physical for $99.

 

I'm in the NG in Texas and most of my drills are sat-sun with a few on fri-sun. It's best to get home a day and a half before you have to go to drill because your body has to recover from all of that driving. So if you have drill on fri, you should be home at least by weds evening. On those drill months I could not miss, I bought all of my gear with me just in case I didn't have the hours left to even "milk the DOT clock". If you get home late on the evening before, you are going to be tired as hell. Also ask them if they would give you that monday off when you come back. Will drill time count against your time at home? Even though you're not driving for the weekend you are working another job. It will suck if you had a busy 3 day drill weekend and you had to go back to work monday morning. Also you have to log your drill time as on duty, not driving.