I Passed!

Oh my where do I start ! I'll post my story

 

Well guys I know it's been a while since I updated you guys but this pretty much sums up my first week as a rookie Solo driver. I started out Solo with Swift on April 15, 2016. My Week started as follows:

Bing! A new message has arrived. I'm going to San Antonio! First pick up the load locally and hit the road. Pick up is tomorrow at 8am.

1. A Trailer: You don't just go find an empty one, the T-call window will sign one. But there are no empty trailers available! " Come back tomorrow," the T-call guy says.

Tuesday morning I'm there at 5am, don't want to miss the pick-up appointment! "No trailers yet, but you're #2 on the list." Later I get a QC message, go to this warehouse and look for this trailer (by number). I bobtail over, get the trailer (they were expecting me, it's not like I was trailer rustling!) and go to my pickup.

2. Load Not Ready: 8:00 pick up, I get there at 9:30, the trailer is not loaded yet! (Ok, so I'm not really "late".) All on board by 11, and Texas here I come!

I get almost to Texarkana and stop early at a rest area for Tuesday night. Stopping early, there's plenty of parking spaces. It's only after about 7pm things start to get tight. My delivery isn't Thursday morning.

About 3am, Wednesday, I start west. I know about the -

3. Bad Weather. A snow storm is heading eastward. I get into the cold rain before sunrise, and it steadily gets worse. My first experience driving a loaded semi in snow. Well the snowing was over by Dallas, and as I continued it got drier, until you wouldn't know it has snowed.

Headed into San Antone following my GPS. Had almost enough time to deliver this afternoon instead of tomorrow! Except my GPS had the

4. Wrong Address! Literally the opposite side of S.A. than where I was supposed to be. Being 4:30, the next step was to get to a truck stop before my time ran out. Got to a Petro, and there were still many spots.

Thursday morning, got to the delivery right on time. There was only one person there, and he had to unload the whole trailer of insulation himself, with the forklift. Being by himself, he often had to stop to handle the phone or to help a customer get his own supplies. This stop became a really

5. Slow Unload. 3 hours of sitting. Well, trailer was empty, so I pulled out of the dock and got set to move the tandems. (Oops! I had not moved the tandems at all on this trailer yet!)

6. Broken Equipment: My next load was 45,000 pounds so I did want to make sure the tandems could be moved. They would not budge! Turns out the pull-rod for one lock pin had pulled out. My Swift's roadside service told me to go to a Petro, she would call them with a PO.

7. Waiting for Something To Happen: I get there around eleven, the service writer said "four hour wait". Four hours ... tick tick tick ... pull into shop ... another hour before the mechanic gets to looking ... tick tick ... by 4pm I was ready to scream - er - roll. But the next pickup would not be ready till 1am the next morning (Thursday). I had put myself into sleeper during all that wait time, so I just finished out my ten hours at the Petro.

8. Too Far for One Day: The delivery was 600 miles away in southern Mississippi. Too far to go in one day (especially in a Swift truck governed to 60 mph.) I had planned to drive several hours, and would have plenty of time to make my 5:30om firm appointment.

That had evaporated while waiting for the trailer fix. Well, I got to the pickup, hooked the new trailer, and headed east on I-10. Nothing else to do but drive!

My 11 drive hours ran out 50 miles short of the destination. My DM , trying to meet the appointment, tried to find another driver who could get the trailer delivered. No luck. I stopped at a Love's 50 miles away with no choice but to sit out another ten hour break.

9. Delivering When the Dock Is Closed: My ten hours expired at 1am so I headed that last 50 miles. Note this is a huge distribution center, I thought it would be open 24/7. I thought wrong. I had started my 14 hood day as soon as I did my pre-trip. Drove to the DC, and the friendly guard told me that, being Saturday morning, there was nothing to do till 10am. (This was at 2am - 8 hours of waiting ahead.)

I drove 24 miles to a Walmart parking lot (with a Waffle House close by) and wrote this novelette. So here are NINE things that can go wrong for a driver. I've blown a week with only the Memphis-San Antonio run of 730 miles on the books. (And this return 580 miles not yet complete.)