KKW Trucking Pomona, Ca Orientation

I'm home from the first day of orientation (for a second time). There were three of us there for orientation, one guy that is a recent CDL school grad and another who drover for Werner for a few months. Most of the material we went over was the same stuff as the first time I was there. Paperwork, power points, and videos. There were a few differences however, instead of learning how to setup and take down doubles we did some map reading exercises and learned how to use their on board computer system. At some point one or both of the other students were given road tests, I know one was for sure and he passed. Oh yeah, at one point I almost had a heart attack when Steve (the training supervisor who does the orientations) pulled me aside and told me that they would be sending me home from orientation again. He had the most serious look in his face and I was shocked and thinking oh what this time? Then Steve was like "naw I'm just kidding." Steve is a really good guy who wants to see us do well, he was just giving me a hard time of course.

Tomorrow is day two, at which any point I will be leaving with my trainer. He is coming from home so when he gets there orientation will be cut short for me. I have no idea where we will be running.

 

In case anyone was still was still following this thread I'll update everyone on what's been up with me.

I started with my trainer on Tuesday, our first load was furniture going to Salt Lake City, Ut. We delivered then went south west to a hay farm. With a load of hay we headed back to Pomona. We stayed the night at the yard and delivered the hay load in Long Beach. Driving a truck in LA traffic sucks.

Our next (and current load) is tile. We are sitting in the truck tonight in Bend,Or. We deliver here tomorrow then have two stops in Portland tomorrow as well.

Overall this has been a good experience so far. The day we delivered to Long Beach was the only rough day so far.

 

A little update since my last post.

We delivered part of our load of tile to Bend, Or. After delivering we made two more stops in Portland. There are a lot of narrow roads and tight turns in Portland that I had to navigate through to make our deliveries. We spent the night in North Portland with an empty trailer. The next afternoon we picked up a load of organic energy drinks bound for Arizona. Yesterday I drove from southern Oregon to the base of the grapevine in California, I was pretty worn out and was almost to my 11 hours so my trainer drove the rest of the way to Pomona. After getting to Pomona I left to spend the night at home, I'm at home right now and I head back to Pomona this afternoon. We're going to drive to the Phoenix area tonight and deliver the load of energy drinks tomorrow morning. If all goes well we should have a load going back to CA and be home tomorrow for the weekend, starting up again sometime on Monday.

 

Sorry it's been a few days since the last update.

We delivered the energy drink load Friday morning. We were hoping to get a load home early enough to be home for dinner Friday night. Instead we were assigned to pick up a Simmons mattress load at 5 pm, ok still enough time to at least get home late. Nope, we didn't leave the Phoneix area until 9:15 or so. I drove until we reached Coachella, ca and stopped for the night. My trainer drove us into Pomona Saturday morning. So I was still able to enjoy Saturday and Sunday off.

Monday morning myself and my trainer both agreed the weekend was enjoyable but felt too short. We finished the mattress load and were assigned another tile load to Salt Lake City. We delivered the tile yesterday morning and were given a load of fabric softener to be delivered to Mira Loma, Ca tomorrow. The plan after is to get a short load so we can be home again this weekend.

 

It's been a while since my last update, a lot has happened in the last week. I finished my time with my trainer on Friday the 23rd. I was assigned my own truck the same day. A brand new Volvo with 58 miles on it and that brand new truck smell inside. I had the weekend off and began solo the following Monday. I came home a few hours ago so I was on the road for a week. During that time I've been to (or through) Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. I've hauled Petco pet supplies, donated toys and shoes for a thrift store, large paper rolls, and laundry soap.

Everything is going good for the most part, the only part I dread is when I have to back into parking spot at a crowded truck stop for the night. I've mostly stayed in rest areas since most truck stops are full up when I stop for the night. I haven't had too much trouble backing into docks.

When I was with my trainer I was on paper logs, in my truck I'm on Elogs. I don't really like the Elogs very much.

I really like having a new truck. According to my notes I've put 3150 miles on the truck during the last week. Another thing, my truck has an automatic transmission, as was my trainer's truck. I didn't think I would like driving an automatic very much, but having driven one for the last month I must say I like it.

Anyways, I'm home for a couple days, not sure when or where I'm going next.