My Experiance with Watkins Shepard!

Good Luck, keep an eye out for me!



American Trucker

 

So I Ended up having to Dead head from the truck stop I was at, all the way to the Thomasville Furniture Plant in Thomasville, NC. I was suposed to "Drop" my trailer and pick up a loaded one to bring back to Conover with me for Local Dispatch......Well I get there and the guys says "I'm gonna need you to do a Double Drop for me" and I say "A what?" and he says "Drop your trailer right there pull this one out of the dock, then put yours in the dock, and then hook up to the one you just pulled out and take that one to conover".....So I figure ok no big deal 10 min tops HAHA WRONG! So I drop my trailer pull the one out of the door and drop it outside the gate, then hook back up to my original trailer and I bring it in to put it in the dock door, now like 5 guys came out to watch, because like always I got the 10 minutes of "OMG how old are you?" "you look like your 15..." so naturally they wanted to come out and watch me back it in lol

So I pull in go to set up and POP, the stupid RED glad hand pops off the trailer and you all know what happens then.....STOP lol.....I had no idea what happend so I get out and see what had happend....BUT I have the Rubber air lines instead of the Coiled ones on my tractor so the red one wouldn't reach the glad hand on the trailer .......so I was right in front of the docks with a bunch of trailers right in front of me so I had to drop the trailer crooked and tried to back under with the tractor straight......NOPE wasn't going to happen not enough room, my truck was to long.....#### lol. I had double check as always that the glad hands were on and were on right but somehow it had come off I was only going 3 mph in first gear and I didn't turn very hard so I have still not figured out that one yet. But anyway luckily for me a Local Watkins Shepard driver had quit and left his daycab at the Plant there so I Used it to get under the trailer because it was shorter I was able to get under it while straight and backed it in with that lol......what should have been a quick deal turned into 30 minutes haha

So then I brought that back to conover and dispatch told me when I got there that he hadn't put me on a load because I had told him I wanted to be routed towards a shop to have my inverter put in, and he didn't have anything going towards a W/S shop so he said to just bring it to Blue Ridge Truck and Trailer right around the corner and have them put it in.......So I was like sweet I didn't know W/S would pay for them to do it lol But they were closed for the night.....So I camped out at the terminal for the night, ran into Joel again as well as cedric both guys were in my orientation class. Then the next morning I went over to blue ridge just as they opened. And he put my inverter in Woo Hoo, and I figured seeing as I was already there and I didn't have a load I would have him look at a few other things for me....

Well a few days eairler during my Pre-Trip I found that I was REALLY low on coolant which was weird because it was fine the day before, so I went into the truck stop to get some Coolant and what do ya know they only sell Green anti-freeze and my truck has Red anti-freeze....Now You CAN put RED into Green but you CAN'T put Green into RED so I'm like hmmmm Well I can put water in there but its getting cold out so I called Missoula and the guy in the shop just said put water in it and run it till I can get to a shop, So I had the guy at blue ridge check it for me and 5 secounds later he says "your radiador is shot"........So then he calls around and he can't get one in until MONDAY it was only THURSDAY so I figured great now I'm stuck all week.....But he's like just keep adding water to in and run it until next week and bring it back lol and when You bring it back for that I'll fix the air valves too (the Red and yellow buttons on my dash leak).

So I left there and went back to the terminal and picked up a load going to NJ...................................BUT the only good part is It was that same customer I was just at a few days before.......lol So I haul butt up there and delivered this morning, Now remember last time I pulled into the ally and did a U-Turn and back it in? well this time there were 3 other trucks in there so I couldn't do that...So I had to back all the way out of there 400 Feet or so out into and intersection and then turn down the intersection and back back through the intersection and back the 400 feet back into the ally so that I could get into the dock haha, then we had to unload 92 pieces of furniture by hand lol

Then I got a weird run, I had to take my empty up to some distrobution center and drop it there and do a yard check, Which is when you drive around and count all of the watkins shepard trailers and right down the trailer numbers and send them to dispatch, then I had to bobtail all the way to the NJ terminal, just to grab and empty and haul butt back up to pretty much the same place I was to get loaded at Waste Management, YUCK! that place smelled SOOOO bad lol I got 20,000 lbs of Crushed/Bailed Plastic to take to the Waste Management in Raleigh, NC on monday lol I have from 5:45pm on friday night to go 486 miles to Raleigh and be there between 8:00am-3PM MONDAY haha so yep I'm at a T/S in NJ where I'm going to do a 34 reset then run down there on sunday and deliver on monday......


Oh and I gave in a baught a month of WiFi from Loves because I stop at them all the time and instead of $5 a night I paid $20 for a whole month

OH ya more good news, So I got a call from the Head of the safety department............and he starts off with introducing himself and with "I got a report that....." and I was thinking great What did I do that I didn't know that I did that I'm about about to get fired for lol....Well Turns out the tire guy reported those tires I had changed and he was calling to find out what I did to flat spot them lol.....and I was like Wow hold on....."I found the tires like that that when I did the pre-trip before hooking to the trailer, then I called Missoula and they sent me to the tire guy to change them...." and he was like oh ok I was just trying to figure out who draged the trailer and then I said "well It really didn't look like the trailer had been dragged because the tires were on the same dual but they were not flat in the same spots and the other 6 tires back there were fine, so I don't know what happend to them but I don't think somone dragged it" and he says "well thanks for all the good info and one more thing.....Where you in the conover Terminal today?" and I said "yes" and he says "well I followed you out and for about 10 miles afterwards and I just wanted to give you a kuddos on your safe driving" So what I thought was going to be a bad phone call turned out to be a really good one lol

Then Today I get a QC message, "when you get the chance call me a Missoula at ex:XXX" So I call him and he's the guy you request your hometime from and who you call when you have a problem with dispatch or someone within the company and he was just checking to see how I was adjusting the OTR and if I had any problems with Watkins Shepard, and he said "it looks like you've been doing really good, and running pretty hard" and he asked if I had been getting any greif from the girls in logs and I said "no" and he says "well thats a good thing, that must mean your doing them properly"......So again another good phone call.


I still don't like NJ.....haha, and I have figured out if I'm going to make any money I need to stay off the east coast, I was getting TONS of miles out west and made good money, but since I've been back here I'm getting a few short runs and half the money . So once I get the truck fixed, I'm going to see If I can get back out west......




Oh and sammycat, I have a HUGE fridge with a Big freezer in the truck but no microwave or anything yet.....But I will as soon as I get some money, I'm going to have to learn how to cook in the truck lol Most nights I'm so tired when I park I just want hot food NOW and then a shower and sleep lol



American Trucker

 

Cool, are you going to Conover?


It's AWESOME! This is the best job I've ever had.....



American Trucker

 

If it exist I don't know about it lol

I really don't care where they run me, But I can't live off $340 a week that just wont work lol, but I do prefer the long non stop runs as apposed to the short runs, lol. I just do what they tell me to do. Stops are great for making money IF you can do it efficiently maybe with time I'll get better at it, but you got to find them all and be there on time, and on the multi stop loads the driver usually has to unload and this furniture kicks my butt, so even if a drop is only 7 pieces, that could take me a while to get it off depending on what it is, plus the backing into crazy docks all the time adds up real quick then your sitting there trying to figure out how to get everything off within your AND there hours I can run a 14 hour day with 11 behind the wheel no problem but these little stores are not open for 14 hours most close at 4 or 5 pm. and don't open till 8-10am, so you really only get 8 hours or so. Plus sometimes if you miss one just one turn it could take 20 minutes to find a place to legally and safely turn around....


American Trucker