My Maverick Experience

There's a few of these already but I feel like making my own if only to have for my self to look back upon. This first post is going to be kind of long since it's a recap of the last month or so. The rest will just be day to day accounts of what I do.

I applied to Maverick on 01/03/2013 after a brief talk with Caleb on the phone and talking to one of their drivers in a truck stop. It took 2 weeks to get everything confirmed. I could've gone to orientation starting on 01/20/2013 but my Social Security Card was laminated and they needed a replacement before they could let me come. I also had to get a doctor to sign off on my right wrist which I broke and had a plate put into in June of 2010. I was finally approved and confirmed to head to North Little Rock, AR for orientation on 01/23/2013.

They gave me the option of either taking a Greyhound bus or finding my own transportation. It is 750 miles from Milwaukee, WI to the NLR training facility. If I found my own way they would pay me the $168 cost of a greyhound bus ticket. I chose to drive myself since I didn't feel like spending 2 days on a bus. Since I drove myself I was able to bring a lot more stuff with me and also made it here in about 15 hours. I made a few stops along the way to see friends. The other upside to driving myself is that I can leave the facility anytime I want and go wherever I want at night since I'm not limited to using the provided van that everybody wants to take at once.

So I spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday going through all my stuff that I had removed from my tractor at my last job. I knew I would have less space since I had a 75" raised roof sleeper before and I'm now going to have a 72" midroof. I used the upper bunk in the last truck for all storage. I finished packing Friday night around 2230. Sleeping Friday night was hard. I was kind of excited to get on the road the next morning. I woke up several time throughout the night because of it.

Saturday morning I was up at 0430. This is extremely unusual for me since I hadn't been getting up until noon most days for the 2 previous weeks. Grabbed the last of my bedding out of the dryer and threw it in my pickup. Rolled out around 0530. Drove for about an hour and stopped to have breakfast with my Dad on the way. Can't turn down a free meal.

After having a nice breakfast I got on the interstate and started going. Drove for several hours through Chicago. I forgot to grab my EzPass from home and didn't have a whole lot of cash so I took I-94 straight through downtown. It was 8AM on a Saturday, and while I rarely dropped below 70mph there was still quite a bit of traffic. It was nice to just cruise for a while. After going through Chicago I had to stop in Monee, IL to wash my windows. I couldn't see out of them because of all the salt. I was going to run through the Blue Beacon but there was a rather long line. My dark blue pickup was almost pure white from all the road salt in WI. After that stop I drove down to Champaign, IL to have lunch with a couple of friends. Spent an hour or so here. Only wanted to spend 30 minutes, but again, I'm not one to pass on a free meal when I'm fairly broke right now.

After lunch I left and drove until I hit Effingham, IL. Had to stop for fuel. Fueled up at the Flying J there. Bought about 27.9 gallons of gas. I finally got tired of seeing my truck covered in salt so I went and sat in line at the Blue Beacon for 30 minutes to get it all washed off. $19 later and I have a nice clean truck. After all that waiting I finally got moving again. Other than a few rest area stops to use the bathrooms I kept going all the way to NLR. About 50 miles away the Low Fuel light on my truck turned on again. Then around 30 miles out it finally clicked over to 0 miles to Empty. Good thing I know there's a 5 gallon reserve after it hits 0. I pulled into the Pilot next to NLR to fuel up again. I put 34.9 gallons into the 35 gallon tank. That was a little closer than I like getting. A good hill and I would've been SOL when the fuel sloshed to the wrong end of the tank.

I finally made it to NLR around 2015. Checked in at the guard house and got my little welcome packet. They told me where to park back by the hotel and which room to head for.

Went back to the hotel and found my room. Went up and met my room mate. He's a cool guy who's just starting out. He's never driven OTR before so this is all new to him. After about 30 minutes of chatting I went out and brought my stuff in. We finally got to bed around 2230.

That's the recap to get up to speed with the past month. I'll use a new post for the first day of Orientation.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

-Ryan

 

Maverick Orientation for an Experienced Driver Day 1 - Sunday 01/27/2013


Day one started out with getting up at 0530. We had to be in the lounge of the training center by 0700. We got up, got dressed and just went down into the hotel lounge to talk with everybody for a while. Around 0630 everybody started heading over to the training building. It started out with the instructors introducing themselves and giving a quick run down of what the day was going to hold for us. We all then went into one room where they called us in one at a time to scan in our CDLs and Social Security Cards. After this the 5 experienced drivers split off from the student drivers and we went into our own classroom.

Our instructor was Scotty. He's a pretty cool and funny guy. I think I will definitely enjoy having him around for the orientation. We went over some of the general first day orientation kind of things. Stuff like Sexual harassment, policies, pay, dress code, and just other general information. Since the 5 of us have all driven OTR before we didn't cover the trip planning stuff very heavily. We went over the basic stuff just to make sure everybody knew what they were doing. There were plenty of entertaining stories told as well while we were going over everything. For the most part the first half of the day was spent just covering all that information and answering questions me might have had.

Lunch was from 1200-1300. Lunch today was Pizza. They had the options of Pepperoni, Cheese, or Sausage. All you can eat. They had several boxes left when lunch was over. They will provide lunch during the Sunday to Thursday part of Orientation. After Thursday we are responsible for bringing our own lunches. Lunch for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday will be Subway. Thursday lunch is catered and is supposedly some kind of grilled chicken because they will be going over eating healthy.

After lunch the we went back into our classroom where we watched a video on Alcohol and Drug testing. The video looks like it was made sometime in the late 80s-early 90s. It pretty much just covers how a drug or alcohol test is supposed to go and how you can screw it up. Anybody that has ever taken a DOT drug/alcohol test knows all of this info already.

After that video we watched on on spill kits. They go over how to use the spill kit when we are leaking diesel onto the ground. After the video there was a 5 question quiz. Pretty much common sense stuff.

At 1400 our group went back into the same room as the student drivers and we filled out a lot of paperwork on the computers. There was no physical paperwork. Everything is filled out and then signed electronically on the computer. This took about 2 hours to go through. After filling everything out we had our pictures taken for our ID/Key cards. These will allow us easy access into and out of the facility as well as display our name so people can actually call us by our name not just some number.

After taking the pictures we went back into the classroom for another 15 minutes and went over the plan for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the drug test, DOT Physical, and Pre-Work test.

After that the experienced drivers were allowed to go back to the hotel for the night. The students stayed behind to do a Town Hall meeting where they could ask questions of what OTR life was going to be like. They even provided a conference line where spouses and family members could call in and ask the instructors what they can expect of their husbands/fathers as far as coming home and staying in touch. I thought it was pretty awesome of them to go to the lengths of doing something like this. I can definitely see how allowing the families to ask questions of the company can help make the transition into OTR a little easier for everybody to adapt to. I also think it will help keep everybody's expectations of the career in line with reality since there's less guesswork by the families/students on what's going to happen.

Overall I am pretty satisfied with my experience at Maverick so far. If the rest of the staff here has an attitude even close to that of the instructors I can see myself staying here for a long time to come.

I'm going to be adding a new post like this every day for my orientation/training period. I hope that some day it is able to help another driver make the right decision on their future in this industry.

As for now, it's 2100. I have to be up early tomorrow so I'm hitting the sack. It will be nice to get a full 8 hours of sleep for the first time in a few days.

-Ryan

 

Maverick Orientation for an Experienced Driver Day 2 - Monday 01/28/2013

Today started off at 0530 once again. Got up and dressed. Headed down to the training building around 0600. Training started at 0630. We spent the morning doing DOT Drug tests, Physicals, and Hair Follicle testing. After that we did the Pre-Work Screen.

The Pre-Work Screen started off with everybody in one room. We had to fill out a small packet and write down any important physical injuries that could affect strength or Range of Motion. After that they came around one at a time and took our blood pressure and pulse while we were sitting to get a base reading. They also had us do a grip test after taking checking our BP/Pulse. After that they called us up to the front of the room to do Range of Motion tests. They just made sure we could bend and flex properly. After the Rand of Motion tests we went into the next room.

The second room is where you do all of the lifting tests. First they have you lay on a table while they check your back and have you do a couple sit ups. Then they have you sit up and they do a couple reflex tests. After that you get off the table and do 4 low squats. Once the squats are done you can finally put your shoes/boots back on and go sit down for a couple minutes.

After a couple minutes of sitting they have you get up and step up and down onto a 6" step for 3 minutes. There is an electronic beeper that makes a noise twice a second. On each beep you move one of your feet. They were doing two of us at a time on this test. After the 3 minutes they let you rest for one minute and then they use a little finger tip sensor to check your BP/Pulse.

After the step test the two of you move over to the lifting tests. One guy moves 10 30lb sand bags from a bucket on your right to a bucket on the left. Once you've moved all ten you then have to put them back where they were in the right bucket. After the sand bags you have to lift a 60lb box from the floor onto a table. After that you lift a 50lb box over your head and set it back down. After that you lift a 40lb box to chest height. Then they add a 30 lb bag and you again lift it floor to knuckle height. Finally they add another 50lbs to make it 120lbs total. This you only have to lift to knuckle height. I'm not a real big or strong guy and I was able to do it. I don't think I could do a whole lot more than that, but I did it. After the 120lb box you are done in this room and move out into the barn.

In the barn they had this trailer set up:


We had to lift a 40lb box from the floor to the back of the trailer and then put it back on the floor. This is easy for any of you tall guys. For me even the back of the trailer is up to my shoulders. I was still able to do it, it just required a bit more effort on my part. After that we had to pull a 60lb tarp across the floor. It was attached to a piece of PVC piper with a rope so we just had to hold onto that and pull it. This was extremely easy.

After pulling the bag around we then went around the side of the trailer and climbed up onto it using the blue ladder in that picture. We then had to get up on top of that box to simulate climbing on top of a load. In front of the box they had 2 tarps rolled up. For the tall guys it was easy and they didn't need the tarps. I'm young enough that jumping up onto something that high was pretty simple for me. The heavier guys had a little trouble at first but eventually everybody made it up without too much issue. If you aren't huge and you have even the smallest amount of upper body strength you should be able to do this quite easily, especially if you use the tarps like I did to give yourself a little boost. Then you just had to climb down the other side.

After everybody finishes climbing on the box you walk up to the cab of the truck and show them you know how to get in and out using 3 points of contact. We climbed into the truck, had a seat, and then climbed back out. After this we went over the the trailer on the left side of that picture. On the second trailer we had to climb up onto the back of the trailer and then climb back down again using 3 points of contact. On the other side of that trailer along the wall they had a 10ft long by 18 inch wide platform sitting on the floor. It was about 8 inches off the floor. We had to step up onto it, walk the full length, turn around, walk back, and then step back down.

After all that we finally got the OK from the physical people and they gave us an envelope to hand into HR to prove we had finished all the testing. By the time we finished everything it was about 1200 and time for lunch. Today's lunch was a 6" Subway sandwich with a cookie, bag of chips, and a soda/water from the fridge. Wasn't too bad for a free lunch. There's always the option of making your own food as well.

After lunch we went back into the classroom and watched a video on the Driver's Legal Plan. It's a program that provides discounted legal protection to drivers if they get a ticket or get in an accident in either a CMV or their POV. It is $2.98 a week for the driver and $1.50 for the driver's spouse. I think everybody signed up for it. It's not like it's overly expensive and if I have to use it even once it could easily pay for itself.

After this Curt Valkovic, the Director of Driver Training came in and did a 2 hour presentation. It was about doing things the right way because there was no excuse not to. We went over pictures and stories of where drivers tried to cut corners and it wound up costing the company tons of money, but more so it wound up costing lives. They really press into us that there's no reason to take a short cut when it comes to securement or safety. The biggest thing he kept saying was, "Do the Right thing for the Right reason, because it's the Right thing to do." I am even more impressed with the company after hearing him talk today.

After listening to Curt the experienced group split off and we went to work with Ed on the MCP200 stuff. A couple of the experienced guys had never used the MCP200 so he went over how to use it and covered the logging portion quite heavily. We did that until about 1800. At that point we were allowed to leave. The Students were still watching videos and stuff. They left around 1900.

We also got you ID cards today. We now have access through the employee entrances and into the main building. I'm probably going to head over to the company store during lunch tomorrow and buy one of the retractable card holders.

Since we got out a little early the 4 of us ran into town to grab dinner. I'm glad I brought my personal truck so I don't have to use the van or wait for it to come back.

That's it for day 2. I'm not sure what we are going to cover tomorrow, but I will have a post about whatever it is tomorrow night.

 

Yea, one of the experienced guys came in and was planning on running in the RAT (Regional Atlantic) division for Flatbed. He was informed that RAT is pretty much everything east of I-35.

 

Maverick Orientation for an Experienced Driver Day 3 - Monday 01/29/2013

Yet another day starting at 0530. Got over to the training building a little after 0600 to fix my Direct Deposit info. Hopefully now I can start collecting some money. It's been about 2 weeks since my last paycheck and funds are starting to get kind of tight. Now enough of my complaining and onto the rests of today.

Class started at 0630. First thing we did was turn on the computers and start watching videos and taking tests. Everybody was in the same room today. Scotty has been out for the past couple days so we've just been doing most of the same stuff as the student drivers. We watched videos and did the computer tests until about 1130.

At 1130 we went out to the lounge to grab our subway sandwiches and drinks. We then went and ate lunch in the classroom. This was one of the few times we are allowed to eat in the room. Normally it's covered drinks only and no food in the classrooms. While we ate lunch one of the Operations managers came over and gave us a presentation for about an hour. She explained how home time and vacation time would work for the different divisions. She also explained how we would go about requesting the time off.

After the Operations presentation a guy from Customer Service came in and gave his little presentation. He explained to us how the country is split up among the CSRs and how they decide who gets what freight. He also helped further explain the more common areas for the different divisions to run in. He showed us a few images of what their internal systems look like and tried to explain them a little without confusing everybody. One of the screens was a list of all the loads and trucks in the Memphis area and I couldn't even begin to understand all the numbers and abbreviations on the screen.

After the Customer Support presentation we continued to watch videos and take more tests on the computers. While we were doing all the computer testing another instructor pulled each of the experienced guys out one at a time to go for a test drive in a truck.

The test drive consisted of pulling forward, and then backing up in a straight line in the yard. After that we went out of the yard and hopped on I-40E and just drove down to the next exit. We then got off and turned around and just came back. This was something new for me since the truck was a short hood Cascadia day cab with an automatic transmission pulling a 48ft covered wagon with spread axles. All I've ever driven since I started driving school and worked at Schneider was Centurys and Cascadias with 72" condo sleepers with an Eaton 10 speed pulling a 53ft dry van. It was odd for me being able to turn around and see the trailer behind me. I also had a little trouble adjusting to the automatic transmission. It was something different for sure. Besides the fact that I stomped my foot into the floor when I went to start it up. I also stomped the floor and tried to grab for a shifter every time I came to a stop. It is also weird having to give the truck fuel to get it moving even when in gear. I'd prefer if it would creep like a car does until you held the brakes. I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually. Going to take some time to break the habit of trying to push the clutch all the time though.

I grabbed a picture of the truck after the drive:


After the little test drive I went back in the room and continued watching videos and taking tests on the computers. Seeing a theme for today here? Around 1700 the students were allowed to head back to their rooms. The experienced drivers had to stay behind for an extra hour or so to catch up on videos we didn't watch over the past couple days that the students had.

After finishing those videos we could finally leave a little after 1800. I went into town to grab some food from Walmart. It was raining a little while I was there but it wasn't too bad. It's about 70 degrees out tonight but really humid. After getting back to the yard around 1900 I made my dinner.

Just as I was working my way through my dinner one of the other guys came into the lounge at the hotel and asked if we had heard any tornado sirens because his phone was saying there was a tornado warning in the area. We told him we hadn't and it would be kind of obvious seeing as there's a siren 200 feet from the hotel. About 3 minutes after he walked out of the room the sirens went off. So we all had to head over to the main office building and everybody went into the IT room there since it's the strongest to protect the servers that run the company. We sat in there for about 45 minutes before they finally let us come back to the hotel. There was about 50 people packed into that room and it was starting to get pretty hot by the time we all got out. There's still a few storms rolling through, but for the most part it's calmed down now.

So after an exciting night we are all fine and everything is back to normal. Tomorrow is just another day. Tomorrow Scotty should finally be back so the experienced guys will be back in our own classroom so we can do the simulators and some final written exams. The official Job Offers are on Thursday.

Again, it's late, I'm tired, and I'm going to bed. Thanks for reading so far everyone.

-Ryan