My new experience with Gordon Trucking, post-buyout

"DD" place a can of coffee with holes punched in the lid in the floor in front of passenger seat. This will remove the cigarette odor...

 

What a waste of coffee just take up smoking

 

Howdy DD,

Thank you for the interesting and well-written commentaries on your introduction to GTI. It certainly brought back memories for me.

A couple of comments:

I was in the orientation group that went through at Pac during the infamous ice storm in January 2012 that shut down the whole facility before we could finish our orientation. One of the results was that we got no QC training. No electricity, no QCs in the classroom. I felt bad about that because my roommate was a 30-year truck-driving veteran who bailed out one week after getting his truck. I just happened to run into him at the Medford yard as he was cleaning out his truck. He said he just couldn't get the hang of the QC. Driving was no problem, but he was getting so much grief because of his QC mishaps that he just decided to call it quits.

You mentioned the QC and all the macros. It doesn't take long before they become second nature. It really is a slick system for you and the DM to keep track of each other. Doing a regular, and accurate, PTA is extremely important if you want to have a pre-plan ready for you before you even finish your current load. You get a reputation for good PTAs, and you'll get good loads.

Congrats on your assigned truck. I figured that as an experienced driver going in you probably wouldn't be started out with an old Columbia like us students did, back when. I don't know if they are even still foisting those pigs off on beginners anymore in California because of the new emission regs. Good riddance, if that's the case. I was in one for three weeks before getting my 2010 Cascadia. I LOVED that truck, and sincerely miss driving it.

About GTI as a company to work for. I had complaints, of course, but I will honestly admit that most of my complaints were not unique to Gordon, but were issues with the trucking industry in general. If I ever got back on the road again, I would drive for Gordon again in a heartbeat. Their Lathrop yard, my home terminal, was absolutely top notch -- roomy, clean, well-organized. It put all their other yards to shame.

About the smoking problem. My Cascadia's previous driver had been a CIGAR smoker, and believe me, the residue was STRONG! I was so thrilled to get a Cascadia I didn't dare complain. The shop at Lathrop has a machine they plug in and run in the cab that somehow "eats" the smoke smell. Ozone, or something. It didn't take it all out, but it did help considerably. For the rest, I just ran with windows open as much as possible, wiped all surfaces down with Windex, used air fresheners, and endured it until it finally dissipated.

Keep the comments coming.

 

Hey DD,

Here's the Trip Planner that I designed for while I was at Gordon. It's keyed specifically to Gordon's Trip Sheet that has to be filled out after each load in order to get paid. It is also very handy for completing your macros at a shipper's or receiver's.

I would have preferred inserting it as a .pdf, but didn't have that option.

What you do is buy a wire-bound notebook at Staples, or wherever. I used one that was about 6x9.5. You unwind or pull back the wire, remove out the pages, run them through your laser printer, then wire the printed pages back into the book.

It is designed to accommodate all the information that comes across as your load assignment, multiple pickups and/or deliveries, as well as the highways that you travel on.

The three "from," "to, "to" fields are for when you start at one location (like a Gordon yard where you took a 10) go to another location to pick up your load, then to another location to deliver. Each step has to be reported on your Trip Sheet, so it's handy to have it already written down somewhere.

Let me know if you are able to use this.

View attachment 60716

 

Apologies.

It opens for me, but there have been other attachments that I haven't been able to open. I haven't quite figured out this system yet.

I'll pm you with my email address. I'll send you a pdf of the Trip Planner as a reply to your email to me.

Dave

 

Hey DD,

Following your advice to try the "Go Advanced" feature. Here it is again. Let me know if it works this time.

 

Thats nice to have i might have to grab that myself