New to tanker driving; starting soon...

So, there don't seem to be too many threads about going into tanker driving, particularly on the food-grade end. I thought I'd start one for anyone who was interested in following along...

Yesterday I went to the main office for some pre-employment basics (paperwork, safety videos, drug test, meeting office folk, e-log/dispatch tutorial...) and after getting the "you passed your drug test" message today it's official. My current job doesn't involve my CDL (I've had the class A for a long time though), and the reason I'm leaving it is because they can't pay me what I can make driving and I need to catch up on some bills... so, having always wanted to pull a tanker (and never having done so; at least not liquid, I spent some time pulling a pneumatic) I'm kind of looking forward to it, but I am a little bummed about leaving my current job. They've been the best group of people to work with and a fun place to be (I have spent the last year working for a small, local brewery, primarily delivering kegs to accounts-- ball-busting work to be sure, but still a great job). If anyone remembers the episode of the simpsons where homer gets his dream job at the bowling alley, but has to go back to the nuclear plant to pay his bills... it's like that.

I'm also not looking forward to being gone, having a wife and a little boy at home. But it is what it is, and there is something to the old timers who I've always heard say things along the lines of how driving gets in your blood. I miss driving a big truck around, for all the hassles that come with it.

I live in what most consider to be the middle of nowhere (northern mn), and as such, the closest terminal of my new company is about a 2.5 hour drive away and they don't really have loads that go through where I live. So I plan to be out for a few weeks at a time and be home for a longer chunk so it won't be so bad commuting to the terminal. I'll be getting my passport when I have the spare money to pay for it (they said they'd reimburse me, though) so I can go into Canada. This job appears to be about the best option, money-wise, and for what I could actually get into that I would want to (the job market locally sucks big time) so that factors into the commute I'll be putting up with.

Anyway, it'll be another week or two before I report to my terminal and start training. They said I'd jump in my own truck on day one, but follow another driver to a regular customer to go through the procedures and do that for a week or whatever, until I'm comfortable with it and they're feeling confident in my abilities. Then I'll be on longer trips. I think they have some confidence in my ability to pick up on it, given all the driving I've done, and my last CDL job being in pneumatics (I'm given to understand there are some similarities in needing to be attentive...)

I'll post some more info/impressions later, and if anyone wants to know more about any of it, I'd be happy to share some info. But there won't be too much interesting to say until I get into my truck and start turning the wheels...

 

Food-grade. See how it goes; maybe use the experience and try chem or gas hauling later on down the road. For now I'm happy to start where I'm starting.

 

Actually, they're mostly white, so far as I've seen. It's not a huge company, and tankers aren't their only gig, but I think they have a little over 300 trucks.

 

You got me; my favorite part of driving was being abused at grocery warehouses. (I've done plenty of dry van and refer in the past... don't particularly want to go back to it.)