Orientation 02/29/12

Well congrats sarge. I hope ur days here at usa ate fruitful and safe for u.

 

Congrats Sarge. You will love having your own truck for sure. My most thrilling minutes and most STRESSFUL minutes were sitting in my own truck and getting my first dispatch. No trainer to ask questions of. You'll do fine. Enjoy.

 

Sarge, I got my fingers crossed you get a good tractor. Also don't forget to maintain the space around your rig at all times. take it slow and GOAL. Make sure you scale loads and watch that bridge law. Make your appointments on time and before you know it that 1st year will be over!

 

Hey Sarge: Make sure when they ask you to back "You get out of the truck and walk around it." You must get out and look. GOAL. If your going to Van Buren Tell Mary the bus driver Hi.

 

Just wanted to point out that when you do GOAL make sure you GO AROUND the tractor and walk back on the right side, not the driver side. At least this is what one of the upgrade instructors told me.

 

My first load was crap lol... 1st: I worked with weekend dispatch, my FM basically just gave me a truck number and that was it. 2nd: There were no trailers where I picked my tractor up (Spartanburg, SC). They had me driving all over the place and finally told me to just bobtail in and pickup the preloaded trailer.
First two weeks out... I was in the NorthEast! 3 days in a row I didn't leave the New Jersey border. I went into ghettoville Philly where trucks probably shouldn't be, stayed the night on the side of the road with the doors locked and hoping to not hear any gunshots. Woke up at 3am to leave, did a quick walk around to make sure nothing happened to outside of truck/trailer and a cop car was sitting on the sidewalk chillin there lol. I asked one of the officers the best way to get out back onto Rt1 and they told me .

Got better after I got home though.

 

My first load was crap too. I got assigned to a truck at W. Memphis and took the Grey dog to get there. Signed for it Thursday evening. W Memphis had no empty trailers so I sat until Monday. FM said I didn't qualify for detention pay since I hadn't pulled a load yet. Monday afternoon I got an empty from a guy who upgraded with me. He had left on his first load and then came right back when his AC quit. (June temps). Then found out it would take 2-3 days to fix. I hooked up and didn't get a load until Tuesday. Live load in Memphis of scrap rubber. Downtown in one of the hardest backing spots I've ever seen. Got loaded heading to Lincoln, AL. Truck needed a parked REGEN every hour and started leaking diesel. Turned around and went back to W Memphis. Was told that nothing could be done about the REGEN issue, just keep doing it until it cleared up. They fixed the leaking tank and I had to leave and pull an all nighter after being up all day to make my final on time. Night dispatch told me if they relayed the load that I would only get paid the 5-6 empty miles to the pickup in Memphis. I made it to the final exhausted and lost another day as I had to take a 10 (legally and physically!). Then to make matters worse, I got a call from Fuel Economy about my "excessive" idle time. This is after I sat for the better part of five days with no load in an ICON truck. I started having serious doubts about my desire to stay with USA Truck. Thankfully, things gradually improved from there and I don't regret my decision to stay.