Random LTL Rants (all are welcomed)

Gladly.

The truck rodeo is really all in good fun. However GFS participates in the big rodeo I.E. going to nationals in Florida and competing against all the pro's from the big time companies like FedEx Freight and Old Dominion and Estes. You know basically all the people on this forum. You know all those pro drivers who are part of America's Road team and go to the white house and talk to the president about trucking. I'm not one of those people and probably won't be for sometime if ever.

So the thing about the truck rodeo is if you have done the rodeo you have a little bit of an advantage over someone who hasn't done the rodeo.

The rodeo was 3 parts. A driving course, written examination on the FMCSA book and then a pre trip inspection.

We had 17 people in our rodeo which really isn't that many people and we had (2) classes 50ft and 28ft.

I was in 28ft and so were 12 other people.

What you had to do was drive the truck up to some cones and stop the steer tire near some cones and the closer to the cones you got the more points you earned.

Then you had to simulate a curb stop where you had to put the back axle of the trailer in a box and stop with the wheel in the box.

Then an ally dock
Then a left hand turn
Then drive through the Tennis Ball Course
Finally stop at the stop bar.

I was the first driver to go, go figure right.
I was I think inside the 10 point line for the cone and I think I was okay on the curb stop.

The ally dock actually had enough room for the 28' trailers where you could almost back straight into the dock. Of course dummy me I thought they wanted to see some big fancy driving so I made this huge way to much work ally dock manuver that was way to complicated and real ugly looking.

Then you had to do a left hand turn around a barrel and then drive through some tennis balls without knocking any down and then stop at the stop bar beep the horn and get out using 3 points of contact.

I knocked over some Tennis balls and stopped 5-6ft short of the stop bar. When I got out of the truck I looked at the judge and said "A little short." He went "Yeah" I said "Ehh doesn't matter I wasn't going to win anyhow."

However they did give us a nice participation bag which was a very nice lunch cooler bag and it was filled with candy bars and chips and a can of pop and a T-Shirt.

They also fed us lunch we had hamburgers and hot dogs and chips and they had cookies for dessert.

The pre trip I got 4 out of 10 on that's 40% that's passing right? It wasn't what I thought they had a truck with some defects on it and you had to find the defects. Stupid me was doing like a CDL pre-trip where you look at stuff like u bolts and leaf springs, and it wasn't like that, the truck was missing stuff like a lug nut and a windshield whipper.

It's one of those things where if you did it before, you certainly had an advantage over some who didn't and everything is timed you get like 7 minutes to do the pre trip and 7 or 8 minutes to do the course. I didn't really know what they expected and what it was all about. Now that I have a better idea, it's like Mya Angelo said when you know better you do better.

I did bad, however others did worse. One poor guy missed the left hand turn by 30 yards and another guy totally missed the entire course coming out of the ally dock and the whole day was chalked with stupid goofy screw ups. It wasn't that it was hard, it was that you have the pressure of a bunch of people watching you and grading you. Although with only 17 guys the whole thing actually went pretty quickly.

Then after that we had lunch and they had a classic car show and it was nice they gave the kids rides in the trucks. You know they make it nice, a lot of people brought there kids, they had a kids bike rodeo and they gave the kids prizes.

I did pretty lousy no bones about it wasn't really pleased with my self, but it was one of those things where at the end of the day win or lose it was kind of fun in a way and I'd do it again maybe, it really wasn't bad, and trust me I wasn't the best not by a long shot, but there was some real ugly driving all the way around everyone was climbing out of the trucks kicking them selves ha-ha.

 

They had us lassoing converter dollies out in the yard. You take the lasso and try to get it around the converter dolly it's a lot like lassoing sleeping cows in a field.
They had a couple of TNT Wallace Coleville Express Pups rotting away in the back and told us we could practice lassoing those before are turn to try to lasso a converter gear!

 

@speedyk
Putting all that good economically obsolete and out dated surplus TNT equipment to good use, well the stuff from the obscure companies. Like Wallace Colvile and United.

@road_runner will tell you that Reddaway and Holland are still using all of there TNT era trailers and tractors.

 

Rene Buron snapped this picture in Montreal, Canada in the summer of 1993. This is old school.

 

Every day out here I see full sets still in Yellow or with Roadway cabs or with USF still on Reddaway sets, but I haven't seen TNT livery --on the road-- for many years. I do see TNT trailers in fields here and there, mostly in Idaho/Montana and Nevada for some reason, none that I recall in AZ.

Because of the size of pups they end up in some odd places as storage. There was a nice elderly and shiny DATS trailer on a back lot in Silverton, CO. TNT's seem to end up on farms. Or there's a lot on US 50 east of Carson City that has a bunch of old Reddaway, likely some TNT's in there.

 

I'm driving one of those cabs --different config-- at the current job. What a great interior design those have. Older driver friend told me "you'll like those cabs" and he was right on. Has a Roadranger as icing.

 

There's a truck warehouse in Solon, Ohio that has an ex-TNT era Ford Aeromax 9000 that they use as like a yard truck. Are you pulling mail with that old Ford? Probably looks like brand new in Arizona.

 

It does look pretty good, certainly no rust. Pulling buildings.

 

Neat freak here ::!