Wannabe to Watkins Shepard Driver

So I tried to get unloaded about 14 hours early at the Wal-Mart depot. No dice, oh, OK I'll just slip on down the Pilot truck stop and beat the crowd. Haven't had a shower in a couple of days so this should work out fine. Just as predicted I get to the truck stop and it's wide open. Get a nice spot where I shouldn't get blocked in by morning. Pack up all my clean clothes and toiletries and head for the showers. As I reach for the door I notice a note "Showers out of order, no hot water" So I ask the lady at the desk if they have someone working on it "Yes sir we have a part coming in tomorrow" Well great, is it OK if I just stand here and wait?
If you are the type of person that needs to have a shower every night you may want to consider a different occupation. Most nights you aren't even in a place where showers are available and then nights like this they are broken. So looks like I'll be breaking out the ol' baby wipes tonight.

 

Hey I know guys from NC can't count without using their fingers and sometimes their toes, so what's your point?

 

You only have to tap the gas (accelerator) peddle one time and she'll run until the fuel runs out. Good thing to because it's hot down here in MS. Waiting on my next load assignment with the AC on! Hope to make it home for the holiday weekend.

 

First Two Weeks On The Road

Finally got a chance to collect my thoughts about my first two weeks on the road. It went by very quickly. I logged 3966 miles in ten states (NC TN OH IN IL MI MS AL KY AR) My two weeks only consisted of 10 actual days of driving as I had a couple of days off. I've pulled furniture loads out of Conover, NC beer out of Cincinnati OH Pickles out of Central MI and more furniture out of Dalton Ga and Myrtle MS. When hauling single stop loads you pretty much go from huge warehouse type terminals to the same on the other end and Interstate highways in between. You don't have to touch any of that freight as it's on pallets and loaded / unloaded with a fork truck. The furniture loads come in two categories, single stop (most likely huge warehouse) or LTL loads (Less Than A Truck Load) The LTL loads are where it gets interesting. I picked up a LTL furniture load in Myrtle MS that had 7 stops in 755 miles. Most of these stops are mom and pop furniture stores in downtown and rural areas. Six of my stops were in Eastern TN. My route (the company gives you directions to follow) took me on mainly secondary 45 - 55 mph roads. This is kind of cool as you get to see a lot more of the country but it kills the amount of miles you can log in a day. The mom and pop stops can be real challenging to say the least. Most of these places were never designed for Condo Sleeper Semis pulling a 53' trailer. When they were built a 30' truck was probably huge, now we're sticking a 70' trucks in the same place.

I was given a truck they use for training to run my first trip, should have been only for a couple of days. Well I've had it now for two weeks. The truck is a real piece of crap and I'm done with it. I can see the companies side of it, they are trying to squeeze every useful mile out of every truck to boost profits. That's fine but not when it compromises safety. I have a laundry list of defects on this truck but the final straw was this. These trucks have a device called an Inter Axle Differential Lock witch basically gives you four wheel drive (both rear drive axles, 8 tires) for maneuvering in dirt, snow, hills or any where traction my be compromised. Well on this old truck it doesn't work and they knew this when I was issued the truck. Not knowing any difference I accepted it as is. Well big mistake! I didn't realize how important it was until I got a light furniture load (5,000 pounds) and had to make all the deliverers to these small towns and mom and pop stores. I was in a town in TN where it was very hilly on city streets. I had to stop at the top of a hill where I was going to make a left turn. As I entered the corner I took up as much real estate as I could because the turn was tight. So just as I get all the way into the turn I loose traction. So here I sit nearly jack knifed in an intersection with the trailer going down hill and traffic blocked in all directions. I put it in reverse, nothing, just spins. Then the law shows up, great. People start to gather as they think there must have been an accident or something. Finally the cop clears the traffic behind me and I'm able to rock the truck back and forth until I get back to the stop sign. Cop tells me to go to the next intersection and try it again. I do as instructed and same thing happens. He tells me to go to the next intersection only this time he will block traffic and let me keep rolling, and also instructed me to go on through the next stop sign at the top of the next hill, he calls ahead and has that intersection blocked by a patrol car. Well that all worked and come to find out my delivery was right next door to the police station. After unloading I went over and shook officer friendly's hand and thanked him. He was a nice guy.

Incident number two was less dramatic. Some places use a sump type loading dock. This is where you back into a hole that has a ramp going down to make your trailer level with the ground for unloading. Well I got stuck in the pit. The owner of the store was less than impressed already as I had to make a couple of runs in his gravel parking lot just to get in the pit. Then I go to leave and she's just spinning. And this was on dry cement. So I took out my tire chains and laid them in front of the spinning wheel, put it in second and slowly released the clutch, sure enough she crawled out.

Incident number 3 was even less dramatic than either of these but the pattern was getting real old real fast and I was getting pissed. I told a friend of mine who is a trucker about what was going on and he said "what would happen if you lost traction on a RR crossing". Wow! I didn't even think about that.

So on Friday I took the truck back to the terminal and cleaned it out. I'm taking the holiday weekend off and will return to work on Tuesday. I'll either get a different a truck or a different job, we'll see.

Sorry for the long ramble. I'll save the other stories for later. I have to tell you about dispatch lying to me, wrong address, GPS hiccups, stinky truck drivers, truck stops, idiots on the road and more!