Watkins Shepard 30 day training as experienced by Warpdrvr

Ya got that right!!

Anywhoo..we were waiting there for 7 hours. After the accidents cleared, they had set the requirements at maximum, and he didn't have enough chains. Finallly they set it to minimum, so we got out there and put 'em on and about the time we were pulling out, they opened the road with NO CHAINS!! Should have known...so, since the road was still treacherous, he drove into Sacramento.

We get to the destination, unload and head for Modesto. I was so wiped out I could hardly stay awake, since I had been up since midnight, and with no food to boot. We pulled into the Flying J in Ripon and I had a really good double cheeseburger and fries.

So, we finally get to Modesto and I get my truck. The truck I was told was in such good shape was horribly dirty on the inside and the batteries were dead. So dead they would not even start the APU. So, the terminal manager calls the mechanic out and he gets it running, but still no APU, or as it turns out, bunk heater. I was pretty cold when I woke up this morning...I bobtailed over to Wally-world and got some cleaning stuff and did some preliminary cleaning, sent in my Macro 11 on the QC and have been waiting.....Just got off the phone with the dispatcher and she said I wasn't in the system yet. So, she fixed me up and said I would have a load home by tomorrow....It's been a long, strange trip from Montana to Modesto...

 

Well, I had my first load.....all of 10 miles! A driver came in yesterday with a bad fuel pump and they repowered to me. 5am delivery time, made it with no problems other than the directions I was given were no good due to construction, but I managed to work thru it.... A plus, I was paid local hourly instead of mileage, so it worked out better.

So, I delivered, hauled back here to the terminal, had a shower and a pretty good burrito for breakfast from the taco truck across the street. Now waiting on a load home. The dispatcher said she'd take care of me today since I helped out yesterday, but still nothing...gotta get used to it, I guess, although I'm wondering if I'll ever see home at this rate, with the long trip from Montana here and now no loads....

 

I did get a load finally. Deadhead to Concord from Modesto for a load of scrap cell tower batteries, then on to Anaheim, CA....these aint your normal D cell batteries...about 2000 lbs each! I'm lightly loaded at 24500 or so, so I should get decent mileage. The sucky thing is the transmission is acting up, sometimes gets hung up on the shifts, stuck in neutral for a couple of seconds between 4th and 5th, or 5th and 6th. I'm gonna have the shop look at it along with the growing list of other things to be attended to while I'm off for a couple days....

Man this truck stop is noisy....a constant rumble, but I'm so tired it will not be a problem to sleep....getting up at 3am to start driving at 4am..hopefully will be home by 10 or 11am.