Western Express or Swift?

God forbid.

 

Hell I spent a day and a half waiting on a b service in Denver. Could have run maybe 1000 more miles. Lord knows my DM was on the shop's ### to get me moving again. She thanked me for no being a codependent ##### and not complaining about having all those miles. I'm like ####, I'd always have more miles than I can legally run if given the option.

Just took Lepton's advice about taking care of business and not wasting as much time as I normally did before. That's basically the only real change I made. I had a lot of food on board and did actually shut down for about 6 hours when I had a 7500lb high value backhaul of electronics and it was mandatory chains and high winds at Eisenhower and Vail pass. Heavy load and I wouldn't even have gotten that little nap in. A 2300 mile load is always nice too. Don't need to talk to anyone for a day or two. Just wake up, log a pretrip and get the wheels turning.

Was a bit daunting seeing the loads stacked like that. Just had to remind myself that I can only drive a mile at a time and worried about that instead.

Now I'm being unloaded as we speak and I'm an hour or two of mid day Dallas traffic from my most important stop for 4 days of being a lazy #######.

 

Hey Red. Really appreciate the honest and straight forward information. I am definitely eyeing Swift now. Do they give bonuses if I mention I was referred? could throw your name in there. I hear ya on not wanting to drive some days. How did you do those miles with a trainer and find the time to relax and eat? I drove six hours straight today in a regular car and felt tense and ill. When I feel that tired I have difficulty eating but maybe with air ride seats it would be slightly better? lol

 

The Youtubers are just a bunch of steering wheel holders with too much time on their hands.

 

Ya know, there's several old timers on YouTube that have been out here for decades, many of which have some great insight, would you call them steering wheel holders?

 

I havent seen one yet. But it depends on how annoying they are. I cant stand the ones the scream.

Also, if the old timers are just providing advice and how to type stuff then no, but if they try to create drama and act a fool then yes I will.

 

Just checking because your original comment seemed to throw all of them into the same clarification. But yeah I would agree with that summarization

 

I, personally, never watched a how to one. I learn better by just saying the heck with it and giving it a go. When i was in training my trainer used me to turn miles. When I got out of 8 weeks of training didnt even know how to check tire pressure, but I taught myself majority of it, rest was the old timers seeing me stuggle and helping me out. By the time my company had me retrained, the second trainer couldnt believe I was driving on my own for a month cause of how well, I was driving, pre tripping etc, just needed to be taught how to trip plan realistically.

 

My TMC trainer did the same for getting loads in. Couldn't stop talking about how he made $118k in 2013 as a trainer. He even showed me his paystubs for that year. He taught me the securement, tried to teach me how to float gears, I ended up figuring that out on my own. I used a few YouTube videos to get an idea on double clutching prior to CDL school. That helped some.

 

Mine, with Crete, taught me how to float. Didnt go well, so I eventually taught myself. I will give him credit he did teach me how to shift really well. But only taught me to trip plan as running teams and i was solo.