I have yet to fingerprint a load. Central pays lumpers however I have yet to have to do this. Everything has been customer unloaded. Central has a contract with someone the requires driver unload but they pay extra unload pay when you deliver there.

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Ugh, ok my day sucked today.

In the beginning I was taking a break in Louisiana. At this point everything is cool but this break interrupts my normal schedule. Instead of driving in the afternoon I am no driving in the morning. I have to stop somewhere in texas to swap out with my trainer. As I am pulling into the truck stop I scrap a freight-liners mirror. There is no damage at all *whew* my trailer just barley touched the mirror, all it did was bump it out of alignment,r but as you can see my day is off to a great start. My trainer is freaking out because he thinks I hit this person while backing and I had to explain to him no infact I was pulling forward.

Then I hop into the sleeper berth. After a while in the berth I go off duty and am talking with my trainer. Our next load comes in over the qualcom. after we drop our potatoes in denver we are to grab an empty trailer in the drop yard and deadhead to the beer plant and drop the empty and grab a full. On the qualcom message it says DO NOT BOBTAIL DROP WORKING TRAILER WITH NO INT OR EXT DMG in-fact it says that twice, and then it says it again in the directions.

The load is a load to Pennsylvania with no possible way for us to deliver on time. My trainer is pissed because we don't have the hour or time to be trying to run like this again. Plus it leaves little time to train if all we are doing is hauling ass down the interstate.

We get to the drop yard where I do some backing practice I do better driving backwards at night then driving forwards during the day.. I then drop our potatoes and head over to the two empty trailers, check them over. Oh joy one has a huge hole in the door. I hook up to the other one, we turn on the reefer unit, only it doesn't, turn on that is. Apparently there is something wrong with it. We have no choice but to bobtail to the beer plant because we can't bobtail to another state to find an empty trailer, that would just be crazy.

Oh and my logs are all jacked up, nothing looks to be in the right place.

On the way to the beer plant I miss the exit so my trainer has my take the next exit, it dumps us into a suburb filled with hairpin 180 deg turns and low hanging power lines and closed roads. We finally turn around after driving through parking lots and making 3 point turns in intersections to get our big ass truck turned around and finally get back to the exit and try to go southbound but its a divided highway and you can only go northbound! so we go down to the next exit. I m so glad I didn't have to do that with a 53 foot trailer.

Now we are heading back the right way and make it to the beer plant. We sneak on without a trailer and hook up to our load, throw in our loadlocks and another driver who has never delivered here asks us for help finding a scale. Then we discover our trailers tags are expired. So we finish our thing and wait up fer her and she follows us down to the TA. We weigh and I try to fix my logs makeing them worse then we take off towards PA. after my trainer helps this lady slide her tandems. I think she was flirting with me.

Well because of the fact this is the wrong time of the day for me I get tired very fast and end up only able to drive for 7 hours before I have to stop combine this with 4 rest stops some time refueling and trying to figure out my logs which I have managed to destroy with white out all over the page and my trainer has just about gotten his 10 hours. I then have a moment of enlightenment with my logs which I can't seam to make legal even though I know I have been running legal... I have been logging everything 12 hours into the future! I undo a few of my attempted fixed and move everything from the last 11 hours or so back 12 hours and everything looks perfect. Awesome. I wake my trainer he has me back some more and I go to bed but not before we find out that we forgot to grab our trailer registration back at the TA that they faxed us.

After about 5 hours in the sleeper berth I wake up all refreshed. my trainer is driving but he doesn't like driving this time of day and would rather come back here and let me drive. I am perfectly refreshed but HOS says I'm tired. This is after it told me I could still drive last night another 4 hours when I was almost asleep at the wheel. anyways the HOS rules are all garbage. They I think make things worse by telling the driver hey your rested but sit on the side of the road with your thumb up your ass or by saying hey if you wanna get paid you have to drive now even if you are tired because if you stop and take a 4 hour nap I won't let you drive again. etc.

We get our next preload on the qualcom and we are supposed to pick something up in PA yesterday and deliver it somewhere in texas that is impossible for us to make on time. My trainer is getting really mad. We are going to reset in PA because he is out of hours tomorrow and we will only be able to go about 7 hours a day which will get us to texas way late. My trainer is getting pissed that these laods are all so tight but they are taking him home for his home time so he is taking them.

There was more stuff but my browser crashed the last time I wrote this and its now a day later now so my memory isn't as clear. Does any one else on here sleep better in a moving truck than at a truck stop?

 

Problems with your logs? :shock:
Why not ask your trainer for help? :?
Oh yeah, that,s right, he's either driving or sleeping! :roll:
If in fact you log it as you do it, not to easy to screw it up! :wink:
Sorry, I'm not impressed with the way you are being trained!
You and those around you deserve much, much better!

 

I was logging it as I did it, but it was off by 12 hours and i didn't realize it.I had a major brain fart. He would help me but i wanted to figure it out on my own. I was about to throw in the towel actually at then end there when i figured it out.

I do agree though training is not what I expected however I am getting better training than others have. My trainer has taught me lots of cool stuff.

 

Remember to ALWAYS!!! Log your home terminal time! :shock: Regardless of what time zone your in now! 8) I use a cheap battery powered clock,Mounted to my dash with velcro.

 

We have a clock on the dash that is 'log time' Then I use my cellphone to check delivery times since it changes timezones automaticaly.

Ok here is the deal with that load to texas that was super tight that my trainer was comlaining about. The dispatcher gave it to us because it was originally a light load but the loadplanner moved the deliver time up after it was assigned to us. Our dispatcher pulled it and gave it to someone who wants it and is giving us another load.

We are headed to texas now with chocolate, then to denver with unknown commodity then to alabama with beer where we will have 3 days amd nights off. (trainers home time)

We have run 100% legal up to this point and have not been pressured to run illegally.

As long as you do not try to use hours an an excuse to deliver late you will do alright here.

 

Good news! I passed my CDL test today!!!

Start orientation next Tuesday and should be out with a trainer by Thursday/Friday.

I am soooo glad to be done with school!!!!

 

I would like to just say that my husband is still working for swift and this seems to be a normal trend my husbands trainer sleeps while he drives and my husband sleeps while the trainor drives. My kids and I got lucky though his trainer was nice enough to get my husband a few days of hometime with us after four weeks of being away from home now it looks like it will be atleast another three to four weeks before we see him again when his training is over and he gets to be solo.

 

congrats bumper, let us know how ur training goes also. how long was the school? an how many didnt make it? good luck

 

Thanks Big A! I started school on October 10th and it will officially end for me on Monday. I will then become a full time Central employee on Tuesday.

Of the last 10 guys sent to the Escondido DMV only 3 of us passed.

Because of the CR England debacle, DMV test dates are hard to come by and we are sending 6 guys to Salt Lake City tomorrow to finish their training there and get their licenses in Utah.

Bump

 

Best of luck,Bumper! Enjoy and stay safe! This product maybe very useful for you!
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