Been Awhile

Yeah, I know, you've all probably been wondering what's going on -- haven't been around for over a month. Now that I'm on my own, I just don't have time to keep this up. It's also not my style to write about my life as it happens -- hence why Twitter never caught on for me, and why my FB status updates are few and far between. Anyway, I'll think about whether I'm gonna keep this going or not. We're in a transitional period in our lives currently (not calling it a quarter-life crisis just yet, it's still a quarter-life reevaluation at this point...), and I know we'll be making some changes very soon, and I hope to be reporting that the Cowboy's Back In Town (thank you, Trace Adkins for the line).

Feeling Better About Things

Yet again, another week has passed since I've had any time to write. Currently we're sitting in Missouri at a Flying J, waiting for the morons in Omaha to send us a load. It's been like this all week, actually. We get a load delivered and then sit for hours, or even overnight, before they decide to give us another one. We delivered yesterday at 10pm, and here it is, 230pm and were still sitting. The farthest we've moved is across the parking lot here to get a better space.

On a brighter note, as I'm here watching drivers try to park and generally fail miserably, since Greg is going home for 6 days around Thanksgiving, I'm going to go home with him, and then Thanksgiving morning, he'll drive me to the airport near his home and I'll be getting on an airplane to Boston, so I can spend my Thanksgiving with MY family, not his. Not that they're bad or unenjoyable people, I just prefer my own people. I also haven't seen New England since October 12. 6 1/2 weeks is WAY too long to be gone.

If all goes well, I should have somewhere around 20-30 hours of training left to log when I get back in the truck after the holiday. With any luck, I can be in a terminal the following weekend, and be in line for a truck on the morning of Dec 6. I've been told that Werner's account with Dollar General in the New England area is severely hurting for drivers right now, so there's a good chance I could get on that dedicated account. I'd be home every weekend and get exercise unloading the rolling carts from the trailer into the stores, too. Now if I can just finish up my hours and get a truck, I'll be all set.

So as I've seen more of this land we call America, I've come to start taking notes on some of the more interesting or thought-provoking things you find. One of the most interesting is the fact that our government finds in necessary to tell anyone passing through Oklahoma on a specific section of highway that if one was to exit here, they could find the ammunition factory where they make all the bullets our country is using to declare it's supremacy. I'm serious, there's a HUGE sign just before the exit - US MILITARY AMMUNITION MANUFACTURING FACILTY

Texas is an interesting place. The state is so large that they feel no road should be posted any less than 65mph. A 2-lane such a Rt 5 thought Vermont, or Rt 4 though New Hampshire would be posted at 65. It takes quite a bit to get used to going that fast.

We were in SE Kansas the other day. We passed a church with a large sign board out front. Apparently someone there has a good sense of humor, as the message read -
HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS.
KEEP TEXTING IF YOU WANT TO MEET HIM

And last night as we were coming through Missouri. The MODOT has a clever employee, as well. Someone put up a message reading
PICKUPS ROCK
THEY ALSO ROLL
BUCKLE UP

Wondering What's Really Going On

Wow....I haven't seen an internet connection in 12 days. WTF. Anyway, Long story short, I've been all over the place in 12 days. Been to Texas, Colorado, California, Arizona, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, BACK to Texas.

This past weekend was a joke, though. We picked up a load coming from Illinois, bound for Laredo, TX, and point south into Mexico. Now we don't run Mexico, but we get it to within 9 miles of the border. We didn't make it. Our load was plenty on time to get there, but Werner has a fleet of daycab trucks that simply run back and forth between 2 pre-designated cities Monday thru Friday. We got a message on Friday evening that a daycab from Laredo wasn't going to be meeting a daycab from Dallas, and that we needed to meet the little whiny SOB in Buda, TX, and swap trailers so he could get home to his loving family......I'll spare my exact thoughts on the daycabbers, as most of them are rather full of expletives, and I'm trying to keep this a PG show.


SUPER long story short - we went to Dallas, got stuck there for 3 days, Greg was almost fired when he went to get his Medical card renewed because the "doctor" in Dallas is a quack, we had 2 loads assigned and then taken away, Werner fired 2 other drivers that same day for iffy medical reasoning, and we finally escaped the prison (seriously, the terminal is surrounded by a chain link fence with razor wire loops on top), and got a load to Houston. That we delivered, and headed to a Wal-Mart DC for another load.

So here I sit, in a Houston-area truck stop, awaiting the repair shop to get to us to fix an air leak on the trailer we picked up. I was really hoping to have my 275 hours completed prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, when Greg returns home yet again. Somehow I'm fairly sure that I'm going to be screwed. Again. Thanks Werner. Sometimes I wonder if you really WANT me to work for you. Or if you'd rather see me walk.

Thoughts.....and Beer

Well I made it through Greg's home time long weekend. We were in Jonesboro until Tuesday afternoon, the 2nd. We got rolling sometime around 3pm, headed for western La to a Proctor and Gamble (P&G) plant. Our load was around 43,000lbs of Tide products, bound eventually for Arizona, however we were directed to drop the load in Dallas, Tx. From there we took a trailer north into Oklahoma City, and proceeded to come back south from OKC to Denton, TX with a load of shock absorbers for the Peterbilt manufacturing facility located in said city. I could have spent the whole night there, admiring all the shiny, new trucks rolling off the assembly line, unfortunately, we had to get a load of Dispatcher Brains from Denton out to Golden, Colorado. Roughly 800 miles with an empty trailer. Werner finally decided to let us know that I'm off curfew now, and I can drive any time of day or night. With this new knowledge fresh in my mind, I drove straight through from about 7pm to 4am, watching the Texas countryside pass by in the amazingly clear night. We switched drivers in Laredo, Tx, and ended up at the Coors Brewery sometime around 2pm. I can vouch for the fact that when Coors says "Brewed IN the Rockies" -- they mean it. So now we're about to get pointed towards Iowa with our 45,000lb load of bottled beer.

Two observations from being in Texas -- ALL the bridges are posted for height, not just the ones that are lower than 15' like they are in New England. I've seen a few bridges that are posted at over 20' clearance. Good to know, my 13'6" high trailer might be close to those......

Also, purple neon in the south means one of two businesses are there. It's either going to be a Mexican restaurant, or an adult store......

Deep In the Heart of Texas -- and some of Louisiana

This is a large post, but then again, Texas is a large state. And it's true, everything is bigger in Texas.

What a week. From Jackson, Missouri, we ended up back in Delaware to pick up a load bound for Laredo, Texas. A truckload of foam insulation headed for Mexico where they build Freightliner trucks. We only take freight to a forwarder in Laredo, and Werner has an affiliate transfer trailers across the border and back -- luckily. The ride from Newark, De, to Laredo is a long one. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800 miles. Along the way, I saw Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and finally, Texas. We hit the Texas border as the sun was setting, and continued trucking into the night, getting to the far side of Houston sometime around midnight. Driving in Houston is a trip. You need 3 things to drive there -- titanium balls, a photographic memory of where you're going, and a sick sense of pleasure. The lanes are narrow, there's construction everywhere, the roads go in 17 directions and merge and peel off just as fast as you can focus on them at 60mph, and there is minimal signage. I was fortunate enough to be able to pick a middle lane and just run straight through without stopping. It was still fun, however.

Werner has a curfew on all student drivers for their first 2 weeks on the road where they can't drive from midnight to 6am. This requires us to plan our stops very carefully if we want any chance of having a place to park 75 feet of steel for the night. It was somewhere around 85 degrees and 99% humidity in Houston. Werner doesn't allow their trucks to idle more than 5 minutes, so we were without air conditioning. We parked just long enough so Greg could finish his 10 hour break, then continue the last 5 hours to Laredo. We got to Laredo around 8am, and from there headed out into the desert to find the industrial park that serves as a link between the US and Mexico. It was a mess. Road signs are non-existent, people drive like idiots, and half the people running the drop yards don't speak English. We got our load of foam dropped after about an hour of waiting, and headed back to the truckstop on the other side of town. From there we got orders to hit the Werner terminal in Laredo for an empty trailer and head back to the industrial park for a load of truck parts from Mexico. Once we found the warehouse, I had the chance to do a 90* blindside back (pushing the trailer around to the right where all you see in the right mirror is the side of the trailer) between 2 trailers with about 30 feet of space on the front side. 4 attempts later it was perfect :-)

Once we were loaded (around 3pm), we beat feet for Dallas. Along the way we were greeted with rush hour traffic in San Antonio. It took over an hour of 10-20mph to get back to open road. Then we hit Austin rush hour. This went quicker, but still added time to the drive. Once we got out of Austin, the sun was once again below the horizon, and we ran headlong into a construction zone. Somewhere in there we got a message on the QualComm to call a driver on his way to Dallas so we could drop our load at the terminal and pick up his load headed to Lufkin, TX. Along the way, we stopped at Willie's Place just north of Waco. This is the truckstop in Carl's Corner that Willie Nelson bought a few years ago and started making Bio Willie biodiesel at. A few months ago they rebuilt the place, more than tripling the size of the building, and adding a bunch more fuel islands. The store now boasts a restaurant and a full blown bar. We just stopped to stretch our legs and check the place out. It was awesome. I will totally go back again if I ever get the chance.

We arrived at the Dallas terminal sometime around 11:30, and were promptly directed straight into the Safety Lane there. This is where arrogant little shits who claim to be mechanics "inspect" your truck, especially if there's a factory recall on something. Unfortunately International has a recall on the jumpstart terminal post on these ProStars, and this truck supposedly needed it fixed. It had been fixed before the truck was handed to Greg, yet somehow the computer system said otherwise. The "mechanic" got into a huge tizzy over the fact that the tire pressure in all 10 tires on the tractor were 10psi low. He got all huffy asking if we were doing our pretrip inspections like we were supposed to. Um, yeah. We do. Our lives kinda depend on it. We make sure the rig is safe. Little schmuck. Of course, he then proceeded to OVER-inflate the tires by about 10psi as we found out the next day when we checked them. Its something you notice right away, the truck handles totally differently; and in fact being over-inflated made the truck harder to control.

After we were released from the "Safely" Lane, we left the terminal and parked at the Pilot next door to wait for the other driver. He finally showed up sometime around 130am, and we snatched his trailer and parked for the rest of the night. Friday morning was shower time, and since we only had a 3.5 hour ride to Lufkin with a 6pm appointment, we took our sweet time. Hot shower felt awesome, hot coffee tasted great, and a hotcake breakfast at McDonald's was scrumptious. We got rolling sometime around 11, and proceeded to run some secondary roads, just to kill more time and get me some more hours towards my 275 goal.

Secondary roads in Texas are quite strange. Most of them are posted for 65mph, are 2 lanes in each direction, and aren't divided or limited access. So yeah, you're hurdling down the road and at any point someone could come bumbling out of their driveway or a side road and you'll be on top of them in negative time. Getting used to traveling that fast is not easy. It's worse when the road goes down to a single lane each way, still 65mph. We made it unscathed, and showed up at the grocery warehouse about 3 hours early, at about 3pm. They were nice people and informed us that despite our 6pm appointment, if we waited until 415, the warehouse would be open for receiving then. We decided hunger was getting the better of us and doubled back about 3 miles to a roadside BBQ place we'd seen. There is simply nothing like good Southern BBQ. We had chopped beef bbq sandwiches with pickles and onions, made by this little old Mexican guy. Check FB for a pic of the sandwich, and of their roadside smoking gun. Actually, check FB for all my pics from the road.

We headed back up to the warehouse, were ushered right in, got to "cheat" backing into the dock (I was able to turn so I was straight in line with the dock, didn't have to adjust hardly any -- as opposed to doing a 45* or 90* back from perpendicular to the dock. We checked in and got settled back in the cab to watch a SWIFT (Sure Wish I Finished Training, See Werner I'm First Today, ask me for the less PC acronyms) trainer try to get his student to back in 2 doors down from us. After the student tried 4 times, the trainer got behind the wheel.....and failed, too. It was a sight to behold. The best part was 10 minutes after the trainer *thought* he was properly docked, one of the dock workers came out and told him he needed to move over 4 inches so the dock plate could be put into the trailer :-D Trying to subdue the giggles was almost impossible. They unloaded us quickly, and then told us the load was 64 cases short compared to the Bill of Lading. 896 cases of paper towels supposedly shipped, 832 cases counted. Great. Luckily we'd only had the trailer for 18 hours, and we confirmed the seal was intact when we swapped the load in Dallas, so our rears were covered as far as liability. Not a big deal; recount the load ourselves to verify, call the Claims Dept. in Omaha, say sorry to the customer, hit the road.

3.5 hours and Greg's gonna be home for the first time in 40-something days. Talk about excited. I mean really excited. Like 8-year-old at 5am on Christmas morning excited. It's a good thing Werner trucks are limited to 65mph, and that I was driving :-) Driving through Shreveport, La on a Friday night is quite the sight. There are lights everywhere. I suppose you could consider it a small version of Las Vegas, with casinos everywhere. We got into Jonesboro, La, sometime around 10pm after making a couple stops here and there to get fuel and check out another new truck stop that just opened in Carthage, Tx. Greg decided that it would be better if we stayed in the truck Friday night instead of going to his home and waking up his 3 grandsons that late. Apparently they have just as much energy as grandpa.....

So here I am, Saturday morning, October 30, 2010. I'm in the motel he puts his students up in when he has home-time. I had the option of hanging out with him and his family while he works on his house today, but I felt the break from society was needed instead :-) Of course, now that I'm used to sleeping in a single bed on a rock-hard mattress while bouncing down the road, a king bed that doesn't move may have me wide awake all night. Oh well, I should be just getting used to it by Monday night, just in time to get back in the truck and head for points unknown yet again. I'm just happy to get a mini vacation from everything, even if I'm in some small town in north-central Louisiana and have no idea where anything is. Greg is kind enough to leave a vehicle for me should I decide to venture out into the vast wilderness. If I can find a shopping center or mall somewhere, I may just go for it....

Until next time....keep the chrome side up.

The Devil Trailer

I can't believe 5 days are gone already, and it's Sunday afternoon. I've been quite a distance since I last had wifi, I'm currently in Missouri. From Maryland we headed north into New Jersey to pick up a load bound for Rochester, NY. It was a short run, but at this point, and drive time counts towards my hours. In Rochester we unloaded and then headed into an old Kodak plant that's been closed for a number of years and is just being reopened and converted to other storage/manufacturing facilities as people need. We picked up a load of Newman's Own pasta sauce headed for New Jersey. About an hour down the road we found a CAT Scale because we knew the load was heavy. And heavy it was. The gross weight of the truck was about 400lbs shy of being overweight. The maximum weight of a truck and trailer is 80,000lbs, and we had somewhere around 43,000lbs of sauce in glass jars behind us. In The Devil Trailer. (I'll save all the math and specifics about weights and distribution of said weight -- it's boring and difficult to explain in type).

The Devil Trailer. We started calling it that because of it's number -- 66672. Its just one of those things -- you know it's going to cause trouble at some point, so you hope you can leave it off somewhere and get another trailer. We weren't so lucky. Our goal for this trip was to make it to a truck stop about an hour from our destination and shut down for the night, delivering in the morning. That's when 66672 came up and bit us in the ass. About 2 miles from the truck stop, one of the trailer tires let go, leaving an entire recap in the road. It didn't hurt us any, but the guy behind us may very well have needed new underwear once his heart slowed down a bit (word to the wise -- don't tailgate a truck, tires are BIG, and you're small). So we hobbled up the road, and sent a message to Werner Breakdown that we lost a tire and needed service. We got into the service bay at the truck stop quickly; but that's when things went downhill in a hurry. Werner was quick about getting the info to the repair facility, but the mechanics were in no hurry to get any work done. We sat. And sat. And sat. We went off and both got showers. And sat. You get the idea. Finally after 3 hours we find out that they're trying to get Werner to authorize the replacement of a trailer mudflap because the tire leaving the trailer ripped it a little. Werner said no, and since it was already on there, the shop had to eat the loss I guess. The whole time we were watching the shitshow at the fuel islands of trucks trying to go in 14 directions, all crossing each other's paths, and saw 2 or 3 close calls because the drivers were in the "ME FIRST DAMNIT" mindset about getting through. At any rate, we got a good night's sleep and delivered the next morning with no further delays or problems. From where we unloaded, we took The Devil Trailer about 30 minutes north to Newark where we pulled into a Wal Mart contractor's distribution yard. We left the trailer for some other poor fool to have, picking up a mixed load going to a Distribution Center (DC) in Tennessee. It was a nice light load we had, about 20,000lbs.

Being in Tennessee was a new experience for me. I was quite surprised to find that it reminds me of New England - the hills are similar, as are some of the trees. After we dropped the Wal Mart trailer, we went around the back of the building and picked up a trailer bound for Missouri with 540 2nd-hand pallets on it. We were rolling around 11am, and somehow I managed to drive for 5 hours without a break. Greg had gone to lay down for a bit, and when he came back up front, he was back on his quest to find a Wal Mart somewhere. As we got close to the end of Tennessee where it runs into Kentucky, we found a good sized town with a lot of shopping, and Wal Mart!! We stocked up on food, got lunch/dinner, and headed back out.

That 5 hours I'd driven felt more like 2.5 to me. It wasn't until I did the math that I realized it. Along the way we had passed though Knoxville and Nashville. Both were incredibly underwhelming from the view I had. The only interesting part was watching the cars. As it turned out, yesterday the Titans were playing the Colts in Nashville. I've heard the saying "Around here, sports is a religion" a million times. I never really believed it, until I saw Titans fans on the road. People will do ANYTHING to show their support. Every other car had those little flags closed into the rolled up windows, many had magnets or stickers; but the best was the Hummer H3 that was white with orange fender flares, a HUGE orange 'T' on the hood, and a 'T' on each door. Now that's dedication. Or stupidity. There's a fine line, I'd say.

As we headed across the TN/KY line, we went from New England-style hills/mountains to flat. Just plain old flat. Kentucky is a polar opposite of Tennessee. And it's literally at the state line where the change is. The mountains are gone, traded for some rolling fields where you can see 2 days in any direction. We got off the interstate in Paducah, KY, (I love that name, don't ask me why, I just do). From there we headed "off through the woods" as Greg puts it, to shave about 60 miles off the trip. We ran some small roads that were similar to running Rt 4 through New Hampshire. Very narrow, twisty and rough. Of course, I love a challenge, so I hunkered down and took the bull by the horns. About 3/4 of the way across from Paducah to the Missouri state line, you cross the Ohio River, followed closely by the Mississippi River, where the meet. The bridges crossing said rivers are something to behold. They only give you about 6 inches of play-space between the center line and the concrete and steel railing. Greg was kind enough to inform me that while I was all smiles making these crossings, he's had grown men in tears crossing these bridges -- in daylight. It was dark when I did it. Even the full moon wasn't offering much extra light. (Yep, tooting my own horn, yet again :-p ) I'm hoping we can go back through that route sometime, in daylight though. The rivers looked beautiful.

So here we sit now, about 20 miles north of where we crossed into Missouri, in Cape Girardeau, MS, awaiting 9am Monday so we can unload. Currently we have a load assigned to us to pick up tomorrow that's going back to PA. We'll be hauling a load of diapers to Scranton.

275 hours, Here I Come!

What a whirlwind. The last 2 days have been such a culture shock and rush of adrenaline, I'm still reeling. I woke up Monday morning and went to the hotel lobby for the Werner morning meeting. There were about a dozen drivers sitting around, wiping the last of their crappy night's sleep from they're eyes. After we all sat around for 30 mins, the lobby clerk gets a call from the terminal with instructions for us to sign in and not wait around any longer. Glad they waited 30 minutes to figure out someone wasn't gonna make it to the hotel......Oh well. After that, I went back upstairs and called my Student Driver Manager (SDM) to find out if there was some sort of timeline for getting a trainer. I was rather displeased to find out that they still had me en route from Allentown, PA, and also that I was still checked in at the hotel there....um, no. I was in Springfield, OH, all damn weekend, thank you very much. After that, I figured I'd be waiting at least another few days since I was SURE I was now at the bottom of the list for getting a trainer. No so. I got a call about 2 hours later from Greg Johnson, a trainer from Louisiana.

Greg showed up at the hotel around 3pm, and we got headed out to Columbus, OH, to get a trailer. He explained he was so late because the dispatchers kept assigning and re-assigning loads "every damn 10 minutes." We hooked to a trailer bound for Maryland, figured out that the registration paperwork for the trailer was expired, and called to have a new one faxed to a truck stop about an hour away. That's when I got behind the wheel.

Now you've gotta understand something - trucks are big. They're big when you're passing them on the road, and they're also big when you're sitting behind the wheel with a 53' trailer containing 37,000lbs of cargo hanging out behind you.

Starting out in a loaded rig you've never driven, in a place you've never been, is not something for everyone. Yes, I'm tooting my own horn here. Shamelessly. Driving a truck isn't for everyone, either, as I've seen by some of the driving here in the T/A Travel Center truck lot tonight (but I'm getting ahead of myself here.)

So I started driving. In Monday rush-hour traffic in Columbus, OH, headed east for Maryland. I was surprised at how nicely this truck drives, and I may hope to get one issued to me when I'm done training. We managed to get as far as somewhere in western Maryland over the next 6 hours. I was definitely put through a trial-by-fire, driving first into rain, then the dark, then more rain, fog, and dark. Greg also took us down a short-cut that takes about 50 miles off the route he had planned. 2-lane roads through Pennsylvania and into Maryland are about as fun as roads back in the northeast. Twisty, hilly, and narrow. We finally made it to a truck stop in Maryland around midnight, and got parked.

My first night in a truck was interesting. I'm extremely thankful to be training in this particular model because it's incredibly roomy for it's size. I have WAY more space in the top bunk than I expected to have. International did a good job designing the sleeper on this truck. Despite being parked on a slope so I was constantly rolling towards the cliff that leads to a 5 foot drop to the floor below, I slept decently well.

This morning we got rolling around 9am, headed for Baltimore. We got to the T/A here around 2pm, and went inside to get cleaned up. My first shower experience on the road was quite pleasant, actually. The truck stop here has 30-some odd individual grooming rooms. They're fully equipped with a sink, toilet, chair, and an open-concept shower stall. And they have a full staff that cleans every room after each use, so each driver gets a fresh room.

The T/A here in Baltimore is quite the place. The parking lot is quite huge. We were lucky and got here early, so getting a good parking space was easy. Now that we've both showered, we're sitting here in the cab, enjoying the 65 degree sunshine with the windows down, shooting the shit and watching the show of drivers. We currently have an empty space to our left, and we're hoping and praying that someone with a reefer trailer (refrigerated trailer) doesn't park there. Listening to a diesel engine running all night to keep a trailer cold is no fun. I'm not sure how reefer drivers can do it, the noise is incredible.

I think I'll wrap up for now. I hope to be able to take some pictures and upload sometime soon.

Got Assigned!!!

As it turns out, Werner did not even know I was in Ohio. They thought I was in PA all weekend. I found out at 0700 today, and they changed my status. At around 930, I got a call on the room phone from a trainer. He sounds like a good ole' Southern Gentleman; kept calling me "young man" and such; saying as long as I put forth the effort and do my share of the work, I won't hear hardly a peep from him.

If all goes as planned, I should be loading my gear into the cab of a truck somewhere around dinner time. In the mean time, I've got laundry to do, a trip to the terminal to get travel receipts turned in, and a lot of gear to pack back into 2 small bags. (10 days worth of clothing, winter gear, rain gear, a TON of paperwork from orientation, books, computer, etc., etc., etc.)

Hopefully this is the start to an awesome journey.

Still Waiting

Long story short since I'm typing on my blackberry; I was offered the opportunity to, with 5 other students, drive rental cars from Allentown, Pa, to Springfield, Oh, where supposedly it's easier to get trainers. Well we drove the 500 miles on Friday afternoon, arrived @ 10pm, and promptly found out from our Cracker Barrel waitress that the hotel Werner puts drivers up in is the HOME for all the local hookers and their pimps....and she was most certainly not exaggerating.

It is now Sunday evening, and ONE of the 6 of us is gone. He was picked up Saturday afternoon, less than 24 hours after we got here. I've spent the day watching The Matrix Trilogy mindfuck, and walking around this dirty, grey, blah city. We're all hoping tomorrow is gonna be the day we get lucky enough to hit the road. Somehow I doubt its gonna happen, looking at how hard it is to get your Driver Manager on the phone to get answers....

I know this is just part of what happens, but somehow what I was told and/or led to believe leading up to this point doesn't quite match up with reality.

Well this was more than I had expected to thumb out, and now my hands are cramping....I did find Krispy Kremes at the Kroger up the street though -- trying for the positive note there.

Well, I Got Hired

Yep, that's right. I'm an official Werner Enterprises employee. Even got my ID badge (and the photo isn't horrible, considering the ungodly hour at which it was taken). So now that I'm officially a graduate of the orientation, I get to wait around here until I'm assigned a trainer. This process could take a day, 2 days, 3 days, who knows.....

So after 2 nights of having my own room, tonight I get a roommate. He's a somewhat older fellow who is just getting back from his 6 weeks of driving with a trainer. While I'm not thrilled to be sharing a room with someone, at least this is a larger space than I'll be residing in for the next 6 weeks. Still, I'm excited to be getting the hell outta here so I can go see the world and get closer to my ultimate goal.





Nothing exciting happened today, so here's a joke:

A friend just started his own business, making landmines that look like prayer mats.

It's doing well.

He says Prophets are going through the roof.




(That ain't right...I'll save you a seat in Hell, cuz I know you laughed as much as I did :-) )

Oh My Aching Head

Day 1 at the Werner terminal here in Allentown, or ALLPA as they call it, was interesting. I haven't had to be coherent to that level at such an early hour in months. It was quite a shock, to say the least.

They started out by assigning each of the 12 new recruits ID numbers and taking our pictures for our ID cards. After that they launched right into PowerPoint slides and movies that covered EVERYTHING. I honestly don't remember anything they said. We then moved on to the computers. Oh, the computers. These machines may not have been terribly old, but they were archaic - utilizing a touch-screen monitor that clicked every damn time you touched it. All I hear now are little clicks. We were assigned a rather daunting list of CBT (Computer Based Training) exercises that pretty much covered what we'd had pounded into our heads for the first 4 hours of the day. I really shouldn't complain too much, as I was able to complete the first list of assignments, and got most of the way through the second list. Due to this, I was allowed to leave the terminal at 17:00, instead of having to work until 19:00 or 21:00 when the shuttle van was going to make it's last 2 runs across town from the hotel.

Let me take a tangent here. We (anyone working for Werner and not residing in the general Allentown area) are in a hotel that is a 10-15 minute drive from the terminal. There is a hotel that is 3 minutes drive, and probably a 10 minute walk, from the terminal. It also has a restaurant across the street and a full-blown truck stop just up the street. We have no restaurant, a measly gas station 5 minute's walk away, and a massive car dealer within walking distance. As it is, if we want to go to the shopping center that offers multiple restaurants, we have to rely on the noon or 7pm shuttle from the hotel, and then we only get an hour to eat and whatnot. I know this place is a cheap hotel, and Werner is getting a HELL of a deal, but I also think some things could have been thought through a little more. At any rate, if I'm lucky, I'll only be spending Wednesday and Thursday nights here, and I'll get assigned to a training truck right away. Hahahaha. I crack myself up. What am I thinking? I'll be here though the weekend with my luck.

Didn't see anything unusual today, as I was in a mostly windowless room from 07:00 to 17:00. Of course, I do really wonder how they expect people to sit in "class" for 10-12 hours and retain even half of what is crammed down their throats.....

It begins...

So...this blog is going to be a way for me to keep you updated on my new adventure in life. As anyone who's close to me knows, I have had this lifelong dream of being a professional truck driver. Yeah, strange, I know; but trucks, transportation and anything associated with said industry have always been my fascination. Until recently, I've been trying and trying again to get a job driving tractor trailer for anyone I could think of. I have not been hired anywhere. The problem seems to be that insurance companies mandate that drivers MUST have 2 years TT driving experience. Now how does one acquire such a steeply demanding level of "competency"?? You sign on to drive you life away for a large national company that operates as essentially their own insurance agent.

As you've probably guessed by now, my next adventure in life is with one such company. I decided after quite a bit of research to sign on with Werner Enterprises. As I sit here now in a Quality Inn hotel in Allentown, PA awaiting my first day of orientation tomorrow, I'm seriously hoping I've made a good choice; but, frankly I won't know until I'm done with the "classroom" BS, done with my 275 hours of driving time with a trainer, and finally out on my own, in my own truck, doing my own thing to get from city to city, keeping you clothed, fed, and comfortable in the house you occupy.

I hope to be updating this on a regular basis with my thoughts from the day, opinions on humanity in general, and, if I see enough odd shit, a list of what I've seen over the course of the day.