The orientation begins...

Just as I predicted, a simple conversation with the Denver recruiting and orientation contact (Tammy) fixed my hotel problem. So all is well there.

Breakfast was unexpectedly good here. Instead of the standard continental fare, we actually had a buffet consisting of biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, sausage links, french toast, and the like. Continental-style eats were also available, but I wasn't interested. No juice though, which was a bit of a bummer.

Since my reservation was messed up, I thought it might be a baaaaad idea to trust that a shuttle would show up and decided to drive myself. It also seemed a bit ridiculous that they'd commit a shuttle to pick up just one person. On my way out the door, I ran into a guy who was starting orientation with Navajo (their terminal is just across the street from the Prime terminal) and he claimed to be a former Schneider driver. A bit bitter, though. Before I was able to get away from him, he had told me how he'd lost his house because of Schneider and whatever other sob story he had.

I'm going to digress now. I've noticed a pattern developing among truckers, and the defining characteristic is attitude. If your attitude sucks, you don't make much money in this career. It's that simple. All the truckers I've talked to that are going broke do nothing but friggin' BITCH BITCH BITCH. And their monetary difficulties are never their fault. I'm sorry, but in a career that requires you to be almost completely independent, you are entirely responsible for how you do. If things start going south, it's up to you and you alone to fix it. Nobody else is ever going to babysit you here. Excuses don't pay bills. If your carrier REALLY and TRULY doesn't have the freight base to keep drivers moving, then move on. If you're not making money but everyone else around you is, then you're doing something VERY wrong. I could go on and on here, but I should probably get back to the subject at hand. Just be positive and have an open mind. Trucking is what you make of it. No more, and no less. It's all YOU.

I drove down to the Prime terminal and was confronted by the locked gate, a keypad for entering the code, a speaker for talking into, but no call button or phone to plead my case for entry. After sitting there and trying a few different code combinations in hopes of someone calling out to me, I drove to the parking lot next door and called Prime's general purpose line. Yes, I should have called the Denver terminal directly, but I left that number back at my room like a moron. Luckily, Tammy is the one who answers and she lets me in.

Now, when I say that this place is small, I mean it is SMALL. There is no fuel there. There is a small row of back-in parking that fits maybe 20 trucks. Not much activity. The building is one of those portable modular things with all the usual safety propaganda featuring pictures of crashed trucks hung up on the walls. There is one shower - in the men's room. Functional, and not much else. It seems to be all they need for the traffic they get there, though. Only a couple of trucks came and went during orientation today.

Just when I thought I'd be by myself this whole time, another fresh face shows up. He's experienced, but less so than me. In fact, I noticed that I was classified as a B-2 seat (3-4 months experience, requiring 60 days of training instead of the 30 days that I was promised!) and I asked the WTF question about it. Tammy promptly reran my motor vehicle, DAC, and employment history and came back with good news: instead of being B-1 (30 days training) like I was promised, I now qualified as an A seat and get my truck immediately following orientation. WOOHOO! I tell you, there's a lot to be said for paying attention to your paperwork and asking questions. Like I said in the last paragraph, you've got to stay on top of this stuff because nobody else will do it for you.

This morning was pretty much consumed by the medical clinic. We went down and got new DOT physicals and drug tests. Pretty standard stuff; was poked, prodded, and molested by the doctor. And thanks to the coffee and water that I started drinking early on, fessing up the urine sample was a breeze. In fact, I was getting rather eager to donate.

After that, we went back to the terminal, watched a couple of "welcome to Prime" videos, ate lunch (they sent out for sandwiches), did a ton of paperwork, and had our integrity interviews. Pretty simple, and really informal seeing as how it's just two of us. We concluded at about 1500 and were told to show back up at 0900. Woot! Sleep in!

That's pretty much it. Tammy gave me a voucher for $8.50 worth of food good at the hotel's restaurant, so dinner is taken care of.

On my way to Prime, and not without complications...

Here I sit in the adequately appointed Best Western of Central Denver. Actually, it's a pretty nice room (much nicer than the Best Western Ontario Airport that Schneider likes to use in California!). It's just in a questionable area of town, but that's just the trucking life. We don't get to see the nice parts of cities very often.

I encountered a problem at check-in; they didn't have a reservation for me. Or for Prime, Inc. Hmmm. I'm guessing that since I'm the only new employee this week in Denver that it slipped their minds. A quick conversation in the morning should rectify this and make sure that the authorization for $80.38 on my bank card doesn't actually get charged. This will be a good test of how Prime handles odd situations. I guess I could be pissed, but I just don't see the point until I give them a fair chance to set things right. Things never go exactly as they should anyway.

During my long and meandering search for food around here I accidentally found Prime's facility here in Denver. Wow. It's SMALL. Very, very small. Again, not really worried because it's my understanding that I won't see this place very often.

Now it's time for bed so that I can stay awake for this orientation.

Goodbye, Schneider!

I got home last night after my codriver dropped me off on the way to Denver. I cleaned my stuff out of the truck (holy crap I accumulated a lot of stuff!) and went for a little welcome home dinner with my wife.

It's a couple of days early, but that's the nature of the business and freight is shaky these days. And I'm glad for the extra time at home with Jill because I'll probably be gone for over a month on my first trip out with Prime, Inc.

Today was fairly productive. I touched base with Tammy, the person in charge of the orientation in Denver and had her e-mail me all the information I need for getting started. Where the hotel is, when to be there, what to bring, etc. Pretty standard stuff.

I also went down to the DMV and picked up a hazmat endorsement for my CDL. I just got my letter from the TSA last week declaring that I'm not a terrorist. (FINALLY!) It only took a month and a half. Gotta love the goverment.

And now for a few pictures from my last run with Schneider...


Me, the truck, and the Rocky Mountains (Vail Pass rest area)


Big mistake. Got stuck in a muddy truckstop parking lot in Oklahoma.


Another view


And another


An attempt to photograph the Rockies in Montana


10,000 Silver Dollars Casino/Restaurant/Gift Shop/Truckstop in Haugan, Montana

Killing a day in Wisconsin

So I wake up this morning at the weigh station on northbound I94 at the Wisconsin/Illinois border. Just another 90 minutes of driving to get to the consignee. In the meantime, our replacement load comes in; a nice load to beeeyoootiful Laredo, TX. Ew. But it's certainly nice to have a load that actually moves over 1000 miles for a change, so I won't complain too much.

Anyhow, I get the load delivered ok and have some time to kill because it's a live load at 1500 and it's about 1000. I start bobtailing south toward my empty trailer pickup and what do I see? Held's! Yes, it's a Cheese/Sausage/Jerky seller with a handy truck turnaround on US41, exit 64. I went in there, lost my mind, and spent a good amount of money on cheese and jerky. It's going to be hard to hold onto some of the cheese until I get home, but my wife will kill me if I eat it all. Very highly recommended.

Anyway, after I part with money and put my newly purchased dairy treats in my power cooler, I finish the bobtail run to the Kohl's distribution center in Menomonee Falls, WI. I grab the empty, sweep it out, and check the lights. Whoa, missing a license plate light bulb. Thankfully, I carry extras. Snap 'er in, and I'm good to go. Haul it down to South Milwaukee for a live load, arrive an hour early, and find that the good folks at the shipper have already loaded a trailer for me and just want me to drop and hook. Darn the luck!

So I pretrip it, close the doors, lock and seal it, and slide the tandems to what I think would be a good legal place for 34,000 lbs. 7th hole should do it. I swing by a Pilot 1 exit south, scale it, and of course I was right. I'm always right. But I also always scale, JUST IN CASE. I just have to be caught wrong once, you know.

So after I get my scale ticket, a horrible thought enters my mind. In the hubbub of getting the paperwork, sliding my tandems, and getting out of the next guy's way, I totally forgot to check the tires. So I did. And of course, one's flat. I called Schneider Emergency Maintenance and experienced a miracle: no hold time. At all. As in, someone answered the phone immediately. This must be my lucky day. Even luckier, we had a tire bank just across the interstate. So I limp it over there, perform a harrowing blindside back off a public road into Wingfoot's driveway (there was absolutely no other way to do it, and the Wingfoot guys helpfully blocked traffic and spotted me), and watch this tiny little guy change the tire. I was amazed that a shrimpy guy like him changed the tire so quickly. I mean, this guy couldn't have been more than 5'4" and couldn't have weighed more than 110 pounds soaking wet. But he got me on my way, and I was definitely grateful.

Finally, late in the day, I'm actually ready to put down some miles. Yeah, just in time for Chicago's rush hour. I made it through, but I'm done. Killed my driving output- only 395 miles for the day. Should have a better day tomorrow. We'll see.

I thought that this was supposed to be spring...?

We took last night off because our shipper wasn't open until 0800. So I wake up and cast my eyes over northern Pennsylvania and am stunned to see how brown, cold, and.. well.. wintry it looks. After picking up the load and getting it scaled, I proceed west on I80. And hit snow. On and off all the way to the Seville OC. WTF?? Why won't winter just die this year?!

In the meantime, we got our next load assignment. A high-value expedited load in which we do FedEx Ground's job for them and deliver a trailer full of packages from one terminal to another. Problem is, it's an 0700 pickup. Uh, we're not going to make it until about 0900. I send in the appropriate macro on the Qualcomm saying 1000, just to be safe. 45 minutes later, the Qualcomm beeps. Imagine that! We've been removed from the load. No worries, though. It was short, and we'd done that exact run before. We'd like to finally get a 1000+ mile load, but 900 is the most they've given us thus far, and it's really wearing us down because we can't get into a rhythm with all these stupid short lengths of haul.

Now it's time to go to sleep and let my codriver deal with Chicago. I got us out of Pennsylvania, and that was PLENTY.

On the road again...

I'm back on the road for the final time with Schneider. I sent in my notice via Qualcomm. So far, this trip is shaping up much like the last one - plenty of miles, but all in short trips. It's really getting tiring because when you're picking up and dropping off every day, you can't get settled into a good routine. I can't get a good, long sleep because when I'm done driving, we're only maybe 100 or 200 miles from the consignee and I just can't sleep through the starting, stopping, coupling, and uncoupling.

I'm also getting really tired of bouncing around the midwest and to the east coast. I don't know where all the westbound freight is, but we really need to pick up some of that.

Other than that, there's really not a whole lot to post about.

New developments... and there are many!

Well, we finally got back on the road soon after the last post. And we got to keep the original truck, meaning that we cleaned her out for nothing. Oh, and our dedicated STL never changed us to the system board. His boss ended up having to do that for us.

Anyway, we've been on the road and things improved greatly. It wasn't a great run because it was loaded with short runs between high value expedited runs. But decent money came in and the working conditions are much better.

Well, last week I had a message come up on the Qualcomm asking me to call our STL. I did, and he asked if we wanted a new truck. As in, brand new. 2007. Of course we did. We picked up her up last Wednesday in West Memphis.



The fun part of all this is that I'm giving three weeks' notice of my intent to resign to Schneider on Thursday, when we go back out. You see, I accepted a position with Prime, Inc and start orientation in Denver on Monday, April 30th. I'm going to try my hand at leasing a truck and working for myself.

I went into this after much thought, soul searching, and quizzing of Prime drivers and Schneider independent contractors about how they run their businesses and how to succeed. There is a LOT of bad sentiment on the internet where leasing is concerned, but the vast majority of it is rants by people who can't compose a sentence. Makes me question their business sense. The rest appears to be the opinions of those who have never even tried it. All the Prime drivers that I talked to said that there is a lot of money to be made, but you HAVE to control costs and treat it like a business.

I'll give it a shot. If you disagree with my decision and wish to tell me so, I'll thank you in advance for keeping your comments polite if you absolutely can't keep them to yourselves. I'm doing this and will update the blog accordingly - both good and bad.