Profile For Arejay (RJ)

Any updates?

The front of that thing in the second picture, first thing I thought of was the old Landspeeder from Star Wars. lol

There are some great comments here, I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents about the comments on Macks. We have 4 new Macks that have replaced a few of the older Freightliners on our fleet. Compared to the FL's, the Macks have horrible turning radius and are much harder to drive and back than the FLs. Also, the side mirrors have these aerodynamic plastic housings that are HUGE and create a blind spots, I have to lean way forward when at intersections so I can make be sure cross traffic lanes are clear and safe to proceed. The Macks are some nice looking trucks, but not as much fun to drive.

I'll chime in with a tidbit of info as well. While I can't say whether Knight is shrinking or growing their fleet, I can say with certainty that they are currently hiring. I've taken a break from Knight while running uber-locally at U.O. for a bit. I've been considering going back to OTR for some time, and as such have been talking with my recruiter at Knight the past few weeks. I will be attending DQP next week at the Lakeland terminal, so should be able to follow up later next week to report how many folks are in attendance for the class.

It was fun to check it out here in Central Florida, it got to about 60+ percent coverage. I was surprised by the number of small airplanes flying around in circles over the area, seems like there had to be at least 20 of them at one point.

I just realized that the unusual amount of airplanes flying over yesterday had nothing to do with the eclipse.

Those were folks flying into Lakeland a day early for the Sun 'n Fun Aerospace Expo that started this morning. As I type this now, I can hear a constant stream of planes flying over my neighborhood inbound to the expo. (A brief look at some crazy stat numbers, more than 3,500 airplanes fly in for and more than 200,000 people attend this week long event each year.)

There is an outfit that is hiring for similar positions. Debating the application.

I would say to go ahead and submit the application! Of course you know there's no law saying you have to accept the position if offered and you decide you don't want it.

It was fun to check it out here in Central Florida, it got to about 60+ percent coverage. I was surprised by the number of small airplanes flying around in circles over the area, seems like there had to be at least 20 of them at one point.

Davy, I always enjoy when you tell a story and put your creative flair into it! :) I'm glad to hear that you survived this adventure and came out (mostly) unscathed.

Who said anything about hurting the company? I think we can agree that the OP's off-duty time isn't a driving force here because if it were it would have been mentioned in the Original Post. What I'm saying is if your company tells you to do something you'd better be on-duty when you do it for liability reasons.

I'm curious... what liability reasons?

If my company asks me to get a physical while on home time, I'll drive directly to the clinic to get the physical completed, then on with any other personal business I need to get done.

There's *No Way* I'm driving to the terminal to climb in a truck, sign in to the ELD to put myself 'on duty', then drive to the clinic to do the physical, then have to backtrack to the terminal again just to get in a truck to put myself back to 'off duty'....

All those extra steps sounds like extra liability to me?

Sorry for the unexpected job loss, it never comes at a good time. It would reasonable to assume that another company will get this contract that you speak of. I can't imagine that the loads your company is pulling will suddenly cease to exist and any company that is awarded the contract may need to add drivers and equipment to cover the loads. Perhaps try finding out who is getting the work and apply with them? Who knows, maybe you'll be able to keep the same schedule you love or perhaps get something even better?