Profile For Leslie M.

I agree wait till you get lots of time out here to decide what you really want to do or if you really want to stay in trucking. Second thing from my perspective is never take a lease purchase through a company. If you want to be an OO then save up and buy your own. There is really very little more money to be made driving your own truck over what you can make as s driver. The "money" to be made is in the first couple of years that are mechanically worry free. You take the "extra" then and invest it in something that will allow you to show a positive return while being able to draw against it when you start shelling out $10-15,000 repair bills. I used to have my own and I've driven for OOs. One woman owner said you had to have five trucks to make any money. One will be broke down, one will need a driver and hopefully the other three would pay for the two!

Can't say what it is like now but it depends a lot on what you haul and where you haul it. If you get frozen food out of someone like Con-Agra you will normally get loaded pretty fast. But then you may end up waiting for a specific dock time to unload at the other end or with 5 different stops. From what I understand drivers don't have to "fingerprint" loads like we used to so that may be different now. It also used to be that the dock foreman often got a kickback from the lumpers and if you didn't hire the right crew or wanted to do it yourself you could set for hours and or days! Meat ships mostly in boxes these day and not as much swinging but meat has to "cool" for 3 days before it can be put on the shelves or cut up so the shippers and receivers used to count trailer time as part of that cooling time. So if you got to Miami in two days out of Iowa then you would set a third day while they used your reefer fuel to cool it. Then going back north you'd get corn out of the Okeechobee area. Corn had to be iced and the you couldn't run the reefer unit. And or course sometimes split loads where you had to control the temp with the reefer in front and ice the corn in back. Also trucking companies used to buy loads of bananas off the central American boats and when you were loaded they would try to sell the. "Head north and call me from Atlanta"! LOL Typical dispatcher statement on "roller" loads. Named because they would roll you north till they had your load sold or it rotted! Not unusual with bananas.

I made a lot of money with reefers but after spending time on flatbeds and tankers I wouldn't pull one of the damn things across the street!

Yes, I drove a cabover condo for CRST back in the day and the ride could be brutal if you were on a not so smooth road... your seat is located pretty much directly over top the front axle of the cab.

Do you remember those old "walking beam" suspension systems Yellow Freight and Roadway had on their company trucks? No springs whatsoever on the drive axles!! I can only imagine how bad that ride would have been!!

I'm sure it will be up to the trucking companies. Not enforcing a law is much different than repealing a law. If it is a "law" this ****head can't "repeal" it. If it is just a DOT requirement he could pressure them to get rid of it. Either way "no enforcing " doesn't make it legal.

The only one who will care or remember anything that happened 22 years ago will be your wife or girlfriend! LOL

Shiny side stays up!!

The new lengths are what happened to them. Back when the total length of a rig could only be 55' the cab overs allowed for more trailer.

I drove for nearly 10 years and never drove a "large car" but from what everyone told me they ride better. (The conventional)

After being off the road for 35 years I guess I'm going back. It is something for me to go to "driver school" because I was on the road when these schools were just coming into vogue and had some "pre-conceptions" to over come. I've seen some "training school" drivers I'd swear could only drive a 10 speed RoadRanger because they couldn't count to 13 to shift a 13 speed Ranger.

But from what I've seen on here the "quality" seems far better than drivers were before. If these practice tests are anywhere near accurate I can see why they have to be better. Some of these things can be real butt kickers.

Anyway as the plan sets now I'll do the 4 week Delta Tech training starting the end of January and then 3 weeks of Schneider National training. Pretty cool to end up running solo that soon. Drawback is running the "dirty side" but don't want to run teams again.

Thanks for the practice tests Brett.

Funny you should mention "floating"! Talking to me Schneider Recruiter today I was told that "school" would teach me to double clutch because they didn't allow floating! LOL You do what they tell you to get the check!

Many moons ago when I was running 48 + Canada I used to stop at the Union 76 truck stop directly opposite the old Ontario Speedway in California. Seems like every time I was hung up for a weekend there they had no races. Or I'd get there on Wednesday and see the signs for a big race but they'd load me for the east as fast as I was empty!!

Such is life on the road!!

I would definitely appreciate that! Thanks! Do you know if they send drivers out to the West Coast or is it basically East of the Mississippi? I meet the area SNI recruiter next month when he sits down with us 1 on 1, but when it comes to budgets and $$$ or the lack of, I rather be ready and have more time to figure things out.

I spoke with an SNL recruiter today about starting on the Regional Vans. Their "region" is basically the eastern half of the US South of I-80. Not much into NYC or Boston. (Break my hillbilly heart ;-)) Anything west of the states bordering the Mississippi require teams.

It may be different with tanks but I doubt it. Running to the west coast is a 4 or 5 day run at best for a single.