Profile For Preston W.

Driving a reefer is hands off. You do have a couple of other considerations to make...reefer fuel..in addition to your truck fuel...but naturally the company you work for likely has this figure tracked and estimated for you. In addition to the worry of it breaking down and going bad you do have minor things you have to do with the load throughout, such as defrosting the trailer and matching the temperature on your manifest to the temperature on the reefer. I've personally never had a reefer go bad on me so that's not a big deal. I'm not 100% sure how often dry vans do trailer washouts. But for reefer trucks you'll have to get your trailer washed out after every unload before getting it loaded again, or dropping it.

So to answer your question the way you wanted it.

Reefer Trailers

Pro's Generally no-touch freight I personally had a lot of long loads 1800+ going from the midwest to the east coast. Which generally translates to less dead time waiting for unloading.

Cons Slightly more work than a dry van due to trailer washouts, mechanical failure and fuel needs. (if you don't unload the dry van that is) Inconsiderate drivers often leave smelly trailers for you to washout. Picking up freight at smelly meat houses. The smell is one thing...that lone fly that gets in, however, that's another. (then again its about to be winter soon not much of an issue then).

I never worked for a dry van/flat bed/tanker so I can't tell how it compares to the others. But those are some of the things I noticed about reefers when I drove them.

On my 2nd day of road training did way better on 2nd day than 1st way less grinding my problem is when I go to shift I drift into the white line making instructor yell . Other time was hitting the curve on a right turn I think him asking if I saw the car parked at the stop light ( I did he didn't see it stopping ) made me cut in too quick and I road up on side walk. Tommorow I hope is better going on a 350 mile haul and turn around 4 of us take turns

Trucking is full of a lot of people who deal with a lot of stressful situations. Traffic and other drivers are very stressful. Many times companies need a lot of trainers to take care of all their trainees. Sometimes these people aren't really quality trainers. They're often intolerant, rude, impatient, and incapable of positive communication. In order to get through training its important you ignore the insensitivity that goes along with learning (I know I was nervous expecting that truck to roll over and kill me and everyone else around me at first...I was terrified) the ride-along drivers that are great are few and far between. Try to filter out the noise and listen to any granules of how to make adjustments to get better.

Curb jumping is pretty common. However there are sometimes obstructions on the other side of that curb. You have to take it slowly at first. That way any knee jerk reactions are minimized and major accidents aren't occurring. Right hand turns can get very tricky.

Hire a lawyer.

http://lawyers.findlaw.com/lawyer/practicestate/traffic-violations/new-mexico