Profile For Mr Mike

Hi Tony who are you driving for?

Good evening everyone. I’ve enjoyed this site for several months and wanted to get thru my training before my first post. I began my company sponsored driving school in mid December of last year. Reason for this, is I’m from Florida and have never seen snow. I wanted to run the full winter season with my trainer for all the input and experience I could receive.

Going thru the school portion was nearly tolerable. But I soaked in as much info as I could handle.

I got on my Trainer’s truck the day after Christmas. We spent a couple hours on the training pad and then headed to Kansas City for our first run.

Over the next ten days, I absorbed as much as I could, logs, freight lanes, good and bad truck stops, and dealing with being treated like a sub human at most shippers and receivers.

I was lucky enough to travel all the major mountain passes both ways during my training. I was shown how to run all passes without a Jake, in case it ever failed. Most of them were in inclement weather and we even got stuck on I80 twice while they shut it down. Wyoming and Pennsylvania.

As far as driving went, my key words to myself were “SLOW DOWN”! When it’s raining, slow down. When it’s windy, slow down. Traffic, slow down. Snow, ice, sleet, SLOW DOWN. I’m proud to say, we never received a safety notice or a late appointment in my five months of training. Not only is it important to physically slow down, mentally it is just as important. After an eight hour shift at 65mph, it’s important to slow your mind down when coming to your stop. I even taught myself to go thru the fuel island even if I didn’t get fuel at the truck stop. This will give you time to catch a breath, scan for a good spot, and mentally prepare your next move while you’re waiting for the rig in front of you to fuel.

I’m sure this has been said many times, but if I can help one new driver from making one mistake, it’s worth it.

Thanks for the platform trucking truth provides. I will be adding to my post as the days go by, but for know, my thumbs and body are tired. Good nite to all. 👍

from military experience, you don't skip chain of command to be "proactive". You let your supervisor do his job.

CJ, I was 21 years Air Force and we were taught to follow our chain of command, but we were also told that if you weren't getting any results then go next person up until you were able to your issue resolve. I feel that these guys on this thread are right, if you want to make things happen in the civilian world you have to learn who to ask. I have found after I retired I have had to make things happen for me and not leave my fate up to someone else. I'm pretty sure it is the same in the trucking industry as well. I will be finding out in about 1.5 years, but whos counting.

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Thanks Kevin,

I have maintained my stateside drivers license. I have been reading the forum and it does seem like there are a lot of people my age starting out in trucking. I am very incouraged all the time by what the members are saying on here. Up to this point l had always heard the negative parts of trucking, mostly on social media. It is so refreshing to hear what trucking professionals are saying and advice they are giving. It is nice to hear the excitement that the new drivers are posting. I’m looking forward to a new adventure, it will be about a year, but I will read and learn as much as I can until then.

Hi I just wanted to introduce myself, I am an American working overseas as a contractor and I'm retired military, I plan on getting my CDL when my contract ends here. I have just started following this forum and have found it very helpful. I am a little older then most, at 53 I'm starting to plan a new adventure. When I start I will go OTR then after a year or two I will look for a dedicated or regional driving job. I would like to drive a tanker food grade out of Idaho. My kids are grown and my wife of 30 + years is behind me 100%.

Happy Thanksgiving. Mr. Mike