New Truck Driver Ride-a-Long

Hello everyone! The start date of my schooling is closing fast; I'm excited, but the nerves have really been getting to me. However, I have the amazing pleasure of going on a ride-a-long with one of my uncles who's an owner operator for Schneider; he's based out of GA and mainly stays in the NE. We're rolling into day 4 on our 2 week outing, so here's a quick summary of what's been going on (All times if I can remember them will be in the eastern time zone if it makes any difference).

Day 1: We started from his house at around 1500. He had already pre-tripped his cab before I was present, so I situated my belongings, sat in the passenger seat, and observed as he went through the (what I like to call) Barney Basics of the Qualcomm. Showed me where to find trip details, what all is important, how to access the gps, then went to his current trip. He had booked 3 trips at this point, his first was an mt pu in Gainesville GA.

He input his approx ETA, did some quick math, and changed his ETA throughout the first load. We bobtailed to the pu location, only to find out the entrance gate closed. He got out and talked to the gate guard and found out that they don't accept trailers after a certain time. He became slightly frustrated, made a phone call, and patiently waited for an mt to be located. After about 20 mins or so, his Qualcomm made a noise alerting us to a change in the pu location. It took us about 20m in the opposite direction of our drop; he proceeded to change the ETAs yet again.

We get to the pu with no issues and spot the big orange trailer we need to grab (it needed to be a food grade trailer, so it needed to be within a certain id# range I think is how it worked). He hooks onto the trailer, making me jump and gasp (wasn't expecting a loud thud as the kingpin locked with the fifth wheel). I observed as he hooked up the cables between the cab and the trailer, raised the landing gear, checked the tires and lights. Everything's peachy, we shove off and out of the yard; he remarked about how much different it feels pulling the trailer. We're en route to a drop and hook in Vonore, TN (I'm intently watching the mirrors that give me a view).

We arrive at the load. We have to drop the mt and pu the load 3 spaces down; took him a few trys to align properly, seems backing is loads harder at night (duh). We hook the load and omg... this is a beast! 43k+ lbs trailer weight. After sliding the tandems (to better redistribute the weight (please correct me if I'm wrong)), we start moving and what a difference!! I instantly felt that the engine was working much harder to do accelerate (I have no experience in manual transmission so this is a great time to learn some basics). Our destination is Chesapeake VA, however we don't have enough time, so he checks an app to find a truck stop along the way, Max Meadows VA. Don't remember the distance, but he inputs the address and starts rolling.

We get to Blairsville VA and he decides that hes too tired and goes to pull into a WalMart; no truck signs both sides of the intersection!! He decides to take one side, hoping the road will wind to a side entrance to the parking lot. NOPE!! We go up a small hill on what seems like a narrow residential road, chugging along in 2nd gear barely making it up the hill to find no road leading to the parking lot. Luck was on our side, just ahead was an old empty gas station with enough room for him to get turned around. After positioning himself so he can pull straight out, he takes 10 mins to step away, calms down, and proceeds back the way we came to get back onto the hw. We find a pilot not to far down the road and decide to call it a night. Stressful 1st day, but a decent learning experience; things haven't gone according to plan, got slightly lost, had to turn in early. Learning early on that its never as easy as it may seem.

Day 2: Sleep came surprisingly easy. For being my first time sleeping in a truck, I was pleasantly surprised at how comfortable it can be with an APU keeping the back cool. After my first truck stop shower, a cigarette, and coffee, we plan out our next 2 days. We must complete our 2nd trip (live unload) by 1500 in Charlotte NC. To get there, we must first deliver our beast to Chesapeake VA, pick up an mt there, and go 130ish miles to pu the load, then finally get to NC.

After awhile of driving, we get to Chesapeake and drop off the load; trip 1 is done. Before he accepts his next trip, we search for an mt only find out they have no trailers for us!! We repeat the process from day 1 and locate a trailer thats 80m in the opposite direction. That added a good 160m to our route (these numbers might not be adding up correctly cause I'm going by memory right now, but bear with me). By this point, we have about 3 hours left, so he decides to go line 5 and bobtail to the mt in Gordonsville to jumpstart his rest hours. We get there aftet about 2h and call it a day. If hes correct in assuming his 10h rest started when he went off duty after dropping the previous load, then with our estimations, we should arrive at the live unload by approx 1400, giving us 1h leeway; if not, the customer will have to wait til morning.

Day 3: What a relief! His time indeed reset when we hoped! We start rolling with the mt (honestly, I'm starting to lose track of the story even while writing this so play along lol) and arrive at the drop and hook at our self appointed hour...

Bobtail:

"Bobtailing" means you are driving a tractor without a trailer attached.

Owner Operator:

An owner-operator is a driver who either owns or leases the truck they are driving. A self-employed driver.

Tandems:

Tandem Axles

A set of axles spaced close together, legally defined as more than 40 and less than 96 inches apart by the USDOT. Drivers tend to refer to the tandem axles on their trailer as just "tandems". You might hear a driver say, "I'm 400 pounds overweight on my tandems", referring to his trailer tandems, not his tractor tandems. Tractor tandems are generally just referred to as "drives" which is short for "drive axles".

Tandem:

Tandem Axles

A set of axles spaced close together, legally defined as more than 40 and less than 96 inches apart by the USDOT. Drivers tend to refer to the tandem axles on their trailer as just "tandems". You might hear a driver say, "I'm 400 pounds overweight on my tandems", referring to his trailer tandems, not his tractor tandems. Tractor tandems are generally just referred to as "drives" which is short for "drive axles".

Qualcomm:

Omnitracs (a.k.a. Qualcomm) is a satellite-based messaging system with built-in GPS capabilities built by Qualcomm. It has a small computer screen and keyboard and is tied into the truck’s computer. It allows trucking companies to track where the driver is at, monitor the truck, and send and receive messages with the driver – similar to email.

SAP:

Substance Abuse Professional

The Substance Abuse Professional (SAP) is a person who evaluates employees who have violated a DOT drug and alcohol program regulation and makes recommendations concerning education, treatment, follow-up testing, and aftercare.

Drop And Hook:

Drop and hook means the driver will drop one trailer and hook to another one.

In order to speed up the pickup and delivery process a driver may be instructed to drop their empty trailer and hook to one that is already loaded, or drop their loaded trailer and hook to one that is already empty. That way the driver will not have to wait for a trailer to be loaded or unloaded.

APU:

Auxiliary Power Unit

On tractor trailers, and APU is a small diesel engine that powers a heat and air conditioning unit while charging the truck's main batteries at the same time. This allows the driver to remain comfortable in the cab and have access to electric power without running the main truck engine.

Having an APU helps save money in fuel costs and saves wear and tear on the main engine, though they tend to be expensive to install and maintain. Therefore only a very small percentage of the trucks on the road today come equipped with an APU.

Cont. We compare the bill of lading to the trip info given on the Qualcomm , finding out that the load is heavier than originally noted. Another beast! 42k lbs. As we were leaving the paper mill (42k lbs of paper, who knew!), he had to weigh himself at the gate. First time seeing this! The scale wasn't divided into 3 secitons (he told me this later on at a pilot. I guess all CAT scales are sectioned like that) so h had to first weigh the cab, scoot forward and weigh the cab plus the front, scoot all the way and weigh the entire thing. Quickly mathed and got the weight of each section.

We start our drive and eventually end up getting stuck behind 2 oversized loads, each communicating with each other and the 2 sets of pilot cars. We make it to Charlotte within 1m of the customer and the GPS tells us to turn left. THERE IS NO LEFT!!!! We're both confused, getting frustrated (I needed a smoke (he doesn't allow smoking in the cab) and had to pee and decided to hold it instead of cupping it since we were close). He quickly pulls over in between lanes at an unprotected intersection (hes not blocking traffic) and we check our phone GPS and Google Earth.

Each one showed our left turn that we supposedly passed. After finding the place on Google Earth, I manually plotted our path and figured out the way there from where we were at. After guiding him to our destination, we both took a sigh of relief when he docked into the bay before closing time. We found out later that the turn we passed was tore up, no signs or any other indication and our guides weren't updated. Sticky situation, but we got out of it. After the unload was finished we decided to stay the night at the Schneider oc in Charlotte which is where we currently are stationed. In the morning, we got a live load about 3h away at 0900, then 800 odd miles to Connecticut. Nothing else planned after that, but our next 2 days are booked up with driving.

So far, I'm having a blast! Learning alot, asking questions, even the stupid ones, and getting a feel for the nomadic lifestyle that is trucking. Updates will be coming if interested.

Yeah keep this going! It's pretty interesting seeing this from a different point of view!

Day 4: Little sleep last night, not quite used to not being on a sleep schedule yet.  Think I fell asleep around 0000 and woke up at 0300.  So we start moving, get about 10m down the road and I'm dozing back off, end up napping which is something I wanted to avoid this entire outing.  Either way, I wake up and we're in a small mountain town called Spruce Pine NC, and the Qualcomm takes us up a windy mountain road, telling us to make a right turn into what looked to be a gravel driveway. 

Lovely... we don't follow it and wind up getting back to the main road after a few mins of passing under low branches hitting the trailer and barely missing a low hanging telephone wire.  After parking in the middle of the road in a shared turning lane, he calls his ICA.  No help after about 5 mins so we take a road that, on our phone GPS, looks plausible. We get to the road, NO COMMERCIAL VEHICLES!

We're following 226 south down an extremely windy road going 15mph, engine brake active on the hills, until we pulled into a "trucks cool brakes" area.  We eventually get written directions and follow them back up the way we came, and finally find the place; it appears to have been an old school at some point.  We find out where we have to dock and pull into what looks like just a carved out hole in the wall. No bumpers or anything, had to back up into a pallet and crunch it. After about an hour of live loading, half of our day already shot, we start rolling again towards I-81 to find a desperately needed Loves station about 80m away.

Barely made it to Loves. As soon as his fuel gage hit red, the needle jumped back up to full.  This isn't the first time its happened.  We fuel up just enough to get us to the pilot another 40m or so down the road to fill up all the way, since he uses pilot rewards.  We continue our long drive across I-81, we calculated that, with about 3.5h of drive time left, we can make it as far as Staunton NC.  He told me an easy method to calculate the time you need to travel.  Figure you're driving a steady 50mph, this will account for slow areas and your own ability to compensate.  This of course only works if the company doesn't have speed governors or if you're an owner operator.

We arrived at the pilot in Staunton.  Parking wars!! The lot is very crowded, the person in front of us is trying to blindside back into a spot, since thats the only way to park here.  We got a big day ahead of us tomorrow, got about 540m to get to our drop in Plainville CT needing to drive through NJ, NY, and CT traffic.  Looking forward to a long and stressful day; I haven't experienced the heavy traffic part of this job yet, so that'll be a trip. 

As a side note, I found out that my mobile carrier doesn't have unlimited roaming data, so I easily went over my limit.  Considering the majority of the time we've been on the road I've been roaming, I may have to think about changing carriers when I become a truck driver myself.  Hopefully I'll be able to upload these logs in a timely manner.

Wow, what an amazing opportunity you have been given, being able to do a ride along before entering school. I think a lot of companies might benefit from having a ride-along program before being scheduled for school as I think it would weed out some people who would realize this is not for them. It also might draw in some people sitting on the fence that would need that risk free ride along to answer some of those questions that can only be answered by doing.

Keep up the posts, this is good!

Thanks guys for the interest. I'm learning quite a bit just watching him drive. Even down to the simplest things like lane changes. Its a great experience so far. I am missing my dogs though.

Day 5:  Early start today with alot of ground to cover!  Started rolling at 0430 after a nice hot pilot shower.  As we leave the parking lot, we notice countless trucks in the no parking areas.  It fascinates me how many drivers are willing to risk a ticket in lieu parking legally.  I learned that you should always leave yourself at least an hour if possible to find an alternative spot if your original plan falls through.  So far its been a quiet morning.  Had to pull through a weigh station briefly, since we don't have a heavy load, we were able to pass through the left lane.  Someone was complaining over the CB about someone not going the posted speed limit on the entrance ramp past the scales.  Someone must've ****ed in his Cheerios this morning.

Other than some light traffic going over the Hudson River and some rain, it was a fairly uneventful drive; some more bull**** over the CB.  Its amazing how many racists there are on the road.  I'm no racists, but I cant deny that some of the things said were pretty comical.  We got to our destination, I was able to drop and hook the trailers from the ground only, under direct supervision of course.  We determine that we have about 35m of drive time remaining, but he looked under hours of service on his Qualcomm and found out that we still had 20m extra under the 11h section.  So we take a 30m break to refill our time. 

We have 55m to get to Uxbridge MA where we can park overnight at a DC.  We barely make only because while he was at a red light, he went Line 5 with 13 mins and 10m left.  I was able to drop and hook again (this part is getting to be fun), however, I go to lift the landing gear up on our load and it wont budge.  Its an old trailer so I chalk it up to the crank just wearing out.  After some assistance jump starting it, I was able to crank it the rest of the way.  With 0 time left, we park for the night at about 1600; we need to drop this load in East Syracuse NY about 250m away at 2230.  Early start tomorrow, get there and wait until our appointed time.

Day 6:  After about 14h off duty, we finally get up and moving.  He guided me through the pre trip, without knowing anything about any vehicle at all, it was all very overwhelming!  I had no idea what the majority of the things he was pointing out or what they did.  But we do a full pre trip and start rolling at 0900.  We stop at a pilot in Castleton NY for showers and fuel.  I'm done and ready to go and hes taking forever for some reason.  After about 30m of waiting, he finally comes out saying we're booked for the rest of the pay week (Schneider pay weeks end on Monday).  He'll be grossing over $4k assuming he has enough time left in his 70h to complete everything.  We'll look deeper into that a little bit later, for now, we start rolling on I-90 towards Syracuse NY.

He misses his exit!  Qualcomm was telling him to take exit 25A, but he had his volume down so he missed it!  However, hes been on this route before. 3 other times before, he took that exit, but it took him on a slow highway running parallel to I-90, so we stay on 90 anyway.  He told me that its set up that way cause the company wants to avoid tolls so it saves them money, even if it means it takes us longer.

We arrived at our destination at 1600.  We aren't able to drop our trailer til 2230 so we have alot of time to kill.  We passed the time by watching a couple movies.  By the time came to drop the trailer, our 14h clock was nearly up.  Oddly enough, it still ticks while off duty which makes absolutely no sense to me, but it is how it is.  We drop and hook the next trailer and have barely enough time to get to the Walmart parking lot just a stones throw from our previous spot, so we parallel park and call it a night.  Tomorrow we're heading to Buffalo NY, leaving at 1030.  Hopefully we wont hit too much traffic.

I'm not sure if you have said this or not, but is this a relative of yours or a close friend? I would have loved to do this before making the leap just to get a better idea of what the life was like. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the life, but it would have been nice to know what I was getting myself into...

Its a relative of mine, one of my 3 uncles in the business. They all live in Georgia, I live in Iowa, and neither of them ever go to the midwest so it took a little bit to get down here to have this opportunity, but its well worth it. Getting to experience all the in and outs of the job and lifestyle first hand is really getting me excited to start classes, and of course getting some visual and hands on practice without even getting behind the wheel.

Day 7: Pretrip review, I didn't do too bad. I remembered a couple of things, but needed a little help on finding where some **** is.  We start rolling towards buffalo, 486 to 90. About 62 miles left to go to reach our destination by 1400, its 1210 right now and over the cb we hear that there's a 30 min delay, construction about 13 miles.  Stop n go traffic, lot of cross chatter on the radio, "passing the time" my uncle calls it.  After what feels like an hour, its hammer time!  We get to Buffalo and hit high wind gusts.  Must be that Canadian wind coming across lake Ontario.  Made to our destination at 1350. Time for a supposed 1h live load. 

20 mins later, the load is done and my uncle comes out with his paperwork; he had to sign and date about 20 BOLs for himself and 20 for them! Hell, they were done loading by the time he was finished with the paperwork!

We got 321m to Breiningsville PA and 7.5h on the clock.  GPS tried to take him on the back roads again rather than staying on 90, but he knows better.  Me, I'd probably take that route and either get lost or take forever.  But I guess knowledge comes with experience. Boring trip.  It takes alot out of you going down the same interstate twice in the same day.  I-90 from Syracuse to Buffalo, the buffalo passing through Syracuse!  God damn that was a boring drive, and I thought I-80 west of Des Moines IA was horrible!

Welcome to Allentown PA. The place where truck stop addresses lead to an employees only back entrance from a residential road... Seriously, how off could the Qualcomm really be?? Luckily, there's another truck stop close by.  Nearly pitch black, absolutely no lighting at all!  There were even 4 wheelers parked in the truck spots, one of them may have even been a boat... WTF!! We eventually find the service plaza we originally wanted on a toll road, luckily it had plenty of parking available.  Maybe that's something to look out for in the future, legal parking within toll areas.  Its been a long day...

The service areas on 90 are pretty nice. Usually decent amount of parking and it's easy off and on. I like running the toll roads because of the service areas.