H.O. Wolding

Day 2 is done. Did some more of the tight 90 and a regular 90. Work on site and blind side parallel parking. Today has been a good day. The owner came and talk with us while we were eating lunch. The safety director came out while we were practicing the backing maneuvers. Tomorrow is more practice on the maneuvers we have already completed. We will also practice bumping a dock. I am still amazed at how friendly and approachable everyone is.

The friendly factor is a big reason why you will meet many drivers and office personnel who have been with Wolding for their entire career. And they really do stress getting you home as needed. Compared to posts I have read on here about other companies home time policies, we have it pretty darn good!

Day 3 complete. They surprised us today with testing us all. I accumulated 3 points. Less than 9 and you don't have to retake the skills test after you are done with your trainer. We did the tight 90, a "normal" 90, sight and blind side parallel parking, an obstacle course, and a 90 degree back up to a dock. I landed the dock. Even and both sides touching the bumpers. I am really proud of myself for that. Even though I bumped the dock a little harder than I should. Not overly hard, just should of been a little softer.

Tomorrow should be paperwork and this weekend / early next week I should be out with a trainer. I am so very excited to get my career on the road. (Pun intended)

Drive safe everyone

Day 4, Welcome to trucking!!! I am hesitant to discuss this, but it is what it is. A little background. All week I have been going to bed fairly early. Mainly out of boredom. Thursday night was no different. I was in bed before 10. Now, I am not the kinda guy that can sleep 8, 9, 10 hours. So Friday morning I was up early as I have been all week. I woke up at 3:45 am. Did some laundry, drank coffee and what not. At 7 all of us head across to this amazing diner for breakfast. We get free breakfast during orientation.

After we get back it is fast and hard doing paperwork. We finish paperwork around noon. At this point we had all filled out logs for our last seven days. What a miracle, none of us worked at all the last 7 days. We all get told to pack our stuff. All but one of us had trainers waiting and appointments to keep. My trainer is in another state. But, another trainer is going to ferry me there. As soon as I have my stuff packed, he helps me load it up. This is where it gets good. He starts coughing and wheezing. The trainer says: "You have cats, don't you,". I quickly reply "Yes, 4 of them." Guess what folks. Yep he is allergic to cats. After some grumbling he decides, he is still going to run me down. The solution. Grab my stuff and throw it in the trailer. So away we go. I had initially filled my log book showing that I started on the clock when we got rolling. After a few hours down the road, the trainer is still all choked up.

The decision now is, we are going to "run hard" to get me out of the truck ASAP. A few more hours pass and my clock on the e-logs is officially started. My paper gets changed to reflect this. I am still a passenger at this point. During this time the trainer ferrying me is in contact with my trainer to be. The decision is still run hard to get me to the point where my trainer to be and another trainer is swapping trailers. A few more hours pass. At this point it is starting to get dark and starting to rain. We are still pushing forward. At about 7 we are approaching out fuel stop. The trainer ferrying me is still in contact with my trainer to be. They have swapped loads at this point. The realization comes that we are still 7 hrs from their location. My trainer to be "may" have enough time to make it home for his 34.

So after a quick discussion between the 2 the solution now is: he heads for home and if he runs out of time, I will be his pocket ace to get him home. About 7:30 we pull in and get fuel. Since my trainer needs his 30 min DOT break, we run in and grab some supper. After supper guess who's turn it is up to bat. That is right. My turn to start driving. So away we go. My first time driving with a 43k lb load is at night while it is raining cats and dogs. Welcome to trucking. Btw this is my 12 day ever behind the steering wheel of a tractor. 8 in school and 4 days now at my company. So shortly after 8 I am hammer down and heading south. Never mind the fact that I have been awake now for over 16 hours.

As the miles and hours roll by I am driving at night, in the rain, thru narrow 1 lane construction zones. As midnight approaches My trainer to be gets ahold of the trainer ferrying me. He will make it home. Thankfully the trainer ferry me makes the decision that we will stop up ahead and bed down for the night. Tbh, At this point I am already a gibbering mess. I let the trainer know I need to pull over, stretch my legs and have a smoke. Oh, I forgot to mention that the trainer ferrying me does not use tobacco. So my wonderful crutch, I use to prop myself up during times of fatigue is gone. Here comes another lesson. Rest areas at night are to be AVOIDED!!! So, I pull into the rest area. Trucks are already lined up on the off ramp.

Yep, my first blaring clue. But I am too stupid and tired for it to register. We quickly find out the the truck side of the rest area is packed and some inconsiderate truckers are so far back, we can't even drive thru. So here we go backing up until the point where the cars split off. We get back and follow the car path. After pulling thru the car side we pull off on the on ramp. I jump out. Grab a smoke, do some jumping jacks and pray to God I can wake up enough to stop seeing 2 of everything.

After my smoke, I hop back in the truck and away we go. The good news is the "truck stop" the trainer ferrying me chose to stop at is only a little over an hour away. So I claw my way thru this last bit of time behind the wheel. We finally reach our destination some time between 1 and 2. I am a complete shell at this point. I barely know my own name. I can't see straight. I have no clue how I am managing to keep it between the lines. The trainer ferry me in the end had to park the truck. It was far beyond my capabilities at this point. So after being up for 20+ hours, the trainer had to help me do my log book. It was beyond me as well.

As I write this looking back I realize several things. 1). This is the LAST time my logbook gets creatively written. From this point on it will be accurate to my situation. The other, learn to say "No More"!! I can honestly say thank God nothing happened. I had no business those last fees hours of driving being behind that wheel.

Welcome to Trucking.

Yes, that's trucking. And it is all so much harder at the beginning. At least that was not freezing rain you had to deal with! You have to recognize when you are toast for the day and just shut down somewhere. I did that one time with my trainer, it was late, snowing and blowing, I was dead tired and no longer felt safe; pulled into a rest area and refused to keep going. She was miffed, but next day said I did the right thing. After you have been driving awhile, you will have more stamina to keep going. Your opinion of rest areas is the polar opposite of mine, I avoid truck stops at night like the plague, and will drive another hour to hit the rest area instead!

Oh, btw, I saw you Thursday at the yard, you were standing with a small group of guys just outside of the picnic tent. I also saw a driver who I went through orientation with two years ago but have not seen since - I caught up with him a bit, and by that time, your group had moved on. So I just missed you! I did not have my dog along, so you would not have recognized me as "the lady with the white pit bull", I left her in the truck, figured she would not be welcome in the food tent! Good travels! Stay safe! Remember to wave at all the Wolding trucks!

We were in the middle of our skills test. We came up, shoveled some food down our throats than back at testing.

The only reason I was in that situation was I had no idea it was coming. If I knew we would be leaving with trainers yesterday, I would of stayed up later on Thursday night, so I slept in later yesterday. I chalk that up to communication breakdown.

Day 5/6. Woke up and got ready. I waited around for the trainer ferrying me to wake up. As I said before, I really don't sleep a huge amount. 5 to 6 hours. That is it. The trainer decided he was going to drive the last 4 hours. I guess the last 2 hours I was driving, I guess the trainer had put himself as sleeper berth. While He had a fresh 10, I had to split log.. So I got a quick lesson about split logging. What it does for you and what you get out of it.

The drive down passed fairly quickly. Only 1 thing kinda ruffled my feathers. The trainer decide he wanted to lecture me about energy drinks. (I drank 2 during my little driving adventure). Tbh, if it wasn't for the fact he was actually older than me, I would of told him to go pack sand. But, I sat their and played dumb. Like the info he was telling me was some big revelation. Once we got to the town the other driver is in, I was put up in a hotel. I get a 34 out of this too.

The only thing that sucks is I am so close, yet so far from home. Only 3 hours away. I really contemplated renting a car and just going home. I did decide against it. So I walked to the Walmart to get my supplies for the week. The trainer told me the WalMart was a mile or mile and a half up the road. He needed to check his atlas. It was closer to 4. I have done more than 1 road march in my time. I would of made good time, but after 2 miles, I started to doubt I was even heading in the right direction. But it in the end all is well.

After work today my wife is going drive down. My trainer arranged to pick me up at 7 tomorrow morning. So I will get the evening with the wife. She will just leave out in the morning when I do, since she is off tomorrow.

Until later, drive safe everyone.

Day 7 Feeling like a trucker.

Today is a good day. My trainer picked me up a 7:40. He was a little late, but nothing that can't be overcome. Right after picking me up, we pulled in to a truck stop and I took over driving. First on our plate was finishing out his run from when he swapped trailers. I drove from Corinth, MS to Haleyville, AL. We get there, pull around back. I back it into the dock. Not my best backing job, but adequate. Drop out trailer and grab an empty. From here we are running back towards Corinth to Cherokee, AL. We are heading to a trailer repair shop we use as a drop yard. We arrive the trailer shop and drop out empty. From here we have to bob tail over to a nearby paper processing plant. Our first mission there is to grab a trailer they kept overloading. We find it, scale it, and slide the tandems to get it in weight. Trailer is fairly front heavy. From here back to our drop lot. We get to the drop lot and I park it next to the empty we previously dropped. Back to the paper plant we go. After some exhaustive searching we finally find our load. We grab it up and get heading down the road. We are heading for Shepardsville, KY just outside of Louisville. The journey up there passes without incident. By the time we pull into the GFS plant in Shepardsville I am out of hours. My trainer takes himself out of the sleeper berth and finishes up and GFS. We grab our empty and we are bound for a Recycling plant in Louisville. A quick 30 min trip later we arrive at the plant. Time to bedsore for the night so we can be knocking on their door at first light.

Overall the day was a good day. Got several Drop and Hooks in. Got a little time running loaded, empty, and bobtail.

I forgot to mention. On the way to our first drop, I got the experience of climbing a steep hill while being heavy. I had to downshift several times to get up the hill. I didn't miss a single gear.

Until tomorrow, Drive safe and God Speed.

Day 8 - Get Er Dun

Woke up at the shipper in Louisville, KY. Repositioned and got live loaded. Back up a sec. I know I said not getting creative with my log book. I should of said no one else will tell me when I am going to get creative with my log book. So did all the repositioning and live load while off duty. I have preserve that 14 hour clock. After getting loaded we scaled. Since I have to show 15 mins on duty for live load, I went on the clock at this point while we did paperwork. Paperwork done, macros sent, time to get down the road. We are heading back to Cherokee, AL with a load of scrap paper. You know recycled products, tee hee hee. About the time we hit the Tennessee our plans for the week got blown apart. Our previous pre-plan got canceled. Now they want us to take our load coming back north out of Cherokee to someone else. Swap loads, take theirs to Cherokee, grab an empty and head to a furniture store in Houston, MS. Do a live load and then run the furniture load. We explain we wouldn't make it before the shipper closes. So scratch the tail end of that plan. Now we are going to take the trailer and drop it at the furniture store and bob tail back to Cherokee. Grab a load and head back towards Louisville.

To make a long story short how it is mentioned above it is how it goes. We arrive Cherokee. Drop our load. Grab the trailer. Run over to Moulin, AL and swap loads. Back to Cherokee, grab an empty and head south west. About 30 mins outside the furniture store, I run out of hours. Drive hours this time. I still had 90 mins on my 14 hr clock. My trainer takes himself out of sleeper and finishes a good portion of the last part. We made it as far north after grabbing the load at Cherokee as the Tennessee state line. With both of us bleary eyed we stopped in one of his hidey holes to bed down for the night.

So far after 2 days of driving, I have just over 1000 miles done. 500 miles a day while still swapping trailers around and odd and end running is not to shabby, I think.

Day 9.

Today was an off day for me. On plan was finishing our run to GFS in Shepardsville, KY. Then to recycling plant in Louisville, KY. After that back to Cherokee, AL. Deja vu. Anyways today was an off day. Couldn't back to save my life, kept grinding gears, etc... Even though I am new, I am usually decent at backing. But not today. 1 of them days. On top of that I didn't get my goal of 500 miles. My trainer stated he was bored and wanted to drive. So he drove us from just North of Nashville until just inside AL where we shutdown for the night. 364 miles is all I got. Ugh.

Today should be a good chance for miles. After we drop off in Cherokee, we have a load heading to South Carolina. Since it is on the west side of the state, I doubt I will get a chance to say Hi to Matthew. On the bright side, maybe we will run threw some rain and wash of my trainers truck. He keeps the inside tidy, but the outside looks like we having been running dirt roads at dusk for a month.