Accepted My First Job

You are self analyzing yourself to death!

Confidence! Confidence!

Troy, you are doing great! I can feel it! I have been reading your thread. I only subscribe to a few. I wish I had more time right now to elaborate more. Just so busy these days. All I can do is read from my phone all the great post.

Failure is a part of life. The mistake most people make is they let those failures break them down instead of using them to lift them up. You will make mistakes. We all have and still do.

Troy, you are a Truck Driver now! Be proud! Be determined! Be Yourself! You got this thing whipped. Relax and enjoy the ride. Remember, that trainer was sitting in the same seat you are now and some point in his life. He puts on his pants just like you do. You have come all this way! Do as he said, relax!

We are all proud of what you have accomplished. Your posts have been great. You are learning and have a great attitude. Let the humility you feel become humbleness for life. Let the spirit which dwells in your heart shine forth.

Merry Christmas, Truck Driver!

I agree with Tracey 100% - be confident! You'll get a lot more comfortable with it real soon. And anyone who does risky things will tell you that a little bit of fear is your best defense as long as you keep it under control. A little nervousness helps you focus and think more clearly. Too much is a detriment.

And think of it this way - you're only driving a rig. You're not breaking the sound barrier in a rocket-powered car. You're not launching into orbit on a space shuttle with a million pounds of rocket fuel strapped to you. It's just a big rig. Nothing more than a really big pickup truck and millions of people drive them around safely every day...and so will you.

So just relax and drive like you already know how. Sure you'll have to adjust to the length of the truck and get the shifting thing dialed in, but those are no big deal. Before you know it you'll be more comfortable in a rig than you are in a four wheeler. This is all just perfectly normal stuff you're going through.

You guys are right confidence is what my trainer is preaching as well.

A little recap of week 2 with my trainer. Im am still having a lot of confidence issues. He tells my Im a great driver and I just need to build my confidence and control my anxiety. I drive just fine but put me in a lot of traffic and tight areas and I just kinda lose it. Not to the point where I cant get the job done. More to the point Ill have a death grip on the steering wheel and start messing up my shifting. Yesterday I started to question whether I could really do this or not. My trainer tells me I can and Im gonna be a great driver but that feeling I have deep inside is like dude what are you doing. Stupid simple mistakes is what it is and why am I not fixing them? Why is my brain not letting me get these little things down. Granted its better then having big problems driving but by the end of the day those situations have me dead tired.

Anyway on to the week. It actually went very well Monday and Tuesday. Just normal driving stuff and it all went well. Still the nerves were on during traffic and stuff but really nothing big went down those days. Had a delivery at Alro in Grand Rapids Monday morning and got lucky and was able to pick up at the same spot with a load of Ibeams to head up to Onaway Michigan. This week started out like my first week did lol. I drove and the further north we got the worst the roads got and I started to use my death grip again driving over some of the snow. It wasnt fully covered roads as the sun was out but there was still some of that crap on spots of the roads. We get up there and deliver and then head back to the Alro in Lansing. Pick up a load there and head to Butler Indiana to deliver there and pick up another load as well. We head down to southern Indiana to drop off. Then they tell us they dont have anything quite yet for us but go ahead and make our way to Gary Indiana and they should have something by then. My trainer is like sweet dead head pay. We get paid anything deadhead that is over 150 miles. Its like $125. We are about 30 min away from Gary and they call saying they have a pick up for us in Monooka Illinois. Yippie its my first stand up coil. It will be a two stop load. One going to Toledo Ohio and the other to Dayton Ohio. Lots of good drive time for me. Everything was going great we get to Toledo and deliver and now on our way to Dayton. We are southbound on I75 cruising along and all the sudden traffic comes to a complete stop and we are at mile marker 130. I turn the CB up and find out a semi had hit a cement barricade and made a complete mess of the highway taking out a car with it. Pulled the parking break and we sat there for 2.5 hours. My trainer pulled out his laptop and put a movie on. Finally it started moving again and got to where we had to be in Dayton. With the traffic problem we had we were running out of hours now and lucky for us we got to stay in a hotel in the lovely city of Dayton. Let me tell you that was the worst hotel I have ever seen. We get up in the morning and I felt dirty as hell. My trainer was gonna shower first and of course NO HOT WATER!!!! Are you freaking kidding me. Me along with my trainer were pretty ****ed about that.

On Friday we got to do a peddle run for Alro Grand Rapids in a ****ty ice filled roads day. We thought it would be easy. Well nope it wasnt. We were gonna be done by about noon and get to head home for the weekend. Sounds to good to be true right? Yep it was. Of course we get a little ice storm up here in Grand Rapids on Thursday overnight. Its ice on all the side streets and parking lots and everything. My trainer drove this day. We finally got going and had 12 stops to make. We are on our way to our first stop and we are almost there and he goes to turn right onto a street that had a little bit of a downgrade to it and as he started to turn we both kinda went ohhhhh ****! The street was a complete sheet of ice and the min we hit the ice it was all she wrote on trying to stop. The weight of the load pushed us into a snow bank and broke the front bumper and we had to call a wrecker to get us out. Before the wrecker got there my trainer got us out of the snow bank but was not about to try to get down the road. The wrecker got there and was like **** I cant even get up the slight hill. He had us slowly ride the curb which was somewhat snow covered down to the bottom of the hill. That worked out pretty good. Now we tried to make our left hand turn where we needed to and wheel went all the way to the left but that did not work. Truck didnt wanna turn because of the sheet of ice we were on. So the wrecker hooked up the the front of us and he was on the street we needed to turn on and he pulled the front of the truck around so we could make our turn. That worked out and we were on out way again after a 2 hour delay. Anyway we get done with all our deliveries around 3pm. We think we are done and here is Modular calling as we were on our way to Alro Grand Rapids to drop their truck off. They want us to go to White Cloud Michigan and pick up a load and its already pushing 330. Its an hour drive from where we were and we wouldnt get started on that until 430ish because he had to drop the Alro truck off and get in our truck and head back to the terminal and pick up a trailer. My trainer is ****ed and Im ****ed because we thought and were told.....Cont

That we would be done after the peddle run. Anyway we go get the load and head back to the yard and he drops me off and we are done for the week finally.

The load we picked up is going to be delivered in Crawfordsville, Indiana on Monday. Then we will prob get a load back to our neck of the woods and will take a little xmas break.

All in all it was a good second week. Still trying to work on my confidence.

Troy...the confidence thing is a tough one to master....but its all in your head I will admit that the first 6 months that I was driving OTR (we were O/O's so our truck HAD to roll)I operated in a constant state of abject terror !! Then, when I thought I was gonna chuck it all, and go back home with my tail between my legs, a miraculous thing happened...My Don't Give a Sh***t attitude kicked in !! I decided to aim that truck down the road, drive it like I owned it (well, me and the bank), and not worry about the What If's...its the what if's that was gettin' to me !!! WHAT IF a car coming down the on ramp didn't see me...WHAT IF I miss a gear...WHAT IF the skies opened up and 20 tons of ice hit the road right infront of me....After I decided to NOT WORRY ABOUT THINGS THAT HAVEN"T HAPPENED I was ok !!!!! I had driven thousands of miles intrastate...there wasn't alot of difference in going OTR...It was ALL in my head !! I drove for 15 years or so, and the only mishap I had was hitting a hog in Kentucky...And that hadn't even been put on my WHAT IF list...So relax...let life happen...face it head on..You have the training, so you have the skills to put to use when you need them. Now go ENJOY your adventure !!!!