My Swift Adventure Continues..... Orientation And Mentor Phase
Topic 20485 | Page 3
Roadpilot, glad to hear from you sounds like been pretty busy so far,and sounds like been all over the place, my hope is when i get as far as you are to get out west as much as i can ,and they can give me . good luck michael
Roadpilot, glad to hear from you sounds like been pretty busy so far,and sounds like been all over the place, my hope is when i get as far as you are to get out west as much as i can ,and they can give me . good luck michael
Thanks Michael,
I've been hoping to get west as well and my mentor and his DM made it happen. He said he likes to run his trainees west at least once during their time on the truck, he's not a fan of Cali but he's willing to come out here to give the rookies some relevant experience.
Well our Amazon load fell apart. After waiting 90 minutes we got told our load was cancelled because of "low volume". So we were able to grab the empty we brought in and we bugged out at the Lathrop terminal (which is awesome btw) for the night. We have a new load picking up outside of Sacramento going to Illinois this afternoon so we are taking the time to get a minor air leak looked at and do laundry. I don't have too much longer with my mentor, I have 140hrs of driving and 38 of my required 40 backs done. I feel ready to go solo but it'll be a bit scary not to have my mentor there with me.
Well I'm gonna enjoy some NorCal sunshine, you folks have a great day
Terminal:
A facility where trucking companies operate out of, or their "home base" if you will. A lot of major companies have multiple terminals around the country which usually consist of the main office building, a drop lot for trailers, and sometimes a repair shop and wash facilities.
Dm:
Dispatcher, Fleet Manager, Driver Manager
The primary person a driver communicates with at his/her company. A dispatcher can play many roles, depending on the company's structure. Dispatchers may assign freight, file requests for home time, relay messages between the driver and management, inform customer service of any delays, change appointment times, and report information to the load planners.
Well I might as well update this while we wait.
We've still been running hard. After that Amazon load fell apart we got another load heading to PA. I got to drive the Donner Pass at night and in the rain. That was interesting, I crawled down the hill at 40mph, some guys were blasting down at 55+.....but i took the slow and steady route and made it down without any smoke or fire lol.
We've been pretty much been on a East Coast-Midwest boomerang dealing with mostly Amazon and UPS loads.
Got down to Dallas on Saturday, that was interesting trying to keep up with what the Qualcomm was telling me and where the construction was pushing me to go. I missed turns in and out but my mentor was able to get me back on track without any problems.
From there we went back Northeast on a UPS load and we brought a Amazon load to be T-Called in Gary. We are supposed to go to Joliet this afternoon to pick another Amazon load to Allentown however we're having the truck checked out by the shop because we heard a pretty loud air leak this morning. Hopefully they'll be able to find an fix the problem.
As of this morning I'm sitting at 189 hours so hopefully either Thursday or Friday I'll get dropped off at a terminal (probably Columbus) to upgrade. I'm anxious to get my solo career started even though I'm pretty nervous about it at the same time.
I'll update this again when I start the upgrade process. Everybody have a great week
Terminal:
A facility where trucking companies operate out of, or their "home base" if you will. A lot of major companies have multiple terminals around the country which usually consist of the main office building, a drop lot for trailers, and sometimes a repair shop and wash facilities.
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.New Reply:
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Holy crap, I can't believe it's been over a week since I've updated this. We've been running pretty hard so its been mostly just sleep and drive, sleep and drive.
Picking up where I left off, from Detroit we went to Hagerstown,MD then picked up a load outside of Baltimore to bring to Columbus. Then up to the Grand Rapids area to bring a load out to Otay Mesa, CA. That's the load we are currently on now, because it didn't have to deliver until Tuesday morning we had planned to spend a day in Vegas but the planners saw that we had extra time so they had us T Call this load in Vegas and well pick up a Amazon load at 1am and bring it up to the Bay Area. We already have pre plans out of the Bay Area to Moreno Valley then Kansas City so as long as Amazon holds up their end of the deal we'll be set for loads until at least midweek. Driving through the canyon's on I-15 was fun, the scenery was amazing, I hope to spend more time out west once I upgrade. I'm figuring on another 10 days with my mentor as long as the freight keeps moving as well as it has. That would mean about 30 days on his truck which is a bit less than average. My backing and shifting are still improving.....I was able to hit the dock in one shot earlier this week. I'm also getting more comfortable with the drop and hook procedures as well. So overall its going great. I honestly am feeling more comfortable running the truck and my confidence level is pretty healthy for once lol.
Like I said, I'll try to keep this updated as much as I can. Between the constant running and sketchy data service it's a bit tough but I will definitely update when I can.
Enjoy your holiday and have a great week folks
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.