On Board With Knight Transportation, Squire School Started 03/22/21

Davy, I just love to HECK to read this diary!! The people forward will be so well apprised, believe you me!

I gotta say ONE thing. Those 'ladies' being all 'nicey nice ' to you in the mix of the conundrum, .... um.... you made 'their' day??

From your avatar, I'm thinking you got some 'preferential' treatment.... if you catch my drift. (O/S, delete if you think it should be.. or Brett.. LoL..)

Sometimes the 'good looking guys' get an edge; is what I'm trying to say! They did what they did to 'help you' for the better view! (Just IMHO, no hard advice; my disclaimer!)

You seem to have handled everything else like a pro, man. I recall the days in twenty ot three, four, and five... my other half in similars!!

Wish you well; smile for the ladies! (Keep showin' those guns, and I'm not saying NRA ones, haha!)

~ Anne ~

ps: All's well that ends well~!!!!

Davy, I just love to HECK to read this diary!! The people forward will be so well apprised, believe you me!

I gotta say ONE thing. Those 'ladies' being all 'nicey nice ' to you in the mix of the conundrum, .... um.... you made 'their' day??

From your avatar, I'm thinking you got some 'preferential' treatment.... if you catch my drift. (O/S, delete if you think it should be.. or Brett.. LoL..)

Sometimes the 'good looking guys' get an edge; is what I'm trying to say! They did what they did to 'help you' for the better view! (Just IMHO, no hard advice; my disclaimer!)

You seem to have handled everything else like a pro, man. I recall the days in twenty ot three, four, and five... my other half in similars!!

Wish you well; smile for the ladies! (Keep showin' those guns, and I'm not saying NRA ones, haha!)

~ Anne ~

ps: All's well that ends well~!!!!

lol, Im sure my cheeks are red right now. Im skinny as a bean pole though, camera adds 10 pounds or something like that.

You better check with your logs and compliance folks about driving PC with time remaining on your 11, especially since you are advancing your trip. Big No-No.

I agree with PackRat. You shouldn't be advancing a load on PC. You'd be better off just showing a violation of your time. Time management is tricky at first. Think about this load. Would you have been better off taking your ten hour break before picking up the trailer? As it is you had to take your break immediately after getting the load. It's all like pieces of a puzzle. Sometimes the timing of putting them together is just as important as how they fit together.

My gut was telling me that. I need to learn to listen to that instinct more. I'll definitely take the advice. This load I'm on should have a little more room at the end but not much

Next load was Loveland CO to Sams club in Murray UT. 40k in the trailer. Drove I-80 out. Wind was bad, but the trailer was fine, developed more there. Also made peace with the Jake and handled the big hill down into SLC. I started at 40-45 mph, kept it there for about half the grade, then gradually upped it to 50-55. Only dotted the service brake to downshift and vacillated between level 2 and 3 on the jake. Drove 10 miles down S. State street instead of taking 215, but it was and easy drive and I didnt feel like playing in afternoon SLC traffic. Also discovered that having to go the bathroom really bad speeds up my backing. Not sure if thats good or bad yet. Stressed over having to go through the main parking lot to get to the docks, but it went well. Easy drop and hook. Took the empty to our Salt Lake yard. finished with an hour or so left on my 14, and on my 11 hour.

Picked up a T-call trailer out of the Yard and headed back to Cheyenne to the Lowes RDC. It was the first place I went to in training. Easy run, 20k in the trailer, was concerned about the wind, but it was lighter today, and pushing me most of the way. So I just had to pay attention to my speed on even slight hills and use more jake to keep it below 70. From the Cheyenne Lowes RDC I bobtailed to the Denver terminal for home time.

Week recap.

Sat to Thursday - 4 loads, 2536 paid miles as far as I can tell. Miles put on the truck 2751. A ton of little things like fixing trailer doors, or adjusting and fixing parts to keep going, all part of the job as far as Im concerned. A little over 13 hours left on my 70 before home time. One of the loads ended up on this check for 394 miles, plus detention pay for while my truck was in the shop plus a 500 dollar transition bonus (didnt even remember that one) led to a decent check. The remainder of the miles will go on next weeks check.

Im not unhappy with the results for a first solo week. Im as productive as I can be, I make a lot of mistakes in some areas, but they are easily correctable and my DDM and DM work with me. I communicate promptly on them and they are getting fewer and far between. Im confident that I will become more efficient as time goes on and will be able to get out of shippers and receivers by and large quicker with fewer errors.

Next load was Loveland CO to Sams club in Murray UT. 40k in the trailer. Drove I-80 out. Wind was bad, but the trailer was fine, developed more there. Also made peace with the Jake and handled the big hill down into SLC. I started at 40-45 mph, kept it there for about half the grade, then gradually upped it to 50-55. Only dotted the service brake to downshift and vacillated between level 2 and 3 on the jake. Drove 10 miles down S. State street instead of taking 215, but it was and easy drive and I didnt feel like playing in afternoon SLC traffic. Also discovered that having to go the bathroom really bad speeds up my backing. Not sure if thats good or bad yet. Stressed over having to go through the main parking lot to get to the docks, but it went well. Easy drop and hook. Took the empty to our Salt Lake yard. finished with an hour or so left on my 14, and on my 11 hour.

Picked up a T-call trailer out of the Yard and headed back to Cheyenne to the Lowes RDC. It was the first place I went to in training. Easy run, 20k in the trailer, was concerned about the wind, but it was lighter today, and pushing me most of the way. So I just had to pay attention to my speed on even slight hills and use more jake to keep it below 70. From the Cheyenne Lowes RDC I bobtailed to the Denver terminal for home time.

Week recap.

Sat to Thursday - 4 loads, 2536 paid miles as far as I can tell. Miles put on the truck 2751. A ton of little things like fixing trailer doors, or adjusting and fixing parts to keep going, all part of the job as far as Im concerned. A little over 13 hours left on my 70 before home time. One of the loads ended up on this check for 394 miles, plus detention pay for while my truck was in the shop plus a 500 dollar transition bonus (didnt even remember that one) led to a decent check. The remainder of the miles will go on next weeks check.

Im not unhappy with the results for a first solo week. Im as productive as I can be, I make a lot of mistakes in some areas, but they are easily correctable and my DDM and DM work with me. I communicate promptly on them and they are getting fewer and far between. Im confident that I will become more efficient as time goes on and will be able to get out of shippers and receivers by and large quicker with fewer errors.

Hay you;

I see you post & update here & there & elsewhere, haha! Love it!

Anything 'NEW' ....specific to share? I'm always here, looking, LoL~

~ Anne ~

Took Memorial Day off, went down to Jerome AZ with the misses. By Monday, all I could think about was getting back in the truck. Kept intermittently thinking about her sitting at the terminal all weekend lol.

Solo Rookie adventures, week two.

My DM was expecting me back tomorrow, not today, so he seem pleased when he asked if I wanted a load. I said yes please. Got my first beer load. Coors in Golden CO to Houston TX. Did a quick search for empties in the yard. Found a brand new one that someone had mauled the skirt on, It didnt have an inspection sticker on it, So I called my DM to see if it was clear. He said, yep, grab it and Im attaching it to your truck number right now. As an added bonus, it had 3 load locks in it (turned out, two of them were short though).

Drove through the I70 mess across Denver morning traffic to the Miller Coors plant. Apparently everyone else, even experienced drivers were just as lost as I was there. Trailer inspection first, saw everyone else open their doors, slide the tandems back so I did the same. I received some vague direction to the empty yard, its pretty much a jeep trail, typical Colorado stuff. Found a good spot, right into the hole first shot, no pullup. Then drove around sight seeing and asking anyone I could find where the preloaded trailers were. Found several others looking for them too. Finally got some good advice from the yard dog. Also, they call every road in the place "The Street". Everything is across the street Finally found my trailer, hooked up to it and found the scale and mysterious "Brick building (cinderblock) across the street" Ran into one of my Top Gun classmates, so we BS'd for a while and I gave him two of my new found load locks, he helped me secure my load. The protocol there is the driver cuts the temporary seal, grabs the permanent seal from inside the trailer, secures the load and the seals the door.

They nicely left 6 kegs loose at the back of the trailer. I ran a strap through all the handles after we lined them up in a row. The kegs row now serves as a bottom load lock. I managed to make a top one fit. I used the formula Doc gave me for adjusting tandems, was 35k on the drives, 28.5k on the tandems. Got em evened out at 31.5 or so each. Trailer to weird at first, kinda bloated and heavy if that makes sense. The cases are stacked to about 6 or 7 feet tall. I just take curves real easy and try to be smooth stopping and starting.

Got on the road, made it down to Amarillo at the scheduled fuel stop. Taking I70 to US287 (I like that drive) all the way to I45, then down into Houston. Drove through a couple really strong cells, and some hail that was bad enough it took the vinyl wrap off my passenger mirror, bummed about that, but Ill have the shop fix it.

Numbers for today. spent close to 3 hours at the shipper , too long, but was good to run into my top gun mate. 10 hours driving including terminal to shipper, 464 miles. 23 minutes left on my 14 hour.

Delivery for the load is 6/3 between 0800 and 1400. Will be in Houston tomorrow (6/2) probably around 1900. Thinking I will shut down an hour or two away from the receiver. Should have about 8 to 9 hours driving tomorrow. I need to see if I can start keeping some in reserve in looking ahead. I dont want to burn my 70. I drove as long as I could today to make up for this mornings lollygagging, also to give myself a buffer zone for the delivery.

Rookie adventure number 2, week 2.

Well, nothing goes as planned. I ended up getting to the Houston area around 8 pm, that was ok but all the rest stops and Truck stops were full beyond capacity. There isnt a whole lot of them to begin with down there on I45 and they are all pretty small tight lots to begin with. I started running into torrential down pours that reduced visibility to next to nothing. As I got closer to the city, I remembered the Macy's yard from training, which is partially abandoned on the outside. That got me to thinking about our drop yard in Katy. I completely forgot that we have a terminal in Katy. I did some spur of the moment navigating on my phone with maps, without time to check if it was the drop yard and if she was sending me into a residential neighborhood. I had 1 hour and 30 minutes left on my 11 hour clock, and the eta was 1 hour according to google. My Garmin and Rand wasn't picking it up, I was driving in severe wind and rain thunderstorms with no where to pull off to triple check.

Made it to the yard that wasnt the drop yard but the actual terminal I had forgot about. Missed the entrance, pulled a couple mile block through some really tight streets, circled back to a Sams club that was damn near flooding. Checked the satellite photo on the yard and made my way to the yard, pulled into the entrance only to read the sign "NO TRUCKS ADMITTED, USE THE TRUCK ENTRANCE. Another newbie driver pulled up behind me, we tried both our badges, no luck. My clock is down to 3.5 minutes. since Im technically on company property and am not advancing the load, I just need a place to park at, I changed it to yard moves. A watchman came, spotted traffic for us, I backed into the street, went and did a U turn in the school parking lot across the street, went into the correct entrance around the block and shut it down for the night. Still storming out like a hurricane.

I pretty much did everything I didnt want to do, going into a road blind, not sure of my route and destination, having to back out into a street, pulling a U turn in a parking lot with obstacles at night in heavy rain with low visibility. It all turned out fine in the end, but the process was uncomfortable. Some of the gusts in the thunder storms were strong enough to blow my trailer around pretty good even with 42k in it. I kept expecting to be stressed, but somehow I felt ok with things.

11 hours driving, 621 miles.

Day 3. Had to wait for my 10 hours off duty to complete. Got to the reciever, found my way around, backed up to the dock, it looked really pretty...The receiver said nice job, but you need to pull forward, open your doors, slide your tandems , and then back up. He was really cool, I explained it was my second week. We both chuckled. Live unload, beautiful weather for the moment....that changed.

My appointment at the next shipper is 1300, 20 minutes away. I get out with 24 minutes to go. More torrential downpours, flash flooding. A train blocking the only entrance road to the shipper....I get there 4 minutes late....and spend almost an hour driving around the warehouse complex, calling the receiver and asking people. I find the place, call in, get my dock and get loaded. I then look at my messages on the Zonar to find the detailed directions finally appeared, it happens. The shipper was totally unconcerned about the time, loaded me fairly quickly and sent me on my way.

Spent 3 hours in bumper to bumper traffic and extremely heavy rain getting out of the Houston area, north on I45 to Dallas. Once I got about 100 miles north, it cleared up. Made it to the yard, plenty of time on my 11 hour and 14. Our Dallas yard is really full and tight. I did find a place, set up for a z 45 back, but just didnt have the room, circled back and just did something between a sight side 45 and 90 that seemed to work, It was one of my more ugly backs, but at the end of the day, its straight in the hole, I didnt hit anything and it is what it is, cant win em all. Need to be at the receiver at 0830, and 10 hours puts me available at 8:00 am so just in case I set it for split berth tonight.

8 hours driving, 314 miles.

Rookie adventure week 2 continued.

So it didnt work out to well, I didnt get the Split Berth toggled, Wasnt on duty til 0800, mandatory 15 minutes for pre trip, Got out of the yard at 8:16. receiver is 23 minutes away. It took me an hour to get across I20 to the receiver. It put me 45 minutes late. I am really sick of tropical storms and torrential rains.

The receiver refused to take the load, said to reschedule for Monday. I immediately started kicking my own butt. I called my DM , and explained. He was very understanding. I did what I could to get to get the load up from Houston and didnt even take a break on the way up. But the shipper took an extra few hours to get me loaded, and the traffic coupled with weather took the other few hours I needed. The lesson for me is to communicate better, I should have called my DM and voiced my concern that my 10 off was going to put me too late to get to the appointment. when I was at the shipper in Houston, It was going through my mind there. Again that instinct, gut level intuition was barking at me. I appologized, took responsibility and said that I would do everything I could to prevent it from happening again.

The day from hell continued, I can laugh about it at least. We decided to leave the load for relay at the Dallas yard, Im watching my 14 hour get devoured by this point. I spot an empty, let the DM know, get assigned a tasty load from Waco to Harrisonville MO, and then from Kansas City MO to Wichita KS just to reposition me. (I dont mind the shorter ones so much because I get more per mile for them).

I proceed to hook up to the empty, do checks on everything, seems fine. I pull out to go on my way, trailer brakes are locked up. Back up, go forward, seems like they pop, I have it out of the hole by this point. They locked solid, I drag it over to another hole, shove it in there, notify the yard manager and my DM that its FUBAR. someone pulled the OOS tag off of it. No other empties in the yard, DM sends me to one of our Drop yards, Nothing there. Its now 5 pm. I have to be in Waco at 7:00 pm. I get the locations of all of drop yards in the Dallas area, I check 2 of them, nothing. Im heading down to the Midlothian TX yard, Its now 7:30 pm. I left multiple messages for the shipper and called dispatch regarding it. They said go anyway.

On the way down, a really nice lady passes me and is pointed to the back of my tractor, I pull of. Sigh.....In my haste to get an empty, I left the pigtail sitting on the catwalk. I get it fixed, replace on of the glad hands, and swap out the electrical line. Get down to the DC, pull the last empty. Got down to Waco at 9:30PM. They are way behind anyway, Live load, VERY tight yard. I get out of there at 1:30 AM. This time I did do the Split berth correctly enough to leave me enough time to get to the Flying J a few miles away.

5.5 hours of driving, 191 miles lol.

Rest of the run has gone well so far except for more torrential rain for most of the drive. Im currently outside of Harrisonville. I stopped today with an Hour and fifteen left on my 11 hour clock, thinking about what OS had said about maybe waiting. I could have just made it to the receiver tonight, but it would have left me with no time left on my clock. Also, I dont want to shut down that close to Kansas City, not the best of neighborhoods there. So Im a bit under an hour from the receiver.

9 3/4 hours driving today, 517 miles. 24 hours left on my 70. I wont get recaps until Midnight Tuesday.

The mistakes I make weigh heavy on me. Im guessing thats normal? They always seem catastrophic to me, but I just put one foot in front of the other and do my best to learn from them. Most of them, I just seem to benefit from luck in getting out of them but I would like to not make them in the first place. My DM and DDM dont seem to bat an eye about them. Onward and upward though.