My First Solo Month

So i am taking my first home time since going solo. Figured i would let you guys know how it went.

I started out the first day after Christmas with a paper load that I had to T-call at my hone terminal , so i get a quick 400 miles to start off. I do the silly class that they make all drivers do when they start at the Columbus Ohio terminal. I get my 10 hour break done during this time and wait for around 6:30pm to roll around to pick up my load at Coke that is going to Dallas Texas (1100 miles). My pickup is a live load set for 8pm, i get there at 7:30 as i CANNOT stand being late for anything and i get told to wait and they will call me when a door opens, 9:00 rolls around and i get my door then i get to hurry up and eight as it seems they load slower a snails pace. I get out at 12:30 which already screws up my trip plan as i was planing to start my trip to Texas after another 10h break but around 7 in the morning. I get back to the terminal around 12:45 and start my 10h break (as i had not slept during the last one as i was taking that class for new drivers). I get my clock going my pre trip exactly 10 hours after i went off duty. I get to texas in plenty of time as to not be late for my delivery which was 7am 3 days later. I get to the Dallas Coke plan at 7 and get told "we cannot take you until 10" i ask where i can park for 3 hours i get a rather snippy "you can't park here" and get told to leave. I find a Lowes down the street that was closed and parked behind it for 3 hours :D. I get back to coke at 10 and get told to wait for the yard dog to tell me what door to go to, at 10:30 i get my door. I drive around the TINY yard and find my door, now if they did not have trailers parked EVERYWHERE there would of been plenty of room to back but they had 2 trailers parked across from the doors basically making the area infront of the doors 20 feet shorter. So I managed to do an awesome 90 infront of a warner driver watching my like a hawk making so i do not take out part of her truck as i back in. 5 hours later i get my paper work to leave, this in itself cost me a 550 mile run as i could not longer meet the pick up and delivery times. I go and wait at a TA to see what my next load is. I get a load that is 160 miles backed by another 150 mile load, i think great short runs around Dallas now. I get my first load which says it delivers to a Walmart, great i got to deliver to a store, i can park there for the night as i will be hitting my 14 not long after i get there. NOPE!!!!! i get there and its a dirt lot saying "Walmart coming soon". I ask the guys there where is the closest legal place for me to park heading to Paris Texas as that is where my next load was picking up at, it was 30 miles back where i came from. I get unloaded with 45 minutes left on my 14 and i go as fast as i can back to a real walmart to park for the night and while on my way the next load was taken off me for some reason. However that ends my "week" of runs giving me 2200 miles total on my first solo paycheck (had some runs in before my home time i got after picking up my truck after getting off my mentors truck that were added to that paycheck).

I wake up after my 10 to being stacked with 3 loads totaling 1600 miles, i think great way to start off the new year with 3 good runs a 300 500 and an 800. The first one picked up near Dallas and took me to houston which i did that day, i get to the DC in houston and get my first lumper experiance. 20 minutes and my truck is unloaded, 4.5 hours till the guy counts it and signs the paperwork throwing a monkey wrench into my 3 load run. I figure out i can still make it, so i head to my next shipper a Walmart DC 45 miles away. I get to the walmart and they lost my trailer, i only have 30 minutes left on my clock so i am told by a DM to get to a safeheaven for the night and call in the morning to find out what to do next. So in the morning i find out that the day DMs have NO CLUE what the night DMs did and that i now have to drive back to the DC and talk to them. Over night they find the trailer but i am not allowed to bring my empty into the DC anymore. I call my DM and get told where to drop my empty which is a 75 mile round trip out of the way, i do that and go pick up the trailer at the Walmart however this has put me so behind i now lose my 800 mile trip into Georgia where i was going to meet up with a friend i went to trucking school with :(. I take my load to Louisiana like i was supposed to but not the kicker is is am so far out in BFE that its nearly 2 hours away from ANYTHING, so i barely make it to a walmart 90 miles away before my clock is dead again. I had lost my load to GA so i call and ask what do i do now for my next load and get told there is nothing in my area due to new years anymore. I get to sit for a 34 due to no freight as i still had 25 hours on my 70. After my 34 is over i get a load to dead head 300 miles to pick up something going to Manteno Illinois. I get that load and deliver and get pre plan for a costco load listed as "extremly heavy load and very top heavy driver may have to leave chains if that will allow him to make weight". Now this load was heading into Wisconsin right when a winter storm is predicted to drop up to 2 feet of snow. I call and ask respectfully if there was anything else as i did not feel i yet had the experiance for a top heavy load heading into a winter storm and get told i have to take it :(.

Wow, so your really enjoying yourself then eh? Be safe keep us posted

I go to put in my Mac 9 to ask for differnt delivery times as i did not have the hours to make the delivery and get told i do have the hours (which i didn't). At this time i get a pre plan for a 66 mile run to pick up something 15 miles from me as i was the only truck around there. I accept as it came from a terminal manager and its always a good idea to accept a load coming from a terminal manager and i could still pick up that costco load afterwards (more miles = more money instead of sitting 3 hours). I go to the Manteno Illinois terminal to pick up the load and get asked what i had after that load and say i got no idea as a load was accepted for me that i do not have the hours to make. He looks at it and agrees i do not have the hours and he takes that nasty costco load off me and tells me by the time i am out of the terminal he was will have something decent for me to do. I deliver the 66 mile load (which took over 2 hours cause it was on all roads that were 35-45). However he was right i had a load that picked up the next morning going 450 miles back to ohio away from the weather. I get parked at a Loves for the night after delivering the load for that terminal manager but the storm hit Ilinois, the roads are covered in snow and ice, the interstates are clear and dry but the back state roads are under 2 inches of snow and ice, me being empty i am not risking driving on ice so i am forced to shut down 60 miles from my shipper because the roads are too dangerous, i lose the rest of that day. The next morning i get to my shipper and make my delivery, and i get to meet up with that friend from school as he ended up at a TA not far from my delivery and we get to have a meal together :D. That ends the second week out with a whopping 1300 miles due to slow freight and bad weather. However good things are about to come.

While talking with my friend i get a pre plan for a 1500 mile run (1 run that gets me more miles then my last week!!!). The run is to pick up some soup from Ohio and take it to Montana and i have 4 days to do it (easy run 500 miles a day). I pick up my soup from the DC in ohio and start my run west, it was such a nice drive the roads were perfect the weather was to be clear all the way. I get to within 6 miles of my receiver to stop for the night before my delivery. Before i go to sleep i get 6 pre plans that blow up my phone, i'm like WTF i cannot do all these as they do not line up, i call my DM and get some prick instead of my DM and ask what ones i take, he says all of them and i respond with i cannot pick up from a place on the 16th after i left there on the 15th. He sees this and fixes it and its 4 runs for another 2000 miles. I get the runs sorted out (of which one leg is a 468 mile dead head bobtail run to pick up a trailer). Now i go to be soup delivery and get to deal with lumpers again, my delivery was at 5:30 i am there early and have to wait until 5:30 that is fine, but it takes them until noon to get me unloaded and get my signed paperwork making me 3 hours late for my next pickup. I do not want this 2000 mile set of runs messed up so I call in and hope there is room on the runs so i can still do them which there is. My next stop was to pick up some pallats for another DC i go and deliver and drop my trailer and bob tail out. This ends my 3rd week out with 2800 miles done more then doubling my previous week :D.

So i start the next leg of my trips starting with a 500 mile bobtail to pick up a trailer left over from Christmas at a Walmart, followed by picking up 46000 pounds of sugar for Kellogg, just those 2 runs equal 2000 miles which still puts me 800 miles from home for my schedualed hometime making this final week out another 2800 mile week. I get to the walmart after a full day of bobtailing and one of the wheels on the trailer is frozen solid, after 45 minutes of rocking it back and being on hold for road side it up and lets go, so i am off and running again to a truck stop 6 miles away to take my 10h. Not i am done with my 10h and i pretrip my truck to find part of my front bumper is flat gone, a whole piece vanished over night i call my DM and tell her my bumper is partially gone, i now have to deal with claims and report that something happened to my truck in the middle of the night and not my volvo looks silly missing a while section of bumper. Anyways thats dealt with and i head the 60 miles to the sugar plant to get the sugar. I get loaded in a timely fashion finally and head back the same 60 miles to the truck stop to weight my load as that is the closest cat scale , i get my load just right and get rolling down the road. My first stop for fuel is in Fargo ND, now we all know that ice storm that cause the bad wrecks in Oregon and in Philly and New Jersy, but it also left 1/4 inch of ice in Fargo, it was so nasty that at the flying J acrost the street from the Loves i was at a drive jack knifed in the fuel island taking out the fuel island At this point i am getting fuel and getting on my CB and asking hout i 29 is as that is my route out of Fargo, i get told its great if you have a pair of ice skates, i turn around and BARELY get back into a parking place as driving on sheer ice is very hard much less doing a blind side 90 to get into a parking place.

I am now once again shut down for a day due to ice, but the next morning the roads are great and i get rolling again. Everything is completely uneventful for the next 2 days until i hit Tennesse, my prepass gets the red light and i have to go into a scale, i know i am only about 500 pounds under gross and i am really close on all axles but i have my handy dandy legal scale ticket, I roll over the scale and stop and it says 34180 on my drives i'm like well ****... then the scale master gives me the green light and i leave quick as i can :D. I get to about 160 miles from Kellogg and deside to stop as my delivery was not until 11:30 the next day . As i pull into a TA i get a message saying go to final they will unload you, I look and I have 164 miles and 2:24 left on my clock so i cannot make it in my truck and even if i could i would have no hours to use to leave the shipper. I send a message and ask if i can deliver early in the morning and get told yes. Right after i send that message i get my home load Memphis TN to Bridgwater VA 780 miles :D. I get my load from the Memphis termial (which suck BTW) and i meet up with another person i knew from school who was on a 34 there :D. Anyways i get my load from memphis and head home and get hom Yesterday finishing a second 2800 mile week in a row.

Now they have already sent me my load for when i get off hometime which is a 1200 mile run back to Texas to get me atleast 1200 miles on my hometime week :D

I was kinda hoping for a run back to my terminal because i need to take some winter driving simulator class (which seems kinda pointless at this point) and the AC does not work in my truck and i wanted that fixed but i guess it will have to wait, 1200 mile runs beats getting the AC fixed until i really need the AC.

The Winter SIM is a bit silly. Took me three months to finally get it done. But hey, we gotta do it.

Congrats on the first month. I agree that the Memphis terminal leaves much to be desired, but there are some nice ones out there. I'm at the SLC one now (just finished the Mentor Class) and it is really nice.

Sorry Eckoh, Congrats on your runs!!!!! Hope the miles keep coming for ya!

Quite the experience eh Eckoh? Sounds like you are off to a solid start. Keep it up and be safe.