Finished up orientation on Friday and by Saturday morning, I already had a trainer waiting for me at the terminal. How cool is that!? I met up with him at 8am and had breakfast. I was glad to see that he was a really nice guy. I’ll be sharing a truck with him for about 15 weeks (longer training program than most companies), so I hope our personalities don’t clash. But so far, we’ve been getting along great.

My trainer had to get a windshield replaced due to a crack in it, but he didn’t expect it to take long. We just needed to wait for that to get done, then we already had a load going out to Florida. Well, the replacement on the windshield took just about all day, so our load was given to somebody else. We were given another load in my favorite direction…West! About as far West as you can go in this country. Delivery was set just outside of Los Angeles.

First, we bobtailed (no trailer) around for a bit so I could get used to the truck. The truck is much different than the ones we used in training. These shifters have a much shorter throw, so I kept grinding and putting it in the wrong gear. Not a huge deal. I was harder on myself than my instructor was. Anyway, he felt I was good enough to drive, so we picked up the trailer.

My trainer hooked the trailer up and went to the weigh scale. We came in at 78,000 lbs. of plastic tubing. That’s legal, but it’s a heavy load (80,000 lbs. is the max allowed). We finally hit the road about 7pm, even though we thought we’d be out of there by noon. That’s truckin’ for ya.

After about an hour of driving, my trainer pulled into a rest area and told me I was up. So, I hopped into the drivers seat and hit the open highway. Surprisingly, I wasn’t too terribly nervous. I couldn’t find 4th gear for whatever reason on the on-ramp, and got a very slow start onto the expressway. Again, I was beating myself up over it, but my trainer is really good at calming me down and helping me out. It’s just frustrating since I was doing so well at school. I feel like I’m learning all over again on this new truck.

The drive was fairly uneventful. My trainer stayed up with me for a couple hours until we were way out in the middle of nowhere. He felt comfortable enough to hit the sleeper and let me drive all by my little self. If I needed anything, he was only a loud screaming cuss word away.

So there I was, all by myself cruisin’ down the Oklahoma Turnpike. It was a strange feeling. When I was a kid, I’d watch all the trucks flash their lights at each other when changing lanes. Now maybe some kid is watching me do that very thing. I still can’t believe I’m actually out here doing this. I must be crazy!  continue to page 2 –>

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