My Truck Driving Career – A 6 Month Review

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 6 months already. I started my CDL training back in January, and got hired on with my company in March. I’ve completed training, and have been on my own now for a couple months. So, I thought I’d share a few of my initial impressions of my early truck driving career, having experienced it for 6 months now.

Backing In And Finding Parking Are Rough

Probably the biggest thing I was unprepared for was backing into insane places at customer locations. You’d think these loading docks would be designed for a semi. But the reality is, many of these customers have buildings with docks, but getting backed into them was left for the truck driver to deal with. I’ve had to back down alley ways, back in from major streets, have a police officer block a major road for me, back into places with zero wiggle room, blind side back, and a slew of other situations that can’t be described in words. It’s absolutely crazy. I’d love to make brand new drivers feel better about backing situations, but all I can say is use your time wisely when you’re with your trainer, get the most experience you can, and never, ever, get into a hurry when backing. You will experience some very difficult situations, and I probably haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg myself.

Another thing I’ve been surprised by is the lack of parking for trucks. I’ve covered it before in my previous blogs, so I won’t go into a ton of detail here. But anytime after dark, parking is very hard to come by. I’m legally allowed to drive 11 hours in a day. But after 9 hours of driving, I need to start looking for a spot if it’s after 8pm, because finding a place to park can easily take 2 hours or more. Truck stops become very dangerous at night because of the tight backing and trucks driving / parking everywhere. It isn’t uncommon to see minor accidents at truck stops because of this. The parking situation really takes a lot of joy out of driving.

They’ve Cleaned Up The Truck Stops

On a positive note, I expected more in the way of prostitution, drugs, and illegal activity at truck stops. I don’t know why I expected this. Maybe I just payed too much attention to the news and maybe I read too many negative Internet forums. But I’ve found that the vast majority of truck stops don’t have this problem. In fact, there are only a few truck stops that I can rattle off that I know has this activity going on. Illegal activity may have been a problem in the past, but my experience so far is that this activity is nearly non-existent these days. Maybe I’m just too ignorant to the fact that it’s going on all around me. That is possible. But I rarely see it or know about it, so it doesn’t bother me one bit.

More Of A Brotherhood Needed

I do wish the moral and brotherhood was a bit better out here. While it does exist, sometimes it seems like drivers have to prove their ego’s to each other or prove they are better than everyone else. The CB in congested areas and truck stops can sound more like a road rage forum and race war than anything else. It’s also just the little things. If I flash my lights letting somebody know they can come back into the right lane, is it really so hard to flash back as a “thank you?” At truck stops, you’ll hear people make fun of a truck having trouble backing in, but does anyone get their lazy butts out to help him out? It happens, but more people choose to make fun of the poor driver on the CB than to help spot him / her. I don’t know how things got to be like this, or if it’s always been this way. But I sure wish it would change. When truckers are actually being friendly to each other on the CB, I try to cherish the moment. continue to page 2 –>

About Author TruckerMike

TruckerMike embarked on a career in trucking late in 2008 after deciding that life in a cubicle might not be where it's at. He's been trucking since early 2009 and is TruckingTruth's most popular blogger. You can find more at TruckerMike's bio.

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