Profile For Davy A.

The way that training was structured was that I only got two weeks with my trainer. My 30 k "Training" miles were done solo. (under the guidance of a DDM - driver developer manager and DM that works with newbies). So essentially it was solo after two weeks of training. Thats not a lot of training time. That being the case, I viewed my trainer as a living source of information and knowledge and thus spent every minute I could getting as much knowledge and information from him. I took notes, I asked a ton of questions, I observed as much as I could.

I also balanced it out with giving him his own space. He said he felt that I did a good job of giving him his space as well as soaking up everything I could. Also, the way our training works is that its solo, If I was driving he was in the passenger seat, and visa versa. Never team driving, So anytime he drove, I observed every detail of what he was doing, How he reacted to weather, obstacles, situations, etc. I would ask him why he was doing things the way he did it. I was very tactical and focused on how life would be without the help of my trainer in the next phase.

My trainer has been at it for over 30 years, definitely a valuable asset. We also developed a friendship, We still talk regularly. I still riddle him with questions and learn from him. I talked to him today, he was giving instruction to his new trainee and I could hear the conversation, it was about negotiating snow packed roads without the Jake, and what speeds to keep it at.

In cab, I found that ear buds at night with b-17 white noise loop on youtube really helped, I cant deal with snoring if Im awake and trying to sleep. Once asleep however, I have slept through house fires, shootings, earthquakes, jealous girlfriends and anything else you could throw at me. Also, I was proactive about cleaning and respecting his home. I always volunteered to clean the windows while fueling, finally asking him how he managed to get his side of the windows so clean (learned the system for that), always emptied the trash, and made it a habit that he never had to wait on me to get back to the truck. Just simple respect.

All we can ever do is change ourselves. we can effect people, but not change them. I looked at what I could do each minute of the day to make the situation have the best possible outcome. One other thing that stands out in my mind is that I brought my laptop and when I was too keyed up to sleep or had downtime, I practiced backing with American Truck Simulator. (I have a very fast gaming laptop) While not the same as real world backing, it still helped with trailer awareness and general concepts of backing. If nothing else, it put my mind in backing mode and then Id sleep on it.

Obviously, your training program may be different, I think each company does things a bit differently. I sometimes refer to my diary I kept here when I run across situations that had a lesson for me in training. Journaling it helped me immensely and is another good resource. The times when I wasnt driving but was able to pick his brain were very valuable and I kept a ton of notes.

Leg cramps can sometimes be associated with blood clots. Maybe something to have checked.

Any updates on how things are going?

Wow, Ole Phil is a bit over the top here. Sure your name isnt Karen (no offense to any Karens).

So, eh. The first western Europeans who made it here were Spanish by and Large. That was after a stop in the Bahamas that they mistakenly thought was India. Though they eventually did end up settling here among various other nations, they didnt move in on their first visit. In all practicality settlements wouldnt be established for another 75 years or so. So basically youre saying that your Spanish then? and you actually can prove your lineage going back to the Conquistadors?

Perhaps you live in some misguided dream world where a bunch of good ole boys settled here in conestoga wagons that had Kenworth emblems on em and they all spoke in southern accents?

Is it annoying that many of the immigrants, especially the illegal variety that come here today refuse to assimilate into our unique American culture? Absolutely. Their habits and customs often are in direct opposition to western culture and values in many ways.

But that does not mean that we are to just blindly and absurdly attempt to prevent their being here. Rather we teach them our customs and try to get them to assimilate into culture.

There will always be waves of immigration. We need to accentuate legal immigration and prevent illegal immigration. If you had worked for as long as I did in an unregulated industry such as construction, you would embrace the regulations that we have in the trucking industry, The regulations help prevent companies from devaluing the wages by hiring cheap illegal unskilled labor. They do this by ensuring compliance with legal immigration and standards. Yes, some slip through, but its systemically far less. Ive got nothing against legal immigrants. Most of them that I have talked to seem to have the same value on freedom and work ethics that us good ole boys do.

Did you try replacing the seals. I keep handfuls of them on the truck. If its a hardware issue and its too tight on the metal flange, I bend the flange out using my hammer tongs. If the connection is too loose, I tap the flange in with the hammer a little bit, so it holds both togeather tighter. Ive rebuilt a couple on the trailer side by grabbing parts off bad trailers. Ive also swapped out mine a couple times. I always use teflon tape on the threads of the hose. I keep my air tool repair kit that I had from working construction. Its got spare fittings, teflon tape, adapters and misc tools in it all related to air.

Untershrift is sign in the sense of "signature," schield is a sign that you can put on the wall.

Danke,

Its not looking real good for Victors theory about the Rothchilds and the Kabal (what ever it is) at this point. I agree that there are some fundamental issues with progressives, leftists, communists and the like, but those issues are ideological, not some satanic boogieman

Kabal is the Esauls and the devils descendents financial and power thieves since Barry Bauer if I am remembering correctly and he changed his last name to Rothschild which means in German The Red Sign. They have come to include the Bolsheviks, Communist, Socialist, authoritarianists and more. But the Deep State was started to regain control of the known world by Cecil Rhoads who was trying to do it for England.

Victor C. II, there are all kinds of videos, but can you explain in your own few words what is Kabal?

Nicht, red sign literally translated in German is "Rot Unterschrift"

Good stuff man. The "Sleeper Sessions"!!

YEP!!

I finally made time to listen to this, unabashedly and undisturbed. LOVE IT, Davy!

Shared on Facebook, too!

Thanks, man.

Great stuff, Maynard!!!!

~ Anne ~

Thank You! Glad you all like it. I like the idea of the sleeper sessions

We're supposed to shower?!? Knew I was forgetting something.

The storm that's coming in will bring snow all the way down to Alabama and even Louisiana. It's a pretty rare event.

So far, my DM is doing a good job if keeping me south. Loads have had a lot of time on them but better than not running at all or worse yet, wrecking. We've had a lot of accidents in the last few weeks, particularly in the north and west.

I usually pick something on the ground for where a line would be if there's no line available. could be puddles, dirt, anything that's there. If there's a line, I just use it as an offset line, and pretty much aim for tandems on it. Docks, I use lines if available, if not just use a straight look line our from the yellow corner mark.

And finally I just kinda zen freestyle it a lot. I don't know how to explain it, but it's just instinct for whatever arc to the point I want the trailer to be at. Most of the time it works, but a lot of times I just correct as needed in process.

Where do I want my tandems to go? Where do I want my trailer to go?

That account is with a new partner. Knight is a great company to work for, but Denver is it's own world. I have had great experiences with them, but others have had difficulty. I think success with Knight, like anywhere else, is dependent on how we handle ourselves. As far as I know, the start time was 0630 AM. In Denver at the partners terminal.

In regards to Top Gun and training. Top Gun is a week long class held in Phoenix, (we haven't started doing them in Denver yet) using simulators and Mostly range time. Concentrating on real world close quarters backing and driving.

After that, you would do two weeks OTR training with a trainer. Possibly, but it's uncommon that you would do two weeks with a local driver for training, you would need to speak with Lauren, our terminal manager for that.

After that phase, your first 30k miles Solo are considered training miles. To the best of my knowledge, that's done OTR, so I don't know how they would figure that for local. I think it took me about 2.5 months OTR to complete the 30k. obviously, you wouldn't drive as many miles local, so I'm not sure how they figure it. Upon completion of those, you become a full knight driving associate.

Not sure who your recruiter is. I can forward you the local Denver recruiters number, as he is the only recruiter in Denver we have, he might be able to give you more accurate information.

Also, as far as I know, you would be driving a regular Knight tractor, so not a day cab. but a full sleeper for that position, meaning that you are maneuvering through Denver areas in it. I sometimes do drops and trailer shuffles in Denver, particularly around commerce city, Brighton, etc and older areas of the city. They are very tight areas with little room for error. Quite a few docks and drops that require blind side 90s and improvised backing. Also, as far as I know, that local position was delivering to box stores such as Depot, Lowe's, sam's, and others. Some are easy, some are difficult. Depot's can be challenging, most sam's are easy, except for the one off Broadway in downtown. Lowe's can be real good or real tight. Most of the DCs are easy enough, but some of the older warehouses in the city area are challenging even for veteran drivers.

Also, at least with Knight, our local guys will frequently run our T-called loads from the terminal to the consignee, which can a pain as well as spot empties (go grab empties and drop em at a customer) . In general, a lot of backing and maneuvering. Again though, I don't know if that is done with the new partner. Unless they have enough work, I'd guess that some of the time you would be doing stuff for knight as well.

Not trying to make things out to be all bad, just want you to know what you are in for. Driving around Denver during peak traffic in a semi is challenging in it's own right, even more so when you don't have a lot of experience.

I detailed my experience with Knight from the start in the diaries section here, if it helps, but as I said, I did OTR, dry van, so the training may be slightly different for local. I can honestly say, that I didn't have the skills nor experience to successfully do local just after coming out oF training. I question wether I would now to some degree.

I understand though that your circumstances prevent you from doing regional or OTR right now, I think that the folks here that have experience with local and LTL have good advice on getting in. I'm not trying to steer you away from local, rather just considering the long run, if you were to get on with a company driving local, right out of school with little or no experience, you're looking at some very difficult challenges that could mean failure for your new career. It sounds like there are some apprenticeship programs for local and other options too.

I wish you the best as well.

Laura, thank you. If the other songs are playing at the same time, you should be able to scroll down the page and hit stop on them.

Bruce, Thanks.

Sean, that's a little Simons kit. It sets up pretty quickly. When I'm done I just fold it up and store it on the upper bunk. It's pretty decent sound for how cheap it is. I have a Steinberg ur22 interface that I have wired into the aux jack on the truck radio for monitors although most of the time I just use cans. (Headphones) . I also have a bass and small midi controller and keyboard.

Pretty amazing the technology we have these days. I laid the bassline in this at the Pilot in Rapid City and the drums in the Loves in CO on 70. I sent it out to my Guitarist and singer then back again for some tweaks and mixing. Pretty happy with it considering I recorded it in something the size of a walk in closet lol.

Dark Sea

for reference, a pic of the set in the truck.

Man, serious derailment there for a bit. How goes it Two Sides? Hopefully better news.

Been great for me. My back hurts far less often than working construction. I eat healthy and have not seen any weight gain. Although I have a high metabolism, rarely eat truck stop food and eat small amounts every couple hours.

Also, I'm very active when outside the truck and hustle when changing trailers and doing work. Far less hazardous than other industries I've been in, in many ways.

When I hired on with Knight, they do per diem as a default. I promptly said no. As mentioned above, the .2 cents is a rip off. Plus giving them capital to make money off of for a year is a big no.

In my case I qualified for exempt from witholding this year. If you anticipate a zero tax liability and or were entitled to a refund the previous year but didn't claim it you may file exempt. It's perfectly legal.

Now, if it turns out you do have a tax liability, you are of course responsible for it. But the thing is, when a person pays taxes, they don't make any money off the lost revenue. The concept that you getting a refund is somehow making money is insane. It means that you over paid, the government took your money, made money off it and then gave you back some of the money that was yours to begin with.

It's actually more of a financial gain to save aside enough money to cover your taxes, use that capital to make money while you have it set aside and then pay your taxes at years end. I'm not about to give the government and or a private company my hard earned money for them to profit off of.

If I recall, your in the springs? I commuted between the springs and Denver, it about 2 hours real time, and then about 2 hours through Denver traffic to Henderson and that's on good weather days. It's worse in the winter. I'd rather drive in Dallas traffic than Denver, that's how bad it is.

Love the reference to country boy can survive.

I don't know. I have a dream, maybe that's the fools gold of being new in that we all think we will reinvent the wheel, and I'm just a dreamer. But I think there's a better way than the status quo.

I moved south for that reason, perhaps I just have an obsession with comfort. But again, I question the mindset that we blindly suffer the weather and cold because it's just how it is. Is it? Is there a better way?

There's an old saying "you don't have to shovel heat"

In a nutshell, I just want to live and work primarily south. I think it's possible, but maybe not. Perhaps I sound crazy. But I'm not demanding it, I don't think I'm entitled to it, rather I just think it's possible with the understanding that there's a tradeoff for everything. And in the meantime there's still the issue of hometime that isn't working too well right now.

I probably sound like Im nuts, but I stayed doing something that I was unhappy doing for a long time, i think it's possible to do what I like to do, where I like to do it. One can hope anyway.