Comments By Davy A.

If it helps, my instructors had me count while looking at the tandems before turning the wheel. Also, be mindful of not cranking the wheel, slow controlled arc.

I spoke with my old TM from there not long ago, she provided me with the average gross for the last few months for the L/Os. Running the costs, no matter what type of financing I ran, even buying a truck outright and then amatorizing the costs, the most I could see was a possibility of a few hundred bucks more under ideal situations on a great week. Just not worth the risk.

I know you and I both owned businesses and I felt the margins were tough enough in that, they're razor thin in this and the contingency is far greater.

Definitely gave me some gratitude for where I'm at, I've gotten very comfortable with being an employee.

While waiting at the loves, I ended up somewhat cornered between myself, another company driver and a lease op. I'm not very talkative and usually steer away from other drivers because they like to do things like talk.

They were talking, and I finally asked the lease op what he typically netted. He honestly replied after all was said and done, 60 to 65k pre tax. Obviously his hope was that as soon as he owned the truck, that would go up.

He asked both of us what we net, two different companies but similar. We both replied low 6 figures, 100 to 105k pre tax.

I asked him what he expected to make after he owned the truck, he was fairly realistic as stated, not really any more than you two guys.

Just some food for thought, at least he was honest and knew enough to know the difference between revenue (gross) and profit (net).

It can be done, but with a failure rate of 97 percent, the odds of winning the lottery are slightly better. Unless there was overriding reasons to do it for scheduling or personal reasons, do the risks justify the rewards.

Why are you looking for another job at 6 months experience? If you've followed the best recommended practices, you would be working at a carrier that you got your CDL from and either contracted for longer than 6 months and or wouldn't be leaving for at least another 6 months.

Logic would dictate that you probably didn't leave on a voluntary basis, meaning that you have issues that are preventing you from being hired.

There's still a lot of job offers out there to well qualified candidates. But it's very bleak if you're not well qualified, meaning a great record, no incidents, no accidents and solid work history.

Is there an option of returning/Staying with your present employer?

What issues do you have on your end and how can you remedy them?

Law of thermodynamics. The added weight for charging equipment and battery storage will offset the energy recuperated.

One thing that I think would be very useful is small electric wheel motors, retrofitted to existing trailers as well as drive axles. They could be electronically linked to the Jake brake and traction control so that using dynamic braking you could in theroy apply even braking force to all wheels maintaining traction and thus eliminate the issue of using Jake's in adverse conditions where they'reapplying braking force to only one axle. The other useful benefit would be during initial take off and hills that would assist in gaining velocity where the most fuel is consumed. Basically a hybrid system that takes from train engineering as well.

Even Musk has said that we're capped at battery capacity relational to weight utilizing existing materials that we know of on this planet.

ICE powered vehicles continue to become more and more efficient and powerful. Eventually I'd expect electro magnetic propulsion, nitrogen based fuels and bio fuels particularly in regards to freight hauling.

They have been successfully doing continuous production biodesiel using centrifuges for a while now. In the early days of biodeseil, it was only batch made like whiskey. Our existing deisel motors can easily be retrofitted to accept B100 fuel, it's changing the ECU, fuel lines and seals.

The biggest hangup is that the oil and gas producers are vested in their current systems, the coat to switch wouldn't benefit them compared to the cost of extraction and refinement using existingmeans many of which are decades old. So they lobby and buy out to keep it as is.

Without having at least general cities on pick up n destination it's hard to day. But if your route involves going over Snoqualmie, that means Seattle area to south eastern Oregon. That's more than a 6 hour trip. Not sure where you're getting your calculations from. But considering the weather and your comfort/experience level, consider that your more likely to average 40 mph, 6 hours is 240 miles.

In general, without checking specific weather, Snoqualmie is a low elevation pass, it gets a lot of wet heavy snow but it also melts quickly.

I usually don't take 26 because it's tight, has a lot of elevation changes and you make better time going down 97. In either case, you're average speed is going to be much slower than tsking interstates. 97 has a lot of towns, curves and a lot of it is two lane. Conditions change rapidly and US highways get treated after interstates. They don't have a high of priority.

Good that you're trip planning, here's some tools I use.

Where you're hauling to and from?

HOS, on all clocks?

Weight?

Weather on the routes?

Adjust average speed for the above. How many miles based on conditions will you get each day?

Set stop points, break points and ETA?

Try Driveweather app. It's easy to use, it's based off NOAA.

Also Ventuski app, windy app, and SafetravelUSA which houses all 511 apps for road conditions. Also monitor your NOAA all hazards radio constantly to keep updated on changes as they occur.

Once you have an idea of how long it's going to take you, you can give that info to your dispatcher so they can make adjustments.

For the purpose of passing the test, I used the tactic of being wide a bit. Go straight until your shoulder is even with the curb or line of the street you're turning on to.

As an experienced driver as well, I can't stand them. In fact it was one of my criteria foe choosing the company I did. We have very little nanny state equipment and what there is can be turned off. We have no cameras, in or out and I will not work for a company that uses driver facing cams.

The adaptive cruise can be useful, but it's so faulty that it's totally unreliable. The AI algorithms on the rest of it is just plain garbage. The crash mitigation systems actually cause more harm than they prevent. Including the now infamous case against Bendix Wingman and Honda after their systems false deployed full braking, shooting the vehicle into oncoming traffic as a result and killing 4 occupants.

In general companies that use the so called "driver aids" do so to reduce driver pay in the form of a barrier to pay out bonuses. It's a manipulation of their intended purposes, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The audible coaching is downright annoying, a safety hazard, and results in most of us muting our tablets.

If you want safer drivers, pay trainers more, develop a standardized cariculum of training and development of physical motorskills training with objective milestones, pay drivers more and enforce existing laws in regards to understanding English and immigration policies, B1 visas and stem the flow of said drivers from Canada and Mexico on reciprocal licenses.

Knight, and a few others absolutely do not team train. The trainer is in the passenger seat the entire time. After your shift, the trainer may drive a few hours, but generally not.

Their training peroid is 2 to 4 weeks depending on if you take their top gun class. They will take people with an existing cdl but no experience on a case by case basis, but I wouldn't expect it. Depends on how stale your cdl is.