Profile For The Pelican

Y'all are awesome. All great advice. Thanks.

PS. Backing is hard! LOL

Of course it's only my first week

Hello all,

I'm currently in CDL school. The pre trip inspection test has me a bit nervous. That's a lot to remember!

Any tips for studying it? What did you do to learn it and memorize it in school?

Thanks for any help in advance!

Pelican

Is it still a little device you have to install or does it come into your truck automatically after you subscribe?

I think humans are naturally more inclined to pipe up if they're ****ed off or disgruntled than if they are ecstatic and happy.

Reviews for everything, from Amazon products to trucking companies, tend to skew negative imo

Thanks for posting. Helps a guy entering the field get an idea of what people make.

Who is responsible for reimbursing the SAP for services rendered?

My mother, father, and great grandfather were all car haulers.

You'll be driving cars onto the trailers, making sure you do so safely and without damaging the vehicle.

Space can be extremely tight, as you may pull a car up next to a beam on a trailer so you only have a few inches to open the door. So have to contort and twist your way out the door, almost crawling upward because there's hardly any room between the door and the trailer. So you have to be physically agile... especially when you start pulling cars onto the second level. Don't wanna lose your step and fall to the ground below! The ledge on the second level to move around is rather narrow. Gotta hang onto the cars.

A basic understanding of math is helpful, since different cars weigh different things and you may end up having to play a version of car Tetris in order to get them on the axles right. If not you'll overload an axle/tandem and DOT could eat your lunch.

From what I understand, car haulers make pretty good money compared to other types of truckers.

I'm not a car hauler, so I'm not an expert, however I did grow up talking to car haulers and watching them work.

When I get my CDL, I think I'll stick to dry van. I don't like heights and that upper deck on car haulers concerns me 😂

Awesome advice about the Rand McNally Atlas. I'm actually studying the High Road program right now. I don't think I've gotten to the section about tandems yet.

Here is the Trucking truth High Road training section on trailer axles:

Tandems

As far as Kingpin laws by state, every driver should have the Rand McNally Atlas which has a very good chart section telling you the Kingpin laws for each state.

Something I'm quickly realizing about this profession is how knowledgeable you have to be about the varying laws from state to state. Seems like a complex mish mash of laws...gosh. Good explanation, though.

You can normally adjust the trailer axles forward or rearward to adjust the weight that the trailer footprint is applying to the roadway. However, some states have limitations on lengths of the overall unit. Think of this as a wheelbase of the trailer. If either of these limits are exceeded, the load will need to be adjusted, or a portion removed.

A driver may get loaded in WV, but the final delivery is CA, so these weight and lengths must be taken into account BY THE DRIVER before departing. Getting to the NV/CA border is not the time to realize that CA has a maximum length of only 40 feet, whereas WV has no limits. That's not the time to call dispatch or finally research it in your trucker's atlas.

Out of curiosity, what needs to be done when you find out your tandem is overweight?

Today I picked up a load at the Tyson plant northeast of Amarillo, headed east on I40 towards the Texas/Oklahoma state line. The load is heavy, over 43,000 pounds, so I definitely needed to weigh it before I reached the state weigh stations in Texas and then again just after crossing into Oklahoma. No problem, I was going to weigh out at exit 96 on I40, at the Loves truck stop. But there isn’t a CAT scale there. Back on I40, eastbound, I didn’t find any scales (unless I missed one). Fortunately for me, both weigh stations were closed when I passed by. Finally weighed out at my first fuel stop, exit 20 in Sayre, OK. I was 34,900 lbs. on my trailer tandems. Easy adjustment. But I guess next time I have a pickup at Tyson, I’ll have to backtrack to Amarillo and hit a CAT scale there.

Has anybody else had a similar experience? Did I miss a CAT scale along the way? Lots of Prime trucks at Tyson. Maybe one of the Prime drivers has a comment? Sure made me nervous about getting an overweight citation.