Profile For Zen Joker

Tony from Chicago with his fancy boat and his buddy go up north to this river well known for walleye fishing. As night falls they burn down the river, get set up, and Tony starts beaming this insanely bright light into the river looking for schools of walleye near the sandbar.

Tony hears a local across the river yell "Hey man could you please kill the light?" Tony, replies "Not really buddy we came up here to fish walleye deal with it!" The local replies "We really don't appreciate you yuppies from the city bothering us-ins with your fancy boat, this is a quiet river!" Tony snaps back "Well, you and your us-ins can kiss my *** it's a public waterway." Tony's friend laughs as the local across the river says "Hey city slicker it sounds like you need an attitude adjustment! Why don't you get off at the shore and run a 1/2 mile down to the bridge and we'll settle this!"

Tony and his friend start laughing (Tony has a black belt in Jiu Jitsu) and shouts out "You got it hillbilly it's your funeral!" The local on the shore yells back "The name is Clarence NOT hillbilly!" Tony laughs back as he steps on the shore and yaps back "Whatever you say Clarence! You just made a HUGE mistake!!"

A few minutes go past as Tony's friend anxiously awaits his return from the bridge. Another minute passes and Tony looking scared as all get up and sweating, says "Let's get off this river!!" His friend asks "So what happened did you cripple this guy when you met him at the bridge!?!? Throw him over the side!?!? What happened!!?

Tony hits the throttle and goes down river looks back and says to his friend "Nothing happened back there! Clarence's name was on my side of the bridge in black letters!" His friend says "Yeah...and???". Tony snaps back "AND.....I can't choke out a guy that's thirteen and half feet tall!!"

More than likely you may need 6 months Class B with a clean record and a good letter of explanation to potential employers that SINCERELY address 3 things:

1) What happened (the plain truth)

2) That you have assumed FULL and COMPLETE responsibility for these events.

3) What you have done personal development wise to avoid any future adverse events.

Best of Success.

Blessings to you and your family Steve!!

Hello Mark,

I am in year three of my career and I am a trainer. First, I have to agree with Nae Nae, if your dispatcher hasn't driven before, he is not credible on the subject of how to help drivers. The best fleet leaders/dispatchers are those with at least 150,000 miles or so as they have experienced the struggles and hardships drivers face out here. Granted while part of the problem in the industry is finding motivated and qualified individuals that work hard AND safely, while keeping their head about them. The 2nd issue is the limitations on funding to pay for training with profit margins in this industry being so thin. Not to rain on your parade but not sure how many carriers would pay for consulting when many won't pay their trainers what they probably should.

As far as what motivated me. I was in the mortgage industry for over 20 years and was an industry burnout using cannabis and alcohol to get through an industry that eats your soul. Living in a rural area, the only option I was qualified for was trucking to meet my families income needs. Many drivers come here out of necessity not because it was a first career choice. Many different backgrounds too. Military, teachers, felons, factory workers, construction workers, policemen, etc. All walks of life. For me I enjoy the job security and earnings potential though it takes a great toll on my family. Others like the idea of being given a job and being left alone. Others escaping "woke" corporate policies.

In other news, with Trump's latest E.O. on English requirements you would expect at some point that foreign drivers without domicile CDL's will decline in the U.S. With that, if Canadian Freight Brokers lose some of their grip on the "low ball" freight rates, in theory, the major carriers employing domestic drivers should see some relief from the recent rough years that have been noted. That would be my layman's prediction.

On another note, it can depend HEAVILY on what your carrier hauls as it's primary freight base. If you are hauling consumer staples (food, paper products, etc) safe and top performing drivers should have no problem getting miles.

Here is a piece of advice. Everywhere you go, be a "brand ambassador" for your carrier. Provide exceptional service to all your customers. If you get a good compliment for the job you did, tell the shipper or consignee you'd love to do business with them again, and then have someone at your carrier's business development follow up with the customer to see if they get that lane as a regular route. Sound like b.s.? I literally did exactly this in January. Went to my regular consignee in North Carolina and got into a discussion about the empty containers they had for the product I brought every week and they said it goes right back to the facility that I pick up my load from an hour from my house! Handed that over to our director of business development and BOOM now we have that backhaul and every week now I get 2300 miles with one stop that I can do in 4 days and either spend 3 days at home or run freight all day on day 5 for around 2700-2800 miles a week. The point is, look for opportunities on your routes and report them back to your office. Even if something doesn't pan out, it shows your carrier you are being proactive for growth and THAT makes you a more valuable driver as long as you are running a safe and profitable truck.

You are better off running the close yellow/red light. Hard braking has a harsher impact on scoring. Hard braking at an intersection adds more weight to the incident. A red light violation (light changes red as you are going thru the intersection) is an event the scoring impact will lessen as you successfully stop at red lights moving forward to month's end. Any close red light violations can be reviewed by safety department and can be neutralized.

But i know drivers who are slamming on brakes as soon as light turns yellow. This resulted in a car slamming into one from behind. There are plwnty of instances of this type of thing.

We dont want to make legal U turns cause of the camera... then can wind up in really difficult areas to manuever because the camera decided the controlled, green arrow, extra space given for trucks was unsafe.

You can't chase the score without maintaining a very good following distance at all times, like 4 seconds plus. No hard braking, no hard turns, no running red lights, no blowing stop signs. These are all behaviors that make a driver safer by default. Just food for thought. Again it depends on how its set up. Hope it gets rolled out and tweaked to make sense for the drivers at the major carriers.

That's just it though, Driver-I wants to "Gamify Safety." Safety isn't a game. I don't want a driver to be "driving to the score" and ignoring the reality of what is going on around them in real time. I don't want them making decisions or not based on what will or will not trigger the camera.

I want decisions to be made split second by the driver. The person actually in the conditions at hand.

My carrier has had Netradyne since I started 2.5 years ago. I too had initial concerns, but here is the deal. One reality we have to face is that carriers will continue to invest in things that protects them from the thousands of ambulance chaser attorneys out there (look at all the billboards we pass for truck accident attorneys).

As far as the company "spying" on you all the time, slow down for a moment and ask yourself this question....do they have the staff and capacity to watch all drivers all the time? If you can't stand the idea of being on camera, then you have much bigger problems in the ever developing police state the world is becoming. Also, you can't yell privacy rights when you are operating their equipment. In the next 10-15 years the cameras will probably be in all highway tractors anyways.

I hope for the drivers most concerned in this thread, that their safety dept.'s gets the cameras and the software tweaked properly to reflect the driver's actual habits as it impacts their bonuses. The software can have its bugs that's for sure. I find the Driver I game quite fun, but I am a very odd duck.

Hope Knight, Prime and anyone else gets it set up fairly for the drivers.

The Atlas is also critical for auditing your GPS route. You can reference low clearances (bridges) and restricted routes to avoid going there in the first place and avoiding ending up somewhere you don't belong. NEVER blindly follow your GPS there is a 100% (yes it is 100%) guaranty the GPS will lead you somewhere you don't belong such as restricted routes, entering a facility into the employee parking area where you can't maneuver, etc.

Best of success to you!

thanks for the info..I start KLLM driving academy May 12 in Jackson,MS...do u still use atlas as well?

Yes, I have a subscription to it. I find it invaluable for locating off the wall truck stops and parking. I use it as a secondary gps. My primary is a garmin dezl otr500. New places final and initial mile as well as location satellite and streetview I use google maps for.