Profile For Brett Aquila

It is amazing to me that every once in a while there is someone like Rookie here who is so stubborn that there is no amount of counsel and advice that can change that. These people are carbon copies of each other, the similarities are striking.

I agree wholeheartedly, BK. There are distinct personality types that are easy to recognize. People within any group are often so similar you can't tell them apart in their writing. You can also predict with 95% accuracy the outcome of their endeavors before they even begin. People who know how to be successful in life can find success at almost anything. People who take the wrong approach get nowhere, no matter what they try to do.

I don't see a respect from majority of members here either

I'm sorry. If I knew you were also blind, I would have never recommended a career in trucking.

I'm going to go help the next guy. You have the information you need to turn this around, but at this point, you certainly don't have the will, the humility, the character, or the commitment to make it happen. Regardless, I wish you the best of luck in your next adventure, which does not look like it will be in this industry.

One of the key things I look for in a person is a strong desire to improve themselves and to become the best they can be. Looking back through your comments, I can't find a single time you asked us how you could get better as a driver or a person.

You blame, complain, and criticize incessantly, but never ask what you can do to make yourself better. That's how Schneider knew, and I know, that you have no chance at success in this industry with your attitude.

I've said my piece. You're not interested in making yourself better, nor are you interested in a genuine conversation. You just want to place blame on others and then recruit people to support your position. You won't find that here. We'll support your efforts to improve yourself and we'll help you find success in your career, but you will not find any success using your approach.

I'm censored here

Stop lashing out at us and talk to us with respect. This is a repeating pattern with you. You did it to the staff at Schneider, to the hotel staff, and now to us. Everyone is trying to give you the help and the opportunities you need to succeed, and yet you spit in their faces and then blame those same people for your lack of success. Truth is, you are your own worst enemy. I hope you can see it's time to change your tactics.

I've read through your comments here and some past comments you've made. To sum it up, you don't have the commitment or the people skills to make it in this industry, at least not right now. You don't have the will or the ambition to make this happen, and you're not putting in the work to make yourself the best you can be.

Most people can drive the truck, but very few people have what it takes to survive in this industry. You got your CDL, but when it came time to begin the real journey, you crumbled immediately. As soon as you faced challenging circumstances and personalities, it all fell apart. Well, the truth about trucking is simple; you'll face challenging circumstances and personalities all the time. You must learn to negotiate these challenges.

People will not bend to your demands, but if you're savvy, you might convince them to cooperate with you. That's the game in trucking. You have no authority over the people you deal with, so you must learn to convince them to work together with you so you can accomplish your goals. You haven't done that so far.

Friend, this industry is not for average people looking to put in an average day's effort. Trucking is for extraordinary people who will go to great lengths to get the job done.

You must also endure very challenging and risky conditions regularly. You've noticed that Phoenix has some dangerous areas. Do you know what other city has dangerous areas that you'll have to deal with? All of them. It's part of the job.

You didn't like the personalities of the staff at your company or at the hotel. In trucking, you must get along with people or at least have productive relationships. If you can't build productive relationships within your company or work together with the people you'll encounter during your travels, you won't get far.

I just don't think you want this badly enough, and here's how you will know. Ask yourself this: If they offered me a million dollars to get through Schneider's training and put in one year with the company, would I have handled everything the way I did?

The answer is obviously no. You would have successfully completed your training and went on to drive for Schneider for one year.

So the bottom line is simple.....you just don't want it badly enough. You will succeed in trucking when you're willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. As you're finding out, it's far more demanding than you expected. Unfortunately, this is the easy part. You haven't faced 1% of the challenges you'd face out there on the road, so I think you're lucky to discover that now.

So now what will you do? You know this is way harder than you had imagined, and you've already put yourself behind the eight ball by blowing your first opportunity. This will be even harder now. You have some tough choices to make. You enjoy traveling, but trucking is far more than just traveling. Trucking takes hard work, risk, and sacrifice. You'll have to decide if it's worth it to you or not.

Thank you for the work being put in. Much appreciate having a forum like this.

You're welcome! Very happy to do it!

there is no way to know whether or not any of those drivers had CBs and whether or not any of them were turned on, at least not without an extensive investigation. What you are referring to is conjecture based on an educated guess, not fact.

You're correct, Ryan. I can't prove who had a CB and who didn't. So I can not rule out the possibility that some of these drivers had CB radios, had them turned on, heard the warnings, but made the conscious decision to drive full speed into the wreck anyhow.

Should you have a CB or not? Absolutely. In my opinion, it's one of the most important safety items to have. Why? Check out this video. If these drivers would have had their CB on they would have known this was happening and they would have gotten stopped.

Would a GPS have helped them? No. Would their cell phone help? No. The Internet? No. Qualcomm? No.

Nothing but a CB could have allowed these drivers to alert each other as to what was happening.

I can't remember which one it was, but I know it was on I-85 in South Carolina. It's been almost 30 years, and I remember my first trip out with my trainer like it was yesterday. I remember my trainer letting my behind the wheel for the first time, my first truck stop, first meal, first night in the bunk, and even an accident we saw that first night. It was the most exciting time in my life to that point (I was 21 years old) and to this day the excitement I felt from that incredible adventure is still fresh.

That's why it's hard for me to understand some of the new drivers. They haven't even attended school yet, and they're already jaded. They hate the mega carriers; they think trucking is a scam; they have a long list of misconceptions about the industry, etc.

Man, when I started trucking, all I ever thought about was the adventure! I couldn't believe I was about to live on the road and drive a big rig for real! What a thrill! I never had an ounce of cynicism. I never wondered if I would get screwed by a company. I didn't even know it was a thing! I just wanted to live on the road and travel the country. I knew I would make four times what I was making at that time, and I was excited about that, but the real thrill was the adventure!

Sorry folks! I updated our photo gallery to a new design, which I'm slowly implementing across the website, and in the process, I inadvertently broke our photo uploads here in the forum and the photo galleries on our profile pages. I didn't even realize that had happened for a day or two.

Everything is working properly now. Photo uploads and the galleries are all working.

Anytime you see something not working with the website, just shoot me an email and use "hey stupid" in the subject and I'll know immediately I screwed up.

Thanks everyone.

I was fixing the photo upload system so I tested it with this picture I took of the moon rising.

Schneider hires on 100 new drivers a week knowing that the majority will quit, but its cheaper than giving good wages

Quick question here from a business owner. Why would I pay someone a high wage if they're brand new to trucking? I know they will not be productive for quite a while because they're just learning their trade. I know they're the riskiest drivers on the road, they're completely unproven, and there's a huge chance they'll quit soon, anyway.

Wouldn't it make more sense from a business standpoint to let the good ones prove themselves first and then pay them a good wage based on their level of productivity?

If I paid everyone good wages from day one, would I be able to afford consistent raises to keep my best drivers around, or would I lose many of them because I can't afford consistent raises?

I know in today's world they teach young people to expect rewards all the time just for breathing, but as a business owner, if you reward unproven and unproductive people, you'll take away any incentive they have to become more productive and you'll go broke in a month because you're overpaying their level of productivity.

You need productivity to survive, and brand new drivers can't produce at a high level. So in the beginning you earn less and work your way up the pay scale as you become more productive. I know that's probably a foreign concept to younger people, but they'll understand why it's so critical if they ever decide to run a business.

I hauled heavy equipment locally at one time, and a guy tried to get me to do that. He loaded his bulldozer on there and said, "Let's go!"

I said, "We'll chain it down first, and then we'll go."

He said we were only going like two miles.

I asked, "Ok, so if I get it there safely with no chains on it, what is my reward?"

There was no reward.

I said, "Well, that's not a worthwhile risk/reward ratio, so we'll chain it down this time. Next time, make it worth the risk, and I'll consider it!"

He just smiled.

People often have no concerns about talking you into doing something dangerous when they know they won't take the fall for it. Don't let anyone talk you into something when you already know better!

I wouldn’t believe anything a company told me when trying to bring me on board unless it’s in writing

That's right. Don't count on anything that isn't in writing. If it's that important to you, ask them to put it in writing. If they won't, then you know.

I don't mean to trash UPS because there's nothing wrong with them other than being a mega carrier

This thinking has been pervasive in the industry for decades. Large, successful carriers are no good even though they have:

• beautiful equipment
• a wide variety of opportunities
• a huge support staff
• nationwide services at the push of a button
• tons of money behind them
• contracts with the largest manufacturers in the country
• nearly infinite amounts of freight
• great pay and benefits

To many folks, the nation's most successful and elite carriers are no good. That always cracked me up. The small companies all want to be big companies, but they just haven't figured out how to operate at that level. So they struggle and bounce along the bottom, hoping to survive.

I think a lot of people struggled their entire lives with money and have developed an inherent mistrust and bitterness toward anyone who is highly successful. Anyone that has that much money must be terrible. They couldn't have earned it the old-fashioned way by outperforming their competition. They must have lied, cheated, and stolen to get it.

You see this even toward the very largest carriers. Way back in the day, Schneider and JB Hunt were the two biggies, and everyone detested them. Now it's Swift, and everyone detests them.

I spent the last 6 years of my OTR career with US Xpress, even though I could have had any job in the country. The mega carriers have the best of just about everything. I worked at my share of mom-n-pop companies over the years, which is how I discovered that the mega carriers are most often the best jobs you'll find out there.

Companies are going to want to know you understand your responsibility and what you have learned from this incident to give them confidence it won’t happen if they put you in their truck.

I just want to back up what PJ is saying here. This is a critical point. Take full responsibility for what happened. Do not blame the traffic light or the other driver or anything else.

Why?

First, those who spend all their time blaming, complaining, and criticizing don't learn. They keep making the same mistakes. Companies want to work with people who will listen and learn.

Second, life on the road is nothing but crazy obstacles all day, every day. If you run into someone because of an awkward traffic light or challenging roadway, you're going to run into things all the time in this business. That will not work.

Show you're the type that takes responsibility. Show remorse. Let them know you've learned from it and you're now far more vigilant. That approach will get you far more opportunities than playing the blame game.

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that we've extended the amount of time you'll remain logged in. By default it was set to 24 minutes. Now it's 60 minutes. So if you're composing a long message or you're using the High Road CDL Training Program and you spend a lot of time on one page, you'll have an hour before your session expires and you have to log in again.

I know some of you have composed long messages, hit 'send', and it never sent the message. That's because the session timed out while you were writing the message. Now you have a full hour before that would happen.

it was never about personal preferences, sleep cycles, availability, biological clocks, stamina, good/bad months, traffic, weather, or any other variable or variation you can think of

Why not? I want to talk about everything that matters in the real world of time management, and all those things matter.

Sure, we can have a purely mathematical discussion that only targets one isolated aspect of time management, but that has limited value and will not give people the information they need to make good choices in the real world.

I'm a practical guy who strives to understand the big picture because we live in a complex world of interconnected variables. I would like people to understand there is a large variety of factors that go into time management. In fact, I burned out early in my career and spent several months away from trucking because I pushed myself to the max all the time.

If we refuse to talk about sleep cycles, dispatch, burnout, traffic, or any other variables, we may give people the wrong impression. They may leave this discussion thinking they must run resets because that will give them maximum productivity. That takeaway may lead them to make the same mistakes I made early in my career. That would be a catastrophic failure on our part as mentors.

So it's nice to cover one variable in great detail, and we have. We have established that running resets will give you the maximum time available if we take nothing else into consideration. If that's all you want to talk about, we're cool with that. We appreciate the contribution. But I'm not satisfied with a discussion of such limited value. I want to take that one variable and examine what happens when you try to apply it in the real world.

That being said, I would appreciate it if you guys would stop discouraging people from talking about other factors or sharing their experiences. I don't want this thread to die, and I don't want to limit the discussion to one tiny factor. There are, in fact, much more important factors to consider when managing your time, and I'd love for people to understand that.

But since this thread just does not seem to die

Please explain to us why you want this thread to die. I was just saying this morning that this is one of the most informative and interesting threads we've had in a long time, and that's saying a lot! Everyone is learning a lot and enjoying it immensely. It has also allowed a lot of highly experienced and successful drivers to share their methods of time management, which is critical to making great money in this industry.

I don't understand why you'd want it to die?

Well, passed pcr test

Who made you take that? I'm supposed to fly next month, but only within the U.S.