Comments By guyjax(Guy Hodges)

There might be hope. You will need to send out as many applications as you can. Small and large carriers. You might get something. It might not be what you like be it will get you through till February anyway. Truthfully speaking though it will be very hard to find a carrier willing to take you. Nothing against you personally but their insurance company dictates who they can hire. And most company websites state that all suspensions must be at least a year old.

Wow....Great to hear things are going so well for you. Im 10 weeks into Solo with Swift. I love your attitude. That seems to be the standard advice on TT. I am trying to follow all of the good advice in this forum. Keep up the good work!

To me its not advise. Its common sense. I hate not knowing stuff I need to know or having to change things at the last minute cause of something I did not know. I am just glad that I have a place that I can come to and express my thoughts on topics related to trucking and some people may just happen to learn something from it.

This has came up in the last hour so I thought I would put it out there for some of the new people here that may not have thought this deeply into trucking.

My spouse went in for a check at the doctor. Found what the doctor thought were irregular heart best rhythms. Going to emergency room to get an EKG done and possible an MRI done. No need to panic. At least not yet. There is a history of heart issue including having 3 stints put in last February.

Here is the tough part. Today is my last day on home time. Because I work at a good company (Tyson) I also have our only form of insurance which I have to keep valid due to the above mentioned issues. I have called my DM and let him know I may need a few extra days at the house because of this which should be no problem. Should be enough time to tell if anything will happen because of this hospital visit.

The hard part will be having to leave to go back to work in a few days to keep income coming in and to keep insurance to cover all cost. I would love to stay home and offer all the support i can but I have to look at the practical side of things. And this is one of the hard decisions you might have to making while being a driver....

Update.... Good news so far. While writing this post I got a call telling me that the EKG readings and blood pressure test at the hospital are good. Waiting on the blood test results right now. Frankly this sucks the uncertainty of "What may happen" and having to choose between what you want to do verses what you need to do.

Guy, I am on day 3 of driver training with Tyson. I put your name down as a referal so as long as I make the cut you should get a little bonus in 8 weeks.

Wish me luck!

Cool but really was not needed. I hope everything works out for you in training. Make sure you ask a lot of questions. Nothing worse then having doubts when you have to making an important decision and making the wrong one due to inexperience.

Yes they have a strict maintenance program. If its broke it gets fixed. Simple as that. Been with them a year and I have very little to complain about.

Its been awhile since I have browsed the forums. Just a few words updating for those that might have an interest in knowing though not sure why anyone would since I live a rather boring life.

Still working at Tyson and making pretty descent. Thought about posting pics of my pay stubs that come to the house, even though I have direct deposit, but that would just be in poor taste and bragging a bit. Benefits are great. Insurance is pretty awesome

Just to summarize Tyson and my time there(been there a year) 12k to 14k miles a month. That'[s an average of 3k to 3.5k miles a week at .43 cpm. Absolutely no restarts or very few at all. Mostly we run on Recapped hours. Lots of night time driving. Wait time ,when there is any, is paid at $100 per 18 hours of waiting which would only happen during holidays or plant break downs.

I mainly do plant to plant runs which works out great since we always have parking at our own plants. Every once in a while I will take a load to a Walmart or other DC locations which have a wait time of 2 to 4 hours.

Got a new truck back in February and already have 79000 miles on it but still new compared to other trucks on the road. Maintenance on the trucks are top notch. Have to be since Tyson leases all their trucks and have to follow a strict lease agreement on the trucks. At the Corporate terminal ,Springdale,AR , they have company cars available for drivers to run into town to do errands while at the yard. Home time is given on time according to the dates you request and they make sure you get it on those dates.

Funny thing happened right before home time this week. Now granted I know this may only apply to me and my DM and the relationship I have built up over the last year with him but this passed Monday I had to take a DOT physical for a med card again and all the company cars were already signed out and I needed to go since I had an appointment at 8 am. My DM throw me his keys to his personal vehicle and allowed me to use it to get the DOT exam done. Surprised the heck out of me. Perhaps that is just a product of being a good driver and doing a good job and building trust with a company.

Anyway this is just and update and not a whole lot has changed in the last year.

A while ago I posted that I was building an add on section to the back of my house and since I don't want to find that post I will just post the finished photos here. For those that want to see the construction photos can look through my pics.

The view out my back door. Love looking at the lake whenever I can.

Three different veiws of the new room.

Here is something to consider and has not been mentioned. More people have this than are willing to admit.

Night Blindness

I use keeptruckin's for personal reference but both companies I have done orientation with said if their e log system goes down you must use a paperlog... I plan to have a friendly chat with safety to see if I can convince them otherwise. There's just no need to use paperlogs anymore if you have all these other options. move on from the stone age. If you try to tell me my phone could break too... well guess what my pen could run out of ink... things can happen on any of the options.

There was another one I used but it was way way complicated to edit your logs (like if you make a mistake). keep truckin is pretty simple.

Its not your company that you have to convince. Since it is a federal law that says you must use paper logs as a backup to your Elogs its the federal government you have to convince. Good luck with that.

Hey guyJax I was wondering where you were hiding, what you up to now

Since we have a bunch of people on here that give great advice and are now experienced enough to get said great advice there is hardly any time I need to jump in and say "Yeah what he said" so I mostly read now.

I am only replying to this cause I want to be Captain Obvious.

All the things that were stated as a concern about the dash cam are a "Cause I feel I want to be outraged for nothing" reason.

The cam is located on the dash/windshield area of the truck. The reasons of being naked, changing clothes, sleeping or basic off-duty/sleeper berth time are all taken care of easily enough.

When your stopped and want your privacy you put up a curtain to Blick the view from the windshield. Since the cam is in that area the curtains block the cam from viewing ANYTHING in the cab from being seen by the cam. Problem solved.