Comments By PPGER

Yeah, my trainer chided me for doing the speed limit in CA too. He said we weren't making any time and were going to miss our appointment. He was regularly do 62-63 in CA. I eventually upped it up to 58 in CA, but did not feel comfortable going any faster than that.

To me it is not worth the risk to speed. My truck tops out at 63, so in most states I can't speed anyway. In the 55 mph states, I usually set the cruise to 58. I don't like to go more than 3 over.

Sorry, haven't been keeping this updated.

Anyway, I've been on my own since December 26th. I have been home about 5 days since them (3 and 2). I am currently at our Denver terminal for the weekend. I just finished a load to Cheyenne WY. Since my son lives in Denver, I asked to spend the weekend here and go back out on Monday. Thankfully, they accomodated me.

Since starting solo driving on Dec. 26th, I have driven about 8500 miles. No complaints at all about Knight. Sometimes, they do want me to take a load that is physically impossible to deliver. That is frustrating. But I tell the dispatcher why I can't take it and they take it off. As a matter of fact, this weekend they wanted to give me a load from Ft Collins, pick up on Friday and deliver to AZ on Saturday. Duh. That's impossible.

I have gotten really burned out of delivering to the LA area. Traffic is a mess. They often want me to pick up a live load from AZ and deliver to Long Beach or the LA area all in the same day. I am not going to take loads like that anymore because there are not enough hours to get it done in one day. If it was drop and hook, it'd be one thing, but live loads just take too long. I recently had one where I had to get live loaded in Surprise AZ. So, go on duty, find a trailer, inspect it, and drive to Surprise -- that's 1.5 hours. Then wait 2 hours to get loaded. Eight hours to get to the consignee in Long Beach. Another three hours to get unloaded and your 14 is up.

I was really glad to get this load to Cheyenne and get out of LA for a change. I lucked out with not having any snow coming up here, but I don't think I'll drive I-70 from Grand Junction to Denver in the dark again -- too much stress for this newbie!

It has certainly been a learning experience. My biggest frustration is the ridiculous wait times to get loaded or unloaded as some places.

I have met some very helpful veteran truckers and I appreciate their advice and helping me out these past few weeks.

Like I said, I have no compliants about Knight. They have treated me very well so far -- I couldn't believe it either when I was assigned a practically new 2016 Freightliner right out of school. Luck of the draw I guess.

I was delayed to find the Spam museum in South Dakota!

Sorry for the delay in postings. It has been an intense few weeks. On Tuesday I will have of four weeks of training -- although we spent four days off over thanksgiving. I think I will test for my own truck sometime this week - I think on Friday. I am not worried about the written test, road test, or pre-trip inspection, but backing is still giving me a hard time. It's almost like I have a mental block or something. My trainer has said a couple of times that I'm overthinking it and he is right. I need to let the truck keep rolling so I can see what my steering inputs are doing. But sometimes I'm so paranoid about hitting something something that I get out and look too much and he said that you can't back up a few feet at at time and GOAL that way. He says that I should be backing up on my own by now, and I should, but at every truck stop or dock, he continues to direct me and not really give me a chance to do it on my own. At one of our drop yards, he said that he was not going to tell me what to do, but just make sure I didn't hit anything, and I did okay, so I am hoping that I will be able to do okay when I test out for my own solo truck. But, he sure does make it look easy. I try to remind myself that he's been doing it over 20 years...

I have lost track of how many miles we have put on. Donner Pass was certainly interesting. El Cajon pass. The Grapevine. Twin Falls, Denver, Boise, Patterson, Salt Lake City, El Paso. I was looking at weather.com and it certainly looks like we will get into some snow when we go back out. I am currently at home for a day while the truck is getting once of its 10K services.

Here's my first week in training:

Tuesday, 11-17: We picked up a load in PHX to El Paso. My trainer drove from Phoenix to Lordington where we stopped for the night.

Wed, 11-18: The next morning I drove to El Paso and we dropped the load of batteries from Auto Zone. Then I drove to St Theresa NM and we picked up a load of cardboard to Salt Lake City. I drove part way to SLT. That day I drove 205 miles, 4:23 hours.

Thu, 11-19: I drove another 477 miles, 8:35 hours, to SLT. My trainer drove the rest of the way. We dropped the trailer at the terminal.

Fri, 11-20: Got a late morning dispatch to Delta, UT to pick up a load of hay to Tipton, CA. Drove 271 miles, 5:06 hours.

Sat, 11-21: Drove 303 miles 5:55 hours to Tipton, CA and dropped the trailer at the terminal.

Sun, 11-22: Drove 245 miles, 5:10 hours to San Bernadino to pick up the cursed load from Amazon. My clock was out so my trainer drove the load on into Phoenix where we dropped it at the terminal.

Mon, 11-23: We picked up a load of cotton in Phoenix to San Bernadino. I drove 372 miles, 7:12 hours.

Tues, 11-24: We picked up a load in Fontana, CA to Henderson, CO. Drove 565 miles, 9:35 hours.

Wed, 11-25: Picked up a load in Henderson, CO back to Fontana, Drove 550 miles.

Thur, 11-26: Picked up a load in Ontario, CA to Phoenix. Drove from Ontario to Phoenix.

I think I've driven just under 3000 miles from Wed - Thurs.

We got back to the Phoenix terminal Thanksgiving afternoon. My trainer stayed there Friday, today, to get the truck into the shop for some new steer tires. We had planned to go back out on Monday morning, but he contacted me this afternoon and told me that the truck will not be ready until Tuesday morning. It should drive a lot better with the new tires! -- hopefully no more shaking on the front end. So at this point, I'm supposed to meet him at the terminal around 10 am Tuesday morning.

It has definitely been a learning experience. I am very happy with my trainer's knowledge and demeanor. Very glad that he has over 20 years experience and not only the six month minimum.

The mountain grades have not been too bad. Of course, without the awesome engine brake on the International it might be a different story. However, my trainer did tell me that I will be required to go down some grades without the engine brake so I know what to do if I get a truck without one or if it goes out on me. The most stressful part so far was getting caught in a snowstorm on I-70 in Utah on Wednesday. I'm used to driving in snow so that didn't bother me, but not being able to see did! The snow was blowing sideways across the highway and that was really cutting visibility down. But then the wiper blades started icing up and not clearing the windshield and then it got really tense. I had to kind of hunch down and look through the lower part of the windshield where it was clear to see. We eased along until we got to a rest area where we were able to knock the ice off the wipers and get the windshield heated up really good with the defroster. Then we could see and drove another hour in the snow until we got to a lower elevation and drove out of it. Of course, the heavy holiday traffic made it all more fun. I am sure glad I had my trainer with me in all that and didn't have to do that all alone my first time.

I'm looking forward to starting up again next Tuesday!

Amazing that it took so long to get your amazon load... heck I worked for the DC for amazon in the San Antonio area last winter (seasonal employee) and they put me on loading dock a few times to many... work ya real hard too... took maybe 2 hours on avg to fill a trailer... closer to 1 hour on a busy day closer to Christmas. I wouldn't want to unload one though... they told us to stack the boxes tetris style but that only works for the first 15 min of loading... next thing you know you have boxes that don't fit in your tetris pattern or they're all the same size and to do tetris you leave huge gaps making weak spots which is the whole reason for tetris stacking... yeah after about 3 rows down we just started stacking boxes till the trailer was full. sup would come, close it up and lock tag or whatever those tamper seals are called and unhook the trailer so it could go and another would take it's place very shortly after.

gosh i hated that job when they put me on loading dock... any other task they had for me no problem but loading dock i hated.

I wasn't the only one. They had numerous drivers stacked up waiting to live load. The Amazon worker told me that there was a "virtual delay" -- whatever that is. Our appointment was at 1 p.m. I kept checking back. At 7:45 p.m., I was told it'd be ready at 9 p.m. He said it was loaded and all he had to do was verify the load online. I went back at 9 and 9:30, still not ready. Disgusted, I went to the truck and took a nap. I decided they could just come and get me when it was ready. They finally came and knocked on our truck around 10:00 and told me it was ready. We finally got to the window and they signed the load out at 10:30 p.m. -- 9.5 hours after we were scheduled to be loaded. We didn't get out of the lot until about 11 p.m. It was ridiculous. Another driver that had an appointment at 1 p.m. didn't get to back up to the dock until we pulled out around 10:45 p.m.

No such thing, so, no.

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Thanks for starting it Errol.

Okay, here goes:

I joined the Air Force right out of high school. I was a telecommunications center supervisor (Cobra Ball, Burning Star anyone? KG-13?) Got out of the Air Force after 5.5 years. (Followed by about 12 years in the AF Reserves). Went to Bible College in Missouri and got my B.A. Worked as a bi-vocational pastor for about 4 years while earning my living doing sign painting and then IT. After bi-vocational pastoring for about four years, I pastored a church full time in Wisconsin for seven years. For six of those years I also ran a martial arts club in the church basement (LOL - that was upsetting to some of the elders -- I told them it was a method of outreach to the youth of the area, which it was). After pastoring full time for seven years, I got burned out and ended up taking a job as the national chairman of publications (and network administrator) for the American Taekwondo Association in Little Rock for a couple of years.

After that I went back to Wisconsin and was an executive assistant for the Berean Bible Society and an instructor at the Berean Bible Institutute. While there I became a reserve police officer, figuring that would get my desire to be a LEO out of my system. But it only made it worse and I eventually became a full-time police officer for 12 years. During that time I got my Masters in Education and taught criminology and criminal justice courses at Marian University. We had decided to retire to Arizona so we started looking for a retirement home out there. Then my wife got a job offer in Phoenix so I took an early retirement from the PD and moved to AZ. I didn't do anything for about six months out in AZ but then took a part time job as Compliance Inspector for the HOA.

Then I, like so many of you, decided to "go for it" and try something that I've always wanted to do -- drive a big rig.

So for now, I am into week 2 of my on the road training. I have driven about 3,000 miles in eight days. I am blessed to have an excellent instructor. He has been driving over 20 years and really knows his stuff plus we get along well. Knight allows a person to be an instructor with only six months experience -- that is crazy. To me, that is like the blind leading the blind. I am very happy that I did not get someone with such little experience as my instructor.

On Wednesday, I was driving from CO to CA and got caught in a snowstorm on I-70 in Utah. So, I got to have mountain grades AND winter driving AND heavy Thanksgiving holiday traffic ALL AT ONCE! I have driven in snow before (lived in Alaska and Wisconin before) so that didn't bother me, but the almost white-out conditions from the blowing snow and the obstructed windshield from the iced up wipers was pretty stressful. I peeked down through the lower half of the windshield where the wipers actually worked a little and managed to slowly drive to a rest stop where I was able to pull over and clear the wipers and windshield. I was thankful that I didn't have to face that for the first time alone.

Finally got the Amazon load. My trainer drove it into Phoenix since my clock was up. From Phoenix, picked up a load of cotton to take to Bakersfield. Got diverted to take a high priority load from Ontario, CA to Henderson, CO. So we dropped the cotton load off at the yard and are headed to CO.

Ugh. Been sitting at the Amazon DC in San Bernardino for over seven hours waiting to get loaded. Now I'm over my 14....