Comments By Daniel W.

Well it took some poking around, but I will finally be going home tomorrow. It kind of irked my nerves a bit when I was assigned a load that was being dropped 3 hours from home, I just assumed that was the load to get me home. So I asked, and the response I got was "you don't have home time in the system". Ok maybe not then. I was the informed I have to drive an hour closer to home to attend orientation. Ok surely after that I can go home lol. So I ask this morning and got the same response along with "you needed to request home time". Whoa wait a minute!! So when we talked last Friday and you told me I could probably go home this coming weekend after attending orientation and getting loads to get me from Dallas to the east coast was a waste of air?!?! I couldn't request time off because I didn't know when I could go home lol. Needless to say I'm going home tomorrow and return to work Wednesday. I was hoping for a bit more home time considering I've been away for 8 weeks now, but I'll take what I can get.

They do both urine and hair. Hair will soon be part of DOT tests. Supposedly congress passed something in December of 2015 that gives DOT a year to come up with guidelines to then be able to accept it.

I don't know if I'm running with you guys, more like jogging, but I'm trying my damnedest to keep up lol. I'm crashing at a tiny lil cramped rest area on I155 east bound (west side of Tennessee). Just hope the rig stays intact and that I can get out in the AM. I made myself a bit wider and shorter by parking with a kink otherwise I'm sure there would be issues. Hopefully that saves the front end and gives me space to escape lol

So far on my own is going well. Just got done driving for the day. I made it to Tennessee and I'm about 15 minutes away from the drop for tomorrow morning (I've earned a couple extra hours off duty lol). Then it looks like I'll be heading to Georgia. I've been getting ok miles, could be better I think, but it's better than none. I'll still be making more than I did for training and I was doing more work then, so that's a plus. I must say it's kinda strange being out in this big ol country by myself. I get a lil lonely at times, but at other times I like the solitude. I think more than anything, I'm just looking forward to going home to spend some time with family. It's been a while, but soon enough I'll be home and this trucking gig will have some much needed routine.

It's a 680 manual, and I really like it. Still trying to get used to it after coming off the freight liner. It is roomy!! I was surprised how much more spacious it seems compared to the freight liner. My downshifting sucks in this KW for some reason lol. But I'll get a grip on that soon enough now that I've finally got a load going somewhere. I ended up bouncing back and forth between Dallas and forth worth a couple times yesterday. But now I finally get to leave Texas. My load now is heading up to Illinois 😊 Then I'm preassigned to go down to Tennessee after that. Bring on the miles!! I just hope they don't hold this current load being late against me. Not my fault they ran my clock out yesterday. Supposedly this account pays 36 cpm, but a late load drops it to 33 cpm for the week 😒 We shall see how this pans out in the next few days.

Thank you all!! I was assigned my truck yesterday but couldn't use it just yet. By the time it was assigned I couldn't get ahold of my fleet manager. But I'm in it now waiting for a load and figure out the reefer business. They gave me either a 2013/14 KW T680. It's taking me a while to learn this rig, but overall I like it. I would include a pic but it doesn't seem like I can via my phone.

I do have some discrepancies at this point though. I got off my trainers truck with 40 hours left of training while he had a load going to Florida. Now all I did for training was dry van, so I have no experience with reefers. It turns out there is an orientation for reefers on this dedicated Perdue account, but I have to get to the east coast. Well I could've been a lot closer if I was dropped in Florida vs Texas. Now I've got to be coached over the phone (I guess) hauling reefers until I can attend orientation. Now to make things simpler why couldn't I do a couple dry van loads to get me where I need to be? None of this really makes sense. And it turns out I'll be out for at least another week until I get to go home. I will have been out 8 weeks away from home, to receive around 5 days of home time. I wasn't too thrilled about that either. But oh well what can I do. At least I'm on my own and learning new things and hopefully I'll start moving to see what how the pay looks.

I woke up to find out I am still being dropped off in Dallas 😆 I'm about 5 hours away. I'm so excited to see what I get!!

Thanks! I'll be sure to share what I get. Hopefully everything goes as planned. As of now I'm not quite sure what's going on. We had a JT load going to Fort Worth TX and then I was supposed to get off in Dallas. But one of our brake chambers went out on the truck in New Mexico (at a weigh station 😖) and I had to milk it to a Petro to get it fixed, Air pressure couldn't get up to 100psi in the tanks. That caused us to get the load swapped. Our new load is going to Florida and is basically a team load because it has to be there tomorrow and we are 30 hours away. So I'm not quite sure what the plan is, but I got my hopes up for getting a truck tomorrow. Only time will tell now.

Looks like my training is shorter than I anticipated. I got crappy hours the past couple of days, in my mind I have 40+ hours left. But we got a message saying I'm to be dropped off in Dallas TX. I get to test out and get my own rig and I guess work my way home (not quite sure). I wasn't really expecting this as it came as quite a surprise. I'm excited but a tad bit nervous lol.

Got another couple of good loads to help chisel out these last bit of hours. We ended up going from Laredo back to Atlanta, got 10 hours on that trip. Then our current load is going from there to Calexico CA. I only got a few hours on that so far due to waiting all night for the load to arrive at the drop yard, but I'll get 10 hours in tonight. I think I'm sitting at around 63 hours left right now. That should be 53 hours left tomorrow morning. Less than a week left!! I'm getting so excited knowing I'll be able to go home soon lol. I can't believe it's been 6 weeks since I've seen home and family.