Comments By Daniel W.

Luckily the GPS took us down to I10 and I slipped right under the storms, and I made it to Texas before my time ended. Everything is wet still and I saw the storms off in the distance. We got really lucky, on the radar those storms look hideous. I hope whoever has to drive through them stays safe.

I'm taking a 30 minute break now, after the rest of my drive tonight I will be down to 78 hours left Bryn 😆 I'm also off curfew so tonight was my first all nighter heading to Laredo TX from NC. I just drove from GA to LA. I should get into TX before we swap seats.

I'm glad this has been helpful for some 😊 I looked around to try and find details about recent new Werner drivers, but I was unsuccessful so I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread to share my experience.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before or not, although I am working for Werner I'm being trained in an Eagle truck (works for Werner), and I'm not quite sure how that all works. There seems to be somewhat of a benefit to this though, because I now have the option to work OTR for Eagle. From what I gather the trainees that get paired up with trainers that work for Eagle, Eagle tries to poach werner's trainees. I overheard a phone call today confirming that, so I should expect a call from them soon. I had no idea how many possibilities there would be in just one company (theoretically). I came into this just wanting to drive a truck to get experience. I haven't even finished training and now I'm expected to make decisions on what I want to do. I haven't put any thought into it yet, because I just want to focus on training and not get distracted by the little things that don't matter until I test out.

I just finished another 10 hours behind the wheel which brings me up to 174 of 275, and I'm off for the weekend. I figured now would be a good time to recap a bit, before the weekend consumes me lol. So this stint out on the road was 22 days, and there were ups and downs. In just 22 days I ventured across half of the country literally, 25 states!!! This truck has done 14,000 miles with me in it. And in types of weather (snow, heavy rain, high wind). And all types of roads. For those looking to see this amazing country this is the way to do it, and you get paid to do so.

I've backed about 30 times so far. Now when it comes to backing my trainer isn't too great at teaching (compared to instructors at CDL school), but he gets out and makes sure I don't destroy everything nearby. He tries to coach me as I'm doing it, but he tends to end up where I can't see him, which can be frustrating. The last thing I want to do is run him over.... Although, no!!!! Lol. I don't mind not having my hand held, but for some it might not work to well. I like trying and learning from my mistakes.

Next up hygiene and cleanliness. Now I didn't expect anything pristine, nor did I expect regular showers, however I would've thought I'd get more than the 3 or 4 showers I did get. My trainers truck is filthy, plain and simple. If I didn't bag up and dispose of the daily trash, I'm not sure what would happen. I can't help it, but I'm a neat person, especially since this is basically your home. Now this would obviously vary from person to person, I just happened to get paired up with a rather lazy trainer in that aspect.

I think that about sums up my rant. I'm looking forward to this break! Happy trucking and happy Easter everyone. For those following along thanks for taking the time follow this new and unique experience of mine. If anyone has questions, please ask and I'll be glad to try and answer 😊

Everything is still going at a steady pace, bouncing around from state to state until my trainer's home time comes up on Friday. I'm up to about 158 hours completed, a lil less than what I hoped for so far, but there's a couple more days until break hopefully. We aren't sure if they are going to send him home early since we are pretty close to his home state, but we are hoping that doesn't happen. He stayed out a bit longer to be home for Easter, and my wife made plans to visit, which would be all ruined if he's told to go home today.

On another note I got a phone call yesterday offering to put me on a dedicated account instead of doing OTR. Looks like I'll be hauling Perdue chicken after training. Supposedly it pays a little more than OTR, and I can gain some reefer experience. If I don't like it or it doesn't work out I can switch back to OTR. I love that I have a job with options!!

We ended up getting another load in Cali heading to Utah, so I got to drive back up to Salt Lake City, then got another load there and headed back east. I got to climb the Rockies and drive through most of Wyoming on I80. My last hour of driving was in snow, but it wasn't too bad. It got quite a bit worse when the trainer took over for the night. That was a lot of hours driving in snow the other day for him. Of course I couldn't sleep knowing the conditions. I picked up in the middle of Nebraska, and got to Chicago (where the load was going) yesterday. That was a good 640 miles of driving. The trainer bounced around quite a bit last night and I woke up this morning in a truck stop with no trailer 🤔 I was confused lol. Basically had today off as Werner had my trainer on a wild goose chase for an empty trailer in Indiana last night. But we got another load this evening going back west to Des Moines. Trainer's driving it due to my curfew still being in effect, which I think my trainer should've logged enough observation hours logged by now to remove the curfew. I mean I've got 135 hours done (half way to completion). But tomorrow I'll be behind the wheel bright and early for another good chunk of hours hopefully.

So far it's still going well. And I'm really enjoying the experience. I'm so glad I've finally found a career I enjoy!! I can see myself doing this a long time so long as my body can handle it. Gotta figure out how to tackle my leg swelling issues. I never had this issue driving long periods in a car. I drove to Texas from Maryland and back right before I started this job and didn't have an issue. I drove 12 hours 2 days in a row to get there, then 24 hours to get back and had no swelling. Only thing I can think is it's the seats or maybe seating position.

Oh before I forget training pay got bumped up again. It was $450 a week, my check yesterday was $550 (before taxes). So that was a pleasant surprise.

The runs are still going well, we ended up getting a load of hay in Utah and took it to South Beach CA, unfortunately there was quite a wait to get unloaded. It was interesting driving around LA, people are nuts lol. The place (south beach logistics) appears to be a crappy place to get into and maneuver, as we sit on the street waiting for over 2 hours to get in and unloaded. Luckily they have a yard jockey to get the trailer to the dock, because I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable backing almost 90 degrees blind side in a tight place. Our next load is going back to Utah. So far I've been with my trainer for almost 3 weeks (but he had 3 days of home time) and I'm up to roughly 120 hours now. Only another 155 or so left to do. Hopefully I can get a bunch in before he goes back home for 3 days for Easter.

The hours are steadily flowing in, which is awesome. I guess I'm now out of the total noob category as our next load will be going from VA to UT. That should be awesome, I finally get to see some states I haven't been in yet 😊 This whole experience is looking up and my 275 hours are counting down rather quick. If this keeps up I'm projecting to be done in about 3 weeks. At which point I can test out and get my own truck! Then I can finally go home again and see my wife for a few days. It's been an interesting experience so far and I've still got a lot to learn, tweak and perfect, but I've come a long way in these past 3 weeks. I look forward to seeing what the rest of my training will bring my way.

I got another 10 hours of driving in today!! I'm starting to make a real dent. My trainer drove through Kentucky last night, and I pretty much drove all the way across Tennessee to Memphis to drop the load, grabbed an empty and set out to Birmingham Alabama. Of course I faced a good down pour along my journey thanks to that big storm that's flooding many areas, but it was good experience. At some points I couldn't see another rig 50' in front of me 😖 Being stuck in rain all day sure does make for a long day. I've never seen so many accidents in one day, think I counted 10 or so 😕 One involved a rig and shutdown I20 at Academy Dr, and I was running out of time. It was a crunch but I made it to a truck stop with 5 minutes to spare lol. As of now I'm not sure what's on the agenda tomorrow. My trainer is driving to Savannah GA to drop this load. I may have to finish it in the AM. Driving time is definitely getting better though and I'm really enjoying it so far.

I forgot to post updates :(

It's slowly getting better, we haven't been sitting like we were, but we aren't getting long loads. After today though I will have logged about 60 hours of training. My trainer is pretty good, we get along and helps when help is needed. Apparently once I reach a certain phase in training (no explanation) we ought to get better loads. Like one load we picked up yesterday in PA went to WA, but because I'm a noob I can't go over the Rockies or anywhere near them it seems, so we had to drop it in OH. The load we have now is PA to OH again. Our next load looks a bit better, OH to TN. So it's slowly improving. Just a lot of little back and forth runs, but I'm ok with that. It gives me experience and more opportunities to practice backing (which is ok sometimes and crappy at others lol), but my trainer isn't happy about the miles, so I get to listen to that quite a bit. All in all its looking a lot better than it did in my last post. I'll try to remember to keep updating this, I'm just getting a lot thrown at me and it skips my mind.

Well Wednesday was unproductive, we drove up to Alachua and was supposed to pick up an empty trailer. Well that turned into spending the night at the dollar gen dc, because there never was an empty. And we were told to just wait Wednesday. (Less than 2 hours of drive time)

Thursday we were given the OK to bob tail up to Douglas GA to pick up a loaded trailer and take to to the Lithia Springs terminal, but when we got there we had to deal with a pretty messed up tire. One tire was flat spotted through all the tread. We got it sorted and got to Lithia Springs at around 1900. (Around 8 hours of drive time)

We've been waiting since and supposedly the next load we are taking will arrive here at 1400. That load is heading to Shippensburg PA.

I've only just cracked 20 hours of the 275 required so far 😕 It seems like this is going to be a longer process than I expected.