Comments By B Y

Thank you Rob. I got to looking at my license and discovered I do have my passenger endorsement. I had to get it for a job in AK back in 2007 and totally forgot about it.

I've had my CDL a since 2016. I was curious about adding a passenger endorsement to it.

I called the school that I went thru to get my CDL to see what I'd need to do. The lady I spoke to said that as of 2022 any upgrade to your license requires you to take the entire course over again.

That sound ridiculous to me. I was basically calling to find out if I could take the test at the DMV and use their buses to do the driving portion in.

Does anyone know if what she said is true?

Your test will be clean if it's been 5 months. Whether you are truthful or not is up to you. Everyone sins. We're all human. There are a lot worse sins out there then fibbing on a questionare. You will be forgiven.

I accepted the job but the pay was very low so I left after 3 months for the second company. I lasted a month with them. I have 4 months total verifiable experience.

I told him I didn’t appreciate his tone or accusations, and that if he called me in there with no resolution and just to make me beg for job as he power trips I could just empty out the truck because there was no need for that kind of disrespect.

I think I know what the problem is.

Hi Sabrina. I started driving in 2016. The first company I drove for was strictly OTR in the refrigerated division, which is what I chose.

It required drivers to be out a minimum of 2 weeks and you got 1 day off for every week you were out.

The driver could decide if they wanted to be out beyond 2 weeks or not. I did not.

I got along very well with my dispatcher and she would work hard to get me home a couple of days early and let me stay home for a few days instead of the 2 days I should've had.

The relationship between the driver and dispatch can make your life on the road easy or rough.

There were times (very few) when she couldn't get me home in exactly two weeks also. But it was never more than a day or two late and she'd make sure I got an extra day or two at home for the inconvenience.

I hope it works out for you.

I've found that in my experience I'd rather talk to "old timers" rather than younger folks any day. I was just in Dennys for brunch and had an older driver on one side of me and a driver about my age on the other. Both wanted to talk. I spent 90% of my time talking to the older driver as the younger guy wanted to talk politics more than anything. The older guy talked about his kids and grandkids and the differences between when he was coming up and how things are now. He was not politically correct and was a fun guy to listen to. Even got on the phone to a grandson so he could introduce him to the cute single waitress serving us.

I don't have the answer as to how to have patience with other drivers but i know you do have to have patience or being a trucker isn't going to be the right job for you. I could tell you several things about other drivers that tick me off on a daily basis but the bottom line is you have to learn patience and realize not everyone is a good driver. You have to learn to take a deep breath and brush things off. Being patient doesn't come naturally for everyone (myself included). And it's not just passenger vehicle drivers that test you, other truckers will test your patience as well.

We have forced loads and can't refuse them. The load times are within my 14 hour window but the shippers/receivers sometimes take long times to load and unload me. I looked at the violations earlier and most were fuel times not matching. I assume this means my "on duty...fueling" times don't actually match the time shown on pump receipts. I was taught by my trainer to pull into a fuel island and log "on duty...fueling" for approx 5 minutes then log "off duty or sleeper berth" the rest of the time regardless of how long it actually takes to finish fueling. He also said he prefers to pull in behind someone that is already fueling and log "on duty...fueling" until they are done then he goes to "sleeper berth" the entire time he actually fuels. I've been doing that as that's how i was taught. I guess i will start logging "on duty...fueling" for the entire time I'm actually fueling so everything matches up. Other than the fact that i am a new driver and may be being tracked more closely because of that, i wonder why he wouldn't be talked to about this. Oh well, I'll not concern with him and do what i have to do for myself.

18 months should be a sufficient amount of time to learn before becoming a trainer. My trainer did tell me though that if you're doing it for the money it may not be a good idea. He makes an extra $30/day or $210/week when with a student. However, his miles tend to go down while training a student too resulting in breaking even with what he made driving solo. Breaking even on top of not having the privacy or space in the truck he has when solo has made him reconsider his decision and after he is done training his current student he is giving up being a trainer. Unless your company is paying you a considerable amount to train, it should be something you have a passion for before you decide to get into it. You should be passionate about it regardless but you get what I'm saying.

I got a message on the quallcom today saying i had accumulated 100 service failure/safety points this month. Some instances i know of for sure are 1) i had to repower a guy who had run out of drive time. By the time i got to him after traffic delays and hooked up, fueled up the truck and reefer and weighed everything i ran out of my 14 ten mins prior to arriving at delivery. If he'd fueled the trailer and weighed/adjusted trailer axles if necessary i would've probably been alright. 2) i arrived at consignee in Chicago on time but as i was being unloaded my 14 ran out and they do not allow nor do they have room to allow overnight parking. My fm told me to go to a safe haven location 12.7 miles away but during rush hour traffic it took me 1.5 hours to get there. 3) i was travelling through a smallish city during lunch hour and hit the brakes a little hard to stop at a yellow light causing a critical event to be sent out. There are several places i stop at with plenty of time left on my clocks only to have them load/unload me hours beyond my appt time causing me to have to creep slowly to a spot i can park at to rest for 10 hrs. The whole time I'm creeping along I'm getting hos violation warnings. 9 times out of 10 i am at least 1.5 hours ahead of my scheduled appt times. I'm not a whiner i am just looking for ideas how to avoid these issues from happening.