Comments By Big Scott

Big Scott,

It is a pleasure to read your new journey. I of course had the pleasure of meeting you in person at the Loves in Wytheville, VA. with my wife while we were rving a couple of years ago.

Your positive attitude is why you will be successful in this new adventure. It really seems like this is a good fit for you. Have fun and be safe around those locomotives.

Thank you. It was great having that chance to meet up. If you're ever in Charlotte, hit me up. Never know if I'm available for a long or quick meet up.

I finally got to drive the manual tractor trailer. Considering I haven't touched a manual transmission, truck, since CDL school, it was trial by fire. The first day with it I had to go to a yard and fuel six locomotives. I should have used the straight truck as that yard is small. I had to turn around and thought I had the room, but there was a pile of railroad ties in my way. I had to move the out of the way. Railroad ties are quite heavy. That was hot, sweaty and dirty work. I got the job done. Then went to the refinery and refiled the tank, the trailer holds 7000 gallons. The straight truck only holds about 4300 gallons. I had emptied it fueling those trains.

there are only two people on for each shift except for Sunday when it's all three per shift. Last night they had too many locomotives to fuel for one person. The other guy had the straight truck and I had the semi. I had to got to a huge yard. While there I snagged a trailer wheel on a piece of concrete. I was coming around a tight turn and was blinded by a locomotive with its brights on. i could not see and thought I was clear. Well road service got there just as I finished fueling the last train and emptying my tank. When he finished, I went to the refinery, reloaded the tank and headed back to the office. There I did my paperwork and relaxed for the last couple of hours.

I am really enjoying this job and company. We work 60 hous per week. I am on night shift, my hours are 18:00 to 06:00, with Wednesday and Thursday off. I like the night shift, I am getting more rest. I have about a 10 to 20 minute commute, depending on traffic lights and traffic. it's 6 miles from my driveway to work. There is a cell phone for the fuel truck and one for the service (LST) truck. You hang onto whichever phone for the truck your assigned to that day. We are on either fuel or LST two days, then we switch. I have been on fuel the last two days, tomorrow, I'll be on LST. The fuel trucks have computers that go to the railroad. These computers keep track of the fuel in and out. They help us too. We have sheets that we fill out each day for what we did. That all goes to the railroad and our company.

Logs are much different for me we do not have a tablet in the truck. There are three tablets, you gab one when your ready to roll. We log into that tablet and then a truck. We can do that while sitting in the office. Once i go on duty, it has you log a pretrip, then I don"t touch it until I'm ready to log off. It automatically goes into drive and after we are stopped, it will go to on duty. I don't worry about running out of hours. There are days where we just sit in the office for a whole shift. Many days I'm done by 22:00. Then it's just wait to see if we are called. W have set things to do each day, but sometimes those things don't happen. We are on call for the rail road. The office is in a rail yard and we hear these trains all day long. the are constantly hooking and unhooking rail cars.

I enjoy being home every day, sleeping in my own bed, having my own bathroom. I miss the sights of this great country but not the life on the road. right now I have a little less than an hour and a half until it's time to go home.

Stay safe out there.

Scott

We highly recommend Company Sponsored Training. There are many companies besides those two who will train you for free. I was trained by CFI and did all my OTR (6 years) with them. They are now owned by Heartland Express which also owns, Millis and Smith. They all train.

Prime and Knight are also good choices. There are many others, depending on if you want to pull dry van, refer, flatbed or tanker.

Best of luck to you.

I always unlocked my tandems and backed in, then when straight with the dock I could easily slide them back. You can do it anyway that works for you. Some places required the tandems slid to rear before entering, doesn't mean you need to keep them that way, just make sure they end up that way.

Can you wait until you turn 21? If so you can get paid while you train. There are many companies who will train you for free.

Where do you live in NC?

10-12-23 Yesterday, I finally got carded. Today is my last day of training. After I leave today I come back at 18:00 Sunday to start night shift. Looking forward to it.

10-5-23 Yesterday late in the day we filled the straight tank and went to the airport to fill those trains. We had to wait for the trains then filled them. This caused us to get back to the office about 19:00, an hour late.

This morning we put sand in the service truck then went to a yard in Hickory, NC to fuel and service two locomotives.

I learned how to pump the sand into the locos.

Then we went to the refinery to fuel the tank.

We're going to get me carded on Monday.

10-3-23

Getting paid to sit in the office, play on my phone and watch TV is not bad. Today we had no trains for day shift. One of the top guys with the railroad, stopped in to meet with us. He showed us pics of our new office that should be delivered by the end of the month. We looked around to see where to put it. We have a ruff idea. He was very nice.

That's all for now.

Have you tried CFI?

So, week 2 started yesterday. More of the same. I did learn how to do the paperwork for the fueling. I hope I can get carded this week. Right now I'm sitting in the office watching TV on my tablet.