Comments By My CB Handle is Frank

I use an alarm clock as well as the alarm on my phone. It's an old habit I have because I'm always setting my alarm when I'm tired and setting it wrong.

If you drive with a trainer or co-driver, it's also a good idea because you can set your phone alarm for a few minutes earlier, wake up to that one usually and turn off your louder alarm without waking up your co-driver.

Here's a new one for you: Getting your load stolen while you sleep at the receiver, waiting for them to open up in the morning. At least it was just a burglary and not a robbery:

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and local police are investigating the theft of a large number of guns being delivered to a sporting goods store in Olive Branch. A combined 61 handguns and six long guns were being delivered to Academy Sports on Goodman Road, according to Olive Branch Police Chief Don Gammage. He said the truck driver had fallen asleep behind the store on Sunday night, awaiting an early morning delivery Monday. When he woke up, he and Academy Sports employees found that the seals and locks had been cut off the truck, and the guns and a small amount of ammunition were gone. http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2017/05/08/mississippi-guns-stolen/101428540/

I can almost guarantee that if you're in Memphis in the wee hours of the morning, you're not going to "fall asleep" with guns on your truck. This is pretty fishy, so many preventable things went wrong in order for this to happened.

There are some tricky ones up there. The smaller ones also open and close more frequently so if you use the CB or TruckerPath or something to anticipate the scales and hear that they are closed, you don't want to get lackadaisical about looking for them. They can still open back up at any time.

I had a close call in SD also. Now, the radio gets turned down and the cruise gets turned off whenever I approach a scale.

I would drive the new Tesla semi. It hasn't even been built yet and it's already the best truck in the world. It can go 1,000 miles with no gass. It's battery power cannot be measured but they say they are as powerful as 10,000 ninjas and you don't have to worry about watching your mirrors because it doesn't have any.

Some companies will have you train with local drivers who are home each day. This would mean you'd still have to find a place to live and to keep your dog during training. If this option is available to you, you should definitely look into it. If you get a chance to train while you're, fresh and well rested rather than team driving otr, you want to do it. Even after training, going OTR with a collie could be tough. You'll have long days where you'll be too tired to get out and walk her and be at shippers/receivers that don't allow dogs outside of the truck.

I would make companies with more local drivers a top priority and be willing to put in some work on the docks until you pay your dues. '

Are you sure you were scaling correctly on a good scale with your parking brakes off? Maybe a silly question but it's strange for the the fifth wheel to be off by that much. You've got my curiosity up as to how that could happen.

I always pull the curtains shut. When they're closed I don't recall any knocking. If the curtains are open, I have had homeless Vets, guys with their car down the road without gas money, even a magazine sales person.

There! This is what I wanted to say. Here is the way my "spelling helper" had it:

I always pull the curtains shut. When they're closed I don't recall any knocking. If the chains are open, I have had numerous Vets, guys with their car diem the first without has money, even a magazine sales performance.

Lol well I might pay $20 for a magazine sales performance. Closing the curtains does usually help. I did get a persistent knock when I had them closed once though. Maybe it was just bad luck.

It's the term sometimes used for the visual check you are already performing; lock across kingpin, no visual gap between fifth wheel and upper coupler (flat area where the kingpin is mounted) and the lever almost completely under the fifth wheel. If you do that plus the tug test every time, it's highly unlikely you will ever drop a trailer.

Gotcha thanks. I check mine every time. The jaws on my truck can be a bit temperamental sometimes so I have to check.

It's hindsight for you but for anyone who's smoked weed, find a reason to wait 30 days to go to trucking school. Don't let those recruiters rush you. They don't gain anything from having you show up and fail, so just tell them you have some loose ends to tie up first.

Kat, Numbers 1, 3, and 7 are considered preventable accidents in most companies...that is, if they are reported. Be careful, many of the TL carriers have a 3 strike rule for rookie drivers. From my vantage point, you are potentially there. Possibly getting by because the dropped trailer didn't cause any damage. You got lucky if that's the case.

GOAL when you are performing a trailer coupling operation, "before" to prevent overriding or undercutting the "kingpin" and after to make sure the kingpin is secured in the locking jaws. Do that shimmy test every time you couple, a tug test will not always indicate if you are high-coupled.

Please be careful.

I have to confess ignorance as to what a shimmy test is. Could you fill me in? I've always just done a tug test and checked the jaws visually.