Posted: 6 years, 8 months ago
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Regen and high idle...confused
If the buildup isn't too bad and you're running up hills you can sometimes skip the regen and let the engine burn off the accumulation with normal driving. You can drive for hours if the regen light is the only dash warning.
Things get serious when the lowest yellow check engine light comes on (outline of an engine with no text). This means that the buildup is bad enough that you need to perform a regen and normal driving isn't going to make the regen light go away. At that point the clock is ticking towards an engine derate. How many minutes you have will vary depending on the amount of buildup, humidity, outside temperature and a number of other conditions but you'll generally have more than an hour. Once the check engine light with the word, "CHECK" comes on you only have a few minutes until your engine derates and your parking options are what you can coast your truck to.
btw...2016 FL cascadia.
May God have mercy on your soul!
Posted: 6 years, 8 months ago
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Is everyone aware the ATA has lobbied for "anti-trucker" wages? Urgent!
It looks like the OP is talking about the Denham Amendment.
The main purpose of the amendment is to check efforts by individual states to set their own rules for HOS and pay. While it's nice to think that when you were in say, California you automatically got layover pay it would be a nightmare for OTR drivers and companies to keep all the rules straight. What if you had 3 hours of drive time by federal HOS rules, but had to pull over in Medford because you wouldn't have enough HOS to legally drive in California?
Of course, other bits get added, just like they do to any other bill. The worst thing I saw was a provision limiting drivers from being able to file class-action lawsuits against trucking companies. I can understand not forcing companies to work with 48 different state laws, but the class-action limitation just looks like a favor to Walmart.
Posted: 6 years, 8 months ago
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CRST Drivers, I got a question for ya.
Congratulations and welcome to the fleet! To log into the app you need to add the letter, "d" to your employee ID number. If you are employee, "903T", you would enter, "903Td". The d on the end means you are a driver.
Posted: 6 years, 9 months ago
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So I failed at flatbed (not really)
To ALL new drivers out there: ^^^THIS^^^ is how you change jobs. If you decide what you are doing or the division you are in isn't really for you, find what you want/need then change divisions WITHIN YOUR COMPANY, that way you can give a division a TRIAL RUN and if you find its not for you, then you can move to another division within your company, that way you don't look like a job hopper and you still have a lot of opportunities.
While I agree that he handled it well, company policies vary on letting drivers switch divisions. For example, if you wanted to try flatbed (CRST's Malone division) it wouldn't be as simple as talking to your FM and making the switch. You would have to quit CRST for 6 months then reapply as an external applicant to the Malone division.
Posted: 6 years, 9 months ago
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New Team Truckers - Seeking Advice
Hi Drew, welcome to the forum.
You've touched on a number of issues, but I'll try to stick to the questions asked for brevity. Every company sponsored training program is different. Some require you to pay the tuition back with monthly or weekly payments, some forgive the debt after working for the company for a set period (with some bits repaid) and some will reimburse you if you paid for trucking school on your own - in monthly installments, of course. I signed on for CRST's veteran's program. They paid for my Greyhound ticket to Careers World Wide in Keenesburg, CO. We stayed in dorms and were given $75/wk for groceries. All DMV fees were paid by CRST. After earning my CDL I was given a rental car to drive to orientation in OKC. CRST deducted $100/mo. to pay them back for the bus fare to Keenesburg and the grocery money. It was about $400 total. After driving with them for 10 months the cost of my training was forgiven. They ran 4 payments of $375 through my check - the money went in and went out leaving just the payroll taxes to pay tax on the value of the training I received.
If I had quit CRST before the 10 months were up, I would have been on the hook for $6,000! There's also a nasty non-compete clause in the contract where they will sue any employer who hires you before your contract is up. Oddly enough, they often do take drivers back who strayed away allowing them to finish their contract provided they didn't abandon their truck or commit some other cardinal sin.
The real advantage to a contract is one-stop shopping and a coincidence of needs. You're going to want one year of OTR driving on your resume before you start looking for another job any way. This shows that you can drive safely in all weather conditions and aren't some kind of snowflake that looks for greener grass the moment things get rough. The company that trained you has invested in your success and is more likely to forgive minor transgressions that you as a new driver are pretty much guaranteed to make.
Most OTR jobs just go where the loads take you. You will see most of the lower 48 states. Regular coast to coast runs would happen on a dedicated account or with a carrier who specialized in that. Most carriers don't go to Canada - it's a specialty. The HOS rules and other regulations are different there. You'd need a valid U.S. passport to drive a cross-border route. I don't know of any companies that will send a first-year driver across the border.
Posted: 6 years, 9 months ago
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Stevens company sponsored cdl training
There's more than one school. Stevens and CRST both send veterans to a school in Colorado for training. I went to the school as a CRST student. Same trucks, same instructors, same dorms. There were three differences between the groups. CRST advanced their students $75/wk. for groceries. We repaid that later through payroll deductions. We were asked not to tell the Stevens students about this since they didn't get grocery money. When the training was complete CRST students took a rental car to orientation in OKC, Stevens students took the Greyhound to Texas. Apparently a tornado had gone through the area where Stevens has orientation about the time we graduated so it took my classmates a few days to make contact with Stevens after they arrived in Texas. The driving skills tests in orientation was the biggest difference. CRST students drove to a truck stop down the street from the terminal. Stevens students would spend hours every day performing rigorous maneuvers. At one point they described having to take the truck and trailer on a figure-8 course in reverse!
Day 1 - DOT Physical. You'll take a UA. Physicals were done in a chiropractor's office above a nearby truckstop first thing in the morning. Afternoon is orientation then study for your permit. Day 2 - Study for permit. Day 3 - Go to DMV before dawn, wait for DMV to open, take your permit test. Afternoon in the yard hooking and unhooking trailers. The rest of week 1 is spent taking a truck with >1,000,000 miles forward about 200 yards then back in a straight line over and over. Done? O.K., you can watch the next student do the same thing! Day 3 is the day the UA results come back. On average, we'd lose one student from each class for testing hot.
Week 2 - Take the same truck forward 200 yards, back at an angle into a lane parallel to the one you started in, pull forward and then back into the lane you started in. About an 8 hour day in the yard and evenings spent studying the textbook and filling out a multiple-choice test.
Week 3 - Mornings in the yard working on alley backing, afternoons on the road through rural Colorado. You'll be evaluated on your next to last day on your pre-trip, alley backing and driving skills. If you pass you'll be given a certificate by your evaluator. In the afternoon you'll drive to the DMV with the rest of your class and redeem your permit, the certificate and your driver's license for a temporary paper CDL. On your last day you'll be packing, working on your travel arrangements to orientation and finishing any odds and ends with your paperwork. There's a small celebration and awards ceremony for highest gpa and best road test scores.
Posted: 6 years, 9 months ago
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I've been very happy with TMO. I've actually seen areas where there was no signal sprout bars in the last two years. They're definitely expanding their footprint BUT they have to do it on the new spectrum they've bought in the last year or two which isn't the same frequency as what they've been using. If you're using an older or lower-tiered phone you won't see the difference. I've actually had some of my students badmouth TMO because they didn't have any bars only to show them my phone with 5 bars! They're SHOCKED to learn we're on the same network. Does your phone support band 12? Band 66?
Cricket is an affordable alternative that may work for older users or folks who use their data only to send texts but more sophisticated users will be disappointed. Cricket is prepaid only. Cricket does not allow tethering. Cricket has some of the slowest data speeds around, much slower than AT&T. While AT&T doesn't cap the total amount of data you can use on the Cricket plan they do cap downloads to 8 Mbps! Real world users average about 4.5 Mbps, which pales in comparison to AT&T's 20.8 Mbps and is a fifth of what you'll see on the fastest networks (Verizon and TMO).
Posted: 6 years, 10 months ago
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A dedicated unit is the way to go. A tablet has a lot more applications running in the background that can create memory management issues, lags or even cause your navigation app to crash. Rand McNally's top of the line Intelliroute 8" TND Tablet earned only 3 stars on Amazon reviews with many users remarking that it's not ready for prime-time. Multiple users reported that their units froze, crashed or otherwise became unusable in less than a year. Nearly half (47%) of those reviews were one star! They make quality products and most of their other products earn 4 stars or more.
A random navigation app on the Google play store probably won't have map updates as often as the market leaders (Garmin & Rand McNally) and probably won't be as truck safe - warning you about truck prohibited roads, low bridges, etc. Bite the bullet and get a separate gps instead of trying save a buck and ending up with a piece of junk that doesn't work well as a tablet or a gps.
Posted: 6 years, 10 months ago
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Thanks Rick. The article made a lot more sense. Drivers won't need to carry their medical cards after June 22, 2018. D.O.T. certified medical examiners will submit the results of their exams directly to the FMCSA. The FMCSA will notify the state DMV of a driver's medical status. Drivers no longer submit their long forms to their local DMV.
I can't imagine what kind of hell it would be for some poor driver who finds that a mistake was made or a physical was, "lost" in the system and had to deal with the FMCSA and DMV to resolve their issue. The other thing that caught my eye was, "This transmission will include the results for both commercial driver’s license (CDL) holders and non-CDL holders." The FMCSA is building a database of physicals for EVERYONE! I guess someone could have a condition and then years later try to get their CDL but that sounds creepy and a little Orwellian.
Posted: 6 years, 8 months ago
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Noob with decision anxiety
You're doing it wrong. There is no right answer. The schools teach you how to pass the test to get your CDL - that's it. Minor details like how to fuel the truck, what to do at a weigh station and where to park your truck when your hours are exhausted are all left to the company trainers. While trainers vary, all companies recognize the need to keep butts in trucks and do what they can to make sure that will be up to speed by the time your training is done.
I also weighed the CPM heavily when I chose my first company. That is the wrong answer. I was ecstatic when I found a company that would count my time in the army toward time on their pay scale. My 8 years of service meant I would be starting at 42 CPM! I'd be smoking the chumps at most companies starting out at 25 CPM. After my first year I found that I made about 65% of what those chumps made. How could that be?
Team driving - My CPM rate was only good when I was driving with a co-driver. If my co-driver quit or got fired I would be driving solo, at 21 CPM until I found a new co-driver! Yes, less than what trainee drivers made. This would go on for weeks or months until I would be routed to a terminal to find a new co-driver.
Evil Truck Company - My company bought all their trucks from the same Evil Truck Company and retired them at 500k miles. This meant most of their repairs were done under warranty. Good deal for the company, bad deal for the driver. I won't name the truck company here because I don't want to start a land war over who makes the best trucks. The point is this policy took money out of my pocket but was something I didn't consider when choosing a company. Evil Truck Company once made great trucks but they moved their production to a third-world country and their trucks are now being made by folks who earn less than $1/hr. and don't speak English.
The pattern was always the same - truck would break down, limp to the nearest dealer, check into the hotel and come back on Monday. On Monday you'd show up at the dealership and ask about the truck. They didn't know what was wrong with the truck yet because your company hadn't given them permission to start work on it. Frantic call to the FM, foul language, threats, etc. Permission given! Two day later you'd call the dealership and find that something was broken on your truck that, "Isn't supposed to break". Things like a broken DEF box or bad camshafts. Either way it was a warranty repair so the techs at the dealership weren't allowed to work on it. Evil Truck Company would have to fly in their mechanics, but it would take a few days for them to get there. They'd have to file a report with Evil Truck Company HQ to get the repairs approved and only then would they start work. My truck was less than a year old. It spent more than a month in dealerships while I was earning $40/ a day in breakdown pay.
Bad luck - I had a co-driver wreck our truck and spent almost two weeks waiting to get out of Sheffield, TX. He was fired and I was forced to drive him to the nearest terminal to his home - at 21 CPM!
A much better measure is what the average driver earns at a company. Obviously, your mileage will vary but a good attitude and a solid work ethic go a long way. I include the above examples to show that it's the things you're not thinking about that can have a huge impact on your earnings.