Posted: 8 months ago
View Topic:
Justin, did you hear about that terrible tanker roll over and explosion under I95 in Philadelphia recently? That driver very likely burned to death. Had he been driving a dry van or reefer, he would probably have survived a roll over.
Really??? Good to know that the several hundred roll-over deaths that occur every year primarily happen with tank trucks. (Just in case my sarcasm isn't recognized, this is a dumb statement from BK.)
Justin, I pull hazmat tanks for a living. I know that not everything requiring hazmat means an instant death from fire and explosions. Also know that a fully loaded tank or baffles really minimizes the surge. However, a story for you-couple years ago I'm 80k gross, pulling hot wax in a smoothbore tank that's only 70 percent full. I'm running up a two lane road through PA/NY (219, some may know it), middle of the night when a freak snow storm hits. Whiteout, I've got to turn on goggle maps just to tell where the turns are on a road I've traveled dozens of times. The only way I know where I am on the road is by listening for the rumble strips. Fighting the surge in those conditions made me realize that that load would have ended up in a ditch my first two years driving. Fortunately, it wasn't my first couple of years driving, and managed to safely crawl north for four hours until I ran out of the storm.
I'm not as adamant as some here about new drivers staying away from tanks-because I know not all tanks are created equal, but I will agree a new driver, handling surge, in bad conditions, is a great recipe for losing his job, or his license, or even something more valuable.
Posted: 8 months ago
View Topic:
My least favored three are Dallas, Boston, and Buffalo, NY.
Lol, surprised to see Buffalo on your list, gotta be a story there. Or maybe it’s just because I’m local there, but the city is tiny.
I’ve really begun to hate Toronto, and I used to do nyc regularly.
Posted: 8 months, 4 weeks ago
View Topic:
I think the bigger question is are you getting paid by the hour or by the mile? While I don’t like a company editing logs, I can see where they are coming from. You left a ton of drive time on the table which in the end, is money out of your pocket. I used to log on duty for 30-45 minutes while securing/tarping, then go off duty for the rest.
Posted: 9 months ago
View Topic:
Bryan Cranston. Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad.
Posted: 9 months, 1 week ago
View Topic:
While it's not technically hand unloading, have you looked into fuel hauling/delivery-most outfits here are paying over $30 an hour. We've also got some owner operators in our fleet that seem to be doing very well (petroleum hauling fleet.)
We've got an outfit around here that hauls trailers similar to what you describe-they use them to haul coils.
Posted: 9 months, 2 weeks ago
View Topic:
Portion of I-95 collapsed in Philly
Heard about this and was wondering what happened to the driver-so sad.
Man, there are some aspects of this job I just don't tell the wife, but incidents like this do stay in the back of my mind. It's a good reminder that no matter how badly I annoy drivers behind me, there's a reason I don't go barreling down off ramps or interchanges.
Posted: 10 months, 1 week ago
View Topic:
New York State Coil Endordement
Of everything you'll haul on a flatbed, coils are the one thing you really need to understand. They are dangerous, and I see a lot of them mishandled by many drivers.
Man, the one I could never wrap my head around was we had a couple places that would load eye to the sky coils in a van trailer right next to us flatbedders. I'd watch the drivers just close the doors and drive off while I'm throwing chains. Couldn't believe I never saw more of them go through the trailer wall. Not even friction mats!
Posted: 10 months, 1 week ago
View Topic:
Regional/Local Routes For New Drivers
Ok, typical doom and gloom about local work. A few things above I agree with, some maybe a little less. I do like the idea of Maverick regional work. It's where I started my career and at the time, they had some nice dedicated work out of Ohio, and they had regional home every weekend there too. May have changed over the years, but it's a great place to start. Now, I did go to a private school and while Maverick was willing to put me on a bus literally two days after passing the road test, driver hiring is slower now and that may no longer be the case-going through their school (if they still have it) would probably be simpler. Two things to think about though, that I never regretted about going to a private school-if I had gone the company school route, I would have had to get the auto restriction off before even applying for something like my current local job (a lot of local is still manual.) That's not a huge deal, but the invaluable part, is my instructors were local to the region, some had driven or were still driving for local outfits-they knew the lay of the land and the best and worst fleets. My current job is with an outfit I'd never heard of, doing a job I never knew needed doing, but was a recommendation from the head instructor who brought up the company as one he'd look at if he were starting over. That recommendation dropped me into the best job I've ever had.
Now, on to the local doom and gloom. Some of it is accurate, get a couple years of driving under your belt before looking for local. Yeah, there are companies that will hire you off the street with a brand new cdl, but those outfits will almost always be the horror shows you'll hear about. You'll start nights, working your seventy every week, driving stuff held together with duct tape. The bottom of the barrel in local work is not good at all for any kind of long term future. It can be done, I've seen it done, but it's a serious risk to your livelihood. A couple years experience though, and while you still can't write your own ticket, it opens up a ton of doors, and doors most guys not in a local field don't even know about. Take my company for example, they won't even return your call with less than two years experience, they don't advertise, heck, this is the outfit I only knew about from my former instructor. And (BY CHOICE), half my terminal does work fourteen hours days five days a week, it's the turn and burn schedule the above posters were talking about. But they also enjoy that 130k a year paycheck. The other half literally works a forty hour week, still makes a living wage, and spends all the time they want with their families. I personally know dozens of local drivers at other companies who work banker's hours-is the paycheck massive? No, but money isn't always the most important thing to these drivers.
Two bits of advice, your driving skills better be on point before taking a local job if you want a long term future in the field. And secondly, don't live hours away from the job. I know, it's not always possible, but a two hour commute on top of even an eight hour day dealing with local traffic will burn you out. (An example of a not so doom and gloomy local job is again my company-decades ago, they realized that a ton a drivers don't prefer to drive hours into a city to work, so they plunked down a terminal in the middle of the boondock's amish country, and another in the heart of the local city-this way, the country boys have a short commute to work as do the city boys.) You've got to network to find opportunities like this though.
Posted: 10 months, 1 week ago
View Topic:
Things to do before trucking school
Get your permit, endorsements, and anything else you want (twic) before even starting school. Seriously. Now, your school may be different, but I showed up day one having already gotten everything I could on my own time, so when the instructor sat us down and told us the first week would be studying to take the permit test at the end of the week, I raised my hand and asked what I could do. He was tickled at my initiative and sent me out to start driving with another instructor. I got a full week of one on one time driving before anyone else even touched touched the truck. I struggled with shifting something awful, so since we had three classes a day, I asked if I could ride around with the other two classes. The instructor thought that was great, and while I could just sit and listen so I wouldn't take any instruction away from the other students, I soaked up a ton of additional instruction, plus had the added benefit of when a student called in, I took his place behind the wheel. I literally spent twelve hours a day with the instructors, and by the time the road test came around, I had more than twice the time behind the wheel of any other student. Also, this site at the time had a great section on learning logs, so knowing that could be a potential hang up for me, I studied that daily, did every exercise multiple times, and would actually engage with my instructors about real world logging examples. Every one of those guys loved sharing every nugget of wisdom they had.
Now, that advice mileage may vary, but I've always been successful showing as much initiative as I possibly can, and being stubborn enough that nothing will stop me from reaching a goal.
Posted: 8 months ago
View Topic:
Dreamed of trucking for years
I don't think it was uncalled for at all due to this line
You don't know that, and I feel you're minimizing the seriousness of a rollover in any truck with this statement.