Comments By J.D.

Hey, Optic-man, great to hear from you again, despite the tough TEMPORARY circumstances! Looks like it’s been about 5 weeks, before which a lot of the folks here gave support, empathy and info, with much interest in your journey… In my case, though I’ve even less experience than you and so can’t offer much more than general advice, now that you got through a few weeks of OTR training, I naturally remain very interested, being close to probably following a similar path to yours OTR. So I AM HERE with ya too…

Can’t weigh in about being on the hook for pre-CDL instruction, since that part of our paths differ due to my having gone the pre-paid private school route, but you’ll be finding out all about where you stand on Monday, it looks like from what you wrote. Seems a good strategy there. Meantime man, I can easily tell the experts here are right, so I hope you can take the time this weekend to sufficiently detail what happened out there, especially with the actual accident and such. Immerse into the back-and-forth of discussion of this forum and you won’t regret it. These folks really will be much better able to advise and support ya in the practical ways you need it. Also, writing in detail and sharing it with supportive others can be very psychologically advantageous, give you more strength to cope with crisis, and you need all the strength you can get right now. Plus in the process you’ll be “giving back and paying forward” to your fellow drivers on the path or considering it, with whatever is learnable from the experience that many others can benefit from knowing.

Your situation really doesn’t sound like you should have to be blocked from moving your career forward, but ya just need to get past an unexpected and unfortunate obstacle… Seems you just gotta take the optimistic can-do approach, cuz you really need (I can relate!), and it sounds like you definitely deserve, are payin’ your dues for this to work out well for you to get yourself back on that road to enrichment ASAP! So hang in there, read and reply to the savvy moderators, keep the forum advised and you’ll likely soon be able to look back wisely on all this (as is learned by those who read enough here, e.g., it's already helped me immeasurably to "psyche myself up", harden my skin to the true realities that are coming—like, many have said that SOME stupid accident is almost EXPECTED of rookies)...To see it as simply your version of the sort of extremely educational bump in the road that most new drivers have to hit, one way or another, and emerge all the stronger from it!

Gotcha Anne... Except I still don't grok the "AZ" part. Not sure what you're sayin there...

CRST...Yeah, I mean no, of course that'd lock me into teaming, instead of having the option of solo after training. And besides, they rejected me a year ago after my father died, when I told them I technically didn't have "continuous employment", just about a year total in the last 5, unless they were willing to accept my 5 years of being Dad's primary caregiver and POA at the end during his end-stage Parkinson's. They weren't.

Will check out those diaries and posts... --JD

Merry Christmas indeed, everyone, for whatever it means to you! So many myths and realities on this day. I guess if I were still that kid who believed in Santa Claus (which was SO exciting on that special day for a while!), I'd figure he'd have to be at least a Superman-scale superhero to do what he does, and since NORAD and the Space Force tracking his progress have reported that he was already home again this morn after delivering those billions of gifts… To pull it off efficiently, that "Peterbilt" image that Anne posted would have to have been pulling roughly the right number of trailers to contain ‘em all (I wonder how many hundreds that would be, more like a freight train for sure) ... And since he clearly can and must somehow defy physics in order to make so many deliveries in one night, he's gotta be magical enough to not need Dr. Fauci (just turned 80 btw!) who answered the obvious Santa question by saying that he personally flew to the North Pole and vaccinated Mr. Claus himself...And he certainly shouldn't need a mask!..

OLD SCHOOL's pic is as homey-cozy a Christmas scene as I've ever seen...I presume it's his wife and kids and himself on the wall there...I hope he's settling into his super-extended home time nicely by now, mostly healed and that it lasts however long he wants it to...whether or not he’ll still want or need to actually get back on that long road... Though no doubt he's doing the trucking world and thus the world as a whole more good in his current role as a sort of retired professor emeritus who now has even more time to teach for free over the internet in this new age of expanded virtual learning! I hope he, and everyone with home time off for the holidays, is treasuring it, and as for all those driving through these strange days, to keep this amazing nation provided for, that they are well compensated and that they benefit from knowing they're much appreciated by many, for doing what they're doing… Thanx to all and may all have a good day and night...and week...and New Year!

Nice to get a quick reply Anne...hope you (two?) are having a great day.

Yes'm, JD is fine... There actually wasn't supposed to be a space before the R... But you're right about the "handle".

About your husband...was wondering what you meant about not wanting to team with him, that a few days together at home is enough at a time...

Some clarifying Qs-- ---What does "looks like you have the AZ out of your home 20, that's cool" mean? Put my "destination in"? You mean my chosen company that I'm not sure of yet? ---And what are "peaks and tunes of life"?

Your comments are sometimes kinda cryptic, and I'd hate to miss your meanings, cuz you have an impressive memory, are such a great "cheerleader" and sweet person here! --JD

Happy Holidays to all! [Hey does anyone know how to tweak the topic line? I think I saw that happen here recently. I especially want to take out the "AZ" part, since I'm no longer quite as limited to finding someone who lives near me, although that'd be ideal...Expand the field of those who might be interested at least in looking at the thread, even if I'm not gonna find a co-driver this way. (Hmm, is not living in the same area another challenge of teaming, that it's a lot harder to get two drivers home or re-deployed than one, the further apart they live?]

Everyone’s comments so far are of great interest to me. I’ll get down to addressing questions and issues raised…

ANNE, yeah, my initials are too cumbersome…Haven’t come up with a suitable nickname yet (“Sir Thinxalot”? ;-)… I assume some of those used here double as the driver's CB handles. I think I know what mine would be, but here and now just “JD” will be fine; it’s the most accurate, so I’ll try to sign off with that. As for what company I’m ending up with… I’m not quite there yet, and in the meantime am a bit, well, “superstitious” isn’t exactly the right word…It just feels best to defer for now on further discussion of specific companies in favor of drilling down deeper into the dynamics of the Big Decision being debated here which aren't company-dependent. Ok, my turn at a Q to put YOU on the spot: Please ‘splain more what you’re sayin’ about you and your hubby. Some tongue-in-cheek, some not, sounds like..?

MARK C, I read that you’re looking at the “Pam” trucking company, which you say trains OTR for a mere couple weeks. Also Schneider seems another rare exception that does that short a stint, which is ironic since they’re SO all about “safety” there. In most ways at this point I feel that a shorter period with the trainer would be more right for me overall (especially than like a month or so), and then go right into co-equal teaming. But it’s another complicated and controversial sub-issue, I know…

…I read the conventional wisdom here that it’s best not to team up with another newbie and that it’d be an unlikely scenario (to score an already well-trained co-driver), cuz who’d want to team with a noob if they didn’t have to? It does seem a good idea in another way to do that though, to be learning the stuff at the same time, as two total rookies, rather than have the start of teaming be more like an extension of the training period. Again, gotta see how the training goes, and if that’s too much of a burn-out, that’d make teaming tough right out of the gate and likely a no-go, period.

MIDNIGHT FOX, your question’s both an easy one to answer AND it brings up real issues. Nope, this is most definitely NOT a multi-purpose quest for me. I’d rather not further complicate things and lower my odds of job success more than necessary by even THINKING about teaming with a romantic partner. To me it’s clearly an unrealistic fantasy better off not entertained, whether someone’s “available” or not. I AM a heterosexual guy who’s lived much more with women than with men in his adult life, including presently, and never in close quarters with one male since just before college. But the mixed gender thing seems possibly even riskier in terms of it working out for any worthwhile duration as co-drivers. And obviously there are, for very good reason, few females who’d be interested in teaming with a guy they don’t know and trust well enough. Some mixed feelings here, so I’d not rule out an “appropriate” female co-driver if it seemed the odds WERE good we’d work really well together (I know, I know, it’s another one of the Big Ifs that’s too hard to tell ahead of time, and does seem pretty unlikely)…[To be continued…]

Well…It’s nice to check in at a less controversial thread than the one I'm about to get re-entangled in; glad you started this one, MarkC. We seem to be in similar boats, 'cept mine's taking on its water in Arizona instead of Florida... Been thinking of moving there, but… Cuz I love to mix metaphors, gotta say I'd MUCH rather live in a sauna than a steambath. Or am I over-stereotyping? How’s that Gulf side, humidity-wise, better than most of FL? Worse? Never been on the west half. It really is too hot here for more than half the year now, but hey, there's always the night time, and of course A/C, and the solar-heated pool and air temp is perfect pretty much all day and night all summer. Sounds like we're both about to jump the ships we're in and MAYBE climb into team trucks, though. Was about to ask you (at the nearby thread I recently started and that you've been carrying along admirably in the rough weather without me there for a bit), what company is that with only 2 weeks of road training…but I see you've already answered that it's "Pam". Sounds good to me, but I looked at them about this time last year and AZ wasn't in their hiring area. Guess should check again in case they’ve expanded operations. The other big diff is that I've recently survived the rigors of a private school...but if you join a company soon you'll be out there ahead of me in no time, at the rate I've been paddling along toward that goal of “commanding a big rig”, as you say...

Interesting, Joseph...If I get into/decide to go with Prime this week, that's about when I'd start too. But not in "Pittsford"... Hmm, the only Pittsford I know is near where I grew up in NY; doesn't seem to be one in PA. Guess I'll have to look up all the terminal locations. Ok, so you must mean Pittston, PA. I'd be going to Salt Lake...either place, brrrr, this time o year...

Nothing against Prime, they're just going with the industry flow, but what's up with this standard of accruing only one day home time a week? Partly cuz you end up with another unproductive average day or so per week just getting home and back into action? You'd think SOME company would want to be known as not just saying they care about home time, but actually allowing for more of it, if not encouraging it. I get it about the incentive to get as much road time as they can out of their trucks and drivers, but jeez, what about the burnout factor? I'd hope if it were me behind that owner-of-the-company wheel I'd want to incentivize my drivers to stay with the company by being a rare exception.

Well I lived in CA most of my life, but don't know about how their permit test differs, nor have I compared what I remember of what I took in AZ to the "High Road", now that I've learned most of that stuff, but hope to eventually. (Did Brett mainly do that on his own?!)

If it's much like the AZ exam at all, and if your brain's good at multiple-choice logic, and you did your studying, well, mine at least was an easier pie to get through than I expected. Things get progressively more challenging as they get more "real world" as we go along this career path... That first big step was not such a biggie after all, especially since you know you get more than one shot at it if you need it...right?

Yes, I've considered the factor of mutual driver trust a LOT. Depends who it is... Since I’ve been getting plenty of push-back here and elsewhere, so I want to try to clear some stuff up.

I’m SO far from knowing everything I need to know about teaming that I do know I’m not close to qualified to hold up my end of an informed debate. I’m not trying to impress anyone with how many 4-wheeled miles I’ve driven and ridden, but that and some big rig rides, plus cross-country bus and train rides is enough to at least qualify me to have some major clues as to how much trouble sleeping I might have. All I’m pointing out about the sleep factor aside from that is that I’ve heard and read from truckers that some of em CAN sleep ok while someone else is driving, and some cannot. So whether my co-driver and I can get enough quality rest will make it or break it and we won’t know till we try. That and of course how compatible we are in other ways. If those two huge factors work, it can work, is what I hear and makes sense. If not, well, it won’t be worth it and I’ll give it up. I’m not looking for the "perfect" co-driver, cuz that feels like playing the lottery, which I don’t do for obvious reason. Clearly the odds are against finding even a “right” teammate, but I do feel guided to give it a try.

It no longer looks like I’ll be going with a company which would require me to already have that partner lined up. The company I’m close go signing on with now promises to help match us up. But plenty of teaming time with the trainer (yes we'd both drive) in the meantime in which to test most of the concept. So we’ll see, but it's not that I "EXPECT it" to work.

Eugene, TOTALLY understandable you have no interest in team driving, just being able to get enough shuteye with your trainer. Sorry I mis-read that in my non-desperate zeal to find a co-driver. I hope you're picking up some good ideas here for getting through your training process. Maybe my "app" described below will be worth a try for ya. Works for me, though there's no magic bullet for sure.

So...good point, Anne, you bring up another thing I do to help me sleep sometimes, mostly to grab a nap at times when my natural sleep cycle "clock" isn't saying "time to sleep" (mid-afternoons and 10 pm or so are what it seems set for). Not with an MP3 player, but an "app" on my iPhone. Perfectly good used iPods ARE still available to buy though, and most iPhones have those players built in, and of course you can still download any of the millions of tracks that are sold. What a revolutionary and classic piece of tech the iPod is and will always be know as, for its time.

The app I use has a lot of both free and "premium sounds", simply repeating soundtracks of a multitude of familiar sounds you can play via a smartphone's speaker or a headset. Everything from house appliances to, well the name of the app is "Rain Rain" and sure enough there's lot of precipitation sounds like thunderstorms and gentle rain. My favorite is "Wet Forest", a mix of rain and the sound of a gurgling stream. Natural noises seem to work best for me, which figures, and there's a wide variety of those, like birds and such, but they also have human noise tracks like "Food Court", "Cafe", etc. There's music mixes, and also "pure" monotony like White Noise and Brown Noise...

You get the idea, whatever works to help someone conk out. You let the sound distract you from everything else, maybe try to sort of "meditate" on that and let the thoughts, stress, etc. fade away... Some folks get hooked to where they think they can't sleep without it... The girlfriend who turned me on to these apps played hers all night, even when we were camping in a forest...which I wasn't a fan of.

Most relevantly here, there's a Transportation category with these 5: "Airliner", "Train", "Car in the Rain", "Winter Traffic" and "Boat on the Lake". So thanx for the reminder, I'll get used to those ASAP... But if they'd only add some like "Big Rigs on the Freeway" and "Truck Stop Sounds", I'd jump on those right away to "have it made" ;-) ; get a more realistic head start on sleeping in a truck!