Comments By J.D.

Glad I could entertain you so, Kearsey. HA!..Yep I've done a couple "ride alongs", a pretty long one, and a short one, hitchhiking many years ago. And driven hundreds of thousands of 4-wheeled freeway miles, starting probably before you were born, young lady!

So I'm pretty familiar with most of the sounds of the road. Most of what Mikey was referring to was not those. I was referring to the vast majority of miles where the sound is more of a monotonous drone and the motion is mild. Have never had too much trouble sleeping in vehicles, even when the ride's been punctuated by more disruptive sounds and movements. But I'm obviously having to do a lot of speculating too.

ANYONE with a respectable amount of experience have any counterpoints they're willing to offer, or is the disparaging take on teaming universal here?

Speaking of avatars, I was about to post again to Eugene's teaming thread, in reply to Kearsey, used a smiley for the first time here and at the end I hit the Preview button to see if it worked ok. I do usually check the Preview option though, just in case. But this time an interesting glitch appeared instead-- rather than my comment appearing in Preview, I was honored to see Rob T's recent hefty thread-starter post on "Slip-Seating" in MY Preview window. So I went back to the Submit option, clicked that and it started to work on "Sending"... I did hit the button again a couple times, but I guess too soon this time and it still wasn't uploading, so I opened another TT window to post this one in the meantime.

Mikey, it's not clear what you mean by "make it through the team training period", since my understanding of Eugene's worry is about long-term team driving...or did I get that wrong?..Oh, ok, yup, I missed his word "portion" (of the team training). That sounds like it tweaks the whole topic I was replying to, since apparently he was mostly talking about relatively short-term sleep issues which would go away when he goes solo.

Regardless, good to note that most of what Mikey brings up is about trying to sleep despite "various disturbances at truck stops and rest areas"... Which puts more stuff in the "plus column", the "Pros" in favor of teaming. These major distracting factors wouldn't be as present on the road itself, and that's what, well over 90% of the hours the team is in the truck? Seems to me that once you get used to it (for those of us who can), that usual monotonous hum and gentle motion would have more of a lulling effect than a disturbing one. Sort of an ultimate "brown noise" or white noise, and like "cradle rocking" for those who can acclimate well to that.

It was just a normal reply (to Eugene, about his own" teaming" dilemma). When I finally tried hitting the same blue ("Submit"/"Sending") button again, it posted right away. Other posters should try that if there's a long delay.

OK, so plenty of definite disadvantages, potential “Cons”, scary possibilities have already been described (worst of which to me being the lack of personal space for extended periods)… All of which I appreciate being plunked down on this virtual table... So now I gotta start laying out some of what I believe would be the “Pros”, at least in the presumed case of myself and other atypical weirdos like me… Starting with the general and getting more specific… And of course I want to reply to the reply-ers, probably ask some follow-up Qs… Reader attention time and interest in the topic being limited, guess I’ll continue to roll out what I have to say in a few more installments. Also cuz I’d ideally like to keep this thread on page 1 here for a little longer, in case anyone else besides me considering team driving DOES somehow make it past the persuasive discouragements already cited above... Let's talk about it!

So…first of all, I want to be completely clear that in order to make it work with a co-driver, it’d have to be a very conditional agreement with the company and any such teammate— Meaning the projected success would be utterly dependent on “the BIG IF”— I’ll have to get with a roughly compatible co-driver who is at least for the most part the same kind of person I am in the key ways. We’ve got to get along well enough in all that entails, actually like each other, have optimistically oriented brains that are able to work in a complementary fashion, etc. If that doesn’t happen, I have no doubt and no problem agreeing that it’d be likely to be a big fat “FAIL!” which I may regret as a major mistake in retrospect. Definitely a pretty big risk. But on the other hand, I see opting to go solo right out of the gate as big-risky too.

For sure to maximize the odds of it working, we’d have to be able to screen each other and actually spend a little time together, ideally do a test run and such, then only proceed if we both get a strong enough positive inner sense of “It’s a go”, the right sort of hunch, backed by enough practical evidence that it’d be worth giving teaming a shot. So we’d need to have our post-training deployment set up such that whether it ends up being solo or team would depend on that "big IF". Whether or not I feel I’ve found someone acceptable and he or she’s found me. Otherwise, it’ll have to be a no go, so we’d have to have that agreement in place to even proceed. Or at least the ability to easily enough opt out if it fails. If the co-driver's coming from another company, is already OTR there, or whatever, having the flexibility would be important. And no doubt a few weeks basically teaming with an OTR mentor will tell me/us a lot about whether I'm/we’re still wanting to do it. [More soon friends.]

So after at least 10 minutes of my (about-average-length-for-TT...does that even matter?) reply sitting there in "Sending" mode, I opened another window to try a short post of feedback here. If 2 minutes seems like a relative eternity (when it's always been almost immediate before), how about 15... Well, let's see... Ok, it was still in Sending mode, but then I simply hit that button again (which of course still said "Sending" at the time, rather than "Submit"), and it uploaded and posted right away as usual.

Good thoughts and attitude, Dude! Your concerns seem to dovetail with mine. Did you see my recent/current teaming thread? Am about to update it which'll bump it back up top for now, in hopes of keeping it alive and maybe succeeding in my quest to find a co-driver. So I'd of course love to have your input on all that.

A couple clarifying questions for ya, Eugene-- --Where do you actually live (I like that your "home state" is "preparing for school"...maybe by accident, but it seems to reflect a real state of mind for you, as it sure was for me and probably most others.

--This teaming option you have such understandably mixed feelings about, which I mostly share as you can see in my thread, is it just that, an option you're considering, or is your chosen company making that mandatory? Sounds like the latter.?

--If you're actually gonna do it, i'm naturally wondering if our teaming together would be a possibility to explore, cuz you're the only one I've come across as even a long-shot replacement for my buddy (who was planning on jumping ship and joining me, but is now is looking at his girlfriend getting her CDL and going OTR with him)........

You deserve all the congrats man. (I kept my milestone too quiet.) How about you, Joseph L... Sounds like it would've been yesterday...How'd it go?

Jeez, guys, quite the budding buffet of food for thought! Thanx always. I'll write up them Pros and Cons and get back here with that, tomorrow hopefully.

Meantime, hoping to get some back-up counterpoint to the counterpoint...IF it exists here. Anyone in AZ, or elsewhere, interested in the teaming adventure discussion, especially if considering it as an actual career choice? "Failure stories" welcome too! --J.D./E.Z.

It sounds like Kearsey is correct. In addition to having previously considered joining their teaming team myself, I just gleaned this 4-star review of Covenant on indeed.com:

"Good starter company especially for couples! They were willing to train me and my wife with out separating us. Dedicated routes are best and easy to obtain especially if your in California." --12/7/20