Log Question

Old School replied to John..,

I had no idea this was going to escalate like this. John, you are going to have to settle down or these may be your last comments here. We have given you some great advice, and asked a few questions that we thought curious. Right now you seem out of control. So, take a deep breath and let's all just settle down so that we can all learn a few things.

We thank you for your service, and I know that PackRat feels the same way. You have probably stirred up a bunch of other feelings in him though. You seem to enjoy pointing out others faults, which says a lot about how you wanted to deal with this issue you were having with your trainer. I said repeatedly that I didn't agree with what your trainer did, but I simply had a few questions. You have certainly went on to answer them with your attitude on full display. Your knee jerk reactions have said a lot about you today.

Totally agree.

Just a couple of observations and questions from a newbie on this.

During training, I would forget to hit off duty so frequently when getting gas, eating, taking a brake etc that I finally wrote "GO OFF DUTY!!!" on a post it note below my Zonar, ELD. I frequently had to go back and fix my logs due to large blocks of On Duty that should have been off. There were also times at shipper and receivers that I was definitely off duty, my trainer was doing stuff, I wasnt yet I had driven in and forgot to punch off duty. I managed to pick up almost 3 hours of time on my clock in one week.

Part of my training was on managing my time. 8 3/4 hours of drive time seems to be the magic cut off to where Im not burning my 70 every week. I understand that isnt always possible, maybe that was the case here. I typically drove 8 to 9 hours and then my trainer would drive for a couple hours. I would stay in the passenger seat and learn as much as I could from him even just watching. Most of our days we ran from about 7:00 AM and shut down around 11:00 PM, after all was said and done, I would drift off to sleep at about midnight to 1:00 AM. leaving me 6 to 7 hours of sleep. I never felt dangerously fatigued, but Individual results vary.

I guess Im wondering if you were budgeting your time effectively? and if it could have been an honest mistake on the logs, or were you definitely on duty? In my case, I had very few times where I was actually on duty that I had to correct, as I said, I usually just forgot to hit off duty. I dont consider me reading facebook and checking TT on duty lol. Also wondering why you were getting so fatigued as well. Just curious, The only thing Ive noticed is that my food intake is way higher and my metabolism was cranking it out in high gear, I had to definitely increase protein and long lasting carb intake and still suffered some low blood sugar in the morning sometimes.

Anywho, Thanks for your service and hopefully all works out well.

Wow!

Old School; I’m just commenting on your question about why he’d be fatigued if he’d recently come off his 10hr break. My answer; newbie. Maybe he’s still adjusting. Oh wait...He’s...never mind!

As for the OP’s follow up sarcasm, SHEESH! 😆😆😆

Thanks Bird One. That's definitely not something that we used in the Air Force waaay back when I was in...tho it describes people that we had like that.

Laura

I’m not even sure what he’s trying to say there Laura. But the term POG though stands for “person other than grunt”. In my experiences people who used that term typically use it to validate all the things that they actually didn’t do in their military career. Hey John if trucking doesn’t work out for ya bass pro shop can always use something to stock the gun shelves. Because that’s where you attitude will get you. Packrat has quite the service record. Have some respect. Both him and the experienced drivers trying to give you advice.

Most of you know that I have been associated here with the community at Trucking Truth for a great many years. I really enjoy being here and providing helpful information when I can. There is no doubt that this career is a tough one to break into. There are so many issues that come with the territory, but misinformation is one of the biggest ones. Another issue that is high on the problematic scale of being able to overcome is the attitudes we limit ourselves with. This little conversation took me by surprise. It took a quick turn into those dark areas of an unknown attitude problem that just came bursting forth with seemingly little or no provocation.

I'm not trying to lure our friend John back into a conversation that he might find disagreeable. I'm merely pointing out something that we see occasionally in here. In just recent past months we have had several people who were so close to their goals just lose it completely. Their attitude issues suddenly blindsided us as they emerged in a conversation here in our forum. People who have seemed perfectly reasonable all of a sudden are accusing us irrationally and talking down to us as if we were cruel and unhelpful. One of them even referred to us as merely "the help." That was clearly an arrogant attitude with racist overtones included in it.

People are funny in social media atmospheres. They don't behave normally. You can be extremely helpful and they will still try to point out their superiority to you. They only want what they are after. Usually that is a specific request that they don't know the answer to, but other than that they really don't want your advice or assistance. They are convinced they don't need anything else from you than the singular thing that happens to be troubling their mind at the moment. If you do offer some advice they will go into things like John did and start trying to point out their superiority. John actually wanted us to know about all the medals he was awarded in the military! That's great - we are proud of him, but those things obviously haven't helped him be a successful trucker.

This wasn't my first encounter with John. He made out like it was when he made these comments...

I didn’t know who you were since I just joined and I’ve looked at your past comments to other rookie posts and you need to come off your high horse. Because you act like you’re some immortal truck driving God This is supposed to be a group that is supportive of new drivers

He basically stated that he didn't even know who I was, and then he went on to accuse me of acting like I am superior to everyone here and that I really should be ashamed because I am more arrogant than helpful. That kind of stuff bothers me, but only for a minute. I have come to realize that people say stupid stuff when sitting at a keyboard, and their knee-jerk reactions are just that. But... we don't allow that type of behavior here because it is our goal to be helpful, friendly and hopefully encouraging to the newbies and many others who are reading along in here. We limit who can and does participate here. We don't try to have the biggest crowd. Our goal is to have the best crowd. That means we want to be able to teach folks the realities and truths that will help them advance their trucking careers. We want to help train up professional productive drivers. We want to do that in a way that empathizes, encourages, and inspires.

I want to provide you a link to my first encounter with John. Remember I am the one that he claims "he didn't know who I was." I think you will see how I tried to be helpful and encouraging to him in his pursuit of the trucking career. It is illustrative of how his attitude is hindering him in this pursuit. This is a conversation where I tried to be helpful to him about a month ago.

Trying To Help John

Attitude issues are on display daily in the world of trucking. Please don't be a victim to your own attitude issues. Truckers are independent folks. We still have to be able to get along well and not be so abrasive. There are a lot of miserable truckers out here. I come across them all the time. I pity them. I don't hang around them. In fact, I avoid them. I hope you all can pursue this career with a sense of pride and enjoyment. It is a rewarding career. It takes special people to do this job, and I always enjoy meeting and interacting with those special folks who handle this job so well.

Very well said OS. I have been MIA alot lately due to being extremly busy. I scroll through when I get a chance. I read this thread and just shook my head. I realized real quick it was going no place good.

People make assumptions often. That usually never ends well. I too have been here along time, like many others. We all share the common frame of reference in our purpose and give freely of our time to do it, because we care about folks and the industry.

Thank you sir!!