So you wanna be a truck driver?

When Manuel and I first started thinking about going into truck driving, I had no idea where to begin. It took a lot of research to figure out how to even be a truck driver. Hopefully this will help someone who is interested in it like I was.

When I started my research, I already had my class B license, and we owned a dump truck. He and I had been driving it for a few years, first in Panama and then in Florida. But a tractor/trailer is a whole other beast completely. I had driven tractor/trailers in the Air Force, but that was 10 years ago and I had forgotten a lot. So I had to figure out how to get us from this point to being over the road truck drivers.

I started with picking up some recruiting/job advertising magazines from the local Peterbilt dealership. Then I started calling all the companies listed in these books, and asking them if they would hire me with my class A license but with no schooling and no experience. You are probably thinking, why did I ask such a stupid question. But you have to remember, I knew nothing of the business at all. I was going in totally blind to what we had to do. Consequently, all of them said no. If we didn't have any experience then we at least had to be recently graduated from an accredited truck driving school with a minimum amount of hours.

At this point I started an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the companies I called. I would note down not only would they hire us as students, but would they hire us from our area (Southwest Florida), what was their minimum schooling requirements (ie 320 hours) and how long their training program was. After a few days of calling I only had 2 companies that said they would hire us, as students, from our area. I thought, 2 was better than none! So on to the next step...

I remembered that my community college back in Nebraska had a commercial driving course, so I pulled up a list of all the community colleges in the state of Florida and started calling. I started another Excel spreadsheet, and noted down the name and address of the school, the phone number, how much they charged for the course, and when their next class(es) started. I did not find any in our immediate area, but I did find 3 that were within a few hours drive. The average price was around $2k to $3k, and the average amount of time was 6 to 9 weeks, graduating with 320 hours.

I had also found a truck driving school called Road Masters. I don't know how, but I had heard to watch out for them. I called them anyway to see what they said. First thing that I noticed about them was that I was talking to a recruiter, not a teacher or school admin person. As you and I both know, recruiters make their money from recruiting people. This was the first warning sign. Another was that the length of the course was only 2 weeks, but they wanted 3 times more money ($6,000). Oh but you should have heard the recruiter, he went on and on about how good their school was.

In the end it was a no-brainer, cost wise. We went with pTEC in St. Petersburg, FL. They offer a 9 week course for $2,230 which includes the text book. Class was 4 days a week and we lived 2.5 hours away. We opted to drive in every day because when we did the calculations, the gas was a lot cheaper then a hotel room. And you can't get anywhere in life by being lazy. We got our lazy butts up early every morning!

At this point I would like to pause and share some photos from the school, because blog posts without pictures are boring!

The classroom

The bridge across the creek to the range

Some of the trucks

Next time I'll talk more about our adventures in the school, and how we got our start with Schneider, later ya'll!

Mexico gets a few auto parts...

Today is Wednesday May 9th. On Monday we arrived at a customer a little after 10 am. The reason we didn't arrive right at 10 was due to the fact that we had passed the small dirt road leading to the business, and took a while to get turned around to get back to them. The qualcomm (that computer thingy in the truck that we use to communicate with our dispatcher) told us we could arrive any time between 10 am and 1 pm.

As we pulled up (I was driving) the first thing I noticed was that it was a junk yard with no dock and no other Schneider trailers. We had been told that we were going to be picking up a loaded trailer, but we soon discovered that we were actually going to be live loaded. The second thing I noticed was a group of about 5 hispanic guys staring at us. I thought they were looking at me, as if a girl truck driver was a circus side show to gawk at. I started to get a little annoyed at that but after a few minutes I decided to not be so judgemental and go and figure out where I was supposed to put my trailer. If they want to gawk, let them gawk!

However what I soon found out was that they were the ones that would be loading the trailer, and they had been waiting for us to arrive. I went inside the office and one of the parts counter employees told me that they were moving some junk cars out of the way so that I could park the truck inside the junk car yard. Once I got it parked (just to the side not really in any spot at all) they started to go to work loading our trailer. I thought they would be done in a few hours, but in reality the whole process was not to be completed until 9 pm the next day!

It's funny how appearances can be so deceiving. I thought the hispanic guys worked for the junk yard/auto parts store, but come to find out, those guys were the actual customers! What they do is, the drive up to Wisconsin together, in a Chevy Silverado pickup truck. The parts store sells them as many parts as they can fit into a 53 foot trailer for one lump sum. So they load it up and ship it back down to Mexico.

They later told my husband that the reason why the come so far north to buy car parts is because it ends up being so much cheaper then parts stores further south. They then meet up with the trailer somewhere in Mexico, and sell their wares in some auto parts store that they have down there.

One of the men was the owner of said establishment in Mexico, and another was his son. The other 3 were the hired help.

There we sat waiting patiently all day to be loaded. A little after 5 pm one of the Mexican dudes knocks on the door. I roll down the window. 'Listo?' I ask. Meaning, is it ready? 'No' he says. My copilot then took over the conversation. They told him that they had not finished loading the trailer, but that the company was closing so could we come back tomorrow? They would start loading again around 6 am and should be done around noon or 1 pm. So we dropped the trailer and bobtailed out of there.

I should mention the method that they used in loading the trailer. The junk yard had 3 huge fork lifts that were constantly moving junk cars around, organizing them, placing them up on these pedestal thingies so that the mechanics could cut parts out of them, etc. The first things to be loaded onto the trailer were whole car engines. The engine would be lifted by one of the forklifts with a chain, and then placed inside the trailer. I am assuming that the Mexican worker bees would then take the engine block and pull them all the way to the back of the trailer. I'm not sure how many engine blocks they loaded but there were at least 5 or 6. After that, the fork lift would take an old truck bed full of parts, lift it up into the trailer, and the worker bees would unload, by hand, all of the parts that were inside the old truck bed.

I thought about this process while it was happening but again, I just assumed that they knew how to load a trailer...

My view of the junk yard

The next day we came back to pick up the trailer, they had finished loading it. They knew we had to go to the scale to weigh it. Luckily there was a Pilot with a Cat scale just 2 miles down the road. They followed us to the scale.
The gross limit for a truck is 80,000 pounds. And that weight needs to be evenly distributed. 12,000 pounds on the steer axle (the front tires), 34,000 pounds on the steer axle (that's the middle axle) and 34,000 on the trailer axle (that's the tires on the trailer).

The first time we weighed the load the gross weight was 84,880 pounds, almost 5,000 pounds over the legal limit! The steer axle was at 12,260 pounds, the drive axle was 37,000 pounds, and the trailer axle was 35,620 pounds.

And so the day began. As I said earlier, these guys were paying a flat fee for as many parts as they could fit into the trailer. But this was not our problem, we were NOT going to haul an illegal load all the way from Wisconsin to Laredo, Texas!

After the first weigh we took the truck back to the auto parts store so that they could take stuff off. Once they did this we re-weighed. We were still overweight by almost a thousand pounds so they had to take more stuff off. At this point they just did the work right there at the Pilot. After we got the load under 80,000 pounds, the weight was not evenly distributed. They had too much weight on the drive axle. I was thinking about those engine blocks they loaded first. We slid the tandems all the way forward which helped a little but not enough, they needed to move stuff off that middle axle.

Every time I weighed we would show them the scale ticket. Discussions were made in Spanish between them and my copilot. Sometimes it can be very convenient to have a copilit fluent in Spanish! After discussions I would park the truck and they would hop in the trailer to do some more moving around. As it got darker they used flashlights.

I had to re-weigh the truck no few than 12 times. Finally, a little after 9 pm, we got the load under legal limits. Phew!

During this process they told my copilot about how this happened to them the last time. The last time??? You would think they would have learned their lesson and known how to load a trailer, ugh!

But it's all good and despite it taking 2 days we are finally on our way to Laredo. On a side note, they also told my husband that whenever they cross the border back into Mexico, back into their home country, they are scared. On the contrary, whenever they cross into the United States they feel a sense of relief, a sense of safeness. I think this is so very sad, and it's a testament to the upheaval going on in Mexico. No wonder these people want to come to live and work in our country.

But that's all I'm going to say about that, I'm not writing a political blog here! Catch ya next time!

Maine freezer

The news that we were taking a load up to Maine got me excited that we would be adding a few more states to our 'been there' list. But we were not prepared for the weather up there.

But first let me start with ...
 The day before yesterday I drove the whole length of Pennsylvania, from West to East. Since Schneider did not want us taking the toll road, our trip consisted of all US and PA hwys. Non-interstate driving is exhausting. You have more curves, hills, and most of all, lots of turns and stops and gos through towns. But I got the load delivered on time in New Jersey, then headed back to PA to pick up our next load, which is the load that had to go up to Maine.

We had time to get the load delivered on time and my copilot wasn't feeling very good so we stopped for the night and slept. He took some nyquil but still did not feel very good the next day, so I drove again. Got us up through the George Washington Bridge and beyond into Maine.

It was sunny when we reached Maine, but chilly. Once I got to the drop location, a Walmart distribution center, the sun had started to set and it was now a blistering 27 degrees with a huge wind factor. When we had left our home in Lehigh Acres, Florida, we thought we wouldn't be seeing anymore cold weather. I had left my hoodie behind, and had packed shorts and capris. Thankfully, though, I had packed one pair of jeans and we still had our jackets. But our jackets are thin fleece and more appropriate for 58 degree weather.

My Panamanian copilot was not having any of it. That and he still wasn't feeling better. So I had to drop the trailer and pick up the empty by myself. I was doing ok, but then I hooked up to a defective trailer and had to start over. By this time I was a frozen popsicle and in a bad mood. But I got disconnected and mozied on over to another trailer and got hooked up to it. All the while coming in and out of the truck to warm up. I was almost done when I lost  one of my gloves, I had set it down on the steps of the truck and the wind had blown it away. At this point it was over an hour into the process so copilot helped me to try and locate the glove. We almost left, then came back to look for it again, and success! Those gloves are oily and smell like diesel but dangit I paid a lot of money for them!

On to the next location to pick up our next load and it's full night and probably minus something. Then I found out that I couldn't slide my tandems, the pull out handle had something in the way not allowing the handle to be pulled. So sorry to the company but I definitely wasn't going to tell them about it, I parked that thing anyway! (I did, however, send a notice to Schneider telling them about it...)

The next job I had to do was connect to the loaded trailer, and when I pulled up behind it I noticed it was super high. I had to lower it. Not a problem in warm weather! But in my haste to get out of the cold, I couldn't get the handle in low gear, and it was not budging in high gear because it was a heavy load. The wind was blowing hard right through my jacket, and even though I had a hat on I didn't have a scarf so the wind blew right down my neck. I was miserable.

After 2 attempts I sat in the driver seat about ready to cry. But instead I said a little prayer asking for a little more patience and the ability to get the handle in low gear to be able to get the job done.

So I sat there, quiet, digging down deep, and then it suddenly hit me... I look over at copilot and he's comfy warm but not wearing his jacket... 'hey. let me borrow your jacket' I say. I take mine off, put his on, then put mine back on over it. Then I looked around for something I could use as a scarf... the bed sheet! It was perfect! It's made from the same material as t-shirts, soft and warm. I wrapped that thing around my neck, made a knot, then pulled it up over my hat. When I went out again I was warm enough to calmly put the handle in lower gear and get the trailer lowered. Success!

Later we pulled up the their scale, it was one of those 1-axle at a time dealios. We were overweight! This was the first time this ever happened to us. 'Move the tandem towards the trouble' is the motto, so we did this. First we were on the 14th hole, then we tried the 12th hole, still overweight, finally I put it in the 8th hole and we were ok except that the front axle was still over by 60 pounds. When the weight came up on the scale I looked over at copilot sitting in the passenger seat and said 'well I guess you have to get out so we can be legal' I was only kidding but when he got back into the sleeper berth, the weight went down to 12,000 pounds exactly!

We saw that we had enough time to deliver this load that we could stop the truck for the night again. By the time I drove 40 miles up the road to a service plaza I was exhausted. We both slept 10 hours straight and thankfully, he was feeling better in the morning and was able to drive to give me a break.

Starting this blogging thing

I've decided to start a blog about my trucking adventures because all this wonderful stuff is happening and I know in a few years or even a few months I will probably forget most of it. I named my blog Girl Trucker Au Contraire because au contraire means, on the contrary, and that's exactly how I feel: the most unlikeliest trucker ever! But I do take my job seriously and I do try to be safe in everything I do. (but if you ever see my truck running down the road, you might want to keep a wide berth hahaha!!)

I must give a fair warning however that I really don't know how to blog. I've even already messed up because this was supposed to be my first post, but now it's like the 3rd post.

A little bit of background about us: I was born and raised in Alaska, joined the Air Force, lved in North Dakota and then Omaha, Nebraska where I met my Panamanian, Manuel. I had a secure but boring desk job at PayPal. He was a new-construction house painter but we saw the bottom falling on that career so we decided to take a couple of dump trucks to his country. When that didn't work out we shipped one back to Florida, and within a year decided to dump the whole dump truck business haha. Anyway, the logical step up from there was to truck driving, so we got ourselves enrolled in a driving school, Ptec in St. Petersburg, and from there got hired by Schneider National. We are probably the most un-truck driver type of people you will ever meet. Daily things happen to us to prove this, and this is why I've started this blog :)

This is the truck the company gave us, a brand new 2012 Freightliner Cascadia:

What weigh station officer??

The night before last night (I think) I got woken up twice.

The first time was due to my copilot not being able to find the customer to pick up our load. We were in Everett, Washington, just north and east of Seattle. The directions were not very clear and both GPS' sent him down the wrong road. So he went around the block, and with my help we found the place. I stayed up to do all the paperwork associated with picking up a load, off we went and back to the sleeper I went.

A few hours later I was woken up again. Copilot had pulled over to the side of the road and had woken me up. "I just saw a sign that said traction tires recommended, what does that mean?" I was up in a flash. "Are we on I-90 right before Snoqualmie pass?" I asked. He didn't know, but I knew. I immediately grabbed the cell phone and called 511. I had just listened to the message saying chains were being required on all vehicles over Snoqualmie when copilot announced "yes we're on I-90". At least he tries! But before I could tell him what I wanted us to do he had put the truck in gear and was heading down the road. He's always been very impatient. No matter tho, we just had to go up a few miles to turn around. I decided we would go to the TA to find out more information, and to possible wait it out. As we pulled in to exit 34, there were trucks lining both sides of the exit. "We might not be able to find parking" I said. We pull in to the truck stop and see an empty spot, but it's on his blind side so he has to find a place to turn around. But as we pull forward we found another empty spot, this one we just needed to pull in, bonus!! Not only that but it was super close to the entrance so I didn't have to walk very far to use the restroom. I love how God takes care of us even for the small things!

After getting back to the truck I turned on my computer and went to the Washington state road conditions website, and again confirmed that they were requiring chains. Later I will have to tell the story of the first time we ran into this same situation, at this exact same location. We are not chaining-up type people. So we both decided to go to sleep and hope that the chains-in-affect would be released later in the day. It was almost 6 am by this time. At 9 am I woke up and called information and they did indeed lift the chain requirement, so I grabbed my coffee and off we went.

The view over Snoqualmie pass is one of my favorites. And today the pine trees were topped with almost a foot of fluffy white snow. It was amazing and this is one of the reasons why I love my job.

Later that same day, which was yesterday March 21st, I was driving over a mountain pass in Idaho, just past Couer d' Alene, when it started snowing... no wait, let me tell the truth, it had started snowing around Spokane, Washington, but once I started going up the mountain, the snow started to fall pretty heavily. I kept an eye on the signs that says "chains required when flashing" but they never did flash. But me and the trucks in front of me and behind me took it easy up, and then down, going about 25 mph the whole way. Once I was down and the roads got better I breathed easier. Copilot slept through the whole thing.

Something else happened yesterday that just adds to my adventures in trucking. Copilot had woken up after only sleeping a few hours (later he would sleep more). I was driving the boring part of I-90, which is after Snoqualmie but before Spokane, when suddenly ahead of me I see 3 trucks start to pull off. I see a sign that says "Restaurant" and I think to myself, wow must be a good restaurant. One other truck did not pull off. I didn't see much of anything else because I was concentrating on not hitting these trucks in front of me as they had started to slow down to get off the exit. But then something funny happened - copilot just happened to look out his window at where the trucks had pulled off, and he sees a uniformed officer waving his arms! "Hey I think that was a weigh station!" he says. "And that officer is waving his arms saying we were supposed to pull off there! You better pull over!" So pull over I did, and put my flashers on. We were discussing what should be our next move - walk back there with my cdl and registration? drive up to the next exit and turn around? - when the officer came up behind us in a van thingy with flashing lights. He walks up to the passenger door and Manuel rolls down his window. I tell him I'm sorry I missed the weigh station but that my gps didn't tell me, and my EZpass didn't flash anything either. He kinda laughs and says "So you missed those 2 signs?" DUH. Yup I sure did! He looked at my license and registration and lets me off with a verbal warning. *PHEW* And the first thing I can think of is my trainer at PTEC, Al, drilling into our heads "YOU HAVE TO READ THE SIGNS!" Lesson learned, I wont let that happen to me again!

We like Mr. Espar

Today is Feb. 24th, and we are sitting at the Operating Center in Dallas, Texas. We have been here since yesterday, and it looks like we won't be getting a load out until tomorrow. We had to come here to do our 3 month evaluation. I guess they want to make sure we kinda know what we are doing so they'll be putting us through a few tests.

Tonight we sat in the OC talking with some fellow truck drivers and surfing the internet. I watched the 2 newest Survivor episodes. A few minutes ago I decided to head to  bed, so off to the truck I went. Since we forgot to turn on the bunk heater, aka the Espar, it was cold inside the truck.

The Espar heater works, I'm not sure how exactly, but it only works when the truck is off. When you turn it on it takes a few minutes to start up, then slowly but surely it starts blowing hot air out of a vent below the bottom bunk bed. If anything happens to be in front of the heat vent, it will melt, that's how hot the heater gets. It has a temperature control so you can control how hot you want it to be. And it runs off of, well I'm not sure what,  maybe diesel because I'm not sure how else the thing works. But the nice thing about it is that we can have a nice warm bunk without having to run the engine. I guess that's what they had to do in the old days, and I guess all of the old trucks still need to do this to run the heat because at night at a truck stop you can hear a lot of engines idling.

So anyway, the thing works pretty good, except for one night in Fargo, North Dakota. This was shortly after we started, not even 2 weeks I think. We were at a Flying J, an older one, but it had a good size driver's lounge. We had chicken wings for dinner, and gotten showers, and was doing laundry. All of this took several hours. We did not think ahead to turning on the Espar heater to keep the truck warm while we were inside. And it was super cold outside that night, like 5 degrees.

So after a few hours I was tired so I went out to the truck to go to bed. I had quite the shock when I got inside the truck, it was so cold that the memory foam mattress was hard as a rock. I turned the heater on and it started working, but slowly. We didn't have a blanket, only sheets. We still don't have blankets, don't ask me why we are just weird like that. (I'm currently crocheting a granny square blanket but at the rate I'm going I'll be done in about a year). After about an hour, hunkered down in the sheet, I was still freezing. My copilot finally came out to the truck around this time, and this was the first and last time we have ever slept in the same bunk together. The beds are small - bunk beds, one on top one on bottom - super twin sized, so they are extra long but not very wide. But that night we needed the help of our combined body heat to keep warm. I think we finally warmed up but I don't remember, I guess I was sleeping...