Hey guys, just wanted to tell you all about my new job! I finally made up my mind and decided me and girlfriend would relocate from Las Vegas to Phoenix Az. since her family is there and there's still some decent jobs there. While still being employed and driving OTR I applied at what seemed to be every trucking company in Phoenix that pulls tankers. I've been wanting to do tanker for a long while now and didnt have enough driving experience but now that I have a little under 3 yrs of commercial driving experience I qualify for most of these companies that want 2 yrs! Well the one company that I really wanted to work for hauls milk in tankers, so I applied but was almost positive I wouldnt get the job because the manager told me, " We've had well over 100 applicants so it will take a little while to process thru them. We will send your application to our processing dept. and they will check your background and verify your driving experience, once we get the thumbs up we will give you a call for a 2nd interview and a driving test if we still have openings". Well with the economy the way it is I was sure the guys out there with 5, 10, 20+ yrs of driving experience that are applying will get the job very easily before I do so I just waited and waited and no other companies called me either. So I decided to just keep my OTR job and get more experience under my belt and try again this summer but......last week I finally got the call I been waiting for. It was the manager from the milk transport job and he told me to come in for a 2nd interview and my drive test! I couldnt believe it, so i went in and filled out some other paperwork and answered a few easy questions and passed my drive test with ease. He asked if I minded starting training that night and I was so excited I didnt even care about getting hardly any sleep, so I made it thru 5 days of training and realized there's a whole lot more than just pumping milk into a tank and driving it from point A to point B and unloading. No you have to test the milk before you even think about loading it, it's actually a little bit of a process once your done pumping the milk and ready to go. The company has day cab Freightliner Columbia's, 1 day cab Sterling, 1 day cab Western Star. I personally like the Freightliners but I dont mind which one I drive because I get to work with tankers and it's been something I been wanting to do for a while. There's a total of 6 bays where we get the milk off loaded, 3 of them are blind side backins and I am truly surprised how much easier it is than I thought it was going to be to do a blind side backin, I had to do it twice one day and it only took me one pull up. Overall I cant expect much more than this with the short commercial driving experience that I have, I get medical/dental/vision, I'll make more than I was OTR, long hours but I dont mind at all and the best part......I get to sleep in my own bed and take a shower without using flip flops, oh and I get to use the same toilet everyday! I hope you guys dont take this as bragging or anything I just am still in kind of a shock because I never thought I would get this job. I've read a lot of Cyanide's posts on pulling tankers and other people's posts too and so far I absolutely love it! Like I said before, it's unreal how easy backing a 42ft. tanker really is, by far I'm no backing expert especially since I've been pulling doubles for the past year. The "surge" is a little scary especially for me not having any experience pulling tankers. On my first day on my own I got a load of milk weighing only 43000lbs (usually loads weigh 50-52k) and there was about 3 1/2 feet of space between the milk and the top of the tanker, so I knew I'd have to take it easy because there's plenty of space for the surge. Well heading back to the creamery I had to drive thru morning traffic in Phoenix which really sucks, and that's when I got my first real taste of the surge and man does it push you and pull on you when your trying to shift gears!! Well I'll leave it at that for now, hope everyone stays safe out there and dont forget.....drink milk, it does a body good!!!!

 

Good deal Wimpy! I'm happy for ya!

 

congratulations, i hope it works out for you. a good local job beats o.t.r. any day. usualy more money and a lot less stress.

 

:bigthumbsup:

 

Best of luck to you. Keep us updated on pulling Tankers. I did it for alittle over 2years. Wish i never left.

 

Good goin Wimpy! Great to be out of the rat race huh? Wave goodbye forever to coolie carrier OTR truck driving. You made it!

:bigthumbsup::bigthumbsup::bigthumbsup::bigthumbsu p::bigthumbsup::bigthumbsup: