Sorry i just found that funny, not being mean or anything.

A friend of mine is thinking of going to Central Ref.

Well I hope to be finished with their school this Friday and taking my DMV test early next week.

where is there school an terminal? i went down to there office in riverside today, right down the street from the usx terminal, its just a little building. terry was off today, so ill call tomorrow. is the school hard? or is everybody passing. well goodluck to u.

The driving yard and the terminal are on Santa Ana Street between Citrus Ave and Poplar Street.

Passing the DMV test seems to be the hardest part.

More of the same, cruising down intestates. We are hauling some potatoes towards idaho from Louisiana to get us back to denver for more beer. I found out today that central is one of those companies that is bad about putting stuff on your dac so if you come to work with us don't crash and don't make a huge scene and piss ppl off when you leave. If you can manage to get on a dedicated account out of training you can also get an instant 6 cpm pay raise.

potatoes TO idaho? isn't that all they grow in that state?

Thanks Cockroach, I will keep all of that in mind.

actually you would be supprised at how little amounts of potatoes we actually grow here. generally they are grown someplace else, then trucked up to us here to be bagged in an "idaho spud labled bag" then shipped to stores, we grow alot of corn here :P

Cockroach;You doing much finger printing loads?Or does Central pay for lumpers? :shock:

I have yet to fingerprint a load. Central pays lumpers however I have yet to have to do this. Everything has been customer unloaded. Central has a contract with someone the requires driver unload but they pay extra unload pay when you deliver there.

----

Ugh, ok my day sucked today.

In the beginning I was taking a break in Louisiana. At this point everything is cool but this break interrupts my normal schedule. Instead of driving in the afternoon I am no driving in the morning. I have to stop somewhere in texas to swap out with my trainer. As I am pulling into the truck stop I scrap a freight-liners mirror. There is no damage at all *whew* my trailer just barley touched the mirror, all it did was bump it out of alignment,r but as you can see my day is off to a great start. My trainer is freaking out because he thinks I hit this person while backing and I had to explain to him no infact I was pulling forward.

Then I hop into the sleeper berth. After a while in the berth I go off duty and am talking with my trainer. Our next load comes in over the qualcom. after we drop our potatoes in denver we are to grab an empty trailer in the drop yard and deadhead to the beer plant and drop the empty and grab a full. On the qualcom message it says DO NOT BOBTAIL DROP WORKING TRAILER WITH NO INT OR EXT DMG in-fact it says that twice, and then it says it again in the directions.

The load is a load to Pennsylvania with no possible way for us to deliver on time. My trainer is pissed because we don't have the hour or time to be trying to run like this again. Plus it leaves little time to train if all we are doing is hauling ass down the interstate.

We get to the drop yard where I do some backing practice I do better driving backwards at night then driving forwards during the day.. I then drop our potatoes and head over to the two empty trailers, check them over. Oh joy one has a huge hole in the door. I hook up to the other one, we turn on the reefer unit, only it doesn't, turn on that is. Apparently there is something wrong with it. We have no choice but to bobtail to the beer plant because we can't bobtail to another state to find an empty trailer, that would just be crazy.

Oh and my logs are all jacked up, nothing looks to be in the right place.

On the way to the beer plant I miss the exit so my trainer has my take the next exit, it dumps us into a suburb filled with hairpin 180 deg turns and low hanging power lines and closed roads. We finally turn around after driving through parking lots and making 3 point turns in intersections to get our big ass truck turned around and finally get back to the exit and try to go southbound but its a divided highway and you can only go northbound! so we go down to the next exit. I m so glad I didn't have to do that with a 53 foot trailer.

Now we are heading back the right way and make it to the beer plant. We sneak on without a trailer and hook up to our load, throw in our loadlocks and another driver who has never delivered here asks us for help finding a scale. Then we discover our trailers tags are expired. So we finish our thing and wait up fer her and she follows us down to the TA. We weigh and I try to fix my logs makeing them worse then we take off towards PA. after my trainer helps this lady slide her tandems. I think she was flirting with me.

Well because of the fact this is the wrong time of the day for me I get tired very fast and end up only able to drive for 7 hours before I have to stop combine this with 4 rest stops some time refueling and trying to figure out my logs which I have managed to destroy with white out all over the page and my trainer has just about gotten his 10 hours. I then have a moment of enlightenment with my logs which I can't seam to make legal even though I know I have been running legal... I have been logging everything 12 hours into the future! I undo a few of my attempted fixed and move everything from the last 11 hours or so back 12 hours and everything looks perfect. Awesome. I wake my trainer he has me back some more and I go to bed but not before we find out that we forgot to grab our trailer registration back at the TA that they faxed us.

After about 5 hours in the sleeper berth I wake up all refreshed. my trainer is driving but he doesn't like driving this time of day and would rather come back here and let me drive. I am perfectly refreshed but HOS says I'm tired. This is after it told me I could still drive last night another 4 hours when I was almost asleep at the wheel. anyways the HOS rules are all garbage. They I think make things worse by telling the driver hey your rested but sit on the side of the road with your thumb up your ass or by saying hey if you wanna get paid you have to drive now even if you are tired because if you stop and take a 4 hour nap I won't let you drive again. etc.

We get our next preload on the qualcom and we are supposed to pick something up in PA yesterday and deliver it somewhere in texas that is impossible for us to make on time. My trainer is getting really mad. We are going to reset in PA because he is out of hours tomorrow and we will only be able to go about 7 hours a day which will get us to texas way late. My trainer is getting pissed that these laods are all so tight but they are taking him home for his home time so he is taking them.

There was more stuff but my browser crashed the last time I wrote this and its now a day later now so my memory isn't as clear. Does any one else on here sleep better in a moving truck than at a truck stop?

Problems with your logs? :shock:
Why not ask your trainer for help? :?
Oh yeah, that,s right, he's either driving or sleeping! :roll:
If in fact you log it as you do it, not to easy to screw it up! :wink:
Sorry, I'm not impressed with the way you are being trained!
You and those around you deserve much, much better!

I was logging it as I did it, but it was off by 12 hours and i didn't realize it.I had a major brain fart. He would help me but i wanted to figure it out on my own. I was about to throw in the towel actually at then end there when i figured it out.

I do agree though training is not what I expected however I am getting better training than others have. My trainer has taught me lots of cool stuff.

Remember to ALWAYS!!! Log your home terminal time! :shock: Regardless of what time zone your in now! 8) I use a cheap battery powered clock,Mounted to my dash with velcro.

We have a clock on the dash that is 'log time' Then I use my cellphone to check delivery times since it changes timezones automaticaly.

Ok here is the deal with that load to texas that was super tight that my trainer was comlaining about. The dispatcher gave it to us because it was originally a light load but the loadplanner moved the deliver time up after it was assigned to us. Our dispatcher pulled it and gave it to someone who wants it and is giving us another load.

We are headed to texas now with chocolate, then to denver with unknown commodity then to alabama with beer where we will have 3 days amd nights off. (trainers home time)

We have run 100% legal up to this point and have not been pressured to run illegally.

As long as you do not try to use hours an an excuse to deliver late you will do alright here.

Good news! I passed my CDL test today!!!

Start orientation next Tuesday and should be out with a trainer by Thursday/Friday.

I am soooo glad to be done with school!!!!

hey everyone
 

I would like to just say that my husband is still working for swift and this seems to be a normal trend my husbands trainer sleeps while he drives and my husband sleeps while the trainor drives. My kids and I got lucky though his trainer was nice enough to get my husband a few days of hometime with us after four weeks of being away from home now it looks like it will be atleast another three to four weeks before we see him again when his training is over and he gets to be solo.

congrats bumper, let us know how ur training goes also. how long was the school? an how many didnt make it? good luck

Thanks Big A! I started school on October 10th and it will officially end for me on Monday. I will then become a full time Central employee on Tuesday.

Of the last 10 guys sent to the Escondido DMV only 3 of us passed.

Because of the CR England debacle, DMV test dates are hard to come by and we are sending 6 guys to Salt Lake City tomorrow to finish their training there and get their licenses in Utah.

Bump

Best of luck,Bumper! :D Enjoy and stay safe! This product maybe very useful for you!
http://www.bumperdumper.com :D Check it out!

Thanks Skullitor and yep, that just might come in handy in the middle of the night! LOL

:lol: They have funnt T shirts there as well! :lol:

You had to come all the way down to Escondido? Bet the traffic was fun on
the i-15 :P Hard to believe the Riverside/Temecula/Ontario DMV's had no
appointments.

Only 3? wow! crazy. The school I went to in oregon has like a 95% pass rate. Isn't the crsi school only a week long?

Right now we are sitting in a drop yard, in 5 hours I'm going to drive for 2 hours then go off duty 10 then drive another 4, with the loads we have now my trainer is planning to give me 2 34 hr restarts this week.

My trainer has been awake alot when I'm driving. We have gone over alot of trip planning / weight management and defensive driving stuff this week.

Yes though I still drive sometimes but its always when I'm on the interstate. We have to do some team driving or he looses money having a student. I do not know of any companies that don't do some of that during training.

I have been suprised how much drop and hook we do and how much no touch. We never have had to wait around for shippers or reciever! I heard horror stories about this in the reefer biz. Also the reefer is not bad, it lulls me to sleep :)

The school is *supposed* to be two weeks long. You basically stay there until you pass your test. One guy has been there for 5 weeks! He is having problems with the pre-trip inspection part of the test. Great driver, but doesnt like giving speeches....

thats the only thing that worries me is quitting my job to go to there driving school an not pass then be out of 2 jobs, or like u said they do keep u till u pass?

Oh yeah, they keep you until you pass. Some time before the end of the year they are supposed to get their DL 170 authorization to do their own testing and license issuing. It is much more relaxed when your evaluator is someone who knows you and your capabilities.

They already have that authority in Utah and that is why they are sending some guys up there. More relaxed and less stressful.

Stress can have a huge effect on your final test, we had a super chill evaluater. Everyone did better with him than the instructors. Of course thats understandable when you have grouchy instructors who yell at you when you screw up.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU TODAY, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING!?!?!

uuuh I just ground a gear jeez

I hear that! The day before my test I was screwing up by the numbers on the skills portion. I couldnt alley dock to save my life. My instructor came up and told me if I didnt get it together he was going to send his wife instead of me to take the test! He dinged me 7 points. Down here failure is 10 points.

When I took the skills test at the DMV I got a 2. :)

well thats good to know, i work retail at STATER BROS. right now an dont plan on stayin much longer. thanx for the info

I got like twelve dings on my school test then went to the dmv next day and got three dings.

Went around one of those loopy off ramps and my trailer crossed the white line and he said i didn't look at an intersection, which I did look, I just didn't turn my head.

that's got me wondering. do the school testers just push you harder because
they know you and your tendencies, where the examiner for the state does
not because they've seen it all?

or is it just pressure works for some and not others?

The last couple days have been pretty slow. I did a 34 hour restart (or is it called reset now?) and interstate night driving and got a lesson on weight problems.

Weight and fuel.
====
We got 44,104 pounds of beer, Couple this with the fact that a reefer trailer heavier than a dry van because of insulation and the reefer unit itself and you have problems.

We showed up with 1/4 tank of gas and drove down the road and scaled. This load was HEAVY 78,700 lbs gross. After sliding the tandems of the trailer we got it so that we had 33,800 on the rear 33,300 on the drives and 11,600 on the steers. That leaves room for 700 lbs on the drives and 400 lbs on the steers. that is only 1100 lbs for fuel.

If I remember right diesel is 8lbs a gallon. Since we are at about 1/4 tank (two 150 gallon tanks) which is 75 gallons of fuel we have about 800 lbs of fuel. That means if we fill up that will add another 2400 pounds. That would put us over weight.

also in this truck any fuel added about 60% of the weight goes on the drives and 40% goes on the steers. So if we just get 1,100 lbs of fuel that will put 660 lbs on the drives and 440 on the steers. Over weight again.

ALSO the fuel program central uses does not take any of this into consideration. It will tell you to fill your tank wherever the gas is cheapest. So what you must do every time you fuel is calculate how much you burned since you last fueled and how much room you have left without going overweight. Then you have to send a macro on the qualcom telling how much fuel you now have and it will tell you where to get fuel at based on the new amount.

Then you also have the fact that central is now using volvos which are alot heavier than the old freightliners they are phasing out and the kenworths the owner ops drive. This means as a company driver you will spend alot of time hoping gas station to gas station trying to stay below 1/2 or 3/8 tank of gas depending on your load sometimes.

Can't drive... can't park
====

As you know if you have been reading this I started out my training pretty hard. The truck didn't stop moving much. Well today after driving for 5 hours I get to the town our load delivers to but we are 5 hours early. my instructor says the pilot in town is always full so he said to stop in one of the rest areas before town, well they where also full.. and so was ever truck stop for about 100 miles before town. We get to the pilot... Full erg, we did eventually find a spot to park for the night but it was NOT fun to get into, I had to squeeze between a bunch of other trucks who decided to park here also on this little side/alley street. I had about 1/2 inch clearance between my trailer on the right and another truck and about an inch clearance between my mirror on the left and another truck. I am glad I made it through because I would not have been able to back back out.

This bring up something else.. While driving through the full truck stops and break areas I noticed allot of truckers pulled far ahead or backed far out of the spot. Is it that hard to line up with the trucks next to you? geez this makes the little ally ways SO much more cramped and hard to drive through.

Cockroach, have you found any good Tamales yet?????? :D

Cockroach; Have you made it to the Northeast yet?Like Mass Or Maine?

we had a load to new jersey. I am sitting in South Carolina now. My trainer showed me a trick to get out of a receiver fast, get there early pull into the dock and they can't do anything with anyone until they unload us first :D

Then we are on the way back to memphis and onto alabama from there where I will do another 34 hr restart. It has been really cool, running 8 hours a day, the truck is stopped for about 5 hours a night. which is right when i'm done driving so its great for me :) I've been running evenings which is cool because I am not a morning person at all.

Today I ran into some interesting construction, the on ramp to get back onto the highway at a large truck stop had concrete barricades out, it was VERY narrow and jutted out into the intersection at the worst angle. I guess the construction workers didn't expect trucks to be using the onramp next to a truck stop hmmm...

Well it was about 2 inches of clearance coming around from one direction. A truck coming from the other way couldn't even make it, someone had to direct 4 wheelers while he backed back out into the intersection, plus they ripped out all the lights so he couldn't see anywhere.. It was interesting to watch him get out of that mess.

After 2 /12 weeks I am going to get my first paycheck tomorrow, woohoo.

It's always nice to arrive early!
Sure takes the pressure off from trying to find the customer with the arrival clock ticking!
....but don't count on that "trick" to always work!
Some customers can be well,.......not so accommadating to the driver! :wink:

You are right, this works best when they only have one dock I guess.

[/quote] DON'T FORGET TO PAY YOUR SKULL TAXES :shock:

DON'T FORGET TO PAY YOUR SKULL TAXES :shock:[/quote]

ok so take my training pay of 375, subtract taxes... subtract my cash advance, subtract my bills for last month that comes out to -$700 since SKULLTAX is currently at %15 that makes my tax -$105 woohoo i'm getting a refund this month :wink: :lol: When can I expect my check?