I wouldnt want to be stuck in a truck with you folks all day long. I'd go nuts and beat ya over the head with yur bible.
Do you really talk that way in all day long in REAL life?? People must look at you cross-eyed...
Ooooh PRAISE GOD!!
Been Bible bopped before ...
SOOOO SMACK ME!
NAh, sometimes we sin, loose a grip on the stick shift and
speak in tongues
Depends on whose driving though...! Usually the guy walking is speaking
more in heathen. He's still working on that salvation
part. Then if we get him back in the truck, we gotta
have a real Bible banging, fire and brimstone sermon and lay hands on that anger management part.
:
Oh Lord, I will NEVER FERGET MY HUBS FIRST DAY! True company man if I ever did see! Freaked the snot out of me though! Forgive me Lord. That tongue speaking thing set in in less than than
60 minutes on arrival to work that day and he was a mumbling and yeilding his forked tonge and raising not so holy hands and going on and on! You would have thought someone annointed him in oil. Black tar
motor oil that is.
Getting his keys was easy, he just walked right up to the desk and got them... getting his truck, well, just how
spirit filled would you be if you walked a racetrack mile and could not find it, no less in the middle of winter and in a brand new $4000 (yeah, four thousand smackers, the price of the $1
schooling including $3999 boots back then.) Talk about trucking raw! Them pair of unbroken in boots that he got while in boot camp and now he was tredging in them in the snow? What a first day.
I will not devulge the plain english
that came from his lips that day! But I bet the look on his
OSR's face was utterly PRICELESS!
after he was exhausted and hollering at him... (Blank, blank blank blank blank where the blank is my truck?) For some reason that affliction Turettes Syndrone comes to mind.
Honey, If-N you get to the point where there is three flunkies in a big truck, then ima gonna guess you got past Salvation
and got your larners permit and a few of you flunky students is
in the bunk Its either that or you is smuggling in with some lot lizards in which case, I know blanking well you got the wrong truck. DO NOT PASS GO AND DO NOT COLLECT A DOLLAR!
And do not do that if you ever get the job, cuz they will gaurantee you will be fired. Four flunkies in a truck means its a foriegn outfit and yep, they defineitly speak in some ununderstandable tongue. Its either that or someone kidnapped me and Im in Mexico. Adois mio.
So, ya still playing games with that CDL Test link? Whats the score there? C'mon, be HONEST! Them multiple choice thingees aint that hard. PICK ONE!Whose first to pass that thing three times in a row 100% score? For penance, do that for three more days and see where you stand.
I just wanna know though, whats with all them kamakazze 4 wheels yaking on the cell phones and using some kinda weird hand signals? That be some deaf thing going on??? Dont they know using a cell phone and signing and not be holding to the wheel while driving is a sure unpleasant way to met Jesus??! Well, thats what the billboards plastered all over the country side are saying! Wanna met Jesus, use your cell phone while drivng....blah blah blah!Dang, there be a lot of them thar people doing it! That there another JESUS fella must be popular guy!
Aint trucking fun! Hang on Beloved...
We just kept another trucking wannabee flunkie or two off the road!
Oh Halleluyah! Thank you Jesus!
Um, watch that pothole.. walking the lizard lot can be treachery.
HMMM CROSSES...yonder be da
EYEBALLS AND DAH, FINGERS!
ANY TAKERS ON LEGS AND THE TOES?! KICKER BAAACK! CUZ YOU TWO FLUNKIES AINT GETTING PAST
either me or the hub or THE OCR!
EWE, my organ donor
came through...
Im still waiting for an appointment now for them to install the dang thing.. Gonna be an interesting procedure....
Dont bust a spleen laughing! Or were gonna have to make red clean up your mess. Ribs is bad enough.
I haven't read the whole thread but I have my CDL (Hazmat, double/triple, tanker...you name it). I went to school at US Xpress and did it because, my then husband, was an experienced driver and teams make decent money and you're not sitting at home. I had no kids so it was an easy choice. I saw the country for 2 years. It was hard but I'd not change the experience for anything. We quickly became o/o, and went to Mercer, hauling military mostly. Team drivers with a drop deck, willing to haul butt coast to coast will make decent money. Fuel surcharges help if you get them (we did). A good dispatcher who likes you helps immensely!!!
Be prepared for some hairy situations! I remember backing my rig down Atlantic Blvd in Brooklyn my first week out of school, hubby out with a wooden pole, pushing up the low lying wires over the street so I wouldn't pull them down with the trailer.
The seat was clenched between my butt cheeks.
I've seen some amazing things. Wyoming in winter. Sierra Nevadas in the Fall. This country is so beautiful.
I've jacknifed in N. Dakota, right outside Fargo in January with the windchill at -50. I've been hit broadside by a bunch of teenage girls flying off a ramp by the mall in Atlanta. I've seen more accidents (and sadly, fatalities) than I care to remember. I stopped to help at 2 of them, as they happened right in front of me (I used to be an AEMT) ...they still haunt my dreams.
My father was a trucker and he tried to discourage me but those 2 years on the road gave me a new respect for my dad (And all truckers!), who was a trucker in the days before nice comfy sleeper cabs, satellite radio, wireless internet and cellular phones. He drove an old Mack between NY and FL, I remember him being gone 3 days at a time as a little one. I hated him being away and eventually as my sisters were born he went and did other work. But it gets in your blood and so it was in his...he loved our big Volvo custom 780. He drove with me once to SC and paid me the highest complement he ever had (in my mind) - he said I was a very good driver.
He had no idea how scared I was the first time I ever got behind the wheel of one of those big rigs. This is someone who was afraid to drive and got her regular license at 20 yo, kicking and screaming, mind you!!!!
These days I'm working a regular job but I have the greatest respect for the drivers ( Remember, if you have it, a truck brought it!) out there who are hauling everything we need to conduct our lives and give them room on the road. The experience has made me a much better driver, to be sure.
I do miss my Trucker Buddy class. Trucker Buddy matches you to a class of elementary students who adopt you. You send them postcards of where you go and they write you letters. We used to visit them several times a year and the kids loved the truck, our dog and the air horn!!! What kid doesn't love an air horn? They would climb all over that truck. I remember as a kid how fascinated I was with trucks, even as a little girl so I knew how exciting it must have been for them to have one to explore. It was good for us too, to look for cool postcards and teach about the country from the road. There was so much to tell them - commerce, geography, culture,...weather! Of course their letters reflected a more basic interest, like where we ate and where we showered! We started a game named "Guess Where Bauer Pooped Today?" Bauer was our lab who traveled with us. Bauer had pooped in every state except Alaska and Hawaii! We send pictures over the internet...5th graders love poop humor.
If your hubby is thinking of the OTR life then all I can say is that it is hard work and being away from home is tough. We'd go out for 2 months at a time (we didn't own, home based at my Dad's so it was no big deal). Can you handle being alone for long periods of time? Driving can be dangerous, too. The food one the road is unhealthy, expensive and exercise is not something you get much behind the wheel - although tarping a load can be exhausting!
Good luck with this, I wish your hubby all the luck in the World. He might like it but it sure isn't an easy job!
Hi Catstar68.. gonna have to come back to your post as I do not have time to read it at the moment but I wanted to get back to tell the ones just starting out or thinking on starting their trucking road trip.. first thing.. health.. DOT is a stickler on where your BP's are at so if you think the Bible banging is raising your blood pressure.. dont go trucking. They will stop you before you start. So save your money and go to another job.. finish Bible College, but dont go trucking.
Back later... My church is calling.
Then its back on the road again. So see ya later and have a safe day.
Quote:
Very true. You have to have a health review every year. If you have high BP or even some types of diabetes, I believe, you're out of a trucking job as per DOT. Luckily, I am as healthy as a horse and managed to jog and do my crunches and pushups most days. It floored me to see a 350+ driver come wheezing out of the cab of his truck, I always wondered how much longer until the guy keeled over from a heart attack. Of course, you can't discriminate over weight, only health and the ability to do the job. Dry van is not so physical as chaining and tarping heavy equipment, you see very less overweight flatbed haulers.
And if Bible banging raises your BP, then don't get yourself pulled into a weigh station for an inspection and log book audit by a DOT officer having a bad day.
Trucking has got to be one of the most frustrating things out there to do for a living. It's just not holding onto a wheel, it's a logistical nightmare at times. Mechanical failure, permits, log books, traffic, roads, weather, fuel, cash flow, deadlines, getting the next load (you may get that great paying load to Montana but you're going to wait a week to find something to haul out of there unless you drive empty on your own dime to somewhere else), organizing loading/unloading (esp. if you're waiting for a union crane operator or a long shoreman to do it), getting in and out of the country if you go to Canada/Mexico (Canada yes, Mexico forget it. Laredo and ElPaso, TX are bad enough), bad food, sleezy truck stops, showering in those same truck stops, ladies of questionable moral character pounding on your door at 2am (equal opportunity, they could care less that I was a woman. they just looked a bit surprised for a moment and then took off as the dog lunged at the door), chaining, going up or down mountains, boredom, idiots on the CB trying to ask you for a 'date'. Need I go on?
Otherwise, I've had the fortune to meet some of the nicest people. Esp other husband/wife teams and many 'old timers' that were just so helpful. Trucking is a community in many of the ways I imagine the circus is.
You know, the whole OTR thing looks easy. Maneuvering those rigs around shipping warehouses and making turns in cities, looks like a nightmare. I drove a 5 ton troop transport with trailers in the Army. Nothing compared to a big rig though. However it was in Germany and they have some serious tight streets.
I also drove a 26' U-Haul across country with a car trailer attached. I always parked somewhere I could get out without backing up. I can't imagine driving a trailer around in town all the time.
The whole job just sounds like it leaves you open to a lot of potential problems. All within your control for the most part, but you really need to stay on top of it.
I hope you're putting us on with the bible routine passochicken. I always thought that kind of stuff was just a Hollywood shtick. Are you being serious?