First Job

Hello! Just a quick note: these postings will probably be a bit more scattered, with the holiday season upon us - sorry, just too much other stuff going on right now.

So, I have just gone and got my CDL from the State - and I'm ready to roll! I, like many of my classmates, was recruited right from my class by many top over-the-road companies. They actually "pre-hire" students, providing they pass all the required tests, etc. I weighed the pros and cons of each outfit (one was based in LaSalle-Peru, IL, I think, about an hour and a half drive each way) and went with one of the larger, more reputable companies: I won't say the name here (hint: light blue trucks and trailers). They sent me down to Indianapolis (they mail you a one-way bus ticket, but I had to travel downtown to the Greyhound station - yikes!) for
a mandatory 2-day orientation. There were other students, as well as experienced drivers, even on the same bus as me! Wow!
Indy seems like a pretty nice town (had never been there before - or since, can't remember).
You stand around waiting for everyone to get their shit off the buses, then a big van comes around and takes you to a motel room. All I really remember is that it was a nice day, and driving past the RCA Dome. You get to the motel, maybe unpack a little (2 guys to a room,
I remember my roommate was an experienced driver from downstate IL - don't remember any women, though), then it's off to class. Basically they explained all the different policies,
company structure, etc., blah, blah, blah. We newbies had to wait around for a trainer to come through town, and they said they were about a week behind with the trainers, which meant, you guessed it; sitting around a motel room for a week, watching TV! Thrilling! Guys who were experienced drivers already could simply do a road test and, bam! be on the road. Incidentally,
my roommate failed his road test, so they sent him home (not real sure what happenened, all I know is the guy was PISSED!)
As it turned out, my second night there I get a phone call at 2:00 am. "Are you ready?" came a
foreign voice over the line. "Ready for what?" I thought, "You just woke me up, motherfucker!"
The policy was that you had to be ready to roll WHENEVER the trainer called, no matter what time of night or day, otherwise you were fired, no exceptions. "Yeah, yeah give me a minute."
The guy said he'd meet me in five minutes outside, which gave me just enough time to get dressed, pack my stuff, and run out the door. The guy was really a foreigner, a German dude named Manfred Wilhoffen (not his REAL name - c'mon!). So, we took off, headed eastbound.
We were going to Cumberland, MD to drop off a load, then, who knows? Manny and I got to
know each other a little bit (we were both smokers - something the company tried to accommodate for, but not always), and I found out he had been in this country for four years, a driver for two, and a trainer for one. But, I'm getting a little ahead of myself; I found out the reason I didn't have to wait a week in the motel was because the guy in front of me on the list had broken his glasses, and had to wait to get a new pair shipped to him, or something like that.
Lucky, me! I guess. Actually, I could have fared worse: it turned out that Manny was a very patient and understanding guy (younger than me), so he allowed me to make mistakes, and learn from them. This was my first experience driving a true "big rig," and, I realized later, the first (but not last) time I had to learn to drive a Super 10 transmission. For those of you who don't know, or aren't current or former truck drivers, a Super 10 transmission is like a 10-speed, except you are splitting the gears every second shift; it's tough to explain, and kind of tricky to master (in later years, at my current job, I had to drive one, and had forgot, so I had to re-learn the whole thing as I went along). I remember the first time I drove was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which is not the ideal road to have your first driving experience: very hilly, up and down kind of stuff, but I didn't do too terribly. We brought the load in on time, and I remember, for some reason, we went to Famous Dave's for lunch at a nearby shopping district
right afterwards.
See, I was part of what is called a "training team," you see them all the time - the trainer is actually the "working" member: he/she is responsible for the delivery, route planning, etc., so he/she gets paid for all the miles. The "trainee," drives a smaller part of the time (usually the middle, open highway part of the run), and gets paid a weekly chump change, er, salary. I think I made $350/week, which was ok, but, if I remember correctly, I didn't have direct deposit set up correctly, so they were sending the checks to my house. That did me no good, because my wife couldn't deposit them. I dunno, it was kind of screwed up - I think it took a while to get the direct deposit thing going. Meantime, I'm out in the middle of who knows where, trying to get money out of an ATM, or else getting an advance from the company in the form of a Comchek (financial/banking service used by truckers/truckstops nationwide). You could request an advance over your Qualcomm (I'll talk more about this stuff in future postings.)

More soon,

Steve