Two People and a Truck

Assuming I pass my driving test tomorrow morning, I'm off to Sabetha, KS to go to work. I have a day or so in Sabetha and then a few weeks with a trainer. Since I have no idea what my training schedule will be like, it may be a while before I get a chance to post anything. So, if you're out and about on the road, be careful! There's a newbie out there.

Category: General

My car is a 1997 Neon with 130,000+ miles on it. Late last week I blew the head gasket. According to Kelley Blue Book it's only worth $1,000 or so and it would cost more than that to fix the engine. It also has a squeak in the front end that hasn't changed significantly for a couple of years. That's probably a cracked motor mount housing. Since I'm planning on going out on the road we've decided to bid adieu to the Neon. The sad thing is, since the head gasket is blown I can't get any money for it. The college's auto maintenance program won't even take it because they don't have any place to store the car until they get to the headgasket chapter of the textbook. So I guess it's off to the junkyard.

Category: General

I took the driving portion of the CDL test this morning (Monday). That consists of three parts: The brake test, the skills box (backing up and turning), and the driving test. Well, I didn't pass the driving test, so I go back next Tuesday to try it again.

I am assuming that I will pass next Tuesday, so I'm going ahead with my job stuff. I go to Ft. Dodge on Wednesday to do the drug test and company physical and fill out all the paper work. (It seems like I've filled out a bunch already. I don't know what's left.) Then on Tuesday, as soon as I'm done with the test, Brenda will drive me to Sabetha, KS and I'll catch up with the other two guys that are doing orientation that week.

The other two guys will do the tests and paper work on Monday and then catch a ride in a Keim Truck from Ft. Dodge to Sabetha early Tuesday morning, so I'll only be a couple hours late.

Category: General

The Iowa students start taking their DOT exams tomorrow and Friday morning. The two Nebraska students test on Monday and Tuesday. Graduation is Friday afternoon. I have no idea what graduation consists of, but I'm guessing we'll be presented with a trucker uniform, such as a black AC/DC t-shirt and a Harley hat. Time will tell.

Most of us have jobs. Keim and Warner get four graduates each. Oberg and Schuster get one each. One person is going to work for a local construction company and one guy has been procrastinating on the application process.

Most of us agree that we failed to get our dream job, which is driving the big pickup that pulls around the Little Debbie Snack Cake 5th wheel trailer. Unfortunately new students don't get the perfect job; Little Debbie will have to wait. oh well.

Category: General

Today (Friday) we went to the Iowa DOT scale here in Siouxland. (The last scale trip I wrote about was to the local South Dakota scale.) There are two reasons we visit both scales. First, Iowa DOT officers are full blown state police officers. They are essentially Highway Patrol with additional training specializing in commercial trucks. South Dakota DOT officers are state employees, on the other hand and not full blown law enforcement officers. South Dakota officers do not carry weapons (unless they are on the mobile teams--the officer we talked to had never had weapons training); Iowa officers have them on at all times. When SD DOT officials need to have some enforcement done (arresting someone or search and seizure), they call in the Highway Patrol. Not so with the the Iowa officers.

The other difference is that the SD scale is one year old and is therefore state of the art, including an indoor inspection area with a pit so the officer can do a complete inspection underneath the vehicle while standing up. The local Iowa scale, on the other hand, is one of the oldest in Iowa's system. By visiting the two scales we got to see the two extremes.

The best story of the day was extra details on a big local news story this year:

Last spring a flatbed with an oversize load took out a bridge just south of Sioux City. The bridge was a county road that crossed the interstate. The bridge has finally been rebuilt and the county road just reopened. It was closed for over six months. The officer was showing us pictures and telling us some of the details of the accidents and what led to it. (The driver's company failed to get oversize permits to drive in the town of Sgt. Bluff or on Woodbury County roads. He didn't want to get caught in town without permits so he took the interstate where there was a low bridge with no exchange so he couldn't exit to avoid it.) But there was more to the story. The DOT officer told us that the same driver had wiped out another bridge to the east of DesMoines just 30 hours earlier.

Wow, that's a company I want to work for!!

While we were there one guy got nailed on an overweight violation and had to move his tandems back in order to balance the load. He got by without a ticket. I guess the officer figured the humiliation of having to do this with a dozen trucking school students watching and asking questions was punishment enough.

The other incident of the day involved a farm couple from a few states south of here. We have a trailer manufacturer in Sioux City, Wilson Trailer Company, that primarily manufactures flatbeds and bull racks. They also manufacture a few horse and cattle fifth wheels designed to be pulled by a pickup. But before I go any farther, some background information is in order.

The morning started out with the DOT officer coming to class and explaining various regulations and the Oct. 1 log book Hours of Service changes. He was saying that the definition of "Commercial Vehicle" is very tricky. He used Ford F-350 pickups as an example. They are heavy enough that if you put a trailer of nearly any size on them they fall under commercial vehicle rules. He then went on to say that there are a whole bunch of exceptions that often come into play. If its used by a farmer within 150 miles of home the rules don't apply. If it's pulling a trailer designed to be lived in, it's classified as an RV and is exempted. If it's pulling one of those fancy horse trailers that also has a built in bunk for a human to sleep in then, in Iowa, if there are animals in it, it's a commercial vehicle, but if there's no animals (even if there's hay and manure), it's classified as an RV because it has a place designed for a person to sleep in it, and is then exempt.

Does that make a lot of sense? Not really, but that was the officer's point. Commercial Vehicle rules are a strange mix of laws written by legislators with constituencies and lobbyists breathing down their back. If you want logic and order, don't drive on America's highways.

Two hours later a farm couple from 600 miles away pulls into the weigh station with a brand spanking new stock trailer they had just purchased Wilson Trailer in Sioux City. It was nice enough to sleep in because there hadn't been any animals in it yet. The farmer, since he was a farmer, figured he was exempt from the rules. He wasn't since he was out of state and more than 150 miles from home. We (the truck driving class) were all out gawking at the guy trying to adjust his tandems while our instructor was cussing and waving his arms at him, so we didn't get to hear the conversation between the farmer and the DOT officer. We found out later that the farmer didn't have a CDL. There were a total of nine violations on him and the vehicle. And he couldn't move the trailer anywhere--it was out of service. The officer told us he'd probably only give him one ticket because the farmer was a nice guy that simply had no clue about the law. If he wrote out all nine tickets, it would have totalled up to between $1,500 and $2,000. The irony is that if they would have had a couple of sleeping bags rolled out in it and maybe a suitcase or two back there, they might have gotten by on a technicality.

And the farmer's going to have to hire someone else to pull the trailer home for him.

Category: General

Today we took a trip to the new truck scale and port of entry near Jefferson, SD. It's one of two DOT scales in metro Sioux City. This scale opened a year ago so it has all the high tech goodies. We spent all morning there and it was sort of boring, to be truthful. After the twentieth truck crossed the scale I pretty much got the idea of how it worked. But hey, a field trip is a field trip.

This place has a rolling scale and prepass electronics installed, so trucks with NorPass transponders don't have to stop. The rolling scales are accurate to about 6%. Trucks that have their brakes applied when they cross the rolling scales show heavier than they really are. (I' glad I paid attention in physics. That makes sense to me. Thanks Mr. Bredesen!)

Every truck that passes through gets its picture taken. South Dakota is a brand inspection state and that means that every truck with livestock gets pulled around back. All the information about the animals then gets sent to the Dept of Agriculture. They also make all oversize and overweight loads pull around back to check their permits. Any truck with more than 80,000 lbs is classified as overweight. If a truck has extra axles or a double trailer, each axle can be within legal limits while the whole truck still weighs more than 80,000 those trucks are legal but they have to purchase an overweight permit.

It's obvious now that I think about it, but the main reason they make the oversize and overweight vehicles stop is to check their route. (All oversize and overweight vehicles have to have a preplanned route.) This way the DOT can make sure they're not going through a construction zone or other problematic area.

We also got to see a level one inspection. That took about an hour. They chose a particular local haul company and asked the driver if he was willing to do it for the sake of the class. The reason they like to choose this company when the Truck Driving class is there is because the driver is on an hourly wage and it doesn't cost him salary in the same way it would an OTR driver.

The DOT officers seemed very nice and friendly. I suspect that as long as you're nice to them, they're nice to you. And since they have the badge, it's a good idea to be nice to them.

The South Dakota DOT also has a drug dog that stops by once a month or so. They then do random drug checks on the trucks. The DOT officer said that they almost always find at least one truck with drugs on it when they do the random checks. That blows me away. Given the strict rules related to the trucking industry, that amazes me.

We asked the officer what the strangest encounter was. He said one time he walked out to the truck because the driver didn't come into the office immediately. That usually means the drivers log isn't up to date and the driver is trying to catch up before he comes in -- DOT officers are not amused by this. It's better to admit your log isn't up to date than try to fake it. So anyway, he headed out to the truck so that he could see the log as it was. Well it turned out it wasn't a log issue. It was a driving team and they were cross dressers. The driver was trying to change out of his pink dress and into a pair of blue jeans when the DOT officer opened the truck door. oops.

Well, I hope I don't have to buy a pretty pink dress when I get hired!!!!

Category: General

The Safety Officer from BNSF Railroad came to class the other day. Of course she showed us all the train-hits-truck videos. I'm glad we got to see those videos as well as the trucks-crashing-into-things videos because when I took drivers education in high school I'm pretty sure video wasn't invented yet. At least we never got to see all those gory videos they show kids today and I've always felt a bit deprived. Even if I never pass my CDL, at least I can now say I got to see the cool movies.

She's from Minot, North Dakota and travels the area from Montana to as far south as Sioux City telling kids and truck drivers about the horrors of trains. Toward the end of the presentation she asked if anyone was from Montana. That sort of question can never lead to good things, but being an honest person, I raised my hand.

She then proceeded to tell a story about four Montana lads who spent their free time playing chicken with passing trains. One night they didn't get out of the way quite quick enough and the car got clipped by the train.

Being good Americans, they sued the railroad.

The case that the lawyers brought against the railroad said that the kids stopped at the crossing behind the little white line. The engineer saw that they were just kids and swerved the train over to purposefully hit the car.

Of course we all laughed at the joke, but she insisted that (1) it's a true story and (2) it didn't get thrown out of court but actually went to jury trial.

Of course, she's from North Dakota, so you have to take it with a grain of salt, but it's a darn funny story, whether it's true or an urban legend.

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And that leads to one of life's imponderables: is it possible for an "urban legend" to begin in a state where the largest city is well under 100,000?

Oh well, I better start practicing backing the truck.

Category: General

First, I want to respond to something that VaqueroMuerto said:



This is precisely one of the reasons I’m so big on the school I’m in. It’s certainly got its problems, but from what I gather talking to folks in the industry, the school is good at steering people toward good companies. That “FAST” company you were talking about (wink, wink) used to recruit at WITCC, but they weren’t nice to the graduates, so they’ve been banned.

There have been several drivers through here (Werner, Schuster, Heyl, and a graduate who ended up at Swift, in spite of the recommendations of the teachers). The Swift driver was decidedly unhappy but the other drivers have all been very positive about being a new driver with their respective companies. Another graduate, who I didn’t talk to, but heard about second hand, went with MCT and was really happy until they started pushing the owner-operator route real hard. He should have guessed it was coming because MCT makes no secret about its history as an owner-operator company.

One of my fellow students wants to drive truck in Iraq. His wife left him a few months ago and took everything but the bills. He had a long career (28 years) as a floor manager and safety specialist at a local packing plant but wants to get out of town. His son is in the Navy and is stationed in central Iraq with a police canine unit. I don’t know whether he’s nuts, has a death wish, or both.

I’ve ended up getting quite involved with him. Even though he’s been in the U.S. most of his adult life and has been a citizen for years, he’s primarily worked with other Vietnamese who work at the plant, so his English isn’t too good. Furthermore, he’s clueless when it comes to computers. So I’ve been helping him apply with Haliburton’s construction subsidiary, KBR. (The process is all computerized.) I’ve had a terrible time finding the trucking jobs, and he keeps badgering me with phone calls about it. I figure I’ll get know rest nor time to study until this is figured out. Well I finally discovered that all the trucking jobs are under the “Maintenance” division--it’s not the place I would have expected to find it. Hopefully, by the end of the day, he will have his application in for KBR/Haliburton.[/quote]

Category: General