Orientation concluded on Thursday, and I met my trainer on Friday. His name was Jon. We spoke on the phone on Thursday, and he said to meet him at the truck at the terminal at 8 am. Jon showed me around the truck, and indicated to me where I could put my things. One small cabinet is not much space at all. The rest of my stuff I kept in my luggage bag on the upper bunk with me.
Jon said he had three rules: 1. Don't hit anything. 2. Don't be late to a shipper 3. If late, it shouldn't be our fault.
I was relieved to see that his truck was an automatic transmission. With my bad shoulder and lack of confidence in my shifting skills, I was glad to see that I wouldn't have to worry about the stress of also trying to master the skill of shifting in addition to learning all the other things I'd need to be comfortable with.
Finally, at about two in the afternoon, our dispatch came through. On board each of the trucks is a keyboard terminal communication system known as Qualcomm. An incoming message is announced by a little chirping sound. At around 2 pm the chirping sound let us know we had a message, and so we read it. It said we were to pick up a load of beer at a major brewery in town, and deliver it to...to...(scrolling down the screen) to Virginia. My first trip would be from Colorado to Virginia. The dispatch comes with all kinds of information including the shipper, the consignee (the entity who is receiving the shipment) when it is to be picked up, and when it is to be delivered. Our job was to review the dispatch, and see if we could answer the very first question in reply. Can you make this trip according to the schedule, and if so, do you accept this load?
I got the Truckers Rand McNally Atlas out, and began leafing through the pages trying to add up the miles and see if we could make it per the assigned schedule. Jon said the easiest way is to just put it in the map program on his smart phone to get a rough idea of the mileage, then work out the details from there. We did the math, and it looked like we could make the trip as scheduled. So, we accepted the load, and off to the brewery we went. We unhooked and dropped our empty container and picked up our pre-loaded container and headed east bound on I-70 out of Denver. After about an hour, Jon pulled into a rest stop and said it was my turn to drive.
Fear promptly took over and was nearly disabling. I was about to be at the controls of a large, commercial vehicle owned by someone else, and I was going to drive this large piece of industrial equipment on the open highway next to complete strangers. Could I do this?
I slipped into the driver's seat, and looked into mirror at the end of the trailer way back there. Through the windshield ahead, lay I-70 with cars whizzing by. Little did those drivers know, that very soon, a large semi truck would slowly make its way up the on ramp, its semi automated transmission shifting up through the gears. The lumbering truck would then edge carefully onto the highway to merge with the traffic. The people driving along, listening to the radio, the passengers playing games on their smart phones would have absolutely no idea that sitting behind the wheel of this big rig was a guy, his white knuckles hanging onto the steering wheel like the captain of a ship in a storm, eyes wide open, taking in the view of the unfolding interstate highway before him and picturing how the pending accident would look on the news tomorrow.
Years of anticipating, planning, making difficult and incredibly risky choices were all finished, and it all came down to this humble, fearful beginning. I put the truck into gear, let off the brakes and we began to move.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
These fears
If I want to be a truck driver so badly, why does it scare me so much?
My worst nightmare is to be on the news "semi-truck causes 8 car smash up -- 3 dead".
Sitting in the cab of a semi truck, you get a sense of how large a vehicle is in my hands. If you were to start walking from the front bumper and proceed the length of the truck to the red marker light at the rear of the trailer, you would travel just over 70 feet. A vehicle this large does not start, stop, or maneuver very easily. Some semi trailers can be up to 14 feet high. Fully loaded, a rig can weigh up to 80,000 pounds or 40 tons!
To make things more exciting, if you get lost, it's not all that easy to simply "make a legal U-Turn" as many GPS guides are fond of saying. It's not easy, and often times simply not possible to just do a U-turn, or pull into a driveway and back out.
Standing next to this huge beast, or sitting inside of it, contemplating its sheer size and its potential for mayhem, I feel my body tense, and my then my mind begin to slowly fill up with all the what-ifs, and worst-case scenarios. Not to mention the fact that just one accident...even a simple one could mean my job with this (or any company) is terminated. What are you going to do then, Vally? By giving up your career track in sales, and becoming a truck driver, It's very possible that you may have forever burned the bridges of getting back into a career in sales or sales management where you came from. You've sort of headed yourself down a one-way road with no exit ramps, no passing zones, and where U-Turns are illegal.
Driving in big cities, tight intersections, and backing into tight spaces all cause fears to boil up inside me. I wrestle with them all the time. As an over-the-road driver, the entire lower 48 states constitutes the map of where I can be assigned to go at any time. I'm therefore dispatched into many unfamiliar cities and to shippers with locations sometimes difficult to find and navigate.
And then there's the prospect of winter driving, just around the corner, with icy and snow-covered highways, mountain passes, and chaining tires for traction in the midst of a major snow storm.
Battling fears has become a largely unanticipated war within myself. As my skills gradually improve, some of the fears diminish, but only to be replaced by new ones.
All these fears notwithstanding, there is something fulfilling after I've successfully unloaded at a consignee. That's where my love of logistics comes in. There's a satisfaction of knowing that this food was over there, 1200 miles away, and now, here it is in your warehouse where your delivery trucks will take it out to stores in your area.
The battle over my fears continues.
My worst nightmare is to be on the news "semi-truck causes 8 car smash up -- 3 dead".
Sitting in the cab of a semi truck, you get a sense of how large a vehicle is in my hands. If you were to start walking from the front bumper and proceed the length of the truck to the red marker light at the rear of the trailer, you would travel just over 70 feet. A vehicle this large does not start, stop, or maneuver very easily. Some semi trailers can be up to 14 feet high. Fully loaded, a rig can weigh up to 80,000 pounds or 40 tons!
To make things more exciting, if you get lost, it's not all that easy to simply "make a legal U-Turn" as many GPS guides are fond of saying. It's not easy, and often times simply not possible to just do a U-turn, or pull into a driveway and back out.
Standing next to this huge beast, or sitting inside of it, contemplating its sheer size and its potential for mayhem, I feel my body tense, and my then my mind begin to slowly fill up with all the what-ifs, and worst-case scenarios. Not to mention the fact that just one accident...even a simple one could mean my job with this (or any company) is terminated. What are you going to do then, Vally? By giving up your career track in sales, and becoming a truck driver, It's very possible that you may have forever burned the bridges of getting back into a career in sales or sales management where you came from. You've sort of headed yourself down a one-way road with no exit ramps, no passing zones, and where U-Turns are illegal.
Driving in big cities, tight intersections, and backing into tight spaces all cause fears to boil up inside me. I wrestle with them all the time. As an over-the-road driver, the entire lower 48 states constitutes the map of where I can be assigned to go at any time. I'm therefore dispatched into many unfamiliar cities and to shippers with locations sometimes difficult to find and navigate.
And then there's the prospect of winter driving, just around the corner, with icy and snow-covered highways, mountain passes, and chaining tires for traction in the midst of a major snow storm.
Battling fears has become a largely unanticipated war within myself. As my skills gradually improve, some of the fears diminish, but only to be replaced by new ones.
All these fears notwithstanding, there is something fulfilling after I've successfully unloaded at a consignee. That's where my love of logistics comes in. There's a satisfaction of knowing that this food was over there, 1200 miles away, and now, here it is in your warehouse where your delivery trucks will take it out to stores in your area.
The battle over my fears continues.
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