Well, my dad (x06col) had to go to Russia for 3 weeks and I got a call the end of August from him asking if I would drive his truck while he was gone.
I had previously rode along with him on a week long stint in the midwest, and helped him with a Seattle trip. I had my CDL Learners permit then. He drove out to Iowa and we used his truck for me to take my test in and as a newly minted CDL Class "B" driver he bid farewell and drove back to Indianna in my Jeep, and left the truck with me. He had sceduled a trip from Marengo Iowa, with drop offs in Colorado Springs, Boulder, Longmont, and Ft Collins Colorado.
My girlfriend was to ride along with me while I was out.
I picked up the load on A Saturday morning. The first lesson in driving was some docks "lock" you down while loading, and forget to unlock you. I only tried twice to drive away from the dock before I got out to look and see what the hell was going on.
We left Iowa on a Saturday .After the first few hours in the truck, I had re learned the shifting, and was no longer grinding the low gears. The first crisis reared its head when I was trying to remember the weichgt limits on dad's truck. I had 22,000 lbs of newspaper inserts, and needed to adjust the TAG axle for weight. after consulting the road atlas, and a few trips across the scale, I called it good with 11,300 onthe steering axle, and 31,000 split on the drives. I was starting to get into my role as a truck driver.
We arrived at the Ft Collins location a couple of days later, and waited in the parking lot till they opened at 6 am for deliveries. Unloaded there, and off to Boulder. The dop off in Boulder was a nightmare. It was a Tuesday after Labor day weekend, and the Boulder Newspaper was located in a miserable "artsy craftsy" narrow, winding road area that had trucks everywhere trying to deliver. I finally had to just stop in the road with several other trucks and go in to find out where receiving was. When they told me I had to go around the block, and come in through an alley into an underground dock, I could not believe it! How the hell was I supposed to get the truck into this little area? There was a tractor trailer there unloading, so I supposed if he could get that in there, I could as well. After a 10 minute trip around the block in the traffic, we arrived at the alley that was full of construction workers and vehicles. After another 10 minute wait, it was cleared enough to just barely get through. We got the load dropped, and get the hell out of Boulder with my nerves a little worse for the wear.
When we got to Longmont, the guy at the paper there said most drivers just drop loads for Boulder off there in Longmont, and pay them $25 to deliver them. The rest of the day seemed fairly easy. One more stop in Ft Collins, and back to the Flying J in Aurora to wait for the dispatcher (step mom) to find another load. By now, I was feeling pretty good after making it through Boulder and the Denver area traffic with no problems, right up until I backed into another trucks mirror trying to get into a spot at the Flying J. After a police accident report, several calls to the dispatcher, and trip inside to buy the guy a new mirror I finally settled in to wait for a load.
The next morning, we got a load from just North of Denver to the White River Apache Indian reservation. Get there to pick the load up around 1 and found they were expecting a Flatbed. It seems the freight broker had streached the facts to them a little. The load was 14,000 lbs of steel for a green house. We ended up having to break down a bunch of pallets and packing things into the truck very ingeniously to get it to fit.
I had previously rode along with him on a week long stint in the midwest, and helped him with a Seattle trip. I had my CDL Learners permit then. He drove out to Iowa and we used his truck for me to take my test in and as a newly minted CDL Class "B" driver he bid farewell and drove back to Indianna in my Jeep, and left the truck with me. He had sceduled a trip from Marengo Iowa, with drop offs in Colorado Springs, Boulder, Longmont, and Ft Collins Colorado.
My girlfriend was to ride along with me while I was out.
I picked up the load on A Saturday morning. The first lesson in driving was some docks "lock" you down while loading, and forget to unlock you. I only tried twice to drive away from the dock before I got out to look and see what the hell was going on.
We left Iowa on a Saturday .After the first few hours in the truck, I had re learned the shifting, and was no longer grinding the low gears. The first crisis reared its head when I was trying to remember the weichgt limits on dad's truck. I had 22,000 lbs of newspaper inserts, and needed to adjust the TAG axle for weight. after consulting the road atlas, and a few trips across the scale, I called it good with 11,300 onthe steering axle, and 31,000 split on the drives. I was starting to get into my role as a truck driver.
We arrived at the Ft Collins location a couple of days later, and waited in the parking lot till they opened at 6 am for deliveries. Unloaded there, and off to Boulder. The dop off in Boulder was a nightmare. It was a Tuesday after Labor day weekend, and the Boulder Newspaper was located in a miserable "artsy craftsy" narrow, winding road area that had trucks everywhere trying to deliver. I finally had to just stop in the road with several other trucks and go in to find out where receiving was. When they told me I had to go around the block, and come in through an alley into an underground dock, I could not believe it! How the hell was I supposed to get the truck into this little area? There was a tractor trailer there unloading, so I supposed if he could get that in there, I could as well. After a 10 minute trip around the block in the traffic, we arrived at the alley that was full of construction workers and vehicles. After another 10 minute wait, it was cleared enough to just barely get through. We got the load dropped, and get the hell out of Boulder with my nerves a little worse for the wear.
When we got to Longmont, the guy at the paper there said most drivers just drop loads for Boulder off there in Longmont, and pay them $25 to deliver them. The rest of the day seemed fairly easy. One more stop in Ft Collins, and back to the Flying J in Aurora to wait for the dispatcher (step mom) to find another load. By now, I was feeling pretty good after making it through Boulder and the Denver area traffic with no problems, right up until I backed into another trucks mirror trying to get into a spot at the Flying J. After a police accident report, several calls to the dispatcher, and trip inside to buy the guy a new mirror I finally settled in to wait for a load.
The next morning, we got a load from just North of Denver to the White River Apache Indian reservation. Get there to pick the load up around 1 and found they were expecting a Flatbed. It seems the freight broker had streached the facts to them a little. The load was 14,000 lbs of steel for a green house. We ended up having to break down a bunch of pallets and packing things into the truck very ingeniously to get it to fit.
