First Day

Starting a new job is always a bit of an emotional jumble of excitement and anxiety. Starting a new career at this phase of my life is just downright scary because driving a truck is very different from software development. Lots of anxiety about what I don’t know, but I’ve spent the last few months preparing–going to school, getting my commercial drivers license, getting hired by a trucking company and spending three weeks being trained–and it is time to get going and hit the road.

There are volumes of federal regulations about truck driving. You should see the book. Some of the things that are regulated are how much time can be spent driving without taking breaks. One of the laws is that after any 10 hour break from being on duty or driving, the most a driver can work is 14 hours before taking another 10 hour break, and only 11 of those 14 hours can be spent driving. There are many other tasks, such as pre-trip and post-trip inspections, loading/unloading, training, etc. that count as on duty time. So, in any day of driving, once a driver goes on duty for any reason, they have 14 hours until they have to shut down for 10 hours.

My first day was supposed to be a morning of training, including a new driver experience which was a walkthrough with my assigned equipment, a 2025 Freightliner Cascadia P4 with just under 9,000 miles on it. I don’t know how I got such a new truck, but I often get that kind of help from somewhere unseen. A mechanic was supposed to go over various features and functions so I would know what everything is and roughly how it works. Unfortunately, the mechanic was not available that day, so it was postponed until 7:00 am the next day, which then started my 14 hour clock.

When I finished with that, I waited for my first assignment that my Driver Team Leader (DTL) wanted to go over with me to show me how to trip plan in order to maximize my time on the road. I got two assignments. Both involved going from Salt Lake to Davis County to get loads and bring them back to the yard in Salt Lake for someone else to take to their destinations. This is called a relay.

One of them had a specified time to be loaded, 1:30 pm, and the other could be done at any time during the day. Unfortunately, they were assigned to me in the wrong order, and I can’t just re-order my assignment queue, because the software system was not designed to allow that and me freelancing would cause problems for the people managing these loads. My first assignment could be done any time, but doing it first would keep me from getting to my second assignment on time. We had to get that straightened out before I could do anything and the clock for that 1:30 appointment was ticking.

It was getting close to noon when we got that re-ordered, so I was running low on time. My first task was to find an empty trailer, inspect it, couple my tractor to it and get to a salt plant west of Ogden on the Great Salt Lake to get loaded. I found one that looked new, shiny, clean and ready to go. I got out to open the doors and check the inside and there was a seal on the doors, meaning that it was loaded and waiting for someone to relay it to its intended destination. Ugh.

So I found another one nearby, hooked up to it, checked a number of things, opened it, and cleaned it out using a leaf blower only to see that there was water inside. It was leaking. This wasn’t going to work. I looked around most of the trailers nearby and could tell they were all old and aging and I realized I was on the wrong side of the yard. By this time, I was probably not going to make my appointment, but my DTL had checked with the company before I went out to find a trailer and they had said that would be fine.

So I found another trailer. But I was feeling a time crunch and hurried through the pre-trip inspection more than I should have, but I got hooked up and hit the road. I arrived at the salt plant at 2:15. I parked in a waiting area with a ton of other trucks and walked to the check-in office. They had a touch-screen kiosk where I entered my information, including my phone number so they could call me when they were ready. It also informed me that I missed my appointment so I would be pushed back behind the trucks who were on time. And there were a lot of them.

I went to my truck and waited for that phone call, which held me hostage. Would they call in an hour? Two? I had no idea. I watched every truck that was there before me leave to get loaded. I then watched them all leave the site after being loaded. I watched several trucks arrive and then leave to get loaded. Still no phone call. Six hours went by. I could have run over to Layton, dropped my empty trailer, grabbed a loaded one, taken it to Salt Lake, grabbed another trailer and been back at the salt plant in that time. But I just sat there waiting for a phone call. It was getting late in the day and I had about 4 hours left on my 14 hour clock.

I decided to go check with the office to find out if this was even going to happen today. I first wanted to know when they would stop loading for the day. I was told they don’t stop. If I was there, they would load me. I then wanted to know if they could load me in time to go off duty when necessary. They weren’t sure. I knew in the best case, I would not have enough time to return to Salt Lake, so I asked if I could stay in the lot overnight. They said that was fine.

It got down to two trucks waiting and the other one left. They finally called and I went back to get my load. I was still wondering when they would finish and if I would be in violation of the law, but I had hope. They finished with 30 minutes left on my 14 hour clock. I drove out over their scale to weigh myself, to see if I was legal (more regulations: no more than 12,000 lbs on steering axle, 34,000 lbs each on the drive and trailer axles, and no more than 80,000 lbs gross weight), and it looked good, but it wasn’t an official calibrated scale. I parked, did a post-trip inspection, and shut down for the night.

What was supposed to be a quick, easy out-and-back turned out to be a day-long odyssey of killing time. And I spent what looked like was going to be an extra night at home before going out on the road for 4 weeks in a waiting lot at a salt plant on the shores of the Great Salt Lake a whopping 65 miles from home. Welcome to trucking.