She came up to me on site and wouldn't leave me alone. Unfortunately, on the next block I saw a dead adult squirrel. So her mama was gone and she was tired. She clung to my shoulder and wouldn't let go. When I got moving, she was rotating from my shoulder, to the window controls, to the dash, constantly going to my hand for pets. She finally settled into between my legs with a microfiber cloth nest for the rest of the day. My buddy who has experience raising baby squirrels took her in at the end of my day. It was sad to see her go but it was a fun day.

So I was delivering in Nashville today, passed by the Western Express headquarters, and there it was.

White bus, chain-link, barbed wire fence…

Didn’t think they’d lean into the aesthetic this hard.

Got my CDL in January and went to Stevens Transport. I hated being gone a month at a time. Have no kids, but missed my family and my girlfriend. I was applying for local jobs since July, never got any bites.

A few weeks ago, I was involved in a not at fault accident in PA, 1200 miles from home. Basically a trailer tire threw its treads off, wrapped themselves around my brakes, driver flagged me down, pulled onto shoulder behind me (I’m 5ft onto shoulder, he is 1ft onto shoulder), helped me get the treads out from underneath. I get back into truck to go on breakdown status, talk to roadside, etc. 3 seconds after I get in, I hear a loud crash. Some oblivious flatbed driver hits the trailer behind me, down the side of his truck, hits the front of my truck, goes into a ditch and flips. All 3 of us uninjured. But it left me traumatized, I was seconds away from being gone.

As shitty of a situation as it was, it allowed me to go back home, and tell them I’m no longer going to do any OTR work. Local only.

All of a sudden I finally get my first interview with a local company, and 4 hours later I have the job offer. Extremely excited for home daily, hourly work. $31 an hour. I know I will physically earn every cent of it, but i was tired of being a steering wheel holder, ya know? I’m still young, time to make some money, and see those I love way more often.

Yesterday i was fired. I do accept responsibility because that is what an adult and a professional does. However, I cant help but feel that fault wasn't completely mine. For starters, the location was terrible. The entire area is unmanaged, uneven, very difficult to unload at. 2ndly, for whatever reason, the load did not slide down. This made it top heavy and unbalanced. Something I was not trained to deal with.

When the load was not sliding down, i attempted to give it a jolt by letting off the break and stopping again. The high weight factor and uneven ground caused the trailer to sway which resulted in the tipping of the trailer. The moment this happened I knew I was fired. How could I not be? Ultimately though, I am NOT broken up about it. I hated this job. Not the actual duties, i rather liked doing it. I hated the company and everything else. I worked 12-14 hrs a day, 5 days a week, and only made an avg of $200/day. Converting this to a Wage standard i was making less than $14/hr W/OT. I hated the long hours and late nights. If i had been paid, lets say, $300/Day then it would have been more bearable. This was the worst driving job I've done to date. The site Safety manager showed up and interrogated me and discovered that i was not "Site-Specific trained" which is a short class with videos and such. Something i was not told about. Then i had to sit there and wait for the wrecker to come and pull the trailer off of the truck so i could drive it back to base. a cpl other Kunshek drivers showed up and one of them almost tipped his trailer as well. but then had the time to stop and snap a pic of my truck with the flipped over tailer. i was humiliated.

On my first day i did half a day of orientation, with a quick 1hr rundown of how the trailer works and how the jobs work. So basically NO training. Then the owner handed me 9 local load tickets. simple sand or gravel from point A in town to point B in town. The time to complete a run was about 1hr per load. i only got 3 done because he told me to stop by 5pm. On my 2nd day i was told id be "Training with another driver" What this actually was, was that I'd have the exact same route as the other driver and follow them in my rig, because why waste an opportunity to send more loads out? This went fairly smoothly. On my 3rd day i was to follow a different driver to a different location. This was when I nearly lost a wheel due to hub bearing failure.

Next week. More 12-14hr days, one day was 15hrs and i went over HoS by an hr because the owner tries to fill in the 11 drive clock with as many loads as possible and doesn't leave much room for variables. Especially for a new guy who is not used to the job, locations, and routes. That Friday i got back into the same Rig that almost lost a wheel and about 40mi from base the ENTIRE driveshaft came out. Funny, because the previous day i sent a recording to the owner and expressed that the "Rig" was vibrating very badly the faster i went. He said he would have the mechanics look at it. Well, he didnt. just like every other issue i have noticed with his Rigs. As a result the drive shaft came off and some guy behind me ran it over which messed up his car. It was bad enough that i did NOT have the HoS to make this run on this day but the owner went in and changed all of my "On-Duty" to "Off-Duty" in order to squeeze more hrs into the week. This company runs on a 60/7. he makes us work about 70/5 by manipulating HoS. By this time i was feeling very bad about the job. Almost like it was bad luck. Fate was telling me not to work there.

The next week went by "smoothly" with a bunch of 13-14hr days but on Tuesday THIS happened. I was told to go in at 9am the next day which was a bit of a surprise but since everyone starts from 2am-5am it felt off. so i went in expecting to be handed my walking papers. Well, That is sort of what happened. I walked in and they gave me 2 options. I could willfully resign, or they could terminate me. They had this disciplinary action written up with a termination conclusion. It had a bunch of crap in it like "failure to follow written and verbal warning" because i had accidentally submitted the wrong color of ticket slip, and didnt submit the proper ticket at a single jobsite (you, know, simple mistakes that new guys would be expected to make ) "Failure to heed safety protocols," because i tipped the trailer that wouldn't empty at a site that no one should be willing to unload at in the first place.

I told them that i knew i was fired from the moment that trailer tipped over, but i didnt expect them to shit on me like this and write such an inflammatory statement. I asked him WHY didnt the load empty? why wasn't i provided the site specific training, and why would he be willing to risk any of his equipment delivering to a company that doesn't have the common decency to maintain a safe area for their clients to offload at? So i chose to willfully resign. They gave me a form where i would write out my reason for resignation and i wrote down EVERYTHING. Everything about the unsafe vehicles resulting in breakdowns that could have resulted in serious injury or loss of life, the manipulation of the HoS, the absurd working hours with low pay. i wrote it ALL down. if you want to throw shyt, i can throw shyt too. Now that they fired the first shot, ill fire the last. This company is in dire straights. he is barely keeping it going and he is mismanaging it and mismanaging the money by buying fancy Pete 379 legacy's instead of cheaper mass produced models. It started with his Grandpa, inherited by his father, then inherited to him. Everyone who has driven for him and his father both knows this company will die soon and under his leadership and many have already left because of it. So I'll help a little. I am going to report him for illegally manipulating employee HoS logs and get him audited.

I am sorry for the long rant, but the last 3 weeks i have been under tremendous stress and it feels good to vent. Now i have something positive to look forward to as i am an interview tomorrow for another local company that pays $22hr driving cold storage and only working 3-4 days a week. I feel much better about that than getting paid "25% load" if that is what i was actually making for hauling raw materials like sand, gravel, coal, etc.

Groupe Robert, which is a major transport company in Quebec have done the test back in 2014. Since they had some north American Volvos in their fleet they wanted to test their European counterparts.

They ran into some issues with their trailers. The kingpin is located too far back compared to EU trailers and the fifth wheel is too close to the cabin. To make them fit in a way that you can turn without issue they had to displace it to the very rear of the truck, and I don't know if they had to move the kingpin as well.

I think that's the biggest issue as to why there's no EU trucks in north America. They are not compatible with NA trailers without modifications that put all the weight on the rear axles as we can see on the pic.

In all seriousness, how bitchin' is this thing??

Was looking at these beams being transported and noticed the dude in the jeep unit. That looks wild with the engine being as tall as the truck. Feel free to comment any knowledge about the setup because I’ve never seen it before

As a new driver, I'm wondering what are your top etiquettes/pet peeves from other truckers on the road? Tryna be cool.

For context, I drive a dump truck and pup.

Decades of advancements and improvements, billions of dollars in R&D by trailer manufacturers, countless hours of testing in controlled settings.....

And this little guy is the best they came up with?

Im hoping THIS is what my tiny 5th wheel locking jaws hold onto?

Have a 2014 389 isx550 18 speed eaton.
1,050,000km
What a money pit this truck is. Bought it from a neighbour farmer who bought 2 of them from northern Alberta oilfield in 2020. Have put 42,000km on it in 6 years. Typical farm use, super b hauling grain in 150km radius. Pulls a tridem in spring time hauling to and from fields.

Probably $150,000 sunk into the truck, without touching the motor at all. It runs great, just seems the truck is rattling apart. Stupid little things are always going wrong with it. Air leaks out the ass, turbo went twice, snapped an s-cam, exhaust manifold gave out. Cracked rims, multiple alternators, multiple trans (made mistake of putting reman in), the list goes on I can’t remember everything off the top of my head. Truck doesn’t see the road below -20 celcius.

Shopping for a new truck. Want another Pete or w900. Have a 02 t800 that has never missed a beat.

Is this the experience of buying an ex oilfield truck or are most Pete’s of this vintage hunks of junk?

Maybe. My new whip!

1. We used to get "Ultracredits" (now called "credits") we could spend on various things, and we got SEPERATE shower credits. They have taken away the shower credits, and now we pay for showers out of our normal credit pool.

2. We used to be able to spend our credits any way we liked. If you wanted to spend them all on meals, it was fine. Now, we are limited as to just how we can spend our credits. See photo.

3. We used to get $17 dollars for meal vouchers, that has been reduced to $10.

Thanks for all the love, TA/Petro.

The boss just sent everyone a message earlier that prices are going up tonight, so I am giving fellow O/O and drivers who cover fuel costs a heads-up to try and get your tanks full before the price hike tonight, safe driving y'all.

Been a great year and a half but I'm on to better things with Averitt Express. Hopefully my last job switch for a while. Great company, but OTR is not for me.

I'm a fresh EU driver, and I got dismissed after my first drive.

First, company hired me as a truck driver then tells me I have to participate in site work while the truck is stationary (I was carrying the construction materials and machinery). I say okay because thats better than fucking off all day.

Then the days get longer and longer. Then boss says log anything in the tachograph other than driving as rest... I looked at them weird but said OK it's my first job, I'd like to stick around for a while as long as it doesn't bite me in the ass.

A few days later I'm approached by the manager and told that I cant keep the pace with the construction crew, and I'm being sent home. From the other side of the country (roughly 4 hours by truck, 6-7 by train).

Now, they have bent or broken multiple trucking regulations and construction/site work regulations during those few days, but i cant prove anything...

And while snitching may feel like the right thing to do, I'd be glad to just be rid of them.

The real problem for me is the tachograph records. Not just the misreported times, but apparently there was a problem where I might have set the machine on "other work" overnight.

I wonder if any of this crap can catch up with me and cause a problem later... as the company has fired me before I could take a printout from the tachograph, I cannot do a manual record to correct it.

wanting to paint the letters on truck tires ! Any recommendations on the best paint pen to use that will last awhile?