Commercial Transportation Jobs

~Dedications~ I dedicate this short book to all the truckers, truck stop employees, DOT s, law enforcement officers, and everyone else who is involved in the field of trucking and commercial transportation. I also dedicate this book to those that have someone involved in one of these professions. With the deepest of respect, I dedicate this book to all the soldiers who serve in the military to ensure America remains a great nation. This great American Nation would stop without truckers doing there jobs and the soldiers who protect us, even at the cost of their lives. God bless each and every one of you. Thank you for all you do!\ -HF

~A Brief Warning~ The profession of trucking and commercial transportation is a high stress career. It is also a dangerous one. It s a profession that many folks take for granted. They look at the trucks and other commercial vehicles going by on the highways and interstates and think it s a simple job. You just sit on your rear and drive a truck for a living. Is what a lot of people think. Yeah, right. There s A LOT more to it than driving. I used to be an OTR trucker and all I have to say is, If you think it s so easy, climb in the seat and look at things from a truck driver s, or any commercial freight relocation specialist s perspective. It s a different world from that point of view. It could even make you think of, The Twilight Zone. -HF

~About This Book~ Before I begin, I need to inform you that you ll need to be able to get a CDL before operating certain commercial vehicles above a certain weight, that have airbrakes and carry certain materials. I m a former professional trucker. This doesn t make me a leading authority on anything involved in this respective field. At best, I m just some guy speaking from experience and expounding upon some of my opinions. The purpose of this book is to answer some of your questions if you are curious and thinking about getting into trucking or commercial transportation. I will point out different trucking and transportation jobs and tell you a little about them. I ll also try to make you chuckle a time or two. I'm also going to tell you plenty of information about over the road trucking as well. Buckle up, this might be a bumpy ride.

~Flashback To Getting My CDL~ The year is 1998. An older DMV employee who fit s the description of a tank on two legs, yet in possession of a big, kind, jovial heart is getting ready to hand a much younger man his CDL for the first time. Congratulations, John, (My real name is John.) you passed your CDL exam and aced your driving test! He started holding the license out. The younger man reached out to take it. Before the young man could grasp the license, the older man pulled it back. Just a few more things before I turn you loose with this. He said with a warm smile. Yes sir? I replied. Having a class A CDL does not make you God s gift to truck stop waitresses, your shipper, your consignee, your boss or your mom and dad. All this license means is, you ve agreed to take on much more responsibility than anyone who doesn t have a CDL. You can now operate commercial vehicles pulling a trailer with a combined weight greater than 26,001 pounds provided that the vehicle being towed has a weight greater than 10,000 pounds. You have taken on a lot of responsibility by getting your Class A CDL. Do you understand what I m saying, John? Yes sir. Good. Now quit standing around here, go get a truck driving job and haul me some more of these endless DMV forms to fill out, will ya? He said with a laugh. -The late Jean Gleason of the Concordia Kansas DMV. God bless you sir. The point of this story is to let you know exactly what I learned on that day. Getting a CDL means you will be taking on a lot more responsibility. Getting in trouble in your own personal vehicle could have consequences that affect your CDL. As a matter of fact, getting in any kind of trouble anymore, could have disastrous consequences on your CDL.

~Rough Start~ First off. I ve driven several types of trucks over the years. I never hurt anyone, but I did have one accident early on in my driving career. I was driving a day cab semi pulling a rock bucket and got distracted while changing lanes on I-70 west of Salina Kansas. An OTR truck hauling frozen meat tried passing me on the right. I steered my truck in front of his and, WHAM! By God s grace alone the driver of the other truck wasn t killed. He didn t get a scratch on him. The motor in his truck was shoved right past him and into his sleeper compartment. I made a mistake. The other man paid for it at the loss of his truck because of the insurance company. The reason I never got charged with anything was because the attending officers reported the other driver as being at fault for trying to pass on the right. Saying, I m sorry, I screwed up. Doesn t fix what happened all those years ago. All I can say is, at least the driver of the other truck is alive, healthy and well. He has the ability to cuss me out if we ever cross paths again. Or he can think bad thoughts about, The stupid kid that cost him his truck. I was twenty-one when that happened. Yes, he was trying to pass me on the right. I know we are supposed to pass on the left. The guy had his speed up and he was trying to zip around me because I wasn t moving as fast as him. He made a split second decision the same time I made a bad one. Two wrongs don t make a right. If you think the guy deserved what he got, I ll be quick to tell you, I disagree. This wreck shouldn t have happened. I hold myself at fault for this terrible event. I got a concussion from the impact when we collided. I whacked my head hard on the back of the cab. Neither of us rolled our trucks. So you want to get into the field of commercial trucking and transportation, eh? Are you sure? Right off the bat I ll tell you that it s all about safety. It only takes one second to do irreversible harm to people. The damage you could do to equipment and other things could cost thousands of dollars.

Still intrigued by the thought of getting into commercial transportation? Good! Do you even know what kind of trucking jobs are out there? No? Well, I m not an expert on the matter, but maybe I could point some of them out to you. I ll give it a shot!

~Peddle Trucking~ If you want to drive a commercial vehicle and get home every night. You will want to look into Peddle trucking. The types of vehicles you could run, range from day cab semi s to cargo vans. A cargo van is bigger than a regular van and will more than likely require you to have a class B CDL to operate. A combination vehicle like a semi pulling a trailer with air brakes, you ll need a class A CDL. Driving local trucks, or, as I ve heard them called, Peddle trucks, is an interesting job. You go into work every morning, load your truck up with deliveries for around town or the area you live in and go deliver. Get used to dealing with a lot of different delivery tickets if you go to work for a common freight dock. What I mean by, different delivery tickets is, they will not all look alike. They will be formatted differently. Certain pieces of information on one company ticket will not be in the same place on every ticket. You will find the proper identification numbers for each delivery as you go over your paperwork before loading your truck. If you live in a big town, say, Kansas City, Omaha, Denver, St. Louis, Dallas/Fort Worth or one of the many big cities out there, you ll be running into a lot of heavy traffic. You ll deal with many people on a daily basis. Be prepared for traffic jams and lots of them. If you can, try to route yourself around areas of congestion that happen around the rush hour times. If you get stuck in one, I suggest putting the truck in it s lowest gear and let it walk along. Your left knee will thank you if you are driving a truck with a standard transmission! Living in a more rural area away from big cities means you won t have as much stress. Mind you, you ll still have some stress though. And it could still be hectic in different ways. As a peddle trucker, you could put in some long hours and be required to run a log book. I ll discuss log books a little later on in this book so you know what I m talking about if you don t already know. The trade-off to such a hectic job is, you ll be home every night. You will have a life that is deemed normal by folks that aren t into the field of OTR trucking. If you have children, you will be able to be there for them and watch them grow up.

Getting to doctors appointments will be easier than if you had a job driving OTR. Some peddle trucking companies even observe certain holidays! Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Veterans day, to name a few.

~Line Haul~ I started out as a Peddle trucker for a small farming chemical company and worked my way up to being a night time line hauler for a different company out of Abilene Kansas. They were a peddle company, but they had to get their freight from somewhere, right? The freight I hauled to Kansas City came from Hays Kansas. The freight I brought back from Kansas City was part of the freight the guys delivered the next day. The company I worked for also had two more line haulers. One of them went to Kansas City ahead of me. He hauled freight that was from around the Abilene Kansas area then returned with freight for the guys at our terminal to deliver the next morning. The third line hauler working out of my terminal went to Wichita Kansas with freight from our area and returned with freight for our dock. Doing a line haul, you won t have many stops, nor will you be delivering to customers. Getting into night time line hauling was an eye opener for me! From driving a cargo van in the most rural parts of Kansas during the day, to pulling swinging doubles into the bottoms of Kansas City Missouri at night. Talk about a change of pace and scenery. I was terrified at first! What a line haul is, is when you are taking a load of freight from one dock to another, so it can be parted out, or, broken down into other shipments to be delivered around the area that dock is located in. Depending on the job, you will either drop your trailer, or trailers if you are pulling pup trailers and hook up to another trailer or two and head back to your home terminal. OR, you will unload your freight at a dock and then re-load your trailer with the freight you are supposed to take back to your home terminal. There are many line-haul jobs out there if you are interested in one. Look them up on the internet and see what s available. Some of them will even be over the road line-haul jobs where you stay out a week or longer before getting back to your home terminal. My job was pud. I dropped and hooked my trailers and went back to my home terminal every night. It was such a nice job, I really liked it! From the reader to the lunk-head writing this: But Hamburger, John, you, whatever your name is! Why aren t you still doing it if you liked it so much? To my reader: Great question! I developed a problem with my right foot and required major reconstructive surgery. It got so bad that I could hardly walk. I took

a leave of absence from my job and found out I wasn t covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act. By the time I was able to return to work, my position had been filled. Reader: You said a line hauler doesn t make many stops. Me: Right! I pulled doubles and triples on my line haul route. I had to do a lot of walking when it came to building my sets and breaking them. Reader: What do you mean, breaking your sets? Me: Rolling the truck and tearing the trailers up. Reader: Say WHAT? Me: Ahem, I mean, disconnecting the trailers from each other. Reader: Oh. Are you sure you didn t break your head somewhere along the way? Me: I was born this way! Not all line hauls run at night. Not all of them will be short range trips. As I mentioned earlier, some line haul jobs will keep you out for a week before returning home. Those companies whose trucks don t have sleepers, will put you up in a motel to sleep in. Other companies trucks will have sleepers. I ll talk to you a little more about sleepers, otherwise known as, bunks, later on in this book.

~Construction Trucks~ You want something you can point out to people and say you helped build it? A bridge, a building, or A ROAD! Then getting into driving a dump truck or concrete truck is for YOU. The mighty dump truck. You ll haul all kinds of things in this vehicle. From Concrete to construction tools and equipment, you will haul many different loads. Driving one of these bad boys around a construction site, you ll learn about the use of hand-signals and how to react to them. Hey you, yes you over there in southern Kansas! Put that finger down. I didn t mean that kind of a hand signal! All kidding aside, when you drive a dump truck, or any kind of a construction vehicle around a job site, you will want to pay close attention to what s going on around you. Especially when you think it s safe, that s the best time to be the most cautious. What I mean is, you might think all is okay, and someone else might think the same thing. Well, someone in front of you signals for you to back up. At the same time someone else thinks they would be okay to walk behind your truck as you put it in reverse. Or they might drive a piece of construction equipment behind you because they didn t know someone was signaling you to back up. Sure, most vehicles are equipped with back up lights. Some commercial vehicles even have back up beepers on them to alert people behind you. What if you didn t inspect your truck that day and don t know that they are on the fritz or broken. If you want to get into running a dump truck on a construction job site, being aware of what s going on all around you at all times is very important. Other peoples lives are literally in your hands. Reader: How are other peoples lives, literally in our hands? Me: You ll be the one holding the steering wheel driving the truck. Reader: Got it! I mentioned concrete trucks at the beginning of this short chapter. Yes, I know I said you d also haul concrete in a dump truck. That is more for pouring, main-line, or the left and right lanes of a road on a road construction job. A concrete truck is more for pouring the shoulders of a road, curb, and guttering if you are doing road construction. Just like the dump truck driver, you will learn the use of hand signals that tell you to: Backup, go forward, stop, STOP, turn left, turn right, and many other things. Making sure your truck is properly maintained is very important. Especially on

the DOVETAIL. Always make sure you grease the swinging apparatus of a dovetail. The dovetail is the shoot your concrete will slide down from. And to give you a prime example as to why it should be properly maintained, let me tell you a short story. When I was twenty two, I was working for a company around Bellville Kansas that was doing some road work. At the moment, I was running a concrete truck hauling to a curb and guttering crew that was pouring a section of shoulder along highway 81. The guy running the dove tail came up to the truck with a nasty look on his face and asked me when was the last time I greased the shoot. Did I mention he had a nasty look on his face? After telling him I couldn t remember, he shouted at me to get out of the truck and go run the thing myself. So I did. After giving it one push forward followed by one pull backwards, I understand why the guy was so angry. The shoot was so hard to push and pull that it felt like it weighed a ton! I took the truck back to the batch-plant and greased the heck out of it dove tail. By the time I brought it back, you could push and pull that shoot with one finger. After that, I made darn sure to grease the dovetail on any concrete truck I drove. It made the guys jobs working the concrete much easier. One more thing about concrete trucks that s very similar to dump trucks. SAFETY! You want to be very careful and aware of what s going on around you at all times. I ll tell you another short story about safety and why it s very important. On a different day but still working for the same company, I was taking direction from a foreman running a concrete pour. The man was being groomed, (trained) to run a crew of his own. He had quite the attitude and opinion of himself. I really didn t like the guy. The man who was grooming him was standing back watching his performance seeing how he did. I had some problems with that guy as well when I first hired on. We got past that. As it turned out, he was a really great guy! Alright, back to what happened. The guy running the controls to pour the concrete turned to say something to his foremen. He shifted his feet and put one of them right behind a tire of the truck. The controls were on the drivers side of the truck near the back end. From my point of view, it looked like I was about to run over his foot, so I stopped the truck. This fella turned back to glare at me in the driver s side mirror of my truck. He

started shouting something I couldn t make out. Before I could get out of the truck, HIS foreman looked at the guys foot placement and whacked him over his hard-hat before pointing at where the man had his feet placed. Quickly, the man re-positioned his feet so they weren t directly behind the tires of the truck. His boss gave me the thumbs up. I returned the hand-signal, put the truck back in gear and continued backing up. From my reader: But Johnny Hamburger, you kind of made the guy running the controls sound a bit like a jerk. Why didn t you just run over his foot to teach him a lesson? Me: Well, it s like this. We were all out there to make a living. The guy being groomed to run his own crew one day, he was just being himself. I didn t know much about the guy other than I didn t particularly like him very much. Had I run over his foot, I would have gotten into big trouble. ii would have looked like I wasn t aware of what was going on around me. Who s to say the guy wasn t supporting a family and his parents because they were disabled and couldn t support themselves. Had I run over his foot, I would have not only hurt him, but the folks depending on him. Like I said about safety, it s very important. In a matter of a few seconds, you could inadvertently change the lives of not only one, but many people.