By Rick & Christine.

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Our trainer is Bill, our load is paper, and our destination is Sparks, NV.  That’s right, we’re FINALLY trucking!!  As I write this we’re bumping and bouncing our way down I-5, with a 45,000 lb. load through Oregon.  This is our second day OTR (over the road), hopefully it will be
shorter then yesterday which was a nineteen hour long blur.  Here are some of the gory details from day one of OTR life:

We rose at 5:00 a.m. and met Bill at headquarters at 6:00.  Due to mechanical problems we did not leave the yard with our first load (Gatorade bound for my former employer, Costco) until noon.  We only had to drive 23 miles to deliver.  Normally we will not be making such short runs but we did this one as a favor.  After finishing at Costco we headed up to northern Washington to pick up our current load of paper.  I backed the trailer up to the dock.  It was the first time I had backed a trailer in three weeks, and my first real world alley dock, so I was nervous.  But I did it. 
 

After we were all loaded I pulled away from the dock to finish the paperwork, and nearly HIT ANOTHER TRAILER WITH MY TRAILER!!   Oops!!   I didn’t swing out wide enough.  Fortunately Bill is very calm and patient.  After that we headed over to the scale house to
make sure our weight was legal.  There can only be so much weight per axle (12,000 on your steering axle and 34,000 on your drivers and trailer axles. 

Of course every state has different weight restrictions), and we were WAY over on all of them.  So it was back to the mill to be re-loaded, then back to the scale house to be re-weighed.  This time it was closer, but we needed to slide our fifth wheel in order to distribute a little weight off the steering axle.  Sigh. So we pulled forward and slid the fifth wheel. 

By now I’m starving and exhausted because it’s 6:00 p.m., I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast that morning because apparently Bill has no stomach, and I’ve been up for 12 hours without benefit of a nap, which is a personal record.   Enter practical joker scale house attendant. 

I went into the scale house to ask the attendant if we could enter the scale from the opposite direction this time, so Rick wouldn’t have to turn the truck around.  And the scale house clerk shakes his head vehemently and says quite indignantly “NO!!”.  So I run out and tell Rick he’s
going to have to find forty acres somewhere and turn this rig around.  I go back to wait at the scale house and the guy is in there with another truck driver and they’re both laughing hysterically.  In between laughter they inform me that he was only JOKING, OF COURSE Rick could have entered from the other side. There’s no reason for him to turn around.  I looked out the window and watched poor Rick trying to turn our 53-foot trailer around, with Bill directing him, and started laughing.  I didn’t want them to tell Bill and Rick about my gullibility, but they told anyway. 

Luckily Bill and Rick also found it humorous, even though they were also tired and hungry. 
Finally we were on our way again and I got us into Wilsonville, OR at 11:15 p.m..  By the time we dropped off our truck, got a company car lined up, and checked into a motel it was midnight.  WHEW!! What a glorious day it was though.  I sure did learn a lot. 

TOP FIVE LESSONS I LEARNED ON DAY ONE OF TRUCKING:

5) Don’t be cocky (yet) when making turns…SWING WIDE, REALLY WIDE!! 
4) Sleep RULES!  Sleep as long as you can whenever you get the chance.
3) Scales, whether I’m weighing myself, or my truck, are the enemy. 
2) Wal-Mart is a trucker’s best friend.  It’s cheaper then a truck-stop, has less hookers AND they have lots of room to park!
And finally….
   1)     DO NOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT THE SCALE HOUSE ATTENDANTS TELL YOU!! 

Hey, we know!
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