July 18

Well, after a couple of weeks at home and in Dallas I am finally back on the road again.

This time I am out for 3 weeks with a finshing trainer. He will basically have me do almost all of the work and make sure that I do it correctly. After this phase is over with I will go back to Dallas and take about 2 days of classes. After that they will assign my truck to me and I become a solo driver.

For this phase of my training I am on a truck that runs a dedicated route from California to Atlanta. We are in a brand new Freighter with less than 18,000 miles on it. Man, this thing is really quite and rides like a Cadillac!

June 24

June 24 – Been at the truckstop all day long. We don’t load until 4pm tomorrow in Oregon.

June 23

June 23 – My how plans change. We were going to repower in Oklahoma City then getting to Dallas Friday night or Saturday. Now it seems that someone needed to be repowered in Gallup, NM with the load going to Salt Lake City by 4AM. We swapped trailers and hit the road. This runis my plans for getting home for the weekend! ERRRRR!!!

While we were on northern Colorado on 191 I just happen to look up and see at least 3 and maybe 4 deer leisurely walking across the road in our lane. Yep, we hit them at 65mph. Got the truck pulled over and checked under the truck and looked for damage on the truck. The only thing that we saw was the license plate was missing. While my trainer makes the required phone calls, I go back and look for the license plate. I found it along with one deer that was on the side of the road. I am pretty sure that we hit a second deer so I am thinking that it was able to run into the field to die.

We finally made it to the receiver and only 30 minutes late. Got unloaded and to a truckstop this morning.

June 21

June 21 - Now we are at our first of three pickups for this load going to CT. We are only going to take this load to around Oklahoma City then have someone repower it from us so we can get to Dallas by Friday or Saturday.

June 20

June 20 – Spent almost all day sitting in a truckstop waiting. Saw some interesting sights such as my first real life lot lizard and then there was the guy that was dressed like a woman… We finally left around 5:30pm local time for our delivery. Got unloaded then went to a dump of a truckstop for the night.

June 19

June 19 – Went into the truckstop this morning to brush my teeth and do my morning thing and the power had just gone out. They said a town about 80 miles out had a big fire and it burnt some powerlines so the power company was alternating power between communities. Right now I am sitting in the truck waiting until 2pm so we can leave. The wind is very strong. Its blowing the truck/trailer really hard. I sure hope that it dies down before we leave! Before the day was done we ran into a lot of high winds and heavy rains.

June 18

June 18 – Left the Nashville area around noon and it was 66°. Had some storms with high winds and very heavy rains. At one point we had to pull into a rest stop and shut down for about 15 minutes because we couldn’t see the road. Finally made it to the Oklahoma border where we switched drivers about 9pm or so. There it was 97°. My trainer drove through the night until about 5:30 local time in Santa Rosa, NM.

Was sitting in the truck at the truckstop this morning and saw Ron Capps car hauler come through. Saw 2 or 3 more but didnt recognize the names.

Also saw John Forces motor coach.