Monday, February 7, 2011

I May be orientated

It's been over a week since I updated my blog. If there was anything exciting about the last week, I must have slept through it. I finished the truck driving school on January 27th and didn't really have a lot to do in the week off. I did go back to the DMV and take a few more tests for endorsements. As of now, I am qualified to haul HazMat, tankers and doubles/triples. I've decided that I don't want a passenger endorsement because I have NO desire to drive a school bus full of kids. Nothing against the kido's, I just don't want to deal with ya.

This morning I started orientation with May Trucking Co. I'm not officially an employee of May until I complete their 3 day process of being orientated. The day started off with me having to fork over all paper work they required. I had to prove to them that I did in fact graduate from a trucking school and that I was an American citizen. Then, they took me out on a road test in a tractor. Bearing in mind that all tractors are a little different and all transmissions feel a little different, I was put in trucks that I was completely unfamiliar with and told my future with company depends on my performance. I'm happy to report that the road test went well.

After the road test, they treated all the new guys to a free lunch at Hometown Buffet. This was an unexpected benefit. Tomorrow, I'm wearing pants with large pockets. When you're unemployed, free groceries are like manna from heaven.

After lunch, I was taken to the back of the yard were lots of cones were placed way to close to each other. I was then tasked with trying to navigate a tractor with 53 foot of trailer behind it through the cones in both forward and reverse. The object of the exercise was to negotiate your way through tight spaces without killing any of the cones.

Since I was not the cause of an untimely demise of any traffic cones, I was invited back to join them for a second day of orientation. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

-Red-

5 comments:

  1. WOO-HOO, sounds like you are on your way. Good luck with that but try to stay away from the doubles and triples - I hate thoese trains on wheels. Hometown Buffet is a nice bonus...how many guys in the orientation?

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  2. Hey, I saw an ad for a trucking company located in Gresham, Fairview to be exact. They were looking for drvers with hazmat experience.
    Since they are so close, I just wondered if you knew who they were. I can't remember the name of the company.

    Good job on missing all of the cone heads. You just never know what kind of lawsuits you avoided.

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  3. I got the doubles/triples endorsement just so I could have it in case I ever needed it. Companies are required by law to provide extra training to anybody hauling triples. I don't think I'll be hauling any in the near future but I like keeping my options open.

    Right now, there are 5 people in orientation.

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  4. I have a HazMat endorsement, that doesn't mean I have experience, yet.

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