My first week's experience with FedEx and as a OTR trucker

So after 3 weeks of background checks and such. I was officially hired two weeks ago. I am team driving with a O/O contractor who also owns two other trucks. We leave for routes almost always on a tuesday or wednesday. For our first drive we received a rare "bump" for Saturday. We drove from from central, IL to Arkansas to meet up with another fedex truck and swap trailers to take back. He had me take the first drive so he could guage me on how well I can do this. I'm still green, because I only have 6 months verifiable local driving experience and have NEVER pulled a double/triple setup. My fathers hopper bottom International was an automatic, so it took me about 15 minutes to get the hang of stick shifting and floating gears again. After that the boss told me he doesn't think he will have to stay up as much as he thought he would have to and went to bed.

I woke him up when we got to our destination. We only had to wait maybe 6 minutes before the other drivers showed up. Very nice timing. The bossman took care of the paperwork, as I unhooked and got aligned for the other trailers. Even tho my 11 hours were not up yet, the boss decided to drive the whole way back, which was fine with me. I couldn't sleep, so I sat with him the whole drive back. We got back around 5pm.

He told me to keep the phone around for around midnight, we may have another "bump" to do. I called him at 12:30am, he said they decided they didnt need a bump.

Wednesday came, the boss calls, we are going to Sacramento, CA immediately. So I shower n haul butt to meet him. He's asleep in the sleeper, they delayed us. So I take a nap as well. Bout 4 hours later we get a call. We hook up doubles and head out. He takes the first shift. I finish sleeping. my shift comes up while we are still in Iowa, so I drive clear to Wyoming. I think I like that place. i have never heard of a 75 mile an hour speed limit for anyone let alone for trucks. I have never been west of Illinois in my life! We are taking I80 the whole way

So I'm trucking at 75mph just flying past other truckers. I didn't know better so I asked why everyone else is going so slow, am I missing something? He says cuz everyone else is either governed or trying to save on gas. We don't worry about gas, cuz the longer it takes us to get there, the further down the list we get for another route. Well that's fine with me driving slow has always make me sleepy. On my first 11 hours I was actually scared. 75 mile an hour just didn't feel exactly safe. ESPECIALLY going down mountains. I lost count on how many times my butt puckered. And I'm a speed demon. He said I'll get used to it, and I just need to learn to ease on the brakes and not stab them like my instructor told me or we will have problems in the winter. He's right I got used to it and is braking perfect. I also hit my first weigh station. I've never had to worry about a weigh station before, so I woke the boss up again. He explained the pre-pass. We got a green, and he went back to bed. Later, I notice my trailer lights are flickering as if my flashers are on just after I pass a truck. So I took the next exit. Bossman woke up to ask me what I'm doing. I shoved a piece of paper towel around the trailer socket to fix the lights. He goes back to bed. I drive for another 30 minutes, pass a truck, trailer lights are completely off now. The the next exit is just ahead. I had to hit the braked kinda hard to get in there ok. P.S. I am soo sorry to that driver that was behind me. He didn't honk or anything, but I bet he was furious that he didnt know I was slowing down. Boss woke up again, and decided he would shove a piece of cardboard from a notebook in there. That fixed it for good. He said some trailers are just loose like that.

After a few shifts we make it to Cali. EVERYBODY knew my boss, he never had take his ID out of the truck. I'm going to take this as a good thing. The dispatcher was really cool with him. Again, I bet this is a good thing. We took showers and hit the beds for just over 10 hours. I just slept so he gave me 4 pills of his 30 dollar bottle of Tylenol PM's. I got to buy some, those things rock. I sorta felt drunk and passed out within 15 minutes.

We get the call in the morning, we are not gonna get a tangent route as we hoped(he wanted some quick extra money before going on vacation on the 19th) so they give us the route back to Illinois. We still made crazy miles in a few days. We just got back yesterday at 6m. I still had some questions.
I asked why we never had to weigh, he said cuz they know FedEx is so strict that DOT can hardly ever find anything wrong with us. Then I told him I can't help but notice when a truck in front of me passes another truck, the passed truck flips his lights to let him know when clear, but when I pass, they usually either won't signal me when I'm clear, or flip me off when I pass them. The boss laughed and said they hate that we don't get weighed, pulled over, don't have governors, and a lot couldn't get hired by FedEx because of their strict policies.
I also mentioned to him I hit 79 before hitting my brakes going down a hill, just before I see a state Cop SUV on the left side of the road parked with no lights on at all as if there was an emergency lane there, which there wasn't. I thought I was busted, cuz the cop pulled out with lights on. Turned out he wanted that charter bus the flew by me minutes ago. *Wipes sweat of forehead* Also, I could have sworn its illegal for a cop to be on the side of the road with no lights on at all. The boss first glances at me, and said to not let that happend again. FedEx if a FedEx gets a ticket for 80 n over, even if the speed limit is 75, hes fired automatically.

He then tells me I did MUCh better than he expected and that he would go ahead and give me the full pay. I never discussed pay, because I felt lucky to even get hired. He was gonan giv eme .18/mile till i figured it out then up to .36/mile.

 

In summary. I am quite happy with FedEx and the boss. He has been very cool with things. Only thing I have a problem with is when you walk into dispatch. Some of those drivers smell like they haven't showered in weeks. I'm sure this is norm with some normal OTR drivers, but ####. FedEx has free showers at almost most buildings.

 

You gonna try for fedex?

 

They were extremely strict and thorough when I applied. They wanted 6 months experience + driving school or 1 year experience. And it took them 3 weeks of checking on my background. I didn't think I was gonna get the job at first. Everyone around here are telling me I was VERY lucky getting with them as a noob with no real OTR experience.

So hope your background is clean. And good luck! Its worth it!

 

Thought I'd put in an update.
We seem to get a IL to CA to IL run almost every time plus a random "bump", so I'm doing well with the miles.

But last week we had a problem.
Last week we were setting up for another Cali run on Tuesday and just after I leave my house to meet the boss at 4am(I live an hour away), the boss gets a call from dispatch. They need an emergency run to ST Louis immediately. The boss says we will haul it as soon as I get there. Dispatch tells him to leave without me they need it there now. Boss tells dispatch that he's not gonna just leave, just for me to show up minutes later and then have to wait in the parking lot until he returns from STL. So he passes on the load. Well turns out the load became a failure cuz noone else was available. So now dispatch is angry. We didn't get a run tuesday so we go home to try again the next day. They told us we are now #2 on the list for dibs on runs. Meet at 4am, no runs ready yet, we go to sleep. I wake up at noon to the boss talking frustratingly to dispatch. He asked why they haven't called us yet. They said it isnt our turn yet. He reminds them we are #2 on the list. They suddenly change the excuse to "there was only one load needed to run out today" .....Yeah right... Fedex only needed one load to go ONE location for the week?? Right....
So now the boss is mad at dipatch, tells me we can go home, come back next Tuesday. We will be #1 on the list. Well on Thursday they called needing us to go to Kansas City. Ha, nice try... If we did it, we would have lost our #1 pick for next week and would only be drivin a days worth of miles for two weeks. No thanks we are not suckers. The boss think's it's partially a racial thing as he knows for a fact that certain dispatchers there hate the black drivers, so they were taking advantage of this situation in screwing him. I don't know. I haven't worked there or talked to dispatch long enough to comment.

Well... Now its 12:40am Tuesday morning. It's time to get ready to head to work and maybe get a little sleep in the sleeper when I get there till 4 am. I'll update tomorrow if they screw us again.