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Alan is getting to be quite the orientation expert. Which is a sad thing. He made it through 2 and a half days of orientation at Swift and they cut him loose. This time it was because he didn't have his license for at least a year. This was something I had alluded to (but not specifically spelled out) in my email to the recruiter. So that was a wasted trip to Dallas and back (twice).
When he got back to the rig, we immediately started work on finding another company. He still had the pre-hire letter from Covenant and I called the recruiter to see if they had everything they needed. They did and gave him an orientation date of the 25th. In the meantime, Alan was working other companies but none would give him a look.
By this time Alan is getting pretty dejected. He doesn't like Covenant because of their policy of making drivers team drive for six months after training. He doesn't want to share the truck with another person. Alan is quite the loner so having to put up with another person is not something he looks forward to.
However, we are in desperate straits so he is resolved to do what he must in order to get our finances straightened out.
He has totally lost every last shred of enthusiasm he might have had for this career. He said after the Arrow debacle he felt as if they had shoved a vacuum cleaner up his ass and sucked out every last bit of liking for trucking that he had. Now he is just going through the motions.
So I drove him up to Dallas on Sunday night and dropped him off at the hotel. This time he stayed at the Comfort Inn rather than the Days Inn. At least Covenant puts their drivers up in a decent hotel. They also fed him dinner every evening (at Denny's). So that was nice.
He made it all the way through orientation and was hanging around Thursday waiting for them to tell him he had a trainer. Again he is watching everybody else get their paperwork so he's waiting for the ax to fall yet again.
He was the very last person to get his trainer, a guy by the name of Mike who is from El Paso.
So he made it. Alan is now employed....at least for the next 5-6 weeks. After that, he will have to take another road test for an evaluation. If he passes that, he will get his own truck (and a teammate).
He and his trainer are currently hanging out at the Dallas terminal waiting for a load. Alan says there are a lot of drivers there so he'll probably be there all weekend. He is bored to tears.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Swift
Tomorrow is the big day. Alan has another chance to get with a trucking company. Swift has given him an orientation date and we leave tomorrow for Lancaster, TX which is just south of Dallas. I'm driving him up there since it is only 80 miles away from Waco and I didn't have the heart to see him endure another bus ride from hell. Supposedly he has three days of orientation and then he's supposed to go out with a trainer for six weeks. After the fiasco with Arrow, I'll believe it when I see it. The sad thing about it is after getting jerked around for so long, Alan is super cynical now and has lost his positive attitude. This job is now a chore rather than a money making opportunity. Which sucks as I've already had experience with a man who hated his job and I know how damaging to the psyche it can be. I have been trying to convince Alan to give Swift a chance and to try to not be so critical. We'll see how it goes.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Only in Texas
Some of the things that happen to me while working the 'hoods are kind of weird. Today this one man answered the door in his underwear. It was 2 in the afternoon and I had woken him up so he was pretty bleary eyed. After I made my pitch he said no thanks and then closed the door. So I go back to my truck and just as I'm about to toss his picture into the reject pile he opens the door (still in his underwear) and says he's changed his mind that he wants the picture. So I go in and while I'm putting the clips in the back, he finally goes and puts a robe on. He said he worked late last night and was still half asleep when he answered the door.
This area has a lot of ranches so some of the roads to these houses are pretty remote. One road here is called Talbert Ranch Road and it goes a couple miles into the boonies with only about three or four ranches branching off it. When the pavement ends you go another mile or so on a dirt road and you finally get to the house. By then you're hoping somebody is home so you don't have to keep coming back out here to catch them at home. But I wasn't so lucky during the week so today I had to make the trip back out there.
Just before the pavement runs out, there was a gated house that I had visited earlier in the week. Some of these gates, if you push a little black button near the actuator, the gate will open. Depends if the homeowner has it activated or not. This one happened to be so I was able to drive up to the house. I ended up having to leave a doorhanger as they wanted to think about it. (Ninety percent of the time this usually means 'No') Once I leave a 'will call' doorhanger, I don't come back until the end of the roll if I haven't heard anything from them.
Today I'm driving out to the Talbert ranch and right when I'm coming up to this gated house, I see a llama. The lady of the house has got a bucket of food trying to lure it across the cow grate of her gate. I stop because the llama is right in the middle of the road. So it walks up to me and sticks it's head in through my open window and I'm eye to eye with a llama. I'm thinking if this thing snorts on me I'm going to be pissed. The lady asks if I was coming to her house and I said, "No," that I was headed on up the road. But I could see that she needed help and the silly llama obviously was curious about me so I slowly drove in through her gate and we almost made it but the llama wouldn't go through. She had put a couple pieces of plywood across the cow grate but every time the llama stepped on the plywood he'd back off and go back into the road. The llama's name was Franklin Louie and he wasn't hers but she had him over to breed with her female llama. I tried helping her for about 15 minutes but Franklin wasn't having none of walking on the plywood no matter how good the food in the bucket was. Finally he went up into the weeds by the fence and I was able to back out and get on down the road. She had to distract him so he wouldn't follow me.
I made the sale at the Talbert ranch as they were home this time. I asked them how many acres they had and the man said 2000. He lives in the house with his mother and works the ranch by himself.
When I drove back past the gate, there was no sign of the llama. If she calls me to order their picture (which I doubt) I'll have to ask her how it all turned out.
This area has a lot of ranches so some of the roads to these houses are pretty remote. One road here is called Talbert Ranch Road and it goes a couple miles into the boonies with only about three or four ranches branching off it. When the pavement ends you go another mile or so on a dirt road and you finally get to the house. By then you're hoping somebody is home so you don't have to keep coming back out here to catch them at home. But I wasn't so lucky during the week so today I had to make the trip back out there.
Just before the pavement runs out, there was a gated house that I had visited earlier in the week. Some of these gates, if you push a little black button near the actuator, the gate will open. Depends if the homeowner has it activated or not. This one happened to be so I was able to drive up to the house. I ended up having to leave a doorhanger as they wanted to think about it. (Ninety percent of the time this usually means 'No') Once I leave a 'will call' doorhanger, I don't come back until the end of the roll if I haven't heard anything from them.
Today I'm driving out to the Talbert ranch and right when I'm coming up to this gated house, I see a llama. The lady of the house has got a bucket of food trying to lure it across the cow grate of her gate. I stop because the llama is right in the middle of the road. So it walks up to me and sticks it's head in through my open window and I'm eye to eye with a llama. I'm thinking if this thing snorts on me I'm going to be pissed. The lady asks if I was coming to her house and I said, "No," that I was headed on up the road. But I could see that she needed help and the silly llama obviously was curious about me so I slowly drove in through her gate and we almost made it but the llama wouldn't go through. She had put a couple pieces of plywood across the cow grate but every time the llama stepped on the plywood he'd back off and go back into the road. The llama's name was Franklin Louie and he wasn't hers but she had him over to breed with her female llama. I tried helping her for about 15 minutes but Franklin wasn't having none of walking on the plywood no matter how good the food in the bucket was. Finally he went up into the weeds by the fence and I was able to back out and get on down the road. She had to distract him so he wouldn't follow me.
I made the sale at the Talbert ranch as they were home this time. I asked them how many acres they had and the man said 2000. He lives in the house with his mother and works the ranch by himself.
When I drove back past the gate, there was no sign of the llama. If she calls me to order their picture (which I doubt) I'll have to ask her how it all turned out.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Arrow Trucking
For the past month, Alan and I have been all about trucking. We have determined that for our kind of lifestyle, driving a truck would be the best way to make extra money to get us out of debt. If Alan drove a truck, we don't need an extra car for him to get to work, I can still work for Air Photo, and he can arrange for a load to be delivered close to where I happen to be at the moment.
So we started out looking at Schneider because they were advertised in AARP magazine as being very retiree friendly. That was a pipe dream. Then we started calling other trucking companies that do training and ran into the same roadblocks. What it boils down to is that Alan has two strikes against him as far as getting hired by any trucking company. Number 1 is that he doesn't have the required 3 years of verifiable work history. We have gotten around this somewhat by coercing our friends to write letters stating that they knew Alan has been retired for the past 6 years. Strike 2 is that he hasn't had his US license for at least six months. Companies need this because they need to verify his driving record. They don't want to hear or see his spotless record in the UK. So those issues have been a thorn in our side for the past few weeks.
So we checked out various drivers schools. We found one (Roadmaster) that claimed they could get Alan a job after school even with the work history/driver's license issue. So we financed $6500 worth of school in San Antonio and Alan went to their 3-week course. It gets down to the next to the last day of school and he still has no pre-hire letters from any of the companies. Guess why!!! The same old thing. On the last day he manages to get a pre-hire letter from a company called Covenant. Now this company is the pits of trucking companies and maybe that's why they'll take everybody and anybody. Drivers who have various issues go to them to get a foot in the door and then they leave once they get experience. Alan will probably have to do the same thing....
...because...
we managed to get Arrow to accept him to orientation. He took the bus ride from hell last week and traveled from San Antonio to Tulsa. He stayed in a filthy hotel and went through Arrow's orientation for five days. He was treated like a non-entity and endured hours of lines where the drivers were herded around like cattle. Every day a few drivers disappeared for whatever reason (failed whiz quiz, failed physical, terrible driving, etc.). By the time Friday rolled around there were 14 guys left to fill 4 jobs. Alan thought he'd have a chance as he'd done well on all their road tests (with the exception of one of the docking tests). But during lunch they called his name to go into the office and they handed him a bus ticket to Waco (where I am now).
What a total let down that was. So he is now back at home, licking his wounded pride. Tomorrow is Monday and we are going to call a few temp agencies in the morning to see if he can get any work driving. We're also going to try Covenant again. He really doesn't want to go there because they have screwed up training (they team drive for six months) but it appears to be the only way he might get work. Besides, we now have this $6500 loan we need to start paying back in October so something has to happen by then.
And that's my update for now. I'm in Waco area for the next three weeks and after that I have a choice of Illinois, Iowa, Montana, or California. California sounds nice but the RV parks there are SUPER expensive. To give you a clue, I'm paying $250 a month for where we are now. I'd like to go to Escondido, CA for the winter but the closest park to where I'll be working is $950 a month. PLUS electric. I've checked several other parks nearby and they either don't have sites big enough for our rig or they're full. But the going rate for the mediocre parks seems to be in the $600 range which I still think is outrageous. That's a dozen pictures I'd have to sell (almost a week's work) just to pay rent.
So that's where we are now. I'll let you all know if Alan gets to Covenant or not and how it goes.
So we started out looking at Schneider because they were advertised in AARP magazine as being very retiree friendly. That was a pipe dream. Then we started calling other trucking companies that do training and ran into the same roadblocks. What it boils down to is that Alan has two strikes against him as far as getting hired by any trucking company. Number 1 is that he doesn't have the required 3 years of verifiable work history. We have gotten around this somewhat by coercing our friends to write letters stating that they knew Alan has been retired for the past 6 years. Strike 2 is that he hasn't had his US license for at least six months. Companies need this because they need to verify his driving record. They don't want to hear or see his spotless record in the UK. So those issues have been a thorn in our side for the past few weeks.
So we checked out various drivers schools. We found one (Roadmaster) that claimed they could get Alan a job after school even with the work history/driver's license issue. So we financed $6500 worth of school in San Antonio and Alan went to their 3-week course. It gets down to the next to the last day of school and he still has no pre-hire letters from any of the companies. Guess why!!! The same old thing. On the last day he manages to get a pre-hire letter from a company called Covenant. Now this company is the pits of trucking companies and maybe that's why they'll take everybody and anybody. Drivers who have various issues go to them to get a foot in the door and then they leave once they get experience. Alan will probably have to do the same thing....
...because...
we managed to get Arrow to accept him to orientation. He took the bus ride from hell last week and traveled from San Antonio to Tulsa. He stayed in a filthy hotel and went through Arrow's orientation for five days. He was treated like a non-entity and endured hours of lines where the drivers were herded around like cattle. Every day a few drivers disappeared for whatever reason (failed whiz quiz, failed physical, terrible driving, etc.). By the time Friday rolled around there were 14 guys left to fill 4 jobs. Alan thought he'd have a chance as he'd done well on all their road tests (with the exception of one of the docking tests). But during lunch they called his name to go into the office and they handed him a bus ticket to Waco (where I am now).
What a total let down that was. So he is now back at home, licking his wounded pride. Tomorrow is Monday and we are going to call a few temp agencies in the morning to see if he can get any work driving. We're also going to try Covenant again. He really doesn't want to go there because they have screwed up training (they team drive for six months) but it appears to be the only way he might get work. Besides, we now have this $6500 loan we need to start paying back in October so something has to happen by then.
And that's my update for now. I'm in Waco area for the next three weeks and after that I have a choice of Illinois, Iowa, Montana, or California. California sounds nice but the RV parks there are SUPER expensive. To give you a clue, I'm paying $250 a month for where we are now. I'd like to go to Escondido, CA for the winter but the closest park to where I'll be working is $950 a month. PLUS electric. I've checked several other parks nearby and they either don't have sites big enough for our rig or they're full. But the going rate for the mediocre parks seems to be in the $600 range which I still think is outrageous. That's a dozen pictures I'd have to sell (almost a week's work) just to pay rent.
So that's where we are now. I'll let you all know if Alan gets to Covenant or not and how it goes.
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