Over-the-road trucking is the finest job I’ve ever had, and I’m 45 years old. To be successful in trucking, you need a strong work ethic, a can-do attitude, and a positive frame of mind. Too many novice drivers ruin their careers before they even get started. The most led lights for trucks and trailers typical blunders that rookie truck drivers make will be discussed in this section.
Prepare Yourself for the Challenge That Is awaiting You.
One of the most important things you need to realize about trucking is that it will be really difficult. Before you achieve your objectives, you will have to navigate an emotional obstacle course. At times, you may even question whether or not you made the right choice to pursue a profession in transportation. Pain is only here for a short time. Taking a few months of CDL training and a year of rookie challenges is nothing compared to the bigger picture. Persevere with a positive frame of mind.
The postal service was awful for me, so you can handle a year of blunders and improvement in trucking. You’ll get the hang of that 70-foot-long, 80,000-pound beast of a truck eventually, I promise. Mastering time management and parking in busy places are just two of the many skills you’ll learn while taking this course.
Learning becomes less stressful at that moment. Now, the only worry you face is the daily tension of working in the trucking industry. It gets easier to back out of a tight spot. You have a good rapport with the dispatch team and know exactly what they need from you. You’ve dealt with mechanical problems before and know how to fix them. You’ve earned a great deal of knowledge and expertise, as well as the self-assurance that comes with it.
It’s a wonderful time to be alive!
Be Acquainted with the Facts
First and foremost, if you want to go through your first year of trucking successfully, you need to get rid of any preconceived notions about what it entails. It doesn’t matter what you imagined it to be like as a child. In the same way that the dream I had about Gerard Butler with his loincloth from the movie 300 is a lie, this is also one.
Even after two showers, you’ll still be drenched in sweat on such days. When the wind whips your vehicle severely during a thunderstorm or a snowstorm, you’ll realize you need to go to the bathroom quickly. In the midst of a long shift, you’ll have days when you’ll want to punch your obnoxious trainer, pound the truck, and cut the head off the driver who refuses to allow you space to dock.
In this environment, things might change at any moment, therefore you need to be adaptable. You may be delayed if you encounter a mechanical issue or a traffic backlog. The shipper may have canceled the shipment by the time you got there. It’s possible that you’ll be forced to reroute a thousand-mile journey to deliver a product to a new recipient who urgently needs it. Trucking is a fast-paced industry. It’s a fact of life that you’ll have to adapt to shifting conditions.
To deal with these kinds of challenges, you must be adaptable in your approach to issue solving. These actions are not deliberate. Nobody is to blame. There is no one to blame except yourself. That’s simply the nature of trucking; accept it. Trucking is not the career for you if you can’t stand being around people all the time. So what? However, give it a year before giving up.
There are several reasons to stay with your first employer for a full year.
These situations may upset a novice driver, but they become inconsequential to a seasoned one.
After realizing she couldn’t complete her three-stop route in one day, a driver made a last-minute change of plans. She gave it all she had, but it wasn’t enough. Any driver with a little of experience would have given dispatch a note noting, “Receiver #2 caused the delay. The new ETA is 1800.” Let dispatch take care of it when we parked the vehicle and went to sleep. Alternatively, they may reschedule the pick-up or send another driver.
