LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

After driving truck primarily on the west coast for over two years now, Craig has learned a trick or two on how best to get around LA.  As with the previous trainees that he has had, Roy was taught just how miserable it is to drive from San Diego, through LA, and over the Grapevine, staying only on Interstate 5 as suggested by the routing given by dispatch.  Craig always makes sure they see for themselves just what a headache it can be, and then afterwards, how advantageous it is to take secondary freeways instead.

Roy had that lesson yesterday when they left San Diego after picking of their load of bananas.  They left around 10am and by 4pm finally made it to Wheeler Ridge, CA and their first fuel stop of this load.  They called it an early night, and spent the night there relaxing with their computers and some TV watching.  Craig's not sure what he did, but he reconfigured some of the antenna wires, and he is now getting some pretty decent reception on our little TV we have inside the truck.  Should work out very well with the new fall season starting in a couple of weeks!

With about 1000 miles left to drive, they will split the driving duties over the next two days, with each of them driving about 5 hours a day.  Roy started out driving first this morning and got as far as the yard in French Camp, where they stopped to scan in paperwork, and then spent some time with Roy learning another lesson on fine tuning his backing skills.  They made good use of the large back lot of the company yard to do some normal and blind side backing.  Craig is getting him ready for his mid term testing when they come into Spokane for home time this weekend.

Craig took over the driving duties from French Camp, and will get them into Corning, CA and their next fuel stop.  They will stay the night there, take showers, and then drive a little over 600 miles tomorrow and stage in the company drop yard in Pacific, WA for their delivery at the Fred Meyer DC in Puyallup Friday morning.  Then if all goes as planned, they will get a load out of the distribution center and have an overnight run into Spokane with a delivery to a local Fred Meyer store either late Friday night, or early Saturday morning...........then let the home time begin!