Hey Steemit, we have been so busy the last month! We have an exciting career we decided to persue by becoming Commercial Truck Drivers!
🔥Semi-trucks, 18-wheelers, Bad Ass Status! 😎
We joined the company called CRST from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There were lots of trucking companies to choose from that offered training programs. A couple of them are Swift and C.R. England. We found that the best company was CRST. Our recruiter Jim has been absolutely amazing! He represented the company superbly and we put our faith in CRST. The company cares about their employees and treated us with respect and we very accommodating to us, as a couple who will be team driving.
Our journey started out on a greyhound from Bellingham, WA to San Bernardino, CA
The company payed for our transportation cost to their training facility in Fontana, CA. The greyhound ride was unforgettable! First couple hours on the bus we overheard someone talking on the phone about trucking, so we asked them if they were truckers. Sure enough, they were! They were heading to the same place we were, and as more people got on through Oregon and California we accumulated more and more truckers. It was pretty cool meeting all these people who were on the same path as we were.
The first notable stop on the Greyhound bus was in Portland, OR. We had a 2 hour layover which crazily turned into. 6 hour layover when our driver decided not to show up and get back on the bus. He had been driving since Canada and fell asleep somewhere, so they had to call one of their on call drivers. We hung out in the terminal shooting the breeze with the other prospective truckers and laughing at our situation. Luckily the next driver we got was pretty cool. Everyone was heckling him and he heckled back which provided good vibes during our ride.
By the time we got into Eugene, OR we had a full bus! A Greyhound bus makes many stops picking up and dropping off people. It seems that everyone was heading to California mid summer, so we got full pretty fast. The bus was starting to look like a three ring circus! We had all kinds of people, some kids, some dogs, some drunks, and some Truckers. We started the trip at 8 am Saturday and around 2am we woke up to some commotion in the back on the bus. The driver pulled over on the side of the freeway and went to check it out. Turns out this guy had been babying a bottle of liquor in the back and was starting to get belligerent and onnery with his dog. Mumbling drunken slurs, "try that shit again" the drive told him to get off the bus in the middle of no where. It was pitch black rural Oregon no cars, no towns. He booted him off, pointed South and told him to start walking!
By the time we got to California everyone was getting pretty tired of the bus ride. It was crowded, uncomfortable and taking a long time. I still don't understand why CRST didn't fly us out. It was way cheaper to fly and we would have been there in 2 hours. Oh well! We would have missed out on the interesting bus ride if we had flown. One of the truckers on the bus was named Robert. He was a really big dude fresh out of CDL school and heading to CRST as a new hire. He was trying to get comfortable on the bus and set his seat to lean back. After awhile of bouncing on the bus we heart a loud <CLACK!>. His chair had given way and fell backwards a bit more. The funny part was that the girl sitting behind him had head phones on and didn't even blink an eyelash as his seat fell 3" more in her lap. We started laughing and Robert was like, "that's trust right there." It was like one of those trust exsersixes where you fall backward and someone catches you, but in reverse, because some HUGE guy is falling on you and your not batting an eyelash!🤣 His chair fell back like 4 more times as it slowly broke from the force of his weight, and she never moved. It was crazy! every time it fell back a little more we heard <CRACK!> and he yelled out "trust!"
We got to through Northern California and when we finally reached the Grapevine which is a stretch of freeway that goes up the mountains and then into the valleys of Los Angeles. The uphill climb is steep and windy. It is approximately 30 miles stretch. Trucks struggle getting up that mountain, and they aren't the only ones. After about 5 mins through the grapevine the Greyhound bus was also struggling. We had to pull over twice to give the engine time to cool down. Picture this hot sweltering heat, broke down bus on side of freeway, surrounded by a host of sweaty passengers! Everyone was in good spirits though, happy to be in California!
When we got Los Angeles Greyhound station we were warned to stay inside the terminal during our layover. They seem to put the greyhound stations in the shadyest part of a town. This was no exception. Skid row, which is like a huge homeless camp in downtown L.A. was a few blocks away and the shady characters were known to come hang around the greyhound station. They try selling you drugs and stolen goods. They sleep outside it, we were definetly glad to get back on the bus after our 2 hour lay over and finish the last 2 hours inland to San Bernardino!
It was our first time in San Bernardino, CA and we were surprised as to what we saw. The whole town is basically a truck stop. We passed acres and acres of semi trucks on both side of the freeway. Apparently San Bernardino is considered one of the hubs around the USA for trucking companies. Shipments come in overseas from around the world via the Long Beach port and then makes it inland to the Inland Empire where it is loaded on trucks and transported around the country. We made it to the Greyhound station in San Bernardino at 8 pm. CRST has a shuttle we called and they came to pick us up. There were other shuttles there from other trucking companies also. Our shuttle was late, but everyone was in good spirits! Tired but happy to have made It through the crazy Greyhound.
We were taken to the CRST terminal in Fontana, CA. When we pulled out to the facility it was rather impressive. It was a rather new structure surrounded by hundreds of gold trucks! That is CRST color. Their slogan is "join the gold rush" which is pretty cool. They had 2 dedicated van shuttles out front and even a little CRST school bus. We felt like we had just got to Camp CRST! It was mid summer too
The checking process took time because so many of us had arrived. Sunday is usually when all the new recruits arrives so we can start class on Monday morning at 4:30am. We patiently waited in the lobby as the front desk figured out where they would be putting everyone. The CRST terminal has dorms where people stay 3 to a room, but they were completely full so they had to arrange hotels for us. It was 11pm when we finally got placed at a motel. Most of the motels were booked around the city so they had a little difficulty finding a place for us last minute. We hoped onto another shuttle bus and had a cheery conversation with the driver on the way there. We quickly learned that most truck drivers are friendly and enjoy chatting and sharing tips and stories from their experiences. He dropped us off at the hotel and when we went to check in he dropped us off at the wrong one! LOL! He had to come back and get us which took another 45 mins or so, before we figured out the whole confusion. 🙃
By the time we got to our correct hotel it was 12:30 am and by the time we got checked in, bathed and in bed it was 1:30am! In 3 hours the shuttle was going to be there to pick us up for our first day of trucking school! We were excited and anxious, not knowing what to expect but committed to becoming truckers. One of the few carriers that with as little as 3 weeks of training we would be in a career that would put us in middle class, and that's just to start!
That means more money to buy bitcoins with! Yes!
This concluded part 1 of our Trucking training Journey!
It has been a very busy last couple of weeks and I am catching up the last few weeks here on steemit as we drive to Denver, CO to meet with our lead drivers who are waiting their for us. CRST rented us a bomb ass Dodge Charger and we are cruising through Nevada & Utah as I type! More about that in part 2!
This has been a long process so I am breaking it up into a few parts. In the second part I will fill you in on the training process, more about the CRST program, and what it is like driving a truck!
Thank you so much for reading! Upvote! We've missed our Steemit Fam!
