Another reason to drive a manual transmission

General Discussion
41

I know a guy . . . years ago, he went to truck driving school, and got his class A cdl

He did not own his own rig, because he was an immigrant without a lot of cash, and his credit was still unestablished

Anyways, nobody would hire him

The reason they wouldn’t hire him, is that they only wanted owner-operator teams. Meaning husband and wife, father and son, brothers, partners, etc.

The concept was that one person would drive until they couldn’t keep their eyes open. Then the other person takes over. Maximum efficiency

He couldn’t . . . or didn’t want to, I don’t know . . . find a partner, so he gave up on the idea. He was really peeved that he spent the money on the cdl school for nothing, essentially

He was really upset that the cdl school instructors didn’t tell anybody about the reality of the situation. Had he known, he would never have enrolled

42

Theres always a "catch 22"if it sounds too good to be true,then most likely.it is.
I observed the “Class A” hassle years ago and “the lure of the road”,suddenly became very unattractive.

43
Barkydog

Shifter vary, take my 72 triumph, please! the brake is on the right foot, the shifter on the left foot, clutch is on the left handlebar and front brake on the right, now I believe that is totally a reverse of most motorcycles today.

Not totally reversed. The front brake is on the right handle bar and the clutch is on the left on all motorcycles.
The Brit-bikes had right foot shifters and left foot rear brakes, but so did the Harley Davidson Sportsters.
I had a '68 BSA with right foot shifter. I had another bike with a left foot shifter but with an upside down shift sequence. I think it was a Bridgestone 175. My old Kawasaki 500 triple had neutral on the bottom instead of between first and second.
Some of the old Indian motorcycles had a left hand throttle.
The DOT standardized motorcycle controls for street bikes back in the 1970’s, not sure the exact year and today all motorcycles have left foot shifters with one down and the rest up shift patterns.
Flat track racers still like the right foot shifter because they are always turning left and they wear special steel soled skid shoes on their left feet. Some of these bikes don’t even have a left foot peg.

44

@db4690 - That’s not the case now…at least here in the North East. I know several truckers…have relatives who have their CDL. Not one owns or has ever owned their own rig. They either work for a trucking company…or Food distribution warehouse…or UPS…or Wallmart.

45

@MikeInNH

“That’s not the case now”

the word “now” is apparently the key

This incident happened in the 1980s, when this guy hadn’t been in the US very long yet

46

When they tell you can make more money as a “driver trainer”, that means they’re going to “team” you up with a new driver they just hired. Let’s see, how do I phrase this, it seems to me that someone who is pursuing an occupation as a long haul trucker would tend to be a loner type who doesn’t want to be living 24/7 in close quarters with somebody else. (Obviously this excludes husband/wife, parent/offspring, sibling teams). So they’d want to pair me up with some stranger and we’re gonna live together on the road in a little metal box, taking turns sleeping in the same bed. I’m supposed to be able to sleep and my life is in the hands of someone else driving an 80,000lb rig down the highway. Personally, I’d rather stand on a street corner with a ‘will work for food’ sign. . . .

47

:anguished:

48

Well maybe the time of automated trucking is coming? Seems that automated cars are just around the corner.

49

The various technologies already exist. They “merely” have to be combined, and they have to properly interact with each other

50

I have three friends who drove trucks for various periods. One got about half way through the company’s school before bailing. Another got on the road with a “training partner” after finishing the classroom work. His partner was more interested in hookers at truck stops than sharing the driving. He came home after about a month and a half on the road, very disillusioned. It was the beginning of the end of his marriage The third drove for a large firm for about six months before he figured out that he could repay them the $3000 for training him to drive, and move to a much better company. Truckers talk, and the truckers all knew how his company treated their drivers. The $3000 fee was per the contract he signed when he started with them. He said they wrote him a couple of letters demanding payment, but never got their money. After three more years with the second company, he bought a tractor and went to work for a third, then a fourth company, as an owner operator. He bought a NEW tractor shortly after that. He made pretty good money, but quit after he messed up his back loading or unloading a trailer. He sold the tractor at a big loss, but had no choice. Today he’s happily retired.

51

Excellent story MG McAnick. Posts like that are why I kill so much time reading these boards. I’m still grinning. :smiley:

Now on the other hand, I’ve heard stories about (husband / wife, siblings, childhood friends who grew up together) going on the road as “team” drivers. Especially if you’re young, have no kids, the idea is you live out of the truck and you can bank almost all of your money (no rent, light bill, cable bill, property tax etc.) and the plan usually goes something like, do that intensively for 4 or 5 or 6 years then take your stack of money and buy some property (especially rural farmland) or a business, straight cash, and put down roots. I don’t know how often that actually works. I couldn’'t live in close quarters with anyone like that, I have anti-social tendencies in the best of circumstances.

I’ve also been told by owner-operators that a big factor in making your money is you keep 3 sets of books. One for your own records, one for the gov’t inspectors, and one for the IRS. Of course, nowadays, “paperless logs” means they’re tracking you through the computer and GPS, probably makes it next to impossible to fudge your numbers, although, where there’s a will there’s a way, I suppose.

52

This one is more controversial, so I put it in a separate post in case it gets flagged, but I think its a funny story.

My (now deceased) father always maintained that that’s how a lot of men “turned gay”, from living on the road in those sleeper cabs with another man. "You know they must get lonely out there on the road with no women around. . . " My mother scoffed at this notion, her view was that already gay men took jobs like this as a socially acceptable way of staying “in the closet” so to speak. (A legitimate way to share a bed with another man). When I was in my late teens (well, at several junctures in my life) I looked into being a long haul trucker, my father was somewhat horrified at this prospect, it took me awhile to get him to fully explain why. . . .

One year when I was a small boy, I saw a bunch of dollhouses on display at Toys R’ Us and decided I wanted a dollhouse for X-mas. THAT really freaked my father out. Of course I was too young to understand why, but I remember it took my mom a really long time to calm him down. What I was too young to articulate was that really I was interested in the architecture. A miniature house, miniature shingles, stairs, furniture, etc. Isn’t that what designers do? Build scale models of new cars, buildings, ships, etc. Geez, maybe I could’ve been some bigshot architect, car designer, city planner. . . .

53

Sometimes people get excited for no reason due to prejudice,try driving a pink car,some of the worst cross dressers in the world are woman and denim(but it sure looks fine on them)some people are judged by the way they dress and most times it doesnt mean a thing,used to be if you wore shorts around here you were considered a “sissy”.Get a fuschia or hot pink truck and see the eyebrows you raise,people need to growup…

54

Years ago had a supervisor who had a pastel lavender Hyundai. He said he got a deal on it 'cause the dealer couldn’t get rid of it due to its color. But the guys ragged him relentlessly with the ‘gay’ jokes, to the point where he started having his girlfriend come in at lunchtime to eat lunch with him, I guess to ‘prove’ he had a girlfriend, but it didn’t help, they just said she was his cousin he put up to it. Of course nowadays they’ve turned the place into a fortress, you can’t even order a pizza for lunch because they won’t let the delivery guy into the building, and any off-color joke that begins circulating usually results in everything coming to a screeching halt while everybody is assembled together for an impromptu lecture from HR on what constitutes professional behavior on the job.

55

Some real good people I know are Gay,but I do not think there are all that many Gay car salesman(but I sure have met some nice lady car salepersons)“Vive et memento vivere!”

56

This is auto-related, because it happened at an auto repair facility . . .

speaking of harassment . . .

At my former job, we all had our own lockers, next to our toolboxes. they were for our supplies and parts for the vehicles we were working on.

But it was understood that, besides the mechanic, only the supervisor could open that locker

It was also clearly stated that it was okay if the mechanic put a padlock on the locker

Anyways, one day a real religious female employee . . . the receptionist, actually . . . decided to have an adventure.

She went into the shop, during lunch hour, when a bunch of the guys were out to lunch at some cheap restaurant. She took bolt cutters with her and cut a bunch of padlocks. Then she proceeded to rifle through all of the lockers

In one of the lockers, she discovered some “girlie magazines” . . . and she ran to her supervisor. She told the supervisor that she considered the shop a hostile environment, because of the magazine

The supervisor decided to ignore the fact that she cut the locks without permission, and rifled through the lockers without permission

Instead, he wrote up the guy that had those magazines. Never mind the fact, that once the receptionist cut that lock, she had to spend several minutes rifling through that locker, until she found those magazines. it was at the very bottom, under a pile of dirty rags

In all honesty, I never knew the guy had those items until I heard about the incident. He was a single dad, wasn’t doing too well financially, and was fighting his ex for custody of their kid. I can’t say I totally blame him for having that stuff

Anyways, I truly believe the receptionist hated that particular guy for some reason. I always thought he was a decent guy, and I still think so. I suspect she wanted to get him in trouble and was hoping she could find dirt on him. Maybe she even planted the magazine, who knows?

When the supervisor confront the guy, it went something like this. “We found this in your locker. That is against company policy, and it’s considered offensive.”

When the guy explained that not only was it NOT in plain sight, but that furthermore, his locker was closed and LOCKED, the supervisor told him “Don’t try to change the subject. I’m writing you up, and that’s the end of it.”

I had always liked the receptionist. Meaning I always though she was a nice lady, and always had some nice words to say. I always said hello to her. But after that, I lost a lot of respect for her.

How do I know that she cut the locks and spent time rifling through the lockers . . . because I overheard her telling somebody. She said something along the lines of “I got him, but good”

:frowning:

57

Reminds me of a lot of activists,who cant seem to mind their own business,perhaps one day they will understand that God is big enough to fight His own battles.

58

When my daughter was learning to drive we had two cars. One (my wife’s) was automatic and mine was a manual. My daughter was less than thrilled when I made her learn to drive mine, but now prefers to drive a manual.

59
One year when I was a small boy, I saw a bunch of dollhouses on display at Toys R' Us and decided I wanted a dollhouse for X-mas. THAT really freaked my father out. Of course I was too young to understand why, but I remember it took my mom a really long time to calm him down

That’s why G.I Joe was invented.

60

Blast from the past! Last time I drove a 3 in the tree was Dad’s 64 Belaire, just before he traded it off in 1970 for his first automatic - a 1970 Belaire.

I made sure my two daughters could:
Swim as soon as they could walk
Groom and Ride a horse
Ride a motorcycle
Drive a stick shift
Do their own basic car maintenance
Assemble and fire most common firearms
Find food and water in the woods
Knowing how to solve partial differential equations or critique poems are nice things to know.
But there are a few things that someday they may really NEED to know.

My daughters taught their cousins and friends (including boys) how to drive the stick shift 240 Volvos that they drove to high school. Tough on clutches.