End of day, Tuesday.

Can I just throw in here before I forget that there are ZERO tables in this place? There is no where to sit down and eat, , nothing to put your stuff on, nowhere to set up your laptop and be comfortable.  It's just another irritant. There IS room for a table and chairs.  Good grief.  I sit here on my bed with the laptop on a small nightstand.  

I don't understand how these people think this is anything acceptable.  Then again, this company had 400 drivers as of a few years ago, down to somewhere near 100 now. Why? I don't know, yet.  The trainer I am with now swears by this place, he's been here 17 years. That explains a lot.  Loyalty, but there is good pay involved for him as well.  

Today was a much better day for me. I wasn't near as tired as I have been and the trainer was getting with it.  Act like I'm not here and do whatever you're going to do. I nailed most of it, the stuff I got t wrong wasn't anything that would cost me a job, get the plant or the receiver angry, etc.  

I sat on top of a rack today memorizing the procedure for loading a particular type of chemical product into the truck  via top load.  Around 20 times I just stood there and repeated it into my mind.  The trainer had gone into his truck to talk to people on his cellphone and deal with his dogs.  Yes, he has 2 small dogs in there, very well behaved, is truck is very clean, not an issue at all.  

I was at a receiving plant attempting to remember how to offload.  I had missed some key parts to the sequence of being done with the offload because previous times I had been asked to do something else that left the view of what was going on out of sight and therefore? Yea, I can't remember something I didn't see or was involved with. 

Basically, it's when the tanker is empty on a pump out.  The truck has a pump on it and you have a line going from the trailer to the truck pump and then from the truck pump to the plant tank.  

I have sequence now memorized, for I did the same with that as I did with the plant we were loading at.

Climb up the ladder, visually inspect to see if the tanker is empty.  Get off the tanker, to go the back of the tanker, shut off the internal valve and the external valve.  Attach a hose to a receptacle on the tanker and the other end to the truck air system. Turn on the air valve on the truck,  then open the valve on the tanker.  The pressurized air forces product in the lines into the plant tank. 

Remove the line and put a water line onto the same valve. Turn the water on and let it run through for a while. Turn that off and put the air line back on and push air back through it.  Then you close the valve on the plant receptacle.  Now you can start removing the lines from the plant, the truck and the trailer.  There are other things, such as putting tarps under hose connection points and 5 gallon buckets under the fittings.  

Oh wait, I got something wrong. For some reason, he closes the valve on the plant until just a crack open, then shuts off the truck pump than runs back and finishes closing the plant valve. I need to ask him why he does this, for it makes no sense to me.  This has the appearance the you shut off the pump and pressure so that product from the plant tank can just start flowing back into the line? Why?

There is one problem with this dude: he has a hearing problem and you really have to have his attention and speak loudly.  Even then, he misses half of what I am saying and trust me, people that know me? Tell me I have a loud voice.  

Whatever. The day is done, it wasn't even 8 hours, I was happy.  

We are starting at 7:00 am tomorrow, but another light day. At least in the trucking world.  I'm starting to get my mind back into this ridiculous mode of endless working.  I've been here since 2 Sundays ago and I'm missing home, my dogs, the kids, Taylor, James, everything I was working my life around.  And I have at least until probably Saturday before I can leave here.  And if they insist, I will be driving back so add another 3-1/2 days to the "let's go home" part.  If they try to get me to go to Arkansas before I go home first, they are going to hear a "no thank you, I'll have been gone for over 2 weeks, I am going home first".  

I don't really care what they think of after what I have gone through here with these "accommodations" of theirs in the living space.  Un...beeee....leeeee...va....ble. 

Ok. Fatigue just swept across me like hurricane force winds. I am getting off of here and get my self ready to go to bed.