Notes to Ron and crew in Charlotte...

I got a note from my good friend Ron F, in Charlotte with some questions he wanted some answers to.
Here’s a bit of background on our trucks… I thought they were supposed to ride like Caddy’s, well, far from it. The seats are adjustable in so many ways they have a 1 hour class on how to do it and if you do it correctly, they will fit and support your body pretty good. Of course, for those who know me (at 5’6” stretching !!!) that’s going to be tough. And the steering wheel adjusts up and down and forward and back – for some people… for me the seat and steering wheel are all the way down and forward just so I can reach the peddles. Then the seat has this oscillating function that lets it slide forward and back so that when you hit a heavy bump it doesn’t jar your kidneys loose. It works pretty well, but it can slide enough to pull my arms off of the steering wheel. Now that’s not a pretty sight.

A small number of the 17,000 trucks that Schneider runs are automatics, but not ours. I have asked Bill for a name for his truck… we’ll see what he comes up with soon. Anyway, since he’s Bobtail Bill I’ll go with Ponytail Billie Jean (PBJ). So, PBJ has 10 gears 5 in low speed and 5 in high. You NEVER use 1st gear, so you start out in 2nd and go through 5. You can skip some if you’re not too heavy. That’s called skip shifting, you can get up to speed faster that way. Then between 5th and 6th you have to, at the same time, flip the range selector switch to high and slip it into 6th. Then off you go through 10th. But again, you can skip some gears depending on load and grade. Then you do the same thing on the way back down.

In general PBJ gets about 5 MPG in town and out on the road if you are “working it” you can get it up to a bit over 7 MPG and Schneider likes that. They have some statistics that say if all drivers can increase their MPG just .1% the company saves millions a year in fuel costs. The trainers work hard to impress upon the trainees the importance of that. Schneider’s trucks are governed (controlled) to not run higher than 65 MPH. They are very focused on safety and efficiency and that is one way to ensure it. Overall, they want you their safe and sound.

As everyone knows the prime mode of communication is still the CB. Some shippers even use them to tell you when and what dock to load to. So it’s important. But it’s also a pain. Folks, men and women get on them and can get pretty racey… but all in all they can be very helpful. The keep all of the HYPO’s posted as BOLO ( be on look out) for everyone. As far as handles go, I haven’t heard any being used most refer to the “jerk in the red truck that cut me off” or some similar expletive deleted.