I've been a trucker for the last ten years but now I am back home at "Camp Chaos" and I will be working at the Fontana terminal as a safety specialist. I hope now that I'm home I'll have a lot more time for blogging!


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I have been here in Omaha a week now. What a week it has been.
I had expected to sit in on endless classroom boredom. I was really surprised to find out how Werner trains their people. I had trained students for almost 10 years in my truck. Now I was going to find out how the people in our terminals are trained for their jobs.

Have you ever called a big company and heard..."This call may be monitored for quality assurance" ??
Well, when you call Werner you will hear.. "This call may be monitored for training purposes."

At almost every workstation at Werner, there is the main phone headset that the person at the computer uses, then there is another phone that only the earpiece works. There I was sitting beside the very person I had called many times from my truck when I had questions about something.
Many times I had problems with my log book. I would call the Log Dept and I would hear "Logs, this is Andrew how can I help you..."
So Wednesday I was sitting along side of Andrew, a 23 year old kid who has been working in the Log Dept for four years now. I was able to listen in on the calls as drivers would call in with their problem.

Out satalite technology makes it possible for our logbook to be created at the company headquarters because the computer knows more about my truck than I do. Our GPS technology knows where every truck is. On Friday, I saw a picture on a computer screen of the USA with something like 10,000 little dots each one showing a Werner truck as they go up and down our Interstate system. So every time a truck moves, or stops, a log record is created.

On Friday I was priviledged to sit with Marie in the Safety Hotline Dept. Next time you see a Werner truck you will see a phone number the back of the trailer asking you to call Werner. We say we only hire courteous and professional drivers. Some of the calls I listened to make me wonder.
A lady called from somewhere near Atlanta. A Werner truck had just cut her off and now He was weaving back and forth from one lane to the other. She demanded we fire the driver NOW!! Marie was calm and asked the person if they could read the numbers off the back of the trailer. The lady gave us the numbers and Marie said 'Thank you for calling, we know it isn't fun having a big truck scaring you on the highway. We will contact the driver immediately." I thought to myself, sure, she's not going to do anything... I was wrong! In about 10 seconds Marie had traced which truck was connected to that trailer and she was sending a message to the truck instructing it to 'Contact Marie at ###-###-##### ext ### Safety Hotline Immediately'
About a minute later the driver of the truck called us. We found out that the student was driving and the trainer had been sleeping in the bunk. Marie told him we had just received a call from a motorist complaining about his truck. Marie told him he needed to watch his student better and that the student needed to work on his 'lane control' . The trainer assured us he would find out what the problem was and they would work on it.

A little later, a driver from another company called us to tell us one of our drivers had his laptop computer up on his dash and was using it while he was going down the road. Not only was he distracted, it was blocking his view of the road! He gave us the truck number and Marie sent him a message saying it was dangerous to use a laptop while driving and that the large screen may block his view of other traffic. I bet the driver was surprised to hear his Qualcomm(that's the name of our satalite communication system) beep and then read that message!

Another motorist called us to tell us a Werner truck's brakes were smoking. We sent him a message to 'STOP and check your brakes, a motorist tells us they are smoking!...'

Just a half an hour before I arrived at the Safety Dept on Friday, we received a call that one of our trucks had just caused a fatality accident. The people in the Safety Dept are well trained for these emergencys and had the whole thing under control when I got there.

Needless to say... Friday was a very interesting day! I got to listen in on every call.

Yesturday, I was again in the Safety Hotline dept. until noon. Then in the afternoon I helped out with the 'orientation' class. New students and new hires coming to our company have to go through a two day orientation class. Then they go out on a 'trainer truck' for several weeks. Probably when I get back to southern California that is what I will be doing most, teaching the orientation class. So far I haven't done much with the class here in Omaha, but I expect I will be doing class teaching the last two weeks before I come home. The other two guys I am here with are learning the class now and they will probably switch with me. They will do the 'phone listening/learning how the dept works' thing and I will be doing the class.

Saturday night our hotel was under a tornado warning. Sirens were going off for a whole hour. The main part of the storm passed just north of us. The National Weather Service said there was a tornado on the ground at Harrison and 130th Ave. We are off 108th so we wern't that close but watching the television, it looked like the whole area could have a problem at any time. The wind was blowing hard, lightening was hitting close around us and it was hailing... I think I'll take the earthquakes.

I have some cool pictures of truck trailers. They are European trucks. The artists are amazing. I am e-mailing them to Brenda from my Yahoo so she can put them us on this blog. Since I am using the computer in the Hotel lobby I can't save the file to this computer.

Till next time...
posted by Tom at 4:50 PM

 
I arrived in Omaha Sunday afternoon around 1:30 PM. I had a 1 1/2 hour layover in Salt Lake City. It was nice in SLC, around 60 degrees. As the plane flew east toward Omaha the clouds kept getting thicker. When we began our descent into Omaha I was somewhat alarmed as we kept going down and yet I couldn't see the ground! Down, down we went through white cotton. I felt the landing gear come down but I still couldn't see the ground. Then suddenly we broke out of the clouds and we were only a few hundred feet above the ground.
It rained on and off all the rest of Sunday and part of Monday.

I am staying in the nicest Hotel I can remember. I have my own studio apartment. I have a full kitchen with cooking utensils, dishes and silverware for four; microwave and full size refrigerator. There is a living room with a fireplace! Reminds me of the houses at Pine Summit.

Every morning the Hotel has a complete hot breakfast. A waffle iron, scrambled eggs, sausage long with fruit and juices.

At night they have a mini-dinner. Tonight was baked potato night. There is also a large electric skillet like thing full of cooked broccoli. Warm melted cheese too!

Werner is treating us (there are three of us here for training) like royalty! Everything is paid for by Werner. If I do spend anything they will reimburse me on my next paycheck.

This computer I'm typing on is pretty old, but the Internet is free. The hardest thing is the space bar doesn't work very well. I type a sentence and then look at the screen and find I have put the whole sentence together like some horrendously long e-mail address! I just found out the 'Delete' key doesn't work at all!

I am having a great time. A little nerveracking though. Today I spent most of the day with one of Werner's head Safety officials. He is teaching me how to use Werner's computer system. I think there at least five or more programs running simultanously. I'm sure that's not unusual but I have to keep track of what each one is doing and what it does.
Besides e-mail, there is the program that keeps track of all the drivers in each of the ten or eleven terminals around the country. Then there is the main program that keeps all of the data about all 10,000 drivers and some 20,000 trailers and the loads they are carrying around the country.
I have to know how to access the drivers info instantly. Each time a driver has an accident or any incident from a logging violation to a student complaining about his trainer, he is brought into the terminal and must see a safety specialist. That is what my new title is. I have to know as much as possible about how everything operates because I will have to make decisions that could affect a drivers whole career.

So, here I am sitting next to Al, head safety man. He put together a training program that uses some data from drivers who no longer work for us. Then using Exel, he created numerous fields holding data about how many accidents a driver had, how long they were employed, how many log violations they had, how much training they had received etc, etc. My job was to look up the info for each of about 20 drivers and fill in each of the fields. This required me looking into just about every nook and cranny this huge program has! To make things worse the programmers wern't always consistant with their commands. On some screens, I have to push F12 to exit out of a screen, others I have to remember F3 does the job. If I hit F3 on a screen where I should hit F12, I exit out of the whole program and have to start all over! It's great fun... really!

This afternoon, I got to do some actual live data entering. Several drivers were in the Omaha terminal today and were due for their annual reviews. I got to enter all of the info, then we had to look up their motor vehicle record from the state they live in and check to see if they had lied about anything. All drivers have to report all tickets, accidents and also have to keep their commercial drivers licenses current. We have to make sure all these things are correct.

I think I have covered most of what's going on here. Today the weather cleared up and it's beautiful here in Omaha.

I am going back to my apartment, it is getting late and I have to get to bed early. I have get up around 5:30 because I have to be at the terminal at 7:00.
posted by Tom at 5:04 PM

 
My cell phone rang around noon today. Unfortunately I was already on my phone talking to my last student. By the time I got him off the incoming call was gone... I looked at the screen on my phone and it said '1 missed call... unknown caller'. Bummer. Pretty soon my phone beeped and it said 'voice mail message' so I called my voice mail and the message was from Lynn from Werner in Omaha. "Call me, as soon as you receive this message, we need to speak to you."
I called the number, waited for Lynn to answer his phone and then I said "Hi Lynn, Tom McConnaughy here, I understand you wanted to speak to me."

Yes Tom, we wanted to notify you that after viewing your video that was sent to us, we would like to offer you the Safety Specialist position at the Fontana Ca terminal."

Whew... I got the job

Today, Friday Sept 1, was my first day in my new job. I wasn't even out of my old truck yet! Sue came to the terminal to pick me up and we unloaded the truck. Then we went to Fuddruckers for dinner.

I asked John, my new boss, when I would start my new position?... and just then his phone rang. It was Lynn from Omaha, telling John that I had accepted the offer and I was now on the payroll as of today. So... John hung up, looked at me and said "well our questions are answered... you start today, but after you clean out your truck, go home for the holiday, enjoy your time with your family and we'll see you 7:00 tuesday!"

Wow!! I'm getting paid to be home!! First time that has happened in ten years!!

So, I'm home now to stay! Yea!

Well... I still have to go to Omaha on Sept 10 for 3-4 weeks on training, but after that I will be home for good.

I can be at all the meetings again... that will be nice!

I can sleep in my own bed every night... that will be nice!

Tomorrow, Saturday, and Monday, we get to work in the yard. I think I'm really going to like being a homebody again.

So, with a contented sigh.. goodnite!
posted by Tom at 10:28 PM