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