4 Days of my LIFE as a TRUCKER | Regional Truck Driver - Truck Stops, Fuel Costs and Sleeping

uh [Applause] foreign okay um [Music] [Applause] uh all right well we are going to go pick up a load that i picked up last friday and i'm going to be taking it to madison alabama from where i live here in fayetteville tennessee and then after i drop that load off i'm going to be taking a trip from coleman alabama picking up a load there and i'm going to go to florence south carolina to start my week off so what i usually do on the weekends that i'm home i'll usually take the trailer and i will drop it at a local empty parking lot down the road from where i live it's about a half a mile from where i live and i'll leave the trailer there for the weekend so on monday or tuesday whenever i start my week i'll come back over here to get my trailer and i'll either finish the load that started on friday or i'll pick up the empty trailer and take it to get loaded to start the week a lot of times truckers have a difficult time finding a place to park for the weekend but there's a local store here where the guy allows me to park my trailer and other truck drivers allows them to park their trailers here as well for the weekend and i don't have to pay anything so i really appreciate that from him it does cost truck drivers to park their truck sometimes especially for long periods of time like me [Music] and what i like to do is once i hook up to the trailer i like to give it a little bit of a tug in first gear that way i know that it's oh and full parking brake make sure nothing's broken or cracked or coming apart make sure the tires ain't flat check them all make sure they're good to go make sure there's nothing in here that's going to cause a problem i'm going to come back here check the back of the trailer make sure everything looks good check the tires here make sure and look at the front of the truck too make sure there's uh nothing wrong with the front there's no oil up underneath or anything like that i do have a load in this trailer that i started out with on friday and this baby is heavy i'm at about 42 000 pounds in the trailer so this truck is probably close to 80 000 pounds so i think many people have the idea that truck driving is an easy job right you sit in a truck you hold the steering wheel and you drive down the road all day well i wish that were true but it's really not it takes a lot of time and energy and effort to make the deadlines that i have to meet like for example i'm taking up a load in coleman alabama today and i'm going to be delivering it to florence south carolina now my load is supposed to be picking up sometime this afternoon it's tuesday march 1st 2022 so i'm going to be picking up this load of chicken by the time they get done loading me i'm going to have to pretty much drive overnight to get to my employment around seven or eight o'clock in the morning so i've been up all day today and then i'm gonna have to drive tonight so i'm not gonna really have a lot of time to sleep and sometimes that's what's required of truck drivers is to make hard deadlines like that that's just the way it is and you know not to mention being away from your family is pretty taxing you know it takes a toll on you after a while so being home weekends is something that i cherish a lot you know i want to make sure that i'm home on the weekends if i can be that way that my children can see me my wife can enjoy my time with her and you know a lot of truck drivers don't even have that convenience many truck drivers today are over the road and they're gone for weeks at a time sometimes up to a month and they don't get to stay home so it it has its own challenges you know uh plus two we're driving an 80 000 pound plus vehicle compared to you know a half ton or a whole time pickup got a lot more responsibility involved and it takes a lot more focus from us there's a lot of areas that we can't drive in that many of you car drivers can drive through we can't drive through all right so let me put my food in my refrigerator so my wife does a really good job at doing food prep for me every week uh looks like we got some shrimp and jalapenos it's looking pretty good i got pulled pork and mashed potatoes awesome what else do i get i got creamy pasta chicken sausage by the way my wife makes this stuff she is super awesome at all of these meals that she makes for me every week not sure what that is it doesn't have a label oh what do we got here we got buffalo chicken and then she says te amo in spanish that means i love you my wife is uh latina she's a mexicana and she's super spicy all right what else we got we got hot sauce chili habanero oh look at that oh and by the way i got to make a mail delivery so what i'll do is i'll take and i'll put these in my refrigerator which is on my floor here and i'll organize these in my fridge to keep them cold during the week so when it comes time to eat them they're fresh and i'm gonna put my salsa in there what else do i got oh yeah so i have kombucha raw kombucha really good for your stomach this has got live culture in it and got really good probiotics bacteria that really helps your stomach so i have that for the week oh and then she gives me these chobani yogurts these things are bomb diggity i love these things so i keep those in my refrigerator as well put those in there the most important thing scorpion pepper salt this is a must when going over the road for your meals and also too i don't know if you can see this but i put my meals they are my meals are cold so what i do is i have a hot logic and this thing warms up your meals so right now i have um some sausage left over and looks like some chicken or some uh that might be pork but i put my meals in here to warm up i don't use a microwave microwaves really destroy the food and take out all the nutrients and so i'll keep my water in here i got a 64 i got a 64 ounce thing of water here that i keep with me next to my driver's seat so while i'm driving i'm able to just reach down and grab it and get some water out of there also got some chips healthy chips i got bananas and a lot of fruit i got fruit drinks we got fruit drinks as well sparkling strawberry she gave me sparkling watermelon oh and my wife makes these awesome chocolate covered uh apples these things are awesome so i got those for desserts this week look at that loading dock there pretty shady one of the smallest load docks that i've been on to unload my truck i usually make sure that the trailer is clean you know relatively looks pretty clean so i'm going to make sure that uh before i go to my next load i want to make sure it's clean because sometimes the shipper will not load my trailer if the trailer is dirty especially for these uh reefer trailers that i have these reefers that hold all cold products and food and stuff you want to make sure that they're not contaminated so you got to make sure they're clean all right so we are here at this shipper and what i usually do is just park out here where all the other trucks are howdy uh my number is 1-3699 all right so we are checked in officially now it's time to wait buddy so the temperature on this one's going to be 25 degrees fahrenheit so what we're gonna do is we're going to turn this on so once it's set to 25 degrees it will begin to cool the whole trailer down so that by the time they're ready to load me with the fresh chicken it's gonna be good to go [Applause] [Music] well it has been a long night i got loaded at my uh first shipper there for the week [Music] at around six or seven o'clock last night and uh i had to pull an all-nighter to get over here to florence south carolina i'm finally here and that sun is in my eyeballs buddy wow you want to talk about dangerous stuff try driving down i-20 going eastbound at sunrise it is a killer all right well here we are in downtown florence south carolina going to take a left here and we're going to be arriving at the receiver with this load of fresh chicken all right let's back up into this loading dock this loading dock is not as easy to get into as most but it is manageable considering i have been here a couple times before i know how to do it but we're gonna come over here and swing out it's one thing about truckers is we have to have a lot of space when we're backing into places and some places we've got to back into definitely is not for the faint of heart sometimes [Applause] [Music] let's go open indoors [Music] chicken has arrived so if you like chick-fil-a it's coming from me buddy all right well let's get this thing unloaded all right we're ready to rock all right so you'll notice there is chicken goo in the bottom of this trailer floor see that juicy stuff so i'm gonna have to get a wash out in this trailer right up the road let's go so i came down here to the blue beacon to get my trailer washed out because i got a lot of chicken grease in the floorboard and this place every time i come here is packed there's never been a time that i have been here that it's not been busy and today it is extra busy especially with it being so beautiful and nice outside guys are getting their truck washed so i'm going to be sitting here waiting a little while and it is two o'clock in the afternoon we'll see how long this takes [Music] all right well the washout's done trailer looks pretty clean i'm gonna go inside to this petrol fuel station and get some goodies that's your typical truck stop you got ear trucker apparel hats and you got your shirts you got your sweaters and you got your basically camping gear anything that you can use to heat up your meals they've got your tool section over here on this side got all your accessories for your trucks over here and of course everything else like your motor oil and windshield wiper fluid things like that typical truck stop a lot of times i have books that you can read to as well over here you got your gps's and you got your cb radios and uh you know you got your trucker accessories like your walkie-talkies your headsets things like that here are the headsets for the truck drivers these monster mean bean coffees are phenomenal yes they are loaded with sugar and bad chemicals but they keep me awake at night and that to me is what matters most all right well we're going to get fuel now fuel can get pretty expensive and across the country just depends on where you are further north to go they can get pretty pricey so typically each week i'll spend just depending on how heavy the loads are and if i'm going to mountains how far i'm traveling uh on average each week i'll spend anywhere between a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars justin diesel and that's what a lot of people don't understand is the cost involved in truck driving is pretty crazy sometimes but that's why you got to find the good loads some loads pay really good and some lows don't pay that good all right let's check my reefer fuel this is run on diesel also just want to make sure i got enough and it looks like i'm doing pretty good i'm ready for fuel i spent about 575 dollars on fuel i got to get cash advance because i spent my own personal money on the trailer washout that i delivered earlier so my boss will give me a comm check code and i'll type that in and i'll get a cash advance if i make any payments on my own like if i buy diesel which i usually don't buy diesel but if i buy like a trailer wash or a truck wash or i buy something that's pertaining to the truck i'll buy it with my own card and then i'll send the bill over to my company and they will reimburse me using a com data card or a check or something like that so i can get a cash advance at the grocery store or at the fuel station it's a lot of fun to be out on the road that's one thing about truck driving that a lot of people don't think about is the freedom that's really involved in truck driving i mean compared to a factory i used to work in a factory for several years i did plumbing i did i worked in the funeral business for a little while and i i did some indoor factory type stuff i hated indoor factory type stuff i hated being indoors and i've been driving trucks for just over six years now i love what i do i wouldn't trade it for anything else i honestly feel free i feel like that it's a lot of fun so i encourage you if you're wanting to know if you should leave that eight to five job at that local factory and get out over the road and see the country do it i've earned way more than it took to go to school so it's definitely worth it i think you should do it i've done it and it's a lot of fun [Music] [Music] [Music] well it's another beautiful day headed over to ella j georgia to take this load that i got last night all right let's get on down the road we got to get to lsa before 12. and it is about 7 30 now got about three and a half hours [Music] [Music] [Music] what's up how are you how did you guess i yeah i do i got i got my uh my channel here i can give it to you you can watch it okay big rig pro yeah probably so give away yep we're going to have you on the youtube channel most likely you know people when they see a camera i got my camera with me you know as a truck driver when you check in and it's like we don't know how camera is on site you know but she's like hey you must do vlogging and i'm like oh yeah we're gonna be waiting today for a little bit until they're ready for me to get on the door to get the rest of this load now this thing is about half full i loaded it last night in some tour south carolina and it's only about half full so they're going to load the rest of the half uh right here at pilgrim's pride in lsj georgia and then i'm going to take both of these loads in this trailer to birmingham alabama tonight well the refrigerator is dead i don't know why it's not working but the food in it is now bad i feel sorry for my wife she made all the food i have like three meals left but they're pretty much unedible so i don't have any other way to cool this now so probably gonna have to toss this food out unfortunately but uh so what do you do when you have a refrigerator that doesn't work and your food is bad you eat mexican food that's what you do [Music] well it is five o'clock eastern time i got here at about radic exactly lunchtime right at 12 o'clock today and they have taken past five hours check me in to get me loaded and i've only got half a load the other half was from last night and some to south carolina so they're just now finishing me up at five o'clock in the afternoon so i've been waiting about five hours and that's pretty typical for poultry processing places but that's trucking man that's just the way things are you're gonna have to learn to be patient you're gonna have to learn to wait and uh you know there's other things i could be doing um i could be editing videos doing work for my laptop making phone calls you know because i do run a uh another business film and photography business so you know i could be doing other things but it's just like i'm ready to go [Music] well i'm gonna park here for the night i am in talladega alabama right off a high 20. i'm going to park here this pilot right down the road from the speedway and i'm going to make my delivery in the morning in birmingham but i want to show you a little bit about what we have to deal with as truck drivers going over the road on a daily basis and that thing is parking spaces which is about every night we have to deal with very limited capacity these guys have been on the road all day and they're ready to park their truck and rest and sometimes we just can't find a space to do that so i'm gonna get some sleep tonight and i'm gonna wake up about 6 30 ish and make my way down to birmingham about 45 minutes away from where i'm at and make this delivery right there in downtown birmingham so i will see you tomorrow morning good night well good morning it is friday day four and i slept pretty good now let's go deliver this load to birmingham beautiful day we're gonna get this load emptied and head home [Music] all right just a little tip for you non-truckers you'll notice that i'm in the left lane and i have to turn right the reason for that is because i have to get this trailer to hook around this corner without hitting the curb so installing small city streets like this it's good to keep an eye out for truckers because they have to swing wide or else unless you want your card [Music] [Music] well there weren't any good paid loads anywhere nearby that would take me back north where i live i'm only about an hour and a half two hours from my house because i'm right here just north of birmingham i waited for a little while and we tried to look around to find something but we didn't really find anything so it's gonna go back to the house best part about coming home what's up sweet boy what you doing oh my three hundreds he makes me think him thanks for watching hope you all enjoyed and if you like this content please like and subscribe if you want and if you want to see more content like this let me know about in the comment section thanks again for watching you'll have a blessed day [Music] you

Channel: Big Rig Pro

Views: 313,635

Keywords: fuel costs, diesel prices, truckers, over the road trucker, truck driving in America, a week of my life, driving a big rig, trucking 101, sleeping at a truck stop, buying fuel, fuel prices

Id: VmDBvdcbUPs

Length: 26min 41sec (1601 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 08 2022