F.O. Day Company in Frederick MD

How to Dump Asphalt:

When you get loaded with asphalt, it's HOT, asphalt is "Gloopy" like oatmeal, it's made out of tar and various sizes of gravel.

To dump it, you have to back up to the paver (asphalt paving machine that looks like a farm tractor of sorts).

The paving machine can't take your entire load... so you have to raise the bed slowly, the paving operator will give you hand signals to tell you when to STOP raising the bed.

The asphalt will slide out, not all at once, it'll trickle down until the bed of your truck get's to a point where gravity overcomes the stickyness of the asphalt.

At that point you lower the bed quickly.

The operator will most definitley get pissed off at you if you overload his machine!


Hazmat and Tanker:

Before they lay down the layers of asphalt, they have to coat the underlaying surface with a sort of glue, they call that glue "TACK"

The "Tack Truck" is the one piece of equipment I've not driven, even thought I do have both the tanker and hazmat endorsements.













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Frederick MD CDL Jobs

The beauty of driving a Roll Off Truck is that you get to work more often...
even if it's been raining for days! The photo above was taken in Frederick Maryland of a Roll Off Truck leaving the Great Frederick Fair fairgrounds on E. Patrick St.

Why drive a dump truck at all?



OVER TIME!!! Time and a Half!

Look at it this way: the construction company will only get on average, maybe 200 rain free/ snow free days a year to get an ENTIRE YEARS worth of work completed.

so... you're going to get paid a years pay but have that years pay condensed into 2/3 of a year!... collect unemployment the other third of the year or work a part time job or what ever.

What is the difference between a Roll Off and a Dump Truck you ask?

Both have beds that dirt/stone/trash debris can get put in and dumped...

The Roll Off can leave the bed onsite, the dump truck has to stay there (with the meter running... most dump trucks in Frederick get rented out at the rate of $60 per hour (the company that owns the truck gets that, you get roughly $13 per hour)

Another thing a Roll Off can do that a dump truck cannot:

The dumpsters come in different sizes
1) big ones, 40 yard cans
2) medium ones, 30 yard cans like the can in the KW photo in the previous post
3) little ones, 20 yard cans - they LOOK little because they're not as tall but usually 20 yard cans get used for dirt/ demolition/ bricks/ cinder blocks/ concrete
they WIEGH more but aren't as tall

A small back hoe can not reach up to the side of a full size dump truck, but the can reach the sides of a 20 yard can.

Get your CDL as soon as possible.

The economy's 'status quo' is changing... you change with it and you'll be fine.


Next Post? Maryand MVA CDL learners permit how to.




This site is not responsible for libel, any driver who ever worked for a truck company is welcome to rate any company they worked for, of course if they got fired, they might not give an accurate description of what it was like to work there.

Roll Off Trucks vs Dump Trucks

The worst thing about driving a CDL dump truck is most of the time you have to stay home when it rains.

It might rain 'cats n dogs' one day and take three more for the jobsite to dry out.

I preferred driving a trash truck when it rained... not a house to house trash truck, but a construction dumpster truck - A Roll Off truck.



I drove this sweet (it was sweet then) KW when I lived in Catonsville Maryland.

Got paid $16 an hour and $24 for time and a half.

You'll get wet covering the load with a tarp when it rains, but it sure beats staying home for 3 days ... three days off kills your acumlated overtime.



This pic was in the last post as well... it's a trash truck:

A Walking Floor Trailer. it doesn't dump, the floor moves, kinda 'pumps the trash off'.
What you do is hook up a 'wet line', slang for the hydraulic pump that drives the floor back and forth. Hence the term: Walking Floor.

This tractor trailer was photographed in the Travelodge parking lot off Route 70 and Route 85 in Frederick Maryland.



This site is not responsible for libel, any driver who ever worked for a truck company is welcome to rate any company they worked for, of course if they got fired, they might not give an accurate description of what it was like to work there.

OTR pays better but takes more out of you.

Most of my previous posts have been about Maryland CDL truck driving jobs that pay by the hour, like construction trucking, dump trucks and such.

The bigger money is in Over The Road trucking, but it doesn't come without it's hardships... when you run out of time (no more than 14 hours consecutive but roughly 10 hours a day) you've got to stop, right there.

You may find yourself at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere!

Truck stops are usually found about 600 miles give or take from a major shipping center.

Why?

Because we can only drive 600 miles a day and stay legal (hours of service limitations from D.O.T.)



The good thing about dump truck jobs is OVERTIME (time and a half)

In Virginia, I worked for C.W.Strittmater in Mannassas. Got paid $16 an hour, $24 for time and a half.

In Baltimore most trucking firms paid $13 an hour, making it $19.50 for time and a half. Baltimore's cost of living is much lower than DC areas.

Over The Road CDL jobs almost always pay by the mile.

So much a mile loaded, so much a mile 'deadheading' (coming back empty)

The biggest pain in the butt for O.T.R. is getting unloaded... you sometimes get paid a paltry fee for waiting there to get empty or loaded... often it's not even minimum wage!

If you're getting a couple hundred a day to get there, they guess you've gotten yours... somebody's got to wait there till you get empty.

You just gotta give some of it back!

This site is not responsible for libel, any driver who ever worked for a truck company is welcome to rate any company they worked for, of course if they got fired, they might not give an accurate description of what it was like to work there.

26 years ago this guy taught me to drive big trucks

The guy that owns this truck (it's parked on South St in Frederick Maryland right across from Griffith Oil's yard) took me out to train me at Steuart Petroleum 26 years ago... damn, now I feel old!

Maryland didn't call it a CDL back in 1982, if memory serves it was called a chauffeur's licence...any how I got a Class B, straight truck licence with Haz Mat and Tanker... and had that Class B until 2003 when I passed the Class A tractor trailer licence test.


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There is a serious need for CDL driving schools... and there are local colleges scrambling to collect their piece of the government provided student loan pie...

ME?

I didn't take no stupid classes... well I did rent a truck to take the test in, and that truck came with a driver... but I DID NOT have to shell out thousands of dollars on overpriced/ stuffed with filler/ 'classes'.

What you need is to pay a truck owner by the hour to take his truck to MVA.

I lived in Baltimore when I got my Class A, I paid an outfit called "Drive Rite" $90 an hour... only took me 4 hours to pass... which beats the hell out of $3000 for a loan that would keep me from getting a Government job or keep me from getting my taxes back if I failed to repay the loan!!!


Some enterprising local Frederick truck owner ought to see this need and fill it.

Think about this now... an off road truck, so you don't need extra insurance, all you gotta do is make sure the person you're renting your truck to has a learners permit.

And to keep the unelected bureaucrats off your ass (the democrats are seriously wanting to make all schools part of the colleges, no independent business entrepreneurs for us... democrats want to drive a stake through the hearts of any one who even thinks of starting a business..."shame on us")

http://politicsandvictimbehavior.blogspot.com is where that rant shoulda been...

What you want to call the person is 'the guy who's renting the truck'
What you do NOT want to call him is 'student'

Why?

because there are legal (and insurance regulations) and MVA regulations about who is and who is not certified to teach.

Who is gonna pay $90 an hour to go to MVA?

Only someone who knows how to drive, has driven a big truck already, has a Class B with air brakes and such... all they need is to get a Class A to double the number of jobs available to em.

nuff said for this post



This site is not responsible for libel, any driver who ever worked for a truck company is welcome to rate any company they worked for, of course if they got fired, they might not give an accurate description of what it was like to work there.

Frederick MD learning CDL skills

The best way for a rookie to learn to drive a big truck is to get a job where you don't even need a CDL.

What?

That's right... Off Road Trucks, which means construction work.



Winter's coming, so there aren't many openings in Frederick Maryland for this type of job at the moment but come spring (and it'll get here quick) right after the first thaw look at the online help wanted ads and you'll see lot's of opportunities like this.

Where in Frederick Maryland can you get a job like this?

Dewey Jordan Inc.
Jobsite: Rt 70 and Rt 85, from East St to the LaFarge Quarry.
I worked there half of last year and drove the water truck above and the Old Mack below:






Dewey Jordan also has End Dumps, which is a HUGE dump truck that doesn't have tags because it never leaves the job site:

From Frederick Maryland CDL Truck Driving Jobs

PS) don't get the paper to look for a job... all papers have an online version
Why do I say this?

the help wanted ads will stay online for a lot longer than yesterdays paper.

typically the online versions (http://fredericknewspost.com and http://frederick.com ) keep ads for 30 days... long enough for a company to hire someone, find out they suck and fire them... and you still have the ad in your hand, well if you printed it out or emailed it to yourself you do

This site is not responsible for libel, any driver who ever worked for a truck company is welcome to rate any company they worked for, of course if they got fired, they might not give an accurate description of what it was like to work there.

More $1000 plus week Frederick Jobs

Economy sagging or not, there STILL are lots of $1000 week jobs right here in Frederick.

It helps to have:

25 years verifiable experience

Haz Mat

Tanker

no accidents for 20 years

no tickets, no points

able to pass a drug test

but the primary reason a driver lands a thousand dollar a week driving job is simply to refuse to work for less than that.

Think about this... "Can your prospective employer pay his mortgage payments on what he's offering you?"

If not, well, you were looking for a job when you walked in there.

If your paycheck doesn't have a 'comma' in it, you need a new job!

There ARE NO YOUNGINS coming up to fill our ranks.

Plain simple fact.

And the baby boomers are:

beginning to retire

those that stay are having to take off work for doctor visits

and a few are having a new pacemaker installed

Many can no longer pass a D.O.T. physical

Right here in East Frederick, as a matter of fact, within walking distance from my front door is:

Richard Rudy Transportation

They've been in the trucking industry since 1938 (even longer than a geezer like me's been alive!)



$200 to @240 a day will work for me.

I need to pay some old debts before I start my writing career and webmastering career full time.

As an author I'm make considerably more than $240 a day, but you gotta crawl before you can walk...

This site is not responsible for libel, any driver who ever worked for a truck company is welcome to rate any company they worked for, of course if they got fired, they might not give an accurate description of what it was like to work there.