Well, here I sit, with a ND CDL learners license in my hot little hands. Off for some endorsements tomorrow. Driven test when I can get a date, 1st available at grand forks was Aug 11th, so I may have to drive a couple of hours across state to Devil’s Lake to get an earlier one.
Must say the experience was nicer, cheaper, and quicker than the DVLA by FAR.
I was wondering how you were getting on over there Allikat. Good luck with the test and all the best for the harvest.
Calv
miss kat i hope you pass we need some good news ,watch those four way jnctions,my hill start was at the side of walmart carpark not nown for its hills.
just left round the block then right,back round a corner and bhy now you must see how much easyer it is to drive there,roads are massive.
bhy good luck. rgds mark.
Good luck Alli, we need some more drivers, 3 brand new Frieghtliner Columbias with ‘condo’ cabs arrived today 
Funny that Pat, it’s just the machine I’m learning musical gearboxes in
A nice guy from South Africa is letting me chew his gearbox to bits whilst touring local roads, and while I have upshifts pretty much sorted, downshifting is giving me headaches. It’s a FL with a 425hp series 60 Detroit Deisel and the standard 8 + crawl crash box almost all trucks I’ve seen out here. And, funnily, a big condo on the back as well.
I seem a little better at floating than I am at doubling the clutch, but i have to be able to at least fake clutch use for the test, ho-hum…
Any little tips? Especially on what to do when I’ve managed to foul up a shift and ended up stuck in neutral with the box whinging at everything I try and do? 
Complaints time: 
Boy does the speedo look small compared to a tacho, and the cab seems to be a random array of various styles of switchgear that looks to have been installed by a guy with a blunderbus…
And the cab is tiny!!! At least the sleepers are nice and big to make up for it I guess.
Can I please be allowed to shoot the guy who invented glad-hands as an airline connector? Please■■?
By the way, I got all my endorsements, doubles/triples, Hazmat and tankers. 
Funny how the ND DOT’s book says I have to be a citizen to get hazmat, yet no-one here on the site has had any trouble getting it… wierd huh? 
Right, well, I’ll likely be off line for a while, they’re moving us from the NorthEast corner of North Dakota down to Mott, in the opposite corner. I’m gonna get me a straight truck under my fat bum and some miles under my belt for the first time in ages. AT LAST!!!
Gonna have my Allikat plate in the window (if there’s room) and a St George’s flag flying proudly. (maybe with a Stars&Stripes to keep it company) Anyone who runs up this neck of the woods - Watch out! Cos here we go!!!
Alli,
You wouldn’t happen to be driving big blue no 104 would you?
That truck was driven by my mate Paul in 2002 and he had it shining like a new pin but she “blew up” in Oct of that year. Are Egbert and Benny the S.A. twins back on harvest this year?
Tip for the downshifting:
Try using your left foot to brake (very gently!!) and at the same time increase the engine revs by 200/400 rpm with your right foot and then give her the downshift,thats the way it worked for me.Don’t worry I didn’t have this sorted when I took the driving test and I also lost the gears and had to come to a stop to get going again, crunched the cogs left right and centre but still passed!!! 
A citizen to have a HazMat licence, thats news to me, I’ve been hauling gas for five years here in the States and I’m not, and have no intention of becoming a citizen.
As for the gears, when you want to downshift, give the gas a quick touch, move the shifter out of gear and rev it again to make the RPMs go up, then slide it in to whatever gear you need. Works really well on the Columbias, actually on all the US trucks I’ve driven.
Stu
It’s apparantly a provision in the “patriot act” that you need to be a citizen to hold a hazmat. So watch it Steve, if they fully implement it down your way, they may decide to try and take it off you. Though according to the ND DOT, permenant resident status is good enough, so you may be ok.
The folks it’ll most affect is us harvest types. No American trucker would work for my wages and hometime. Wonder what will happen to us next year?
Yeah, it’s a big blue FL with a condo on it. Don’t know the fleet number off hand, one of the South Africans is living in it for now. I’m gonna be on straight trucks for a while before moving onto the big rigs later on when some of the guys start heading home.
The Patriot Act huh, well I do have Permanent Resident and full Green Card status, so I doubt it would affect me, although sometime ago I did hear that they were going to fingerprint all new HazMat drivers or whenever you had to change your licence, e/g change address or add endorsements.
Have fun in the harvest Ali, oh and come to think of it, what do they pay you guys on harvest work…■■?
Stuart
Pay■■? It’s like trucking back home, we do it for the sheer job satisfaction, don’t we??
$1500 to $2k plus a month, depending on hours. This year won’t be a great payer, but I hope to be back next year and get a machinery hauling spot, with my own big truck.
allikat:
Pay■■?
$1500 to $2k plus a month, depending on hours. This year won’t be a great payer, but I hope to be back next year and get a machinery hauling spot, with my own big truck.
Allikat! You are being paid peanuts…thats the whole deal of the harvest thing…they use people like you as cheap labor. and promise you the earth…if the harvest was such a good deal then dont you think the rest of the truckers would be doing it?
Bully
yeah, but I look at it this way:
1: Paid flights
2: Living money, and sufficient left over at the end to pay for a few weeks touring the US
3: A 4 year valid CDL with all my entitlements on it.
4: OTR experience
All things that loko ok to me. I’ll come back every year and rack up experience on the US roads, in US rigs until the day I can not bother coming back.
I make that in about a week and a bit, and I only work four on three off, three on four off. Ali, they saw you coming my dear.
I wouldn’t get out of bed for what your making a month, sorry
Stuart
Yeah, which is why they import people every year, just so you lot can have cheap corn…
Ah well, 'tis but a stepping stone on the way to better things. If it gets me a job over here full time on more money, I’ll be the last to complain at a few months on poverty wages.
Alli,
My best was $3700 for driving a John Deere STS combine in the month of Sept 2002.When you start hauling the combines you’ll find they are regularly earning over $4000/month which is £2222,Thats not bad in my book 
This is obviously why they can’t get locals to do the work 
I am home on average for 10 hours a day, and never work weekends, I do on average 2,250 miles per week and make a good living compared to that, but the we have to take into account that the harvest job should be looked at as a working holiday more than a job, a bit like students working in summer camps etc. I met a young girl from Devon last week who was working in a camp a few miles away for a pittance, but she did it for fun.
Fun huh? Since when did a 1988 k-whopper count as fun? I’m fully installed in number 15 (which for those who don’t know is a 1988 kenworth former daycab tractor unit converted with a chassis extension and tag axle into a straight truck) and not doing too badly.
I take your point about the pay Pat, it is fairly poor by local standards, but if we didn’t work so cheap, the price of bread would double overnight, and then where would the US be■■?
I’ll be on the hunt when we’re done and trying to find a longer term job where they actually pay me to work!!! 