First Mentor Trip Completed

Well its been a busy first trip, with my mentor coach Ian we left from the yard Sunday 22nd November after the pre trip checks and headed bobtail for Moncton, New Brunswick to pick up our trailer.

A quiet Confederation Bridge heading west towards New Brunswick.

On arrival at the cross dock we found our trailer did the checks, hooked up and set sail for Massachusetts, not before grabbing a coffee from Tim Hortons! We decided that breakfast would be had at Woodstock and on the approach to the truckstop came across this.

 Lesson number one, "don't come on and off the ramps (sliproads) too fast" Ian tells me, there are no long run off's like in the UK and the other thing is that there are no countdown markers, just the sign at the junction's. After breakfast we headed for the US border at Houlton, Maine. Now if you want to be made to feel like a criminal, the guards in the border gate are experts, I only went in for my I94 card which allows me to enter the USA (and must be renewed every 3 months @ $6 US), I came out feeling like I was on Parole!!

Anyway off we set for a fairly uneventful run through Maine, New Hampshire and into Massachusetts, we decided to call it a day about an hour from our first drop and parked up for the night.

Monday morning, up nice and early and remembering we were now on Eastern time headed for our first drop, Wallmart store to drop off 150 fresh christmas trees, Problem was no one at wallmart had advised they had closed the store down and moved it to the other side of town!!!!!

We were on to our second and Ian pointed out this place.

 

                            Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots NFL Team

After unloading all 800 trees we get the message to head for New Bedford to collect a load of Clementines for Toronto, so we reached our pick up point to be greeted with about 30 other trucks collecting for the same place. 10 hours after we arrived we finally get the call to go onto a bay! We ran for a few hours then parked it up for some sleep.

We headed for Toronto crossing at Buffalo and into Niagra Falls and up to Milton to tip the following morning, met up with two more drivers from Bulk who were also tipping the same place as us. Another early start and after a wait of a couple of hours we were empty and heading for Brampton to drop our trailer and wait for the call to collect a loaded trailer for Charlottetown, we arrived Brampton thursday morning

                                                      Time to relax and a bit of shopping

 and finally left 9pm Friday night. We ran for a few hours clearing Montreal and parked up for the night. We decided the following morning to team run back to the Island. The return trip took us through Ontario into Quebec and into things to come.

It was just a light dusting of snow then as the miles went by turned to rain and that was the story all the way through New Brunswick and back on to the Island. We eventually arrived back 10.30 Saturday night.

Went into the office today and was passed off training and was allocated my own truck so on Tuesday I get my Hiring pack and all my gear to go out on my own. I would like to thank my brother and his wife as my new GPS arrived today as well so thats saved me a few hundred bucks, cheers guys. Well i'm off to bed now as I have to have my Drug and Alcohol test tomorrow, then, well who knows? Stay tuned to find out where I end up on my first solo run.