Andrea, creator of the Lovintruckin YouTube channel and this website by the same name, or “Lady A”, as I like to call her, opened the door for me to share with you how I was introduced to her and James…

“Big Fat Cowwwwws!” LOL

This is Part 2 of my story, how I learned about LovinTruckin and life on the open road.

In short, hauling asphalt oil was not how Alan and I wanted to continue our trucking careers. You may recall that part of our story from my last article. That’s when we made the pivotal decision to learn about team trucking and driving out on the open road.

Yep, we made the decision to leap into the unknown and applied with a local company called, Kivi Brothers. Kivi, is a flatbed company that specializes in machinery, cranes, construction equipment and the like. You may have even seen their big red flatbed trucks out on the highway across the country.

They were eager to hire us!

The plan was for Alan, to start first. He jumped in a truck and followed one of their experienced drivers to all of his pick-up and drop-off locations to learn the ropes. Alan got a crash course on everything from strapping, to chaining up, to learning how to use binders and a whole lot more. Once Kivi felt he knew how to secure loads and could find his way around, I was going to join him.

While Alan was on his learning adventure, I had to finish up my time at the old company hauling that messy oil. Once done (thankfully!), I was going to start preparing for our shared adventure as team drivers with our new company.

But — how does one prepare for something one knows nothing about? Answer: RESEARCH. And lots of it! And what better place to start than YouTube?

Or, so I thought…

After scrolling through endless YouTube videos, I realized something; there were very few educational resources to learn how to live on a semi, as a professional driving team and a couple, on the open road!

There wasn’t even that much out there that helped guide team drivers at all. This was frustrating, to say the least.

I felt defeated before we ever hit the road.

What were we getting ourselves into? How could we prepare if there wasn’t anyone to help guide us? I couldn’t find anything that gave me a sense of what it would be like to live on a truck successfully doing this job.

And then… as he always does!

Alan, came through in the pinch! He found what I couldn’t. A channel that was brimming over with insight and inspiration for a couple like us that helped explain how to embark into a whole new world called couples team trucking.

He was so excited when he sent me links to this quirky, fun-lovin couple’s YouTube channel that he had found.

The channel was called LovinTruckin and it fit. I started watching every video and was eager to take in all I could.

Alan could not have been more spot on with his assessment of a channel that could give us a little guidance and I got hooked watching!

When Alan’s training was complete, he came home for a few days to rest and recharge. We chatted endlessly about all the options that were available to two people and one small dog; that could make our home on wheels as comfortable and efficient as possible and we set to work on a plan.

Our first question was how long do we want to stay out?

We decided to stay on the road for three weeks at a time and go home for 4 to 5 days.

With our work schedule decided the next question was clothes.

What did we need? How many items for each of us? Since we started in February, it was clear that most of our clothes would be bulky. And… since we would be traveling from cold places like Minnesota (our home-base) to hot places like Florida all within a few days, we had to figure how to pack for that.

How can you pack effectively and efficiently when temperature swings could rock and roll from -20 to 90 degrees in a matter of days?

A great lesson that Alan picked up during his training sessions helped to answer that question. He discovered that many truck stops have laundry facilities. A very big help!

So, we narrowed down our clothing choices to cover 5-7 days for each of us. Well, that would work for Alan at least. I mean, after all, I am a women and we can never decide what to wear!

Next came food.

Our first step was have a look at the size of the frig in the truck we would likely be driving to determine how much it could handle. We have always been more fresh over frozen foodies, so this was going to be a challenge.

We did eventually work the food part out and here’s how… we bought 7-10 days of food at once, all of which fit in that little frig if you can believe it, and then stopped at a Walmart to replenish before we got back home.

Our third puzzle was how much stuff can we stuff in a truck if a truck must be stuffed??

We found out we’d be driving a very nice, brand-new, Volvo VNL780. It had a roomy sleeper and ours came with two beds — an upper bunk and a lower bunk.

The lower bed could flip up against the wall. When it was flipped up it brought up a dinette which is a nice table with two bench seats, one on each side like in a RV.

The top bunk had the fancy feature of also folding up to the back wall so completely that you couldn’t tell it was a bunk at all. This offered more head room to sit at the dinette that popped up when the lower bunk was folded up to the wall.

This type of configuration is a great idea… for a solo driver.

A solo driver can keep the upper bunk made up for sleeping, since they have to stop to sleep, while the lower bunk can permanently serve as a place to sit, eat, use a computer and so on. This gives the cab a homey and spacious feel. But for a team? One person has to sleep while the other drives and that means you’ve got a whole different situation.

Alan and I realized that to gain the most storage room for clothing, food and all the other items we would need to make being on the road work for us, the best choice was to leave the upper bunk down, to store all the aforementioned items and the lower bunk would stay down as our permanent bed.

These were all points we picked up from the “Truck Tour” video“Truck Tour” video posted by Andrea and James on their LovinTruckin, YouTube channel.

On the top bunk, we added stacked storage cubes so we could take advantage of all the real estate the truck had to offer. We had a combination of storage units; two taller ones with four narrow drawers and one longer one with three wider drawers.

The tall storage was for clothing and personal items (including our shower gear) while the wider storage cube served perfectly as a pantry. You’d be surprised how many canned goods, dry food items, cooking utensils and towels can be pack into those little storage cubes!

Once we decided on which cooking appliances we’d use the most, we packed an electric fry pan, a coffee maker and a 3-in-1 Ninja cooker. We filled in the rest of the space with cooking essentials like spices and oils and capped it all off with the ever necessary dish cleaning supplies.

As for our little guy, our four footed companion named Harley, he would own the real estate under the bed. Thankfully, he weighed in at 4.2 pounds which meant he could pack almost all of his favorite toys!

Oh, one essential item we found essential if you have a pet on a semi-truck is called a “Neater-Feeder”. Highly recommend it. The Neater-Feeder, is a two-in-one bowl holder that turned out to be key for keeping the carpet dry. While the truck is moving, if water splashes, it will stay inside the tray instead of ending up on the floor.

Harley, our baby Yorkie, loved having his own little world of food, toys, and his very own kennel.

On our very first trip out, well, all I can say is, I was awestruck at all the sites I had never seen. I’m not saying that I had never been out of Minnesota before — but it was usually by plane. When you travel by plane you get to see a very small part of your destination and nothing on the way there or after you leave. Trucking was a whole new world to me. I wondered how many states we would get to see during our professional driving careers?

Most of the loads we would haul for Kivi Bros., would be heavy equipment, road construction supplies, farm machinery and crane parts and I wondered how that type of freight would effect which parts of the country we’d get to see? (you might want to plug in a tid-bit about how many states you went to?)

On the flatbedding front…

In case you thought I would get to skip learning about straps, chains, binders and everything else to do with open deck load securement, you would be sorely mistaken!

Oh-h-h-h-h yes, I had to learn all of it and lucky for me, I had the most patient and caring teacher. A teacher who was willing to put in a lot of time and effort. Alan, took the time to teach me how to do the job right and I must say, I got pretty darn good at it. AND… efficient too!

We developed a solid routine. We were so streamlined that we could get the job done with each of us doing a specific job, while knowing exactly what the other was doing — and all without saying a word.

As we gained more experience, we’d get to a construction site or to a job in progress and Alan would have me stay in the truck, to “keep me out of harms way”.

At first, I was infuriated by his request. I knew what the job was and I was capable of doing it. Then, I stopped to think about why he did that and realized he really was doing his best, to keep me safe.

I figured out that ‘staying in the truck’ could be a good time to get cleaning and organizing done in the truck. It gave me time to cook a meal so we could eat once he finished and get it all done easily, before hitting the road again.

Before Alan started asking me to stay in the truck, I was hopping between jobs. As a team, you each do half the driving and when I was helping with loading too, it was hard to get all the other necessary “inside” chores done. Cooking, cleaning and organizing had to be tucked in wherever time would permit. As this new rhythm began to form, it made a lot of sense and worked out well for both of us.

It was February, when we first set out and we were still renting a house at that time. Once we were on the road full-time together, we only got back to the house once a month.

I remember coming home, looking around and wondering why are we doing this?

Not only did I have to do laundry, repack everything for the road and do grocery shopping, I also had to clean the truck and then clean the house too! Every time we were there. AND — we were paying rent, utilities and phone bills for things we only got to use 4 days out of the month.

Something needed to change…

Our lease was up in May. We opted to pack everything up and put it in storage instead of continuing to pay a full month’s rent for 4 days of use..

The storage unit we chose was an hour away from the house which made our move a daunting task. If you’re wondering why we picked a storage unit so far away, the answer was simple… it was only 10 minutes from the company headquarters and truck yard.

Without a house to go to where everything is right there at arm’s reach, we knew we’d need to get our hands on packed items quickly from time-to-time like clothing, shoes, personal papers and more — so even though it made moving our things into storage more difficult, it really was the smart choice.

As it all worked out, we ended up taking one truck load to storage over each of our next three home-times until it was finally done!

I am a very organized person, so every bin was carefully packed, labeled, and a detailed list made. Things were even packed based on the time of year they would be needed. Told you I was organized! The upside to my tendency for being a little OCD when it comes to organization, is that we knew exactly where every item was in our storage unit, when we needed it.

We did catch to good break when it came to putting our things into storage though. The people renting the house after us, were shown the house with all our furnishings still in place and asked if they could buy about half of our furniture as part of the deal. I hated to see some of those pieces go since I had put a lot of effort into finding it and putting it all together — but we figured why not? We can always purchase new someday.

By the middle of May, the house was squared away and we were ready to put all of our efforts into trucking.

Right about that same time, we made another decision. It was a big one but something we really wanted to do. We wanted to own our own truck one day and create a business out of trucking… and I’ll save that part of our story for next chapter!

Until the next adventure stay safe and enjoy life!
Liz