States, Regions and Areas
States
The US has 50 states but the mainland where we are focused is the 48 states (excluding Alaska and Hawaii). A common saying for Over The Road driving and operating is “runs All 48 states” meaning the company has loads and runs throughout all 48 states and drivers should expect to go anywhere within those states while working for the company.
Knowing the states and where they are is very important since drivers can live in any of the 48 states but not all states are good for hiring, every company has its own hiring area that is aligned with the work the company has and it’s location.
A great tool to learn all the states and where they are is a quiz on the following link (you need to be able to get 100% of the states):
https://www.sporcle.com/games/Matt/find_the_states
Regions
The US has groups of states that form a region and these regions can vary depending on the purpose. Within the trucking industry the most used regions are:
The MidWest
The North East
The South East (South)
The South West
The Rocky Mountain
The Pacific
Also there is a different saying for the states that are on the coastline with the atlantic ocean – East Coast states (from north to south along the coast).
A good example to get familiar with the regions is also the areas that are the most populated within the US, forming “mega-regions” of cities. How many cities can you name within each mega-region on the map?
Phone Area codes
Every phone number has the first 3 digits as area codes from where you can see where that number was issued in (what state and what area within that state). You can use the following link to see where the number is from: www.allareacodes.com
In most cases that is where the driver is living (that’s his home state).