THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

Well day one was GREAT. Everything about it. The Schneider people up here are extremely nice, helpful, and funny, what an awesome group to work with. I'm really glad I ended up coming up here for IC orientation.

My roommate showed up last night around midnight, hes from NC too and we get along great and I will have no problem sharing the room with him for the rest of the week. That'll save me some money.

So, where do we start?

Got up at 0545, had a bite to eat from the hotels breakfast room, then waited outside in the -17* weather until the huge orange Schneider school bus showed up around 0630 to drive us down to the OC. We've got a big group, I'd say 95% are new IC's, I think only 2 people are here for company driver orientation. Me and my roommate are the only two that are currently transferring from company drivers to IC's, so luckily we get to skip a vast majority of the training.

We started out in a classroom, then me and the other driver from NC went separately with a really nice lady who went over a lot about our schedule for the next couple days and just talked with us a bit about the Choice board. Then we got to take a look at our trucks. I was lucky and mine was being finished up in the showroom, so I didn't have to brave the cold to get a good look at it. Everyone was extremely helpful and they were happy to let me borrow a creeper to crawl around under the truck with. The truck looks to be in great shape. The engine was manufactured in 2009 so while it DOES have a DPF it does NOT have a DEF system to worry about. OnGuard? NOPE. THANK GOD. They did an excellent job detailing the truck and like Dipschitt said they honestly look like they just rolled off the showroom floor. The only downside is nearly EVERYTHING has been wiped down and is shiny as hell and slippery, including the floor lol.

They did leave the little chain/flame whatever decal things on, but its no big deal, its not like they look bad and I can always remove them myself. I haven't had a chance to try out the APU yet as I'm unsure what the switch on the dashboard that relates to it does and what position I need to have it in. I ask about this tomorrow at the shop. I need to have a closer look with a good flashlight, but it does look like the APUs cooling system is tied into the engine, which is what I wanted, so that the APU will keep the tractor engine warm even when it is shut off in cold weather. The truck also has load bar locks which I was glad to see, however I don't think they will work with my square-tubed load bars. Oh well, it won't hurt to get some extra ones anyway. The one thing I am missing and will need to get is a tool box to store stuff in and find a place to mount it on the frame. There is no outside-access side box on the passenger side so I'm pretty limited in terms of storage space for tools, etc.

After checking out the trucks for about an hour we headed back in to the classroom and did some more paperwork signing this and that for the lease agreements, insurance, etc. Everything kind of jumbled together so I may be fairly out of order with some things here, sorry about that. Lunch was covered by Schneider for today and today only, we had some GREAT chicken dumpling soup and turkey sandwiches on croissant rolls. #### that was good! Since me and my roommate were already company drivers we are skipping over much of the orientation, so I can't offer much insight to what else went on. Part of today was also spent watching a video about insurance, filling out our insurance coverage and optional coverage. We were also given brand new permit books with all of our personalized paperwork for registrations, etc., in them, along with brand new EZ-Pass transponders. After that part of the class me and the other SNI driver were pulled aside again and we filled out some final paperwork with the same really nice lady we started talking to at the beginning of the day. We got to talk to two more SNI reps who offered us tons of helpful advice and were really great to deal with as well.

I can honestly say this - they truly WANT us to succeed. I have honestly never dealt with a nicer group of people, I can't express that enough. Whether its offering little tips and tricks that they have learned over the years or taking extra time to explain something in great detail these people are just top notch. Many of them have been with Schneider for a long time (and I mean a LONG time) and have been apart of being an O/O for Schneider at one point or another or have spouses that have been as well.

Tomorrow we won't start class until later in the morning. Over the next few days we will need to completely fuel our tractors and load them up with all of our gear and scale them to provide Schneider with a scale ticket. All I will say is that we have been informed to make sure we do our best to scale them heavy.

In all the stuff from today I've kind of forgotten what exactly lies ahead over the next couple days. I do know that for the company drivers its pretty much all smooth sailing from here with a lot of downtime. No problem, it'll be nice to relax a bit before I hit the ground running very soon.

One thing we were told is that empties are very hard to come by up here and that we may be sent fairly far toward empty trailers before we pick our first loads. Apparently some got sent as far as Virginia LOL. These trailer search miles will be paid by Schneider at a very good rate this first time. After that we are normally on our own for the first trailer search, if we get to the location and none are available, the second search will be paid for by Schneider.

What more can I say than I am _extremely_ impressed by everything, the training, the people, and my truck. I am very glad I decided to get my truck from Schneider as I know they really want to see me succeed and will help me do so. That Cummins runs like a scalded dog as I found out on a little freeway adventure after getting lost trying to get back to the motel. It will take a little bit of getting used to the 13 speed. In school I learned on a 9 speed so that pattern came back to me very quickly. The splitting of the upper gears I will be practicing bobtailing around Green Bay during my downtime over the next several days. Just started getting a hang of it on the drive here, but with the game tonight I quickly parked it before I got stuck sitting in traffic somewhere. I don't even have to buy the non-coiled air hoses I wanted, the truck already has them!

Time for show and tell!

 

I think my roommate is sitting over there on his bed staring at me out of the corner of his eye wondering why the hell I'm just looking at the computer screen just cracking up...