How long did you spend on logs in School/Training for your CDL?

My instructors taught about logs through lecturing, illustrating examples on a whiteboard, and passing out actual logbooks for my class to fill out. We were also made to plan and log several sample trips, using our Motor Carrier's Road Atlas, while taking care to keep our logs legal and accurate.

 

When I went to school we started logging on the first day. We had to provide logs for everyday of the week even for weekends when we weren't in class.

I was in school for 6 weeks. We showed all classtime, rangetime, time when we were doing homework, and any time where we were doing something related to class as line 4 time.

All our driving time, of course, on line 3.

When we were in our rooms sleeping, line 2.

Our teachers did actually check all our logs. First two weeks of class they made corrections and explained what was wrong. Last four weeks they marked what was wrong, and we lost points towards our grade. Logging counted for 1/4 of our grade.

We spent apx 15 min to half an hour a day going over logs.

Over 6 weeks, five days a week, that's about 450 minutes at the minimum of 15 minutes a day.

 

When I was in school they used an over head projector and zerox copies to teach use logs. I passed their log test, but didn't really learn how to log correctly till I got in my own truck. They really had a great log dept with people who really tried to help.A great log dept guy (Jerome) sat me down and worked it all out with me. He was cool, he knew all drivers occasionally make mistakes, and he took the time to help me correct them. Pretty soon I didn't have so many mistakes.

During my time with the trainer I had he was kind enough to keep up with my logs for my stay with him. Something about helping me out, and his profits.L.O.L

 

In the school that I recently attended, our instructor went over logging basics for ehh... maybe an hour or so, then assigned us a huge assignment to log. It was a mock run that ended up being logged as 19 days or so. On the assignment, we also had to write down every scale that we crossed and our weight at the time of crossing that scale. It took us all several days to complete since ya cross a lot of scales in about 10,000 miles..lol. We also logged all of our driving done at the school. Not sure if having us do a mock run is the right way to teach... what it taught me was how to log by MILES rather than as you do it. The nitty gritty of the regulations I am learning as I go along.

 

Do any of these "TRUCK DRIVIN" SCHOOLS" teach enything about real truck drivin or just government crap on how to please the GOVERNMENTS STOOGES?

 

In training we do a log starting day one, and we do one every day.
We submit them at the end of class, like a test to be graded.

All the above on day 2.
Explaining what each line was for, and how to fill them out Correctly. What was needed by DOT, and What is needed by our company.
That today will always be day 8, and yesterday will always be day 7.
Then we were shown examples of logs on the projector, and as a class, we'd try to determin if they were legal or not.
Some of them were quite tricky.

We all come up with a way to understand it better on our own.
I like to think in terms of boxes. Maybe cause I am an old United Vanlines Dock Worker. lol

You start with a 24 hour box.
Within that 24 hour box, you have a 14 hour box.
Within that 14 hour box, you have an 11 hour drive box.
You can not drive outside of any of those boxes without adding either a 10 hour off duty box, or a 2 hour sleeper box and an 8 hour off duty box.

And above all else, Line 4 is never your friend, try not to sit there.

Not sure if it makes sense to anyone else, but it makes sense to me.

Also we were given an awesome flow chart.
It really helps out alot... I'll see if I can find it and post it.

Here it is!!!

 

In my school we spent a good part of two days on it then logged in it everyday for the full 4 weeks of class.
In the classroom we got the basics then were given trip senarios to log for practice and trip planning.
In the yard we logged our hours as on duty not driving, logged our breaks, logged when we were out driving; which included co-drivers, truck and trailer numbers mileage etc....we even logged our days off, so they were fairly thorough in getting us some practice as far as logs go.