National refrigerated super-carrier C.R. England applied for and now has received an exemption which will allow their non-CDL holding new hires to drive their routes without needing a driver trainer sitting in the seat next to them.
The carrier complained that it was too expensive to get new drivers back to their local DMVs to pick up their CDLs, impairing their ability to train and hire new drivers. This despite the fact that Google Finance reports C.R. England’s revenues for 2014 as just shy of $3 Billion with after-tax earnings of over $200 million.
The exemption will allow C.R. England to run the new driver and the experienced driver as a team until they’re routed to the new driver’s home state to pick up his or her license. The exemption will be good for two years.
While in the past many new truckers had to deal with their “trainers” hanging out in the sleeper while they were getting their first few hundred miles under their belts, some are expressing concern that officially endorsing this dangerous practice could result in poorly trained new drivers and more accidents on the road.
C.R. England contends that since their new hires hold permits and have passed both the written and practical portions of their CDL exams, that they have proven that they don’t need any more training.
The FMCSA agreed with that statement saying “There is no quantitative data or other information that having a CDL holder accompany a CLP holder who has passed the skills test improves safety.”
After the request for the exemption was announced back in December, TruckersReport published an article detailing the request and included a link to a public comment page posted by the FMCSA. Of the 279 comments, all of which can be viewed here, 257 of them were posted by individuals and organizations in opposition to the request. Among those were the CVSA, OOIDA, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, and former C.R. England employees and driver trainers.
Next Story: New Highway Bill Will Put States In Charge
Source: overdrive, fleetowner, thetruckereport, googlefinance
Oh no, this is bad….greedy ########
Apparently Congress needs to find out who’s pockets they are stuffing at the FMCSA to get things like this approved! Even their employees say it isn’t safe and they ignore the comments, and what is their accident record?
“Super-Carrier” C.R. England….this phrase tells one ALL they need to know about
the situation. Big money always greases the wheels.
You mean the six weeks I spent, after first passing and recieving my CDL, were un-necessarily spent with a 10 year veteran????
I think it was helpful and may have contributed to my two year accident and ticket free (so far) record.
A GOOD trainer teaches the newbie invaluable tips (why reinvent the wheel???) while
keeping the newbies out of tricky or dangerous situations.
At Hogan Transport trainers are not ALLOWED in the sleeper while the trainee is behind the wheel.
Check out Hogan Transport: its a well worthwhile bit of driving education.
This is absolutely insane, first off as a product of the Swift system, I was barely prepared to touch a truck after I completed their B.S. training. I was one of the lucky ones, I had an awesome mentor. There is a lot more to driving then just sitting behind the wheel…..scary stuff……the next generation of super truckers, who speed and don’t think their truck can hydro plane or slide on ice….
After 25 years of safe driveing my son had his first hydroplane accdent and jacked knifed into a guard rail if it wasnt for his knowage of how to handle a jack knife thanks to a trainer he had 25 years ago he would have been dead rolled over a cilff in wv . His option is a trainer is the best benfits if they have of atleast 5 years of over the road exp
This is motivated by absolute greed and shows an absolute disregard for anyones safety from the new hire and all those he will be near to on the roads and highways.
I hope the mainstream national news networks latch on to this ruling and put enough pressure on this crooked greedy company and those who passed this insanity and get this garbage ruling rescinded. Contact the press folks
this is insanity at it’s worst. We have enough poorly trained or equipped drivers on the road already, less training in not the answer, just because you want to save a dollar from training drivers and keeping the roads safe for all motorists.
This goes both ways. Does the trainer feel like putting his or her life on the line by being in the sleeper as the inexperienced driver is learning.
They usually wait to see if you can handle the truck before the risk, but yes, too many of the lazy phucks do it… and if you knew how much they get paid running as a team driver AND a Trainer you would; a) be pissed if you are or have been one of those Trainees and, b) understand why they do it!
I had an old fart at Covenant 10+ years ago fess up to me that he was getting nearly $2,000 per week.
You always wonder what makes some trucking companies worst than others, for example how did CR England get such a bad reputation as a starter company. Well we see first hand in this story…..bad decision followed by bad decision in the name of revenue.
I was sent home to get my hard copy after accumulating about 1000 miles. It’s been two weeks now waiting on another trainer. Time to find another company.
Your reaction time on a sudden situation happens, your experience is the final out come. Think about it. When behind the wheel .
Clearly, FMCSA has totally lost their mind. I have been a CDL A driver for the last 30 years and I can say without any doubt that the, ahem “training” program’s at these mega carriers are a joke. With this decision and other brainless decisions made recently by FMCSA, they have lost all credibility. It is quite clear that they need to change their name from FMCSA to FMCAKA – Federal Motor Carrier ASS Kissing Administration. Obviously, safety is not part of nor any concern to, this organization.
How many driver trainers can you name have been killed by the inexperienced trainee.
Back when Idrove for M.S. Carriers in 2000, one of tbeir trainers and his trainee were crushed and burned in a wreck. From what I was told, trainer was sleep, or at least not in passenger seat, trainee behind the wheel, drifting across the road, then right into a tree. The load came through the nose of the trailer, on top of the cab, and flattened it. Then it caught on fire. No trainer should be sleep while the trainee is behind the wheel.
I knew one. Is that enough for you?
Af you have had a cdl for 30 years then you never saw any training. And for that matter someone just threw you the keys to a truck and said go get’em son so don’t bs people some of us know how you got your cdl! You have no room to speak!!!
I wonder who got paid a bribe to allow this crap to get passed
Funny..I never had a trainer in the next seat….After I got hired…and I had never driven a big bore than about 10-20 miles…I met my trainer in the terminal in Largo…He drove over the bridge to tamps and loaded then he drove to the rest area just outside Tampa and told me…wake my up when we get to Atlanta stop at the truck stop there…and he crawled into the sleeper and went to sleep…
He had never even seen me drive any truck at all….much less down down the interstate and through a city…He must have been very brave or stupid…
How many driver trainers can you name have been killed by the inexperienced trainee.
279 comments, 257 recommended against. Wonder who C.R. paid off???
The guy with the new yacht at Annapolis.
Are they serious? That is just mental and dangerous!
2 things here, c r England paid off a politician, and now they can run the truck as a team unit earning additional revenue were as before it was against policy for a student /trainee to drive after and before certain hours of the day. Feds can be bought by anyone to ignore their own safety standards if you have the right amount of money
All the more reason to keep a wise berth when you see a CRE truck on the road. I offer my condolences in advance for all the people that will die, be maimed or traumatized by these future accidents.
GET a LIFE!
You must work for cr england
when cdl’s first came out in 1986,all of us with experience had to take written test and road test in n.y state.I drove for one of the big ten common carriers pulling twin 45ft trailers(added special lic) to do so.retired in 89 with 5.1mill no accident @liberty mutual ins.moved to southern state and was asked by state dot to join there cdl examination program.was sent to their school in last part of 1990.they were about to lose fed funding.since all of this I have seen way to many people get their cdl’s from schools.they last on the job no more then six months.no pay,no miles and with a driver with them were paid ten(0.10) cents a mile.there are to this day way to many drivers on the road with no experience.and I tell them,do not worry about that car,that truck coming at u can kill u.pay the driver and let him do his job with-out harassment and proper time to get it done.give him the proper training to do so.AND THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO DO IT.
This can only end in a bad way. Way to go CR England, you have now proven that you are run my morons that do not care about safety at all. When a new driver first starts out on the road there are a lot of questions that they will need answers to so that they can actually earn a living and they also need to have any potential bad habits corrected via a trainer. Those of you that talk about your “trainers” going to sleep in the bunk need to realize that those are the bad ones. Here come the lawsuits and I say hold England and their that grant this accountable
This is exactly why we are all burdened by regulation for e-logs, truck speed limiters, shorter hours of service and, all the other crap the Feds force feed us each year. The trucking industry has been begging for more training and a mega carrier greases some law makers pocket and gets around all of it. The only thing that will make a improvement in trucking is longer and better training coupled with mandatory driver training at the state level for people who operate regular automobiles. With increasing congestion on all highways it is imperative for ALL new drivers to receive more training and, continued training for existing drivers.
It would also help, greatly I believe, if they would make the ability to drive a requirement for getting a licenses.
So, let me get this right? A company who is above the intervention threshold for unsafe driving (70%; threshold is 65%) is granted an exemption to allow drivers with permits to drive a truck as a team driver “because they’re safe since they pass a skills test”. That…has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve heard. My company is sitting at 22% in that same category and we’d never want to do something to put any more liability on us and put the population at risk. Must be fun to have money, but not have it.
The government is using this to prove driverless trucks will be safer. :~) lol
To try and clarify the meaning of TRAINER,
A trainer is someone who is actually awake when the STUDENT is being trained not sleeping in the bunk so he’s able to run team operation (like the company wants) instead of teaching the Newby how to safely operate a commercial vehicle not to mention road courtesy (something these new drivers have none of).
There’s no training going on with these big companies is all about how much money they can make running team vs a solo driver.
To give you a personal experience,
I have been a trucker since 1976, going on 40 years. I took a 2 year break from driving long enough for my CDL to expire and I had to go to school to get it back. I had been driving at that time for 28 years but when I hired on with (not to mention names but the company initials are) USA I forced me to go with a “trainer” and the one they picked for me had only had his CDL for 6 months. Now tell me how much could this “trainer” teach someone?
They didn’t have a trainer anyway so what’s the difference
How much did you teach the rookie? He probably learned more from you than the previous 6 months.
This is an example of the fox running the hen house. Corporations only have to invest a relatively small amount of bribery, completely undetectable, to influence braindead corporate favored policy and laws.
This is your small government free market country at work.
Lol,more like letting the rabbit watch the carrot patch. But yours was good also.
This request should be denied. No unlicensed driver (permit holding or not) should be allowed to be on the road by themselves. Experience is needed. There are too many errors committed by inexperienced drivers. New Drivers need all the experience they can get before being turned loose. This would be like a major airline petitioning the FAA saying it’s too costly to put their newly graduated pilots in the second seat till they get experience to be a Captain. Would you fly on an airplane with a pilot just out of flight school with a permit to fly and not having a Captains license?? I think not!! CR England too bad suck it up and play by the rules. Maybe if they paid a better wage and gave more home time they could save the training money and hire experienced, qualified, seasoned professional drivers!! Oh wait that would still cut into the big salaries the corporate big wigs earn. Come on charge more to haul the freight and pay your “Seasoned” drivers more……………simple!
These are the same idiots that think the rest of us need to have speed limiters and electronic logs.
There’s no way you can call this anything but sick! It’s frieghtening what has happened to our government.
Must be nice to just pay off regulators so you can continue to hire unskilled drivers, give them minimum training and pay, then send them out in the road where you are destroying the industry by hauling freight for cheap!!
Shameful that money is more importian than morals!!
What a joke. Just because you barely have a license doesn’t mean your ready to drive all by yourself.
Did any of you read what this is? This is working around a technicality. What is the difference between a driver passing his test in his home state and picking up his CDL and this? Only difference is not having a piece of paper.
Nothing is different. And the point isn’t if a new CDL holder SHOULD be able to drive solo. But allowing someone that passed ALL the required test to drive while waiting on a piece of paper.
You are all probably the same people that scream about getting the government out of things. So they got out of the way and now you’re not happy.
Exactly!
I didn’t read your comment until after I wrote mine (and I apparently can’t delete mine). But they pretty much say the same thing. If a trainee has passed their written and road test, what difference does it make if they have the paper / plastic in hand?
bill & rich,get the d.o.t off the side of the truck and run it.i hope u both are sitting down when u read it.and have a pill to keep u-r heart pumping.
I’ll remember this next time a cop says, “license & registration please”
I have one officer, just not here.
I’ve been driving just over two years. My “trainer” was required to sit on the passenger seat. And he did, playing games all day. I was never taught about courtesy.
In other words no training to speak of. Most companies will let anyone train anyone with a pulse. The training phase is where the safety issues start and end. If you train trainers and trainees to be safe and courteous you could quit with the bogus sleep studies and the such.
Certify trainers(at the companies expense).
Am I missing something?
I’m 45 years old, of above average intelligence, never had an accident, or any tickets in the last 20+ years.
I got my training and CDL in California, with Central Refrigerated in 2006, and I assume that CR England is similar.
We got our permit after passing the written tests the second week of class / orientation. We got our paper CDL (California mails their plastic license) after passing the road test the last day of class, and left with our trainer the next day. (I had to have my California license transferred to my home state of Nevada after my 3 weeks of OTR training. I assume that once you pass your Road Test, CR England submits your information to your home state so they mail your license.)
If the person has passed the road test, I don’t see what difference it makes if they have the plastic in hand or not. Once my trainer and I got out of Fontana California and heavy traffic, my 73 year old trainer climbed in the sleeper. During my 3 weeks, I probably drove about 40 – 50 hours a week, and he maybe drove 10 per week. He was usually sleeping when he wasn’t driving.
A 12 year old can set the cruise control and hold the wheel for the hours between cities. It’s only in city traffic, on surface streets, and in truck stops / shippers / receivers that a trainee really NEEDS that set of experienced eyes.
I doubt that even CR England gets more than 70 – 80 hours of driving a week out of TRAINING team, and most trainers are in the passenger seat in the city, but logged off duty.
And sorrow to the families whose loved ones are just innocent victims in the inevitable multi-vehicle crashes. Going into SLC and out again, east, is a dangerously steep Mountain pass. Experiences drivers are extremely caucious east and west. And with C.R. England being IN SLC, it is inevitable crashes will occur within a hundred miles of the Home Terminal. CRE, is going to have a huge liability doing business in this dangerous, greedy, idea to line their already bulging pockets.
“There is no quantitative data or other information that having a CDL holder accompany a CLP holder who has passed the skills test improves safety.”
If a lack of quantitative data trumps good sense, why not exempt all companies, or for that matter why should there ever be trainers after a student passes their tests? So the attitude of England as stated in the article and apparantly the FMCSA is that once the tests are passed, no more training is needed. And these idiots are responsible for industry safety?
Obviously, no one has bothered to let CR England know that A) most of their LICESENED drivers can’t drive, B) The ability to obtain a drivers licenses has nothing what so ever to do with the ability to drive!
Of course, it wasn’t surprising that the FMCSA don’t think that two people in a truck is better than one, especially if one of them has experience! You watch the accident rate of CR England sky rocket! I know, it is already way up there, but it is about to get a lot worse! Poor “innocent” 4 wheelers!
Bad idea the idea was to make A trained driver responsible for the safety of the operating equipment. The license was the verification they were properly trained and can operate it safely.
They didn’t have a trainer anyway so what’s the difference
The people have the power, not these sleezy trucking companies.
every driver should refuse to work for any company that won’t grantee a weekly pay and puts your safety at risk by using speed limiters.
Going to the press with such issues is worthless, since media outlets are owned by the same people trying to oppress us.
The people have the power, stand up for your rights and stop working for these big companies that don’t give a flying F about you.
“C.R. England contends that since their new hires hold permits and have passed both the written and practical portions of their CDL exams, that they have proven that they don’t need any more training.” Who has seen the board of directors from England standing by the side of the road as these new drivers who “don’t need any more training” drive by? How many of them trust these new drivers to drive along at highway speeds in the rain, next to their family? I guess with my 30+ years of experience actually driving the truck, I know everything there is to know about driving everywhere and anytime. D***, I’m smart! Why do I still drive a truck?
lol your 10-4 on that one
The people who trained me, said the minute you think you know everything there is about driving a truck, is the day you should hand in your keys.
I will be watching even more now when I see a CR England truck passing, at the truck stops, near toll booths, truck on the shoulder, mountain driving, etc etc…basically anywhere!!…LOL
Oh yeah, and don’t even mention the out of route costs when some so-called trainers Don’t assist the rookie in planning their trips. They will end up at the Canadian border, when should have been on there way from SLC to South Carolina.
Our company checks our paperwork at the gated exit. There have been many times when the driver was under the assumption the he was going west to LA, Ca. When in fact,they originated in Vermont going to Lafayett, LA. People don’t always check out the bills at the shipper. They have told the clerk at least 5 times that they have a load Portland, Oregon. If they don’t enter their data at the dock for dipatch, they may find out the next day, that they had bills of lading saying they were on they’re way to Flagstaff, Az. Confusion in the shippers office results in errors on the driver’s part because he/she didn’t find the error right there at the window, that oops? The shipper made a mistake that cost the trucking company hundreds of dollars in expenses. No profit there, eh?
does it really matter. the trainer probably had just swung by his state to pick up his cdl before getting the trainee(ie 2 months). its like the blind leading the blind. there should be a minimum requirement of at least 2 years driving to become a trainer.
“The FMCSA agreed with that statement saying “There is no quantitative data or other information that having a CDL holder accompany a CLP holder who has passed the skills test improves safety.”
Why would it? After all, the trainer is in the bunk. When I was a trainee at Star Transport, the trucks only had one bunk, making it impossible for trainer and trainee to sleep at the same time. Or, more to the point, it made it impossible for trainer and trainee to be awake at the same time. This was by design, of course. Trainees simply provided a way to fill team seats, and trainer trucks were dispatched as teams. Training consisted of putting the trainee on the big road at night, pointed in the right direction.
Trainers were also incentivised to follow this practice, since they were paid the trainee’s miles, too. So, the more trainee miles, the more trainer pay. I suspect this is a not uncommon practice.
Oh no! As if I wasn’t scared of being next to an england truck already!!! This is just ridiculous
If CR England still has the Walmart account out in Sterling, IL, it will now become an even larger training ground for all of the England newbies. With all of those low bridges in the greater Chicago area to deal with, can anyone name a better place for newbies to simply “sink or swim” as they learn how to drive an 80,000 LB bomb?
This proves that special interest and lobby groups who represent these big companies call the shots in this industry. They say it’s all about safety with all these laws they’re pushing and I have to say this is anything but safe. It’s too expensive? Boo fn hoo. Cost of doing business.
Are you kidding me? Somebody greased somebody’s hand that’s all I can figure. With all the safety concerns these days this is really disgusting.
*jaw drop*
I mean at this point why bother having a license?
Between the self driving Google truck, imported foreign drivers and untrained rookies, if it wasn’t for the THOUSANDS of dollars the states make in licene fees (per driver!) they’d probably let you hop behind the wheel with a C license and just rape you after you have an accident.
It’s never about safety, it’s always about fines and getting in front of a camera after a tragedy and promising to “DO SOMETHING ” if elected.
Thoroughly disgraceful , gives every caring driver a black mark because of a few greedy morons who don t care about anything but their bottom line.Maybe if it s their family that gets hurt by one of their “drivers” they ll see things different. Sadly ,that s what it will take for idiocy like this to stop.
But yet there making elogs mandatory in the name of saftey. Something is wrong here. Like somebody’s getting paid and it’s not the driver