Orientation is much different

For weeks I scanned this forum and every other source I could to find information about what to expect during orientation, an boy did I cause my self alot of unneeded stress and worry. Now I realize every company is different and every terminal is different but here is my story to maybe help someone that is entering orientation soon.

To start off I entered orientation with already having a CDL, which in some ways made my life more difficult because even though I had a CDL for basically 10 years or so I had no real experience other than a few years driving a 48ft beer truck.

To start things this is orientation during the COVID 19 pandemic, the first day we got there it was 5 of us for the class on Monday, (3 of us had cdls but needed training, 1 was a rehire, and the other one I think was experience as well), everyone needed drug tests and physicals but me ( I completed mine friday before I left), we arrived at the terrain around 7am and were seated everyone was told they can't leave the room till they completed the UA, while we were waiting for that we watched a few videos on things that didn't have much importance other than to keep us engaged while waiting for everyone to complete UAs.

All this sounds pretty on par with what I read and researched on up until the point where everyone completed UAs and physicals, after about noon or so we were told ok were done for the day, those that drove here (there were 2) you can go home and well call you, the rest back to the hotel.

Day 2 we get there around 9am sit there for about an hour and told ok were waiting for drug screens and some other stuff everyone back to the hotel. Well call you tomorrow on what time we'll pick you up.

Day 3. This is the day I expected there to be some road tests and some more info but we sat there for 4 hour waiting on stuff (which I assume was the last bit of verifying stuff on applications that wasn't done prior to orientation). And again sent back to hotel.

Day 4. This is the day where everyone was kind of getting tired of all the running around and I think they could sense that, throughout this whole process everyone was extremely nice even if information about what was going on was not being shared well with us. Eventually 2 of us went with mentors and the other was assigned his truck and off we went.

I know this post is getting kind of long winded but I don't know if it was the pandemic or just random luck but the orientation process was completely different than I was expecting. I expected everyone with CDLs and out of school for awhile to get road tests day 1 that didn't happen, I expected to be put up in a not so nice hotel that didn't happen. We had solo rooms and I know me and other other guy had suites all 4 days, everything was done online learning wise and almost all communication was done online too. It was so much different than I expected it to be but now I'm out for my 200 hours so hopefully I'll be able to update more later on.

 

Orientation was with Swift

 

Urinary Analysis aka wiz quiz aka drug test