Why CSA 2010 and E-Logs are a good thing.

Thats where the contrast between a companies SMS and a drivers PSP should red flag the inferior driver. If you have a guy with a couple vehicle infractions and he tells you he just couldn't get the company to maintain their stuff, then you pull up the company and see they are in the high 80's on maintenance his story is plausible.

Where a guy saying they just couldn't dispatch and has a few HOS violations, and an unsafe but you pull the company and they are in the low 30's chances are he is a problem. Not fool proof or conclusive by any means, however it is a better tool than DAC in these areas.



Training should be graduated. The first XX amount of hours a driver is actually driving the trainer,mentor, baby sitter (whatever they are called) should by law be on duty. I say XX because the time I think should be required varies in proportion to how many times I have to adjust for a suspected training truck.

The new drivers need to be trained, not used as a cheap team to support someones lease truck, or enhance the companies revenue stream. Until real regulations and a graduated system are put in place the turn over of new drivers will continue.

 

The turnover of new drivers will continue despite ever tightening restrictions on training. New driver turnover will continue until there is a way to figure out whether someone is suited to this job before they ever get licensed.

Someone who is made for this will succeed in spite of not so great training. I am an example, as are many others. I ran team with my mentor from the second day I was on his truck. Ten hours of observed driving and we were off. He was able to evaluate, in that short time, that I was not going to pile us up into a wall, run us off a cliff or kill a family.

You are looking for a one size fits all training program. That doesn't work in public schools, so how on Earth could you expect it to work in this application? Even union trades apprenticeship programs understand that some people "get it" faster than others. Apprentices (at least, UBC ...Carpentry apprentices) must complete specific training areas, "lessons" if you will, properly or keep repeating them until they do before they move on to the next period of their apprenticeship.

With the extremely wide variety of not only segments of this industry, but the variety of people joining it, there is not really a feasible way to "apprentice" a trucker. Either they will make it or they won't. Most don't. I do not see this changing in the foreseeable future.

 

Maybe I misunderstood something but, all I thought they put down about crashes was you had one. Thats what ticks me off about that. I've had 2 and neither one was my fault. Still, they will be on MY record for 5 years.

 

Observed driving for 10 hours is not what the complaint of trainee teaming is about . There have been many posts here confirming CRE trainees run 10 hours while the trainer logs sleeper, Then they switch for 10 hours

 

Well, where did my mentor log himself while he crashed out during my drive time?

A large complaint I see is people think a mentor has to be in the jump seat the entire time a trainee is on the truck and never do anything else. You can pretty much tell whether someone is going to kill you by watching their driving style for a week. My mentor made that call after a single day. I'm surprised I haven't seen the hand wringers pipe up and say I should have killed somebody due directly to my mentor's neglect.

It's all a judgment call, from the testing authority handing out the licensing to the safety dude at the company saying the driver is good to go. There will never be a "perfect" solution to training, new drivers, new driver dissatisfaction or inherent safety concerns with new drivers. There is not a single one of us who started out knowing everything about trucks, the physics of large vehicles in motion or our own limitations. It's all stuff we had to learn.

 

Your post reminded me of another thread and this theme:

http://www.laramieboomerang.com/articles/2011/03/26/news/doc4d8d6b99c4152383781120.txt

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...139971-i80e-between-laramie-and-cheyenne.html

Your right though every company is different when it comes to this,,I too started with a company(Builders) and my trainer once he was comfortable with me went to the bunk

Conway TL does not let us do this until the meet their minimum miles and are signed off and we run team to get their truck

 

Obviously this trainer didn't watch close enough . If I remember correctly the emergency crew didn't find the trainer's body until a few days later when somebody noticed the logbooks were for a team .
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wifwg6xWVAU"][/ame]
Very interesting a CRE truck filmed this . It doesn't seem they learned much about training from it except maybe to not send trainees over Donner .

 

That film is used in training for many companies, as is another of the same crash, filmed from a different angle. I believe that was a Swift. People just get in too big of a hurry going down hills like that. Donner is really not that bad of a hill. I'm surprised we don't see more incidents over Snoqualmie.

 

So why bother with the mentor after the first day. If they are just gonna bee in the sleeper dreaming of all the money that student is making instead of training why bother. Questions can be answered far more economically with a phone call.

Because someone with so little experience needs observation and everyone knows it.

Now in fairness I have no idea how this whole trainer deal works. But I have seen new drivers absolutely struggling to back in, make corners at tight shippers, trying to figure out axle weights. ......

Where is their "teacher"? Sleeping away the time so he can drive his shift, or getting up and helping but logging it as sleeper so he can drive his shift.



Graduated licensing, real #### training and testing not the dog and pony show they do now. Now it may not end driver turn over as your correct some people will just try and fail.If a little more effort was required to recieve a full blown License perhaps some of the lazy ones will be weeded out.

 

So who trained you when you was turned loose in the world of trucking?