interesting student

Since there are some stories of nightmare trainers out there I will share this. Sometimes there are nightmare students as well.
A couple of years ago I picked up this guy at the company terminal in Gary, IN. After introductions are made he asks me where we are going. I tell him downtown Chicago. "Where is that?" he says. I ask him if he's kidding he says nope, "I've never been outta Arkansas in my life before this. I rode a bus here for orientation." I tell him its about 30 miles west and a way we go. We deliver our load and have to pick up another 20 miles west of where we delivered. Student is looking at the map trying to figure out where Chicago is on the US map. After about ten minutes he finally finds it. I tell him ok lets look at the Chicago map. He starts looking at the C's, California, Conneticut. I tell him it will be in the Illinois section. "Whada ya mean, isn't Chicago a state?" he asks. We make it to the blown up map of Chicago. The quallcom directions tell us to to go 20 miles west on i94. The student is looking at the map again, "I found 94 but I can't find west 94". This is going to be a long week.
We pick up our load and deliver it somewhere in the Twin Cities. The next load picked up in Shakopee, Mn. We pick it up and are crossing the bridge over the Mississippi river on eastbound 494. "Is this the Golden Gate bridge?" What? "Is this the Golden Gate bridge"? No, thats out by San Fransisco and Oakland. "What state is that?" California. "Oh."
As far as driving he did pretty well and is probably the best backer upper I"ve trained. Adding up his hours on the log book was a whole other story. For the first six nights I would give him about an hour to figure it out on his own. Then I would just take it and do it myself. The whole decimal thing blew his mind. "What do you mean thirty minutes is .5 isn't it .3 hours" I had to make him a conversion chart. 15 min = .25, 30 min = . 5, 45 min = .75. "When I get my own truck everything is going to be done in hour chunks. I will drive for three hours and take an hour break. That will make it easy to add up my hours." I asked if he was going to fuel for an hour. "Yep."

After a couple of days with him I started noticing he had trouble with his vision. He had a little problem reading signs in the day time. At night he was blind as bat though. Great big over the interstate signs, like 94 this way, 43 the other way, he could not read until he was too close to safely react. He would have his nose an inch from the windshield squinting his eyes trying to read them. He told me he passed his DOT physical so that was good enough. I told him that you weren't going 60mph at nighttime on his physical. I set up a little test for him. We were headed west on I-80 by the quad cities in west IL/east IA. I told him to stay on 80. When the 280/80 split was coming up he was doing his nose by the window squinting deal. I-80 veers to the right and 280 or 480 or whatever goes straight and hooks back up with 80 on the other side. He sees it too late and can't move over. This isn't going to fly. I told him he can't drive a truck if he can't see at night. "Please don't say anything I've always wanted to be a trucker. My grandpappy has been driving trucks for 30 years and he only has one eye." I'm trying not to laugh because he actually said "grandpappy", I told him he can still drive trucks but he has to get his eyes fixed. He took a bus home that weekend and got some glasses and completed his training with another lucky trainer.

 

That's right I forgot about that. We were talking about hiring requirements and driving records. He told me it was easy for him to have a clean driving record. He said he was so broke he couldn't afford to drive, he had been riding his bike for the last two years.
He passed his DOT eye test but like I said. you are not going 60-65 mph at night on the physical. Anyways, he was sent back home and I guess he got some kind of glasses to fix the problem and completed the training. The guy could drive but was dumb as a rock.
I also forgot this little tidbit. We were going down the road and he was driving. I notice he is kinda sweaty so I turn up the AC. This doesn't help so Mr. Arkansas decides to take off his shirt while driving. I ask him what the heck is he doing? "Well I didn't sleep too well last night so I'm kinda tired. When we were at that last truck stop I got some of those Stackers and took about ten of them. My heart is beating really fast." This is when Stackers still had ephedra in them. It is basically over the counter speed. If I take one or two I don't sleep right for a couple of days. This knucklehead downed half a bottle and was sweating all over my seat.