Considering schnieder, read first!

Sounds like you had a bad experience. I thought Schneider had Qualcomm on board computers for communications? Perhaps an emergency message to dispatch would have "expedited" a response from the company. I find it hard to believe that a company of Schneiders size would have such a poor system for dealing with emergencies.
Good luck with finding a better company to work for. Dont throw in the towel on driving, it can be a satisfying career it just takes time and patience.

 

Schneider was an eye opening first misstep for us as well. The wife and I went to Schneider training school in Charlotte for one day and quit. Most everything the recruiter told us turned out to be a lie.

They put us in the most God awful roach motel you ever saw. They jammed 45 people into a bus and classroom at 6:00am. Before we got to class we sat in the cafeteria and listened to other students trying to cram homework before the day started. Every one of the students said class runs until 8pm or 9pm and its a huge struggle to keep up on little sleep.

The straw that broke the camel's back was a prephysical that pretty much weeds out the women. The recruiter told us they really want older, married couple teams and the teams were gurarranteed 99% no touch loads. In the 1%, the husband would be able to handle anything. When we got to school, they put everyone through a series of tests requiring you to lift and carry 60lbs over a period of time and distance. There were no pause or rest periods and when my wife's breathing and blood pressure started to go up, they canned her.

Well for Pete's sake, what do you expect for a housewife at 53? She passed her DOT physical with flying colors and her doctor says she is in perfect shape for her age. In any case, we finish trucking school with someone else next week and we are looking forward to driving for a good company. If you consider hiring on with the Orange guys, be very cautious in regard to what they tell you. It may not turn out to be the truth.

 

I once heard of this happening before at Schneider about 5 years ago, I believe. There's not a #### thing you can do about it, either. You should be able to sue them for discrimination, but if you could, they'd have been sued plenty of times already for that, which they haven't. Sounds like typical trucking company dirty trickery.

Did you call that Pumpkin recruiter when you got back home to tell him he was full of ####?

 

uncontrolled High Blood Pressure DOES disqualify one from being able to drive a CMV. Armed with the information that your wife MAY have a problem, you can most likely address it with medication and change in diet. Have you seen your physician?
That sounds more reasonable than blaming the Big Orange....

 

You bet we called the recruiter when we got back from school. The excuses were all the same. "Oh, I didn't know about this or that. Oh, they must have changed things recently. Oh, I should talk to management about that." Suffice it to say that nothing changed.

My wife had a complete physical including a heart stress test before we went to Schneider's school and she DOES NOT have uncontrolled blood pressure. The pretest Schneider gives makes anyone's blood pressure rise, especially when you have to repeatedly lift 60lbs, walk back and forth with it, and go from physically demanding test to test with no rest period.

The issue is that they have the same unrealistic expectation regardless of whether you are 20 or 60 years old, whether you are male or female, and wheter you have been promised no touch loads or not. The issue is NOT whether you meet state and federal physical requirements to drive a commerical vehicle.

Ah well, it's all for the best. Mom and Dad have no desire to drive for a company that lies, hoodwinks, and makes excuses after the fact. Bad experiences are like good ones in that they educate you and make one wiser for the future.

 

Mom & Dad, don't take it personally, but there could be something else going on here.

Maybe Schneider tries to weed out older drivers. Older drivers do mean higher insurance costs, so maybe that's what they were looking at. I know US Express once rejected a driver with over 26 years experience simply because his wife had a certain disease and required high-cost health care attention (drugs, hospitals, et al.), meaning they wanted no part of him. Of course, they had to give him a lame excuse for their decision. But we knew the real reason--some companies just don't want prune faces.

Just a thought.

 

I understand your concern and yes their system leaves much to be desired when you have problems on the road. I think this company is too big, their system always crashing, and yes the recruiters sell you a bag of goods. Low miles, but never ending hiring, hundreds of trucks sitting in Green Bay drop yard, yet no one can seem to find trailers or loads. They need to fix the system and let the drivers drive. Maybe this is just an indication of all very large companies out there.

 

I live close to Green Bay and was in town this morning. Man they sure do have a lot of trucks sitting there.

 

Sorry if it sounded like I got on my high horse...didn't mean to do that. The main reason we got involved with Schneider is AARP told us that Scheider is one of their top 20 recommended companies for people over 50. That did not prove out to be reality.