dismissal from orientation?

How about the guys who get drunk at hotel bar and word gets back to the big wigs at orientation.

 

The best part about W&S !

 

Missoula's hotel lacks a bar.

 

Missoula, as in Missoula, MT? If there isn't one in the hotel, there will be one within crawling distance. After all this IS Montana. . .

 

I don't know what their procedures are now, but when my spouse and I went to orientation, they spent a lot of time in the classroom, which makes sense because others, like ourselves, had just gotten our CDL and knew NOTHING. They then proceed to take you on various drives around Missoula and end with a 6% grade going up so you can downshift going up then you turn around and start down and let you gain speed and then downshift till your engine brake will hold it. Seems simple now lol, but at the time all were scared ####less!! In any case, I was NOT a natural, I knew it and needed more training. My husband however got hired on, was thrown the keys to a truck and told not to kill anyone, no other training was given. If you do not make the cut with Watkins Shepard it is usually because you can't master "the hill" on the first try. They will let you go at any time if you don't do well on the various trips around town. I went with another "horrible" company, completed training with a trainer and then moved on.

 

I used to wonder the same thing as the guy who made this thread. But the way they do it makes perfect sense I suppose, as ridiculous as it seems at times. It's all just talk until the person actually shows up. It's no different than a car dealership demanding you show up before they bother to run your credit. Sometimes they'll even roll you out of there with a job only to fire you 10 days later for some technicality about your application. (Funny personal story I could share there lol)

It's really only the bottom feeding OTR companies that have a hard time keeping drivers that hold boilerplate orientations. Because of their sky-high turnover rates they've determined this to be the cheapest way to get as many (potentially) qualified people to show up as possible. These are all cheap-freight companies that operate on thin margins and it permeates all the way down to their hiring practices. I myself attended and passed W/S's 10-day orientation right out of driving school in 2011, and I will say the whole thing was a pretty crazy experience I wouldn't have any interest in doing again, but at the time it was all part of the learning process that everybody has to go through. Once you reach a certain point in your driving career you have no interest in working for any of these types of big box trucking outfits, at least for me. And once you've worked for 2 or 3 of them like I have you realize they're all peddling the same nonsense.

 

And a lot of that has to do with being expected to deal with borderline junk equipment when you're a company driver. When you're out there in the middle of nowhere you need to be reasonably confident your equipment wont let you down. Otherwise you're going to be sitting around making no money and/or putting yourself in all sorts of compromising situations.

 

Incompetent dispatchers, load planners, shippers and recievers is more of a problem imo.

 

I've been driving team with my boyfriend since October. The only real issue we have is their lack of communication. But we get good loads and stay running most of the time.

 

All that too, yeah. You really are relying on way too many other people who consider you just a number so you tend to get jerked around and have your time wasted a lot. All these people know the drivers get nothing or practically nothing for having half their day wasted so they don't really care if they screw with you.