Week One at Central Ref...(woman's perspective)

I'm not trying to pick on you Brickman, I promise, but we ONLY pay $3,000 IF you leave before your year is up. If you get through school, stick it out for a year, you only end up paying $1,200. Central picks up the rest.

 

Its all good! I still like ya and think you're pretty cool!

 

I understand that. I suppose that that part of my post could be read as being snotty, but I didn't mean it that way. I simply meant it as information. There are ALOT of complaints on these boards about the starting pay of the training companies. That part of the message wasn't really meant for you. I was trying to stop people from starting a rant about how low the pay is. I was just trying to give some perspective. I apologize for making you feel attacked.

As far as the pay for experienced drivers, I'm not sure what it would be. Especially since they're only hiring students right now. I know that by the end of my first year, I'll be up to .31 cents per mile.

Sorry again!

 

Day 10 (Wednesday): Today was an awesome day! This morning we went driving in downtown Salt Lake. The great thing was that I got Tom, the head trainer, today. He is wonderful to work with. He cool, calm, and most important, informative. He corrected alot of the mistakes that the other trainers had instilled in us. We learn the best way to make right-hand turns and he even got one guy, who was having trouble down-shifting, to finally get the feel for it.

We also had our pre-trip exams today. And wouldn't you know it, I ended up having to pre-trip the entire truck! They break the pre-trip test into four sections. One test is just the engine and in-cab, the second is from the firewall to the back of the tractor plus the in-cab, the third is the trailer and in-cab, and the fourth is the whole darn thing. Now, I'm really not that upset or angry about it, especially since we'll have to pre-trip the whole truck and trailer by ourselves when we're out on the road. My complaint is that technically, I feel that everyone should be tested on the entire pre-trip. Even so, I managed to pass with an 80 out of 88 points. I got the whole in-cab right and only missed a few pieces on the outside. Phew! Glad that's over with. We did have some people that failed their first try today, so that's already one strike against them. I hope they can pull it out and finish the rest without any trouble.

We also managed to get some of our backing exams done today. Boy Howdy! I was nervous about this one. Well, really I was nervous about the off-set part. The straightline backing and parallel parking I was fine with. But #### was I having problems getting that trailor straight in the cones. The best thing is, that somehow, miraculously, I was able to pull off my best off-set backing ever and passed the test without missing one point! This puts me a day ahead. So all I have to do now is pass the driving test. Thankfully we have one more day out with the trainers before we have that test. Unfortunately, tomorrow we go up to the mountains to drive. YIKES!!! I hope we get Tom again tomorrow. That would make me feel somuch better about going down the mountain in a big truck.

Thanks for reading y'all. Stay safe and I'll talk atcha tomorrow.