Starting Schneider Bulk

Well, I am here in Houston, TX. I was flown into Houston from my home location in South Carolina. Schneider provided airfare, taxi service, and they put me up in a relatively nice hotel. Due to the coronavirus the hotel rooms are single booked, no sharing rooms with a stranger.

Day one begins tomorrow I will post a daily report if possible for the duration of my training with Schneider Bulk.

This will be my first CDL A job since receiving my license nearly a year ago. I applied for the regional bulk tanker driver position.

Please if anyone has any comments or questions feel free to post them here I will answer what I can.

 

Thanks for the response @kemosabi49 Your well wishes are sincerely appreciated.

Training and gaining experience are really the only reasons I am here. I haven’t heard anyone complain about the training, and at this point, neither will I. I don’t plan on staying forever, I just know Trimac and Superior among others don’t hire newbies in my area. Not too many companies appreciate my self taught CDL either.

As far as pay, I would be happy if I get paid over $640 gross. I was making this as a roll off driver. I worked for a demolition company and business got slow.

My end goal is Linehaul, or Cryo.

 

Day one is complete.

Started out by getting ready to leave the hotel at 6:00AM. Breakfast was eggs and sausage along with all the other components of a typical hotel served breakfast.

Due to Coronavirus concerns, they only transported 4 people at a time in the shuttles. I finally departed the hotel at 7:00AM.

It was what I would expect to be typical as far as first day of orientation at any company filling out a tax paperwork, I-9s, drug screens (both UA and hair sample removed from my right arm) and watching tons of videos which occupied pretty much 3/4 of the day. The folks that did not have proper footwear were able to acquire their boots today, and all other PPE aside from the corrosive suit and the Nomex suit were handed out today.

This brings me to what is different, and that is the physical testing. Out of a class of nine trainees we have already lost one due to blood pressure issues.

Throughout the screening process your heart rate will be monitored. As a safety measure and per their testing procedure screening will be stopped if your heart rate meets or exceeds 90% of your age predicted maximum which is calculated (220 - Age) * 0.9 for me that meant my heart rate could not go over 169 bpm.

The physical test requires you to step up onto a foot tall platform at a rate dictated by a metronome for one minute, then do 10 squats with your back straight fully touching the floor, then you must be able to carry 40 pounds for a distance of 60 feet.

You have to then lift the 40 pounds from the floor to the height of your waist three times followed by lifting the same 40 pounds from your waist to over your head.

Next you’ll have to pull over 100 pounds three times in a row and you will also have to push 80 pounds three times in a row.

They will make you walk and crouch on a catwalk that is sitting on the ground that is supposed to test your ability to crouch down to reach washout caps.

After all of this physical activity you then must climb the trailer, circle the crashbox, kneel down, touch a washout cap and climb back down the trailer following all of their safety procedures.

They also did a weird test involving placing a large number of electrodes throughout major muscle groups of your body and having you perform simple tasks, I guess in order to measure soft tissue function. They mention that this information acquired from this test wouldn’t even be utilized unless you were injured and they would use it to have a baseline by which to restore your function to in any injury you may come across on the job.

So long story short aside from their pre-work screening physical, the first day went well. Started with 9 people, down to 8. Tomorrow is more videos and an extended trip up top the tanker trailer, along with getting fitted for the beloved pickle suit and FR Nomex suit.

 

The lack of current info is why I am going to try to post a daily log of training, and hopefully some weekly posts about my first year.

I’ll be reading the thread you linked, and thank you for your well wishes.

 

Second day of training completed.

I would like to add some information so that people understand what position I’m coming from. I am an inexperienced driver going through Schneider’s inexperienced bulk driver training in Houston Texas, as I have chosen one of their regional positions. This means that I will be in training for a total of five weeks.

Today we got our official Driver numbers and were informed that we are now officially fully hired with Schneider, I guess this means if I or anyone else fails the bulk tanker training we could be stuck in a dry van.

Today was mostly a repeat of yesterday, finished up watching more training videos, sat down to an instructor led class going through how to fill out paper logs, hours of service rules, and the like.

We did get sized up for our Nomex suits and fitted for the respirators.

The full scale tank trailer climb was done today and aside from a few people getting rather shaky on top of the trailer everyone made it through reaching all of the washout caps and dome lid. We also went through a quick 30-45 minute demonstration on the basic parts of the tanker trailer, such as the QRB valve, the internal valve, airlines etc.

Classroom training will continue through the end of Saturday, Sunday will begin some actual activities with the truck and trailer.

We were all given the Schneider bulk training manual which is like a 2 inch thick book, and upon reviewing some of the sections in it, I am quite intimidated by the process of unloading the trailer safely. I guess as training and instruction goes forward it will be a lot more manageable to digest the information, and I think I should just set the book down for now, stop stressing about it, and try to get some sleep.