A word to newbies

For all the lurking new recruits out there. Do the trainers, (or coaches as Trucker Steve prefers to call them), a favor and DO NOT get on their truck without expecting to be on it for at least three to four weeks.

That means possibly no home time, appointment obligations, birthdays, anniversaries, court dates, etc.

Your trainer may not live in your home town region. That means he might go home for a day or two while you stay back at the nearest terminal and hang out. Might as well get used to it

Also, think hard about whether or not you really want to become a truck driver before you even go through truck driving school, apply for a job, get hired by a company, go through orientation and then get assigned to a trainer's truck.

Trainers are sacrificing their time and space to take you on their truck. The least you can do is finish the training part. It's frustrating as hell to have a new guy get on the truck and start talking immediately about how he can't miss his little girl's birthday which is four days away!

I know whereof I speak, I've had many do that to me in the past. If you make a commitment to get on the truck and train, at least stick with it through the training period.

Thank you for reading and considering.

Scooter Jones

 

Thank you.

 

True story here. I had this trainee get on my truck in Denver. Two days later as we are heading east he tells me he has a child custody hearing in over a week. I was thinking to myself "WTF". We run to CT then Jersey and back to upstate N.Y.

The whole while the guy is distracted from his duties because he is fretting over whether or not logistics is going to get us back on time for his court appt. Not good for him to be in that mindset and certainly made me unhappy knowing the guy wasn't focused.

We dropped a load outside of Buffalo and sat at a Flying J for almost a day. He was absolutely convinced we weren't going to make it back. He called a taxi for a ride to the Buffalo airport and bought a full priced airline ticket back to Denver! Un-freaking real!

I got a dispatch 5 minutes after he left to...you guessed it...Denver.

I picked the load and pulled into Denver 5 hrs before his court appointment.

Oh yeah, he never came back to May. He quit. What a waste of his time, my time and May Trucking's time. As a trainer, I will never take anyone on my truck again unless they have priorities in place and their personal business resolved BEFORE they get on the truck. If the next guy wants to take him, have at it, not me

 

Of course I realize I can't control whether or not a guy decides he really doesn't want to be a truck driver after 5 days of training and just walks off the truck, I've experienced that too.

 

Swapped trailers with a driver today. Did an inspection and this is what I found! Unreal that drivers would continue to pass a piece of equipment on to another driver knowing it's in this condition.