PAM Transport and Driver Solutions only care about money

Discussion in 'PAM' started by fdtlaw, Jan 7, 2011.

  1. crazy88mike

    crazy88mike Bobtail Member

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    Dec 19, 2011
    orlando florida
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    just like to say thank you to all the drivers with more the 1-2 years driving and know what they are talking about.

    for all you new drivers out there that just came out of driving school and think your a trucker.

    YOUR NOT STOP ACTING LIKE IT.

    IF YOU DONT THINK YOUR READY SAY SOMETHING.

    YOUR DRIVING 80,000 LBS OF STEEL GLASS AND ######!!!

    pull your head out of your 4th point of contact and grow a pair. if you hit something while driven its on the driver. even as a driver of a four wheeler knows that. Use your brain for once in your life.
     
    mattbh23 Thanks this.
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  3. Ozarktrucker

    Ozarktrucker Light Load Member

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    Aug 28, 2010
    Newton County, AR
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    So latest victim, what company did you go to work for? What are they paying and how are the miles? I'm not ready to leave pam today, but am always interested in hearing about good oppurtunities.
     
    airforcetoo Thanks this.
  4. Peterbeatinit

    Peterbeatinit Medium Load Member

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    Mar 8, 2012
    San Antonio Tx
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    Oh my lord..

    Fd..first of all if you had any type of law degree why did you go to c1 and not a longer tech school..

    let me explain about training set ups like c1..their training is designed to get you your cdl..period..thats all it is.Its not designed to teach you to drive a truck and know everything that you are supposed to know..it gets you a CDL..thats it

    Where you messed up is when you were with your trainer..The first moment you were dissatisfied with your trainer you should have been on the phone to the company requesting a new one..period..delay in completion or not and this goes for ANY driver straight out of any training..if you don't feel your trainer is teaching you the right way of doing things..GET the FRICK off his TRUCK ASAP and get another one.

    The only person responsible for you is YOU..

    Now lets see about the accidents..53 feet of swinging trailer..that says it all...and you weren't watching your mirrors enough in both situations..on top of that..a gas station to turn around...really?...REALLY? A fuel tanker is only like at most 48 foot at most..thats all and in some stations even they have trouble getting in and out of em without clipping things...whats really funny is you probably could have went around the block and turned around that way or went down the road a bit further and went in the truck entrance behind a walmart or some other store and swung around that way where its designed for trucks to do that or used the parking lot of a walmart or grocery store to swing around in...bottom line..you were rushing and when driving something with a total vehicle length of 70 feet or so..you CAN'T rush anything. When you rush all you are doing is Rushing to slow yourself up or worse..you found out what worse is..Moving these things around takes slow deliberate planning, and then pausing to think things through as the situation changes..your mindset was still driving your bmw.

    Getting lost..Thats totally on you...You as the driver are in charge of your trip planning and double checking your route..I never ever relied on directions sent..before gps I called the shipper or reciever myself

    Now there's google earth online, gps, mapquest...if you got a street address and zip or city name and state you can find it online..google earth will even show you what it looks like from the street so thats your own fault..then trying to turn around in a U turn is just utter idiocy...not only did you find out one reason why but what if some four wheeler had run up under your trailer while it was stretched across the road....best thing to do..Pull over..get out the maps and pc or gps..figure out where you are..call the shipper, tell them where you are and they can help you out..they know the area. I once had the shipper come and meet me because they were out in the boondocks and I was picking up in the field..no signs, no labels..it was go..1 mile this way..1/2 that etc to get there..after an hour of driving gravel roads trying to find it from the directions they themselves gave me I stopped and called again and said ok..this is where I am right now..can you meet me and I'll follow you in..they were absolutely glad to do it and kept requesting my truck from then on..and every time..they would meet me and I would follow them to where they wanted me..they had no problem doing that...lucky with them there but hey..sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do...that was also before gps and mapquest and so on

    If you think you are going to sue pam/c1 I'm LMAO again

    Whats funnier..all of it would probably have been avoided if you had called the company and requested a new trainer when you started having problems with your first one but you were in a rush...probably so much the trainer was going along with it just to get you off his truck before you ran it into something as well..

    Petey
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2012
    Pirate Trucker XOXX and Cooper09 Thank this.
  5. Peterbeatinit

    Peterbeatinit Medium Load Member

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    Mar 8, 2012
    San Antonio Tx
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    Nailed it..

    Its funny..I read stuff like this on here all the time..99 percent of it if the person whining about it got off their lazy ### and picked up a phone or the qualcomm it wouldn't happen at all..

    As far as trainers staying up..maybe you were driving so bad he didn't trust you to go to sleep LOL..Its his job to be up with you at first....the phone thing well..Not touhing that one..there isn't a truck driver anywhere that hasn't been on the phone while driving and there isn't a 4 wheeler driver either that isn't guilty of it unless they flat out don't have a cell which is rare anymore..

    Noggins is right though..complaining about it here doesn't bring it to the attention of those who need to know..you think anyone from PAM's safety department hangs out here? I doubt it..If there is they lurk and never post..on top of that due to the very nature of the boards...and no real names they an't use it anyway...this isn't a company sponsored website. This is drivers talking to other drivers so there you go..

    You got contact numbers for training managers or whatever PAM calls them during orientation..these situations are what those phone numbers are for..Why new drivers don't use them for things like this I'll never know...

    Petey
     
  6. truckerdave17

    truckerdave17 Light Load Member

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    Nov 17, 2009
    st louis, mo
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    Hey fdtlaw...welcome to truck driving. U have any idea how many times i took a wrong turned or backed thru mud or had to get myself out of a near impossible situation? U cant blame pam for ur mistakes, those come with the job. However, u really should've had a bit more training.
     
  7. bigjoel

    bigjoel Road Train Member

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    1,833
    Jan 20, 2011
    Houston, Tx
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    Like a guy told me once, "if your mistakes don't kill you, maybe you will learn something from them".
     
    Pirate Trucker XOXX Thanks this.
  8. tjonzen420

    tjonzen420 Bobtail Member

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    Apr 2, 2012
    Leitchfield, Ky
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    It is all your fault!!! C-1 tells you right off the bat that you are there to get the basic skills to get your CDL!!! Did you listen in class or were you one of the know it all people that don't listen to anyone? Your fault for not requesting a new trainer!!! Your fault for most everything that went wrong because you have no idea how to speak for yourself, except when you can hop on the web and complain endlessly!!! Quit your gripping and man up dude!!!
     
  9. HGRaptor

    HGRaptor Bobtail Member

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    May 16, 2012
    Cleveland,Ga
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    The one thing i keep thinking is, even with the truth being, cdl schools are just that,cdl mills. designed to get u a cdl in a very short time, and on to a company that will give u 172 hrs, give or take of on the road training. at the end of that you still dont have the skills to 100% operate a tractor - trailer . the truth of it is it takes minimum of a year before you get enough experience to really know what your doing,and still your a rookie. so with that said carefull operation and attention to detail as to not make simple mistakes is on you. like any job there is not a master level of training before your exspected to perform...on the other side, if your so called trainers an mentors are not showing u the correct ways to properly operate a tractor - trailer ,by texting and doctoring logs etc that is truly a problem. but that is how it is with just about every company i have ever encountered. Good Luck...
     
  10. pksteph

    pksteph Bobtail Member

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    Mar 21, 2012
    TX
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    What's bad is that you'll go to the C1 CDL mill, where you're only taught the bare basics of how to pass the test. You aren't taught much anything else very well at C1. My class had practically two weeks of just straight-line backing (where I went). The class ahead of me was also large. So, we kept on getting pushed back. We were taught 45's by having a trainer come out show us once and walked off back to the air conditioner. LOL We spent the rest of the time attempting to teach each other. We kept losing a test truck. Yet again, the rest of us waiting to test would get pushed back. (The trainers weren't bad... there were just too many students per trainer!)

    Then you go to PAM and they have that ridiculous week of orientation (company BS mostly) and a day and a half of waiting around in the dust for your turn to drive the course maybe 4 times. (Was better than C1, I have to say. They should bring people there to get their CDL's!) After this you get a WHOLE TWO WEEKS with a mentor. Unless you're really lucky and get a great trainer you're not going to learn much and/or back up much at all (or even if you do get a wonderful trainer...you're not going to get much backing with a trainer in two weeks!). You won't know how woefully under-trained you are until you get out on your own and end up in places 10x's tighter than anything you saw with your mentor. Maybe you'll get lucky and have a good co-driver. Or you'll end up unlucky like I did and get one for a few days. She quits. I get sent solo. Then they try to set me up with a man... My husband freaks. lol (two weeks with male trainer is a bit different than 6 months with some random dude!) Get sent solo again. (Solo rocks btw. I just wasn't ready.)

    I tried my best to train myself backing by practicing at yards/large truck stops. Unfortunately, I make two stupid minor moves while flailing on my own and end up terminated. 1st one. Bent the air fairing turning around to set up at a cluster$*%$ of a dock (Ryder) where trailers were dropped all over the place/dead end/ in the dark. The 2nd was I lightly scraped a reefer unit on a neighboring business that uses the same dock. (Or at least they said I did. I didn't feel/see anything. I could have sworn I saw scratches/paint on the unit before I backed... No proof, though! I was having a hard time figuring out exactly HOW to back in that dock. Cars all over the place.) Add to this my incident on my first day of training, while I was supposedly being "Spotted", knocking the hinges off a trailer door on a pole in one of those dark hole type docks(took me a while to figure out how that happened.... trainer just said I wasn't watching the mirror. I was. :biggrin_25512: The trailer was crooked/close to the passenger side pole when I went under it. Tractor/trailer wasn't the straightest when I hooked so when I pulled out "straight" I went at more of an angle than I thought I would be. Then bang, right when I was almost out the hinges hit the pole. It was so dark back there I didn't see it in the mirror) 3 strikes = termination Ugh... I know it was dumb, but, I learned from the experiences.

    (Oh, and, if you get terminated... hope it's near home. I was 1200 miles from home in Michigan and had to leave A LOT of stuff in the truck. I ended up giving it to friends who showed up at that terminal 2 days later and got the cooler/cook stuff and food I had to leave. Oh, and, PAM lied to me about giving me taxi money from the terminal to the bus station, too. Not cool. )

    I have no problem being on time. Good route planning, qualcomm, with customers, scaling, tandems, drop/hook, etc. . Good on highways (heck mountains and around places like New York) during crappy rainy weather mainly because driving on the HW doesn't feel that much different from driving a bus to me and I have two years experience with that, got good at floating.....

    Now I'm searching for some company that's give me another chance and real TRAINING. (Heck, like the 6 weeks my contract states PAM does. Isn't that kind of them breaking the Driver's Solution contract?)

    It's like C1 and PAM is setting people up to fail. It's a pretty big $$$ incentive if we do. Several people that I went to C1 with and kept contact with have either quit out of frustration, or, agree with me but still drive to get their year over with (already planning their way out, too).

    (Now concludes my disertation... sorry for writing a book. Need to get this off my chest. ha!)
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2012
  11. CaptainKirk

    CaptainKirk Light Load Member

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    Dec 8, 2012
    Virginia
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    I ended up finding funding to go to a local community college CDL program...5 weeks, 200 hours, 1000-1500 miles driving time. Take it slow and don't jump into it with ANY company sponsored training unless you definitely know you want to be a trucker and have researched the life you're getting into. If you are that desperate for money, go work at McD's. You'll make more to start and be home when u want to be. I spent about 5 minutes talking to a driver solutions recruiter after I created my prehire account. I asked a few very specific questions about the contract and training period that he didn't answer clearly, followed by a few more through email that he didn't answer at all. The next day I tried to log in to my student account and remove my personal info and it had been disabled. Guess he knew where I was headed. Sure it happens every day.
     
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