Question to the New to Trucking Drivers

they touched on it in school, never had a trainer. But I learn as I go.

 

The CDL school I attended (a community college) was 4 weeks. First week we spent a couple hours on log book in the classroom on Thursday. From that day on we kept an active log book every day, & the instructor took up the page the next morning to grade them.

Toward the end of orientation week at McElroy we covered log book & began keeping an active log that Friday when we got our employee numbers. Along with our trip plan homework each night, we were also given a scenario we had to log. Once on the trainer truck the trainer never checked/graded my log book, but if I had questions, he was there to help. Never had any though. My CDL instructor did a great job teaching logs.

 

I attended school for 7 weeks. And from the 2nd day all the way until a few days before the last day we had a log book that we used everyday. Class started at 7:45, so we went on duty. Lunch break, off duty for 45 mins Then back on duty. Then at the end of class at 3, we went off duty. Also the teacher had us put what we were doing when we were "On Duty" (Classroom, Pre Trip, Driving in the yard). Then when we actually got on the road and drove , that would be our "driving time". Added up all the hours for the day then at the end of the week for the weekend we would start the "34 hour restart" until monday. So needless to say, I was pretty comfortable with using logs by the end of the 2nd week. Also we had to log out a trip given to us in the last week of class. My intructors were very good at having us understand the importance of logging correctly and keeping up with our hours.

 

We went over it pretty good in class at TDDS in Lake Milton, OH. We also kept a paper log for the whole 10 week course. We devoted a few hours to it in orientation at Roehl and had log homework. When I went out with my first trainer he was really having trouble with paper logs and ended up messing mine up because he said they were wrong. As it turns out they were correct to begin with. But his help really ended up confusing me. He was a trainer and he should have understood logs well enough to be able to help trainees with it. I'm in orientation in Melton now and we've been doing log homework and did about an hour class on it. I was on elogs during my time at Roehl for the most part.

It's possible one of the big issues is that these big companies are running so many people through orientation and their schools and wanting to get them in a truck as quickly as possible that they just don't want to make the time to go over in detail something as important as logs. And then there's quite a few trainers out there that are in it for the money and don't care what you learn or what you know when you get off that truck.

Now I'm no expert on logs but I know how to do them and know enough to not get a violation. And it really doesn't take a whole lot of time to teach that much so it's really quite ridiculous when newer drivers are having these problems.

 

A.I.T is the school i went to and they talked about HoS and logging alot and made sure we had it down
my trainer showed me some of his log book tricks you could say and went over my logs to make sure i understood how to Properly log and how to log his way when needed.

sad these quick train schools dont focus enough on logs let alone proper manuvering tech ie backing, angle, docking, alley docking, blind side docking and the ever so complicated loopty loop backwards angle docking tech lol some of you may know what i mean by that.

 

Everyone's going to E-logs now anyway. I know how to do both... Simultaneously. But it is important to know how to properly log your hours. Either by ink or by buttons.

 

Drivers need to use paper logs when e-logs malfunction . E-logs will be a problem because there are several different manufacturers and the options carriers use vary even when two carriers use the same system . Driver that have gotten in the habit using one system will have difficulty adapting to another one when they change carriers .
There is no standard system and I doubt CDL mills will teach every system .

 

I was made to maintain a log book throughout school and while with my trainer but we use e logs. It's easy to me....much more common sense than anything.