Do any of the schools or company trainers teach anything these days.

Now over the past few days I have helped out more than a few new drivers with various companies. First there was the fellow 6 months driving trying as hard as he could to get his weights right they had loaded his trailer way too front heavy. He came over to me and asked how he could fix it. With the trailer axles all the way forward he was still over on his drives. He was heading to Georgia with 3/4 tanks fuel. A quick calculation determined he could be legal with under 1/2 tanks fuel. Then there was the young fellow rather cute fellow trying to get to a place that was not on his GPS , Showed him on a map how to get there. yesterday at Grand Forks there was the swift driver who had been there 2 days because his trailer brakes were frozen, told him where to hit with a hammer to get the brakes free, then he was parked on ice so he had no traction, emptied the cats litter box in front of his tires so he could get some traction. Now I would think these types of things would be covered in school or by the company trainers but I guess not anymore.

 

One has to wonder if they should be teaching a little more for what they charge for the classes, and trainers are not much help if they are just there for the extra cash they get for training. Hitting the brakes with a hammer is a old method. The problem can be avoided as I told the young fellow if you dont set your trailer brakes until after they have cooled off. When you park make sure you are not on a wet spot that can turn to ice if you are, then put something like cat litter in front of your tires then pull onto it.

 

Difference is 38 years ago there were no such thing as CDL schools, I went to the real world school, no classroom all outdoor practisms. Started driving on the farm then to the oilfields, which was a little more difficult back then for a a girl in a boys world. Now we have these wonderful new schools that are suppose to prepare drivers for the road, and which these men and women spend very large amounts of hard earned cash to attend. As the title of the thread indicates do these schools teach much of anything. Back when I started we didnt have these wonderful laptops to carry around and find information on the internet as well. This thread is not about me or what it was like 38 years ago. Want to go back to that point many of these young drivers wouldnt be looking at OTR as a job. The world was a very different place back then.