My Quality Drivers/Celadon experience April 2014

You could and it probably is but I would be disappointed in anything less because I have been studying for months prior to attending. I don't want to waste my time in a classroom when I could be learning to handle the truck. How long should it take to get something that I can get without having to set foot in a class?

 

I am not 100% sure they do but with all of their recent acquisitions I wouldn't be surprised. I know that they do not haul doubles or triples. They encourage us to get as many of the endorsements as we can because it makes us more 'valuable' or at least opens more options if we want to go elsewhere once our contract is up.

I will definitely be asking about that at some point because it is a path I am planning on going down in the future.

 

Day 5: It's Friday! (happy dance in progress) It's Friday!

Today was both disappointing and informational. The disappointing part was that the BMV computers at the site I was going to go to went down so there was no testing that could be done. Which means I didn't get my final endorsement. I will be going to my local branch and do that over the weekend. The motivated members of my class are planning to go the usual location tomorrow from the dorms.

The informative part was fairly eye-opening. We had several guest speakers.
First was the Safety Coordinator. He gave a presentation on why it is important to everyone that each of us follow the safety rules. I am sure that was a fairly routine speech that doesn't vary too much from company to company since they are all operating under the same safety rules.

The second speaker was Steve Russell. He is soft-spoken even when wired with a mic but very entertaining and gave us the background information on his baby (the company).

The last speaker was the Operations Manager, Greg. He would have been a good person to hear from before they had us sign the contracts. The fact that the contracts came first lets me know that their basic operating procedure is not a big selling point for the company. It was good to know what they will be expecting from us once we get out of training and which parts of the training I should pay attention to the most. If you are thinking of going with Celadon pay extra close attention to the following. The Operations Manager expects you to be money-motivated. If you have a different motivation, I would seriously consider a different company. He sees it as his goal to keep you rolling as much as he legally can. He expects his drivers to make use of the tools at hand to ensure that they are rolling every minute they legally can. You are truly a number (well, perhaps a name) in a seat to the Operations Manager. They do forced-dispatch and no, they don't want you getting creative with your route. If you get creative with your route and there are extra expenses incurred, expect to pay for them out of pocket. You have to get authorization before you do anything other than what you are told to do. They do have sound business reasons for all of this but in the end it comes down to what you expect from the company you choose.

I don't have a problem with this philosophy because I am at this school to earn money while getting the experience I need to apply with a company that fits my big-picture goal. My big-picture goal is about two years away so this company is a good fit especially if the miles they claim to give come anywhere near the miles they actually give. I do think that they should explain what you are getting into before you sign the contract rather than after. One of the options on the contract is to agree to the contract miles or discuss a payment plan for the school and I can imagine that there may be several people that would choose the payment option if they had known these were the expectations. So, to those people... Heads up.

I'm home for the weekend and those of us that have our permits will be headed out to our first day around the trucks on Monday. I am excited to finally get to the part of the job that I really need to learn.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

 

Spm,
Most of the people in my class are there to get in, get out and start making money. People like that aren't going to mind the forced-dispatch-to-anywhere-on-the-continent style dispatch and the running hard for three weeks to get three days home because we will be making 2-3x what we used to at our old ***** job.
The people that want to see the country, control-freaks ( no offense to control-freaks), and people that have a clue what they are doing (not newbies like me) would want to know that they will be rolling every second of their available hours before agreeing to spend the better part of a year fullfilling the contract.

Of course, I am basing that on the control-freak side of me that cringed as I signed the contract almost blind. I could be wrong.