Starting with Schneider on Monday

Day 5:
Most boring day yet. First, was a short demo on sliding tandems and scaling then all afternoon was CBT's and trying to finish them all. That took from about 11am to 3pm... Straight. Most boring thing ever.

We also got assigned to our TE's so I am going out with a guy named Sammie and another student. So three of us in the truck. So me and the other student are sleeping in the truck and Sammie gets put up in a hotel. Fine with me. We get picked up on Monday so once I am out there my updates may be a bit spacey, but at the least I will update you all when I get back here on Saturday.

Safe travels to you all and have a great Easter weekend!

 

Well things happen. We were supposed to go out with the TE today, but his truck broke down about 150 miles away from here so we got put back up in the Comfort Inn for the night and it should be fixed by morning. Fun fun.

 

Time with the TE:
Well I spent four night out on the road with my TE and another student. Long story short, it was a great experience. Out there in the real world you really start to put two and two together about what you were taught in school.
Now for those that want the long story. First, about the truck. He had a 2014 Cascadia with a Park Smart system and it had almost 500,000 miles on it. He said that this truck has seen over 300 students, and it shows. Now the interior is great, I had no issue sleeping in there as it has been well taken care of. However, what i mean by "it shows" is that the engine is slowly dying. When we left it had a small oil leak, about two quarter size drops per night. Later on it got worse to about a small puddle every time we stopped. So we had to keep putting oil in it. Then it got a coolant leak, about a gallon a day.... It has certainly seen better days but hey its used for students. Now for some info about the trainer. Sammie is a very easy going guy, he can take a lot of flack. He is also very indecisive. when we aren't sure where we are going it is like "take this exit! No wait, it's the next one! Oops. It was that one now turn around." Other than that, i got a lot of good info from him and definitely made a good friend. Now while we were out on the road, it was get groceries or eat out every meal. So I loaded up on granola bars and sandwich stuff. I ended out pretty good as far as food goes. I ate out a couple times.
Now for the bad. As you may know, the rough schedule is first week classes and paperwork, second week driving with TE, third more paperwork and classes on workflow and trip planning. If you ask me, it is asinine that workflow and trip planning is the third week! Had we been versed on using the qualcomm and properly planning our trips we would have had a much easier time. I had no idea where I was most the time driving. Just following his directions. Our TE had mentioned that we were making more than he was this week because we had to spend so much time learning paperwork and and the process as apposed to driving.

Overall it was a good experience and it helped a lot on my journey of learning to be a trucker.

 

Excuse my ignorance of all the acronyms, but what is TTR lol