How much do trainers get paid?

Had a Pete 379 for about 4 glorious minutes. I had found the path to Valhalla and Gloried in that thing's 1000 mile on the clock and huge kitty. Cat and I had a fine introduction that morning.

She shook and shivered when I forced the clutch to take a gear that was going bad while turning. Trainer exploded. Get in that right seat and shet up fool!

I sit there learning nothing for two weeks wanting to take another turn at that pete. It never happened. Company paid me. But I got to where I am very careful not to take on too many trainers after that one. It's really hard not to manhandle a 100 pound shrill voiced anklebiter yelling at you to shet up. But if you value your freedom you must not give in to those lusts of violence and destruction burning those blood vessals.. It was a very difficult two weeks.

 

I love teaching (retired professor), but I wouldn't want to be a trainer. There's a lot of great, intelligent drivers out there, but there's also many that aren't. Even if I didn't already have two great retirements, the extra money wouldn't be worth the stress and lack of solitude.

 

I went to Henderson Trucking to get my CDL and this is how they done their training/pay.

1. Your required to be trained 4-8 weeks. Trainers choice at how fast you upgraded.
2. Company Trainers received .38 cpm for ALL MILES.
3. Lease Drivers just got a $500 weekly bonus, because they get more loads. (Of course trainers get priority dispatch)
4. Student receives.15 cpm ALL MILES the whole training period.
5. Week 1 Trainers required to sit in the jump seat and train you. After Week 1 if they felt you were ready, you guys become a team.
6. Company/Lease Trainers got a $750 bonus upon upgrading the student.

I loved my training, had a cool trainer. and he was a Lease driver so of course we ran hard. He had been a trainer over 10 years there so when he said a student was ready, they didn't question him. I drove a straight truck before going to get my CDL so I could already shift and what not. So after 2 days of him watching me drive, he made the call and we ran as a team starting that 3rd day. I made great money as a trainee. First week we ran ~4500 miles, the other 3 we ran 6-7k miles(30. cpm on 6-7k = $900+) (I only trained 4 weeks). He said I was the easiest trainee he ever had. He showed me how he netted 75-85k the last 5 years. So it is good money to be made, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't sleep while some fresh CDL holder was taking me across the country and thru the snow and of course the mountains.

 

15 is too low for anyone per mile. *Growls...

 

Yeah, thinking of it as .30 cpm for all miles made it easier for me to get up in the morning. lol

 

I come from a different world that has tainted me into thinking that in order for one to train, they have to be educated to train and earned that right to train. Furthermore it is a case where actual training takes place, not just in words or advice to someone but actual training.

So this entire concept of having someone become a trainer because of the miles or time they spent in the seat is really counter productive to the industry as a whole, there are no real qualifiers nor any way to judge someone to be an effective trainer just the title of it.

now before you jump on me with this, read some of the threads about what people go through with their "trainers" and why I call them mentors - which many are just team drivers.

Shouldn't that alone make any of you feel there is real room for improvement?

I think what one of my drivers suggested could work better, he was a CDL instructor licensed by the state to teach people and he has a very low opinion of drivers being trainers.

SO his suggestion was to have industry wide training standards on training and qualify them to train but compensate those who do this greatly for this effort. Then have them paired or have two students who will be with him/her from the start of their CDL venture to the end where they get their own truck, learning as much as they can without the BS involved.

I know I am not explaining it well enough but it is a good point, we don't teach right to make this a career but rather just as a job and this is where we fail ourselves.

What the hell do you think we all have to put up with, a bunch of bad drivers who just got their cdl and are trying to kill us. It doesn't make a difference if you are a "trainer" or just a driver.

 

I don't know about the 21 year old but in the Military they run multimillion dollar tanks into battle. Or drive trucks filled with cargo of all kinds into battle. and so on.

The idea of putting a newbie fresh from State CDL Test passed to a assigned truck with no trainer at all (Mentors.. eh, just a title that does not fit too well...) is just asking for trouble. The industry does keep a wealth of knowledge secret and you can only learn by doing. No one is going to tell you that no one will hire you for your first year out of school. No one will tell you that you have to live on 300 dollars after taxes and borrowed money, not even that much some weeks. No one tells you anything about flipping sleep cycles, DOT inspections, chains etc etc etc. Hitting anything is deemed preventable and newbie is fired. Then they come here to these forums to cry on anyone willing to take em waifs in wondering what happened.

You do not see that silly stuff in really safety sensitive work such as railroad engineers, airline pilots etc. Truckers look like garbage next to these professionals. And who do you blame?

I like to lean on the carrier quite a bit because money starts with them and ends with them. Without money nothing gets moving at all. Money is what moves the United States every day. If money was to vanish, our shelves will be bare. Witness the devaluation of Venezuela and the removal of paper money from india's economy. Devalued so much you need to carry a 300 pound bale of paper money to buy a stamp at our current exchange rates.

I think of one driver going to AK this week, he is fixing to potentially purchase 6 dollar fuel. You cannot make money on that kind of expense unless you make a contract with someone to make enough money so that you can afford 10 dollar fuel worst case scenario. If they ever build that Bering Strait Bridge to Russia, theoratically Tractor Trailer loads from east coast USA to London UK on the ground becomes possible in 3 months one way. Faster than some shipping lines today. But no one is going to do it. Because it will be like a 50,000 dollar haul for one truck one way with nothing coming back to the USA unless you stop by Bejing to pick it up on your way.

 

"The industry does keep a wealth of knowledge secret and you can only learn by doing."

sorry but that makes no sense.

We are not driving trucks with some super secret knowledge but driving them with skills we acquire. The industry can't teach skills without practical knowledge behind the wheel and guidance by a mentor. and when the knowledge is passed along with defects attached to it, it makes things bad for all of us. Having a trainer who is a crap driver to begin with is just making more crap drivers. There is a thread made about how a "student" was told to log illegally, how he wasn't getting the miles and as I assume the trainer was a crap driver only concerned with himself getting by. Why should we tolerate this type of training, maybe we actually do need to worry about not the newbie but the old idiot who hasn't popped up on the radar but drives like an idiot.

 

Ok, Let's say someone wants to learn how to be a O/O and things like rates and such are knowledge not easily shared with anyone who would like to know. That is one example. There is a need for someone to teach a newbie in the cab all the little things that makes trucking go. If the trainer is bad then everything is downhill from there. Eh?

 

My trainer proudly told me he had already made 32K for the year...that was about December 1st
Maybe it's the reason he ate cold Ravioli out of the can regularly? He did get three decent dinners and a new directional lamp on me so benefits are definitely there!