My orientation with Schneider

Sorry if some things are vague. I've been exhausted. The heat out here fries your brain.

Day 2: Learned a bit about paper logging. Introduced to the different instructors and split into teams. We jumped right into some driving and were taught how to skip gears. A lot of what Schneider does with shifting is for increased mileage. We skip gears going up and minimize downshifting to 7 and 5 under optimal conditions. What this meant for me was a lot of confusion and relearning but regardless of how you feel about their methods, it did finally force me to rely on and learn road speeds for gears instead of "going through the motions" while simply staring at the RPM gauge. More paper logging talk after that, some power points (don't even remember what they were about) and then some stuff on the laptops where we had to agree to a bunch of legal jargon crap and we were assigned driver numbers today. Some bobtail driving after that. Finished logs.

Day 3: From here we log everything. We met with the "Regional Student Driver Rep" and gave her our receipts for reimbursements. Talked a bit about week 2 training, fuel cards and whatnot. We set up direct deposits (account number and transit/routing number is all you need because it's done electronically, no voided check necessary). After that was some unmonitored pretrip stuff, driving and backing. At this point I've driven about two hours total and backed twice, and only one other person is in my team, so yeah. Our instructor doesn't seem to care as much as the other instructors and he doesn't really go into depth about anything, but that might be because our group isn't having any big issues. He's definitely effective and helpful but I do get a strong "retiring soon, don't really want to be here anymore" vibe. Things move slow and are surprisingly unorganized at times, but this OC is brand new so I'm guessing they haven't got their routine set yet. Don't get me wrong though, overall it's a great experience.

Tomorrow is supposed to be an open book test (all tests are open book) and maybe some simulator fun. We've lost 5-6 people at this point for various reasons.

 

Nope, her name is Rebeca Bernal.

 

Day 4: I forgot to take notes today so I can't remember too many specifics. We found out who our week 2 trainers would be and weather or not you'll be traveling to meet them. Some students are getting put on a plane or getting rental cars, others are getting picked up locally. Students going with a trainer driving an automatic did all their driving in an automatic today. Students going with a trainer driving a non-Freightliner tractor had to watch a short video (presumably of the differences they should expect). Today was a stealth test day (the instructors were very bad at hiding it) on driving, the idea is for you to not feel pressured by the T word which I think is something they try to do throughout orientation at various points. It's not very strict -- if my horrible driving today is any indication, just don't hit anything or anybody or cause a serious road hazard. Everybody remaining passed.