Companies with shortest training period?

Depends on what stresses you out. Don't lump too many people in a single group.

On the other hand, trucking can be a VERY stressful job.

I started a thread a few weeks back about a moderately bad week I was having, and that week got much worse before it was done.

In 2 years and two months since I started driving, in my first week with a trainer, I nearly hit a pitbull in the middle of a freeway. I have also had a deer run across the road in front of me, so close I could not see it's legs, a few weeks back, I had an owl smash itself directly into the middle of my windshields like a bomb out of nowhere, breaking both of them.

I had a hit and run driver sideswipe my truck in San Antonio.

I experienced an incredibly fast road condition shift from road slush and snow to freezing rain and black ice, and #### near got blown off the road. I traveled at least a two hundred yards while the truck was barely under any control at all, trying to keep the steers lined up with my direction of motion until they found traction.

I fell on ice in a Loves in South Texas near Houston, and broke my glasses, sprained my wrist, and gave myself a two inch cut over my left eye. The resulting black eye lasted two weeks and swelled so bad the day after that I could not open the eye. For a week, I had a black eye so dark that it looked like something out of a Popeye cartoon.

I've watched Hispanic shippers, receivers, and drivers work together to skip over non-hispanic in Laredo, TX, while pretending that I did not understand them.

I have bent trailer mud flaps with rope and a load lock. I have used rope to keep an APU muffler from falling off. I have used baling wire to hold my trailer doors super-tight against the trailer side in docks so tight that I would have ripped the doors off the trailer if I hadn't.

I've run into CA with a load of rice that was 79980 lbs, and 33990 on the tamdems, but two holes past 41'.

I've had shippers and receivers take my paperwork and lose it.

I've gotten sick on the road, and dealt with it.

I've swapped day-to-night sleep schedules several days in a row so many times I can't count.

Thankfully though, nothing serious has happened.

That's the critical part. All that #### that happened to me? I never let it bother me. I learn from it and move on. Water off this duck's back.

All kinds of weird #### will happen to you on the road. If you cannot adapt and overcome, this job will break you.

 

Cutting corners on time being trained will bite you in the arse. Trust me on this. Do not cheap out. What you don't yet know from a good trainer will hurt you in a short time.

 

Can I find a trainer who will let me walk his dog?

 

You hear a lot of horror stories about trainers, but how interesting would a story about a decent trainer be?

Bad news moves quickly, and we tend to pay more attention to it.

That said, there are bad trainers out there. If you are really concerned about it, pack really light, make sure that you keep your gear ready to get off the truck on a moment's notice, and be sure to consult with whoever your contact back at the company is before you jump off the truck, if your trainer is a poor one. If you jump truck without letting anyone back at HQ know, things might get ugly.

One more thing. Don't object to that trainer making you do most of the work, if they do so, because when you go solo, you will be doing ALL of the work. In fact, if you aren't basically running that truck solo by the time you finish training, that trainer is doing it wrong.

The trainer might make you use old-school tools, like atlasses, maps and paperback books with truck stop listings. You need something to fall back on when, not if, your electronics go balls-up.

 

If you can't handle the stress of having a trained driver helping you avoid making mistakes in your first 3-4 months of trucking, you'll have an impossible time handling the stress of getting out on your own.

 

Watkins Shepard that's now owned by Schneider has/had the 10 day training period.
TransAm has 11 day training period.

 

You need a person to show you how to do the job correctly. That’s the trainer. The CDL school cannot teach you how to be a driver for your new company. So knowing this, you will just have to keep your anxiety in check.

I ended up enjoying my trainer. He was chill.

 

You’re going to want the training in the end. The backing you learn in school will give you zero help in the real world.

 

Whoah... you have to learn how to use atlases?