Team training fears

Even though you are both on the truck, you won't be in the trainer's presence 24/7. If its really teaming, one will be driving while the other can stay in the bunk with curtains closed.

 

I think it would be, average, longer than 4 weeks. It varies quite a bit depending on what path you choose.

Time flys when you are busy. what is next?

 

You could do what I did. Get your license. Go to work for a company. No training in driving. All they did was try to get me to screw up. They tried pretty hard too. I think they called it: We tested him and he’s a good driver.

 

Yeah your fears are actually well founded and justified i'm a little that way with sharing space with someone you don't know and you pretty well have to do things the way they want you to do them as well, thank goodness i only had to go out for about a week. Basically you'll have to to suddenly develop the skills of long suffering, and patience also speak to the people that have organised your training about your concerns hopefully their decent human beings and have some empathy also be up front with your trainer if you say things in a tactful honest way they may very well understand your situation, anyway dude happy trails .

 

Your worry is normal. Many of us that like this job consider the short period we spent with a trainer to be when we learned the most and also the hardest part of our career.

Chances are most of the time with two of you in the truck your trainer will be in the sleeper. You'll get to make small decisions on your own but your trainer is available if you are not sure. The first couple of days he may be awake when you are awake until you both get comfortable with you doing the easy stuff,like going down the interstate for many miles without stopping for fuel or navigating interchanges.

Just get through the training period, then get through the hardest part typically the first week, then month, then season. The days will quickly get easier, as you make the same smaller decisions over and over and then face the less frequent decisions, like decisions about weather, and getting maintenance done or waiting. It quickly gets better after you get your own truck. The thing I noticed about trucking is unlike most part-time and just out of high school jobs at ton of things are left up to you or you only learn to consider when you are faced with them. The company tells you to go from A to B at certain times, probably which route and where to fuel, but then you get to customer and they ask you questions like "pick up number" or "how many pallets of X can they load" and nobody bothered to tell you those answers. As you have those situations you learn to ask your company when they dispatch you. Just do the next thing as best and safely as you can. You can do it, and be willing to learn. People will tell you stuff only an idiot wouldn't already know. That's because they have worked with idiots, not because you are an idiot. Then you will start to meet the idiots that didn't know parking sideways across a driveway was a dumb idea. The hardest part of the job is being on your own. If you're an introvert you are way ahead of the game. It's not rocket science, it's a few things over and over in different places. Get through the hard part right up front, it's mostly attitude and willingness to learn.

 

And there you have it, my friends.

 

Dont skip the training, you need it whether you realize it or not. I had a great trainer who I still call from time to time.
No way you can learn all the ins and outside in 2 weeks. You'll learn as much from picking his/her brain as you will behind the wheel.

 

I had one trainer who understood me very well. I got to visit with him briefly in harrisburg years after and was able to show him a clean working truck, minus a paper reciept and a couple of other small items that escaped the storage on a bad bridge. (He had a thing for clean cabs.. that helped me alot)

One time when putting the mirrior back up after bending it on the breezewood toll gate he says You got the big stuff. No problem. It's the devil in the small stuff that will get you.

Little did he know thats the story of my life. Little devils chipping away at what I don't know or see coming. =)

 

I Soo Lucked out getting injured and being Let Go right before I was supposed to go out over the road with a trainer .i had just acquired my CDL with the mega I signed my life away with.

After being bed ridden for 2 months I started looking at craigslist ads.

1 st milk hauler I called pretty much hired me over the phone even after me telling him I had no experience, but I had to say no because I no place to park the truck at home .

I applied at another out fit the next day and they interviewed me for an hour and took me out for a 1 hour test drive.

Tester told them I was good to go and I was hauling milk the next day locally. .

Week later they had me shadowing another driver on some 900 mile runs.
My 60 inch sleeper is crowded with just me. Can't imagine sharing it wth a stranger or a pet.

Or sleeping with some body driving that who knows what about them.

 

My first team was different than most. We had a GM account to feed auto glass for astro van assembly in Batlimore downtown. Guess where that glass came from? Lexington KY several times a week with a curtain side step deck.

Boss man came out and said hey kid get in here. You drive with this man, his wife breaks a bone so shes out a couple of months. No more seacans to philly but I'll roast you if you screw this account up.

My first night was mountain winter 101 in west virginia in two feet of powder then valley ice and rain back up for another taste of powder until over the divide and eating the wet snow deep on the west facing.

When that trainer was through with me I was a pretty successful mountain driver. No more of that philly crap. He did tell me one thing. Watch that food bill. Turns out the more work I put in, the more food. =)