becoming a TE...

How long have you been driving?

 

I think you have to have allot more than one year to be a TE.

 

I had heard after about 9 months they may ask you. When I was with my TE I remember thinking there were 4 or 5 guys in my class that would make that job brutal! I dont think it would be worth it, but Im not much of a people person.

 

You'd be amazed at how little time on the job some companies require before pushing a newbie into a trainer position. That is one of the biggest problems I see with this industry right now, because you simply cannot pass knowledge on to your students which you have not yet acquired for yourself...and a mere couple months on the job isn't nearly enough time to gain a sufficient level of experience to be knowledgeable and competent in the various aspects of the job in order to become effective trainer. You might be able to get that extra pay for having a person with less experience than you ride along for a few weeks and help you put some miles on the odometer....but the level of training a rookie driver will be able to offer to a newbie is quite poor. You just don't know the job well enough to teach the job....but that doesn't seem to matter to a lot of big carriers.

 

The training to become a TE is pretty straight forward but a little time consuming. You'll need to go on check ride and then have an interview with either your DBL's manager or the Regional Manager. Once you pass both you'll spend a week at an OC spending 1/3 of a day in the classroom going over methodology, policies, and procedures. The rest of the time you'll be with an OSR observing them working with first/third week guys.

Pay is $40 a day and $15 a month for each of the first 6 months your trainees are with the company and accident free. You will probably end up running fewer miles as it takes the trainees significantly longer to do things. An hour and a half to do a drop and hook is pretty common, as are 30 minute pretrips.

You'll need to be very patient. You'll have to explain things 3-4 times before they'll stick. Plan on spending :30 to an hour after shutting down every night to go over logs, the next day's trip plan, etc.

1 out of every 3 guys you'll absoultly hate. Maybe they have a lousy personality, or they're lazy, or bad hygiene, or are dumber than a box of rocks. Despite wanting to leave them at the fuel island you'll have to be the bigger person and give them the best training you can. This is probably one of the toughest things about being a TE.

Being a TE isn't really worth the extra $2-4,000 a year unless you enjoy teaching or interacting with others.