got my pre hire

It was a long time ago, but I had a REALLY bad trainer my first time out with Werner. The same can be said at almost any of them. My second trainer at Werner was almost better, but I was basically the second driver, and we once drove a set of bad front wheel bearings until the wheel almost fell off. The shop said it would have been a miracle if we'd made another mile. We'd driven over 200 with it wobbling, while the trainer slept in the back and ignored me until I pulled over and yelled at him to wake up and pay attention. He said to keep going, and when I refused, he drove it, very pissed off at me. I was right. We were very lucky we didn't have to crawl out of the front window in the Everglades a hundred miles from anywhere. I got very little training and was sadly unprepared when I went solo, but I made it.

All of the companies that hire rookies can either put you with a bad, so-so, or good trainer. You can (most of the time) have something to say about that, but you as a rookie, probably don't have much of a clue whether you're being trained well or not, unless the guy is seriously an idiot. I'm not going to badmouth Werner, (just those TWO trainers) but there are a lot of companies that will train you out of school.

My advice, such that it is, is to do a lot of research on here with ANY or all training companies, (like do a search on training) and look long and hard at how long the time with a trainer/mentor is, what you'll get paid, and how they will train you.

Some will train you for a very short, make or break time period, and some will leave you out there driving team with a "trainer" for as long as they think you can stand it, or they can get away with it. There are several that will do you right as a trainee, and several that will do you wrong. Get smart about this fast. There's a site about trucking truth (figure out the google search for it.) that will tell you some stuff about several of them, and it's worth at least reading that.

I wouldn't say you picked the two best, or the two worst at this point.

Did you have a look at this? http://www.thetruckersreport.com/jobs4newtruckers/ Do. About half way down, you'll see a list of some of the companies that would possibly hire you. Look at their hiring locations. Go to their web sites. Look at the site I told you about, and research each of them here. You will find more bad reports on most of them than good ones. Some people like to whine, and some have legitimate greivances. What, you thought it would be as easy as asking a bunch of truckers in a single forum post? HA! LOL Good luck.