Insane trainer at Pride

Welcome to OTR trucking. The problem is trainers aren't picked because of their ability to train. They are picked because they are either hard runners or yes men who never complain. I've also worked in the transit industry and can tell you that a driver spends about 160 hours driving a bus in a variety of environments with several different trainers before they even take their drive test with the DMV. I think we need to start funneling some of the money away from collegiate education(which lately seems to only qualify you to be a barista at Star bucks) and to public vocational education. The government money now paid as grants to training companies would probably be better put to use in that way too.

Just to head this off at the pass. This was a private non-union for profit contractor. Not a municipal transit.

 

You couldn't record a video of him?

 

Review it and show them whatever is worth showing.

 

Email Jay England, he will email you back.

 

Post it on here PLEASE!!!!

 

^What he said!

 

Glad to see it's not just me got a bad draw on a trainer, Cavril. I got 2 weeks with mine, but, it was in a slow period and we missed 4 days altogether, and several half days where we didn't get a second order, (regional driver). All told, about one weeks worth of driving, then I was to shadow him for a week. The experience fell somewhere short of awful! I was shown very little; when the situation called for backing up, (Super-B), he'd take the wheel saying that I'd take to long & just Freddie, Uncle Charlie, Kate it up. My protests to this, and almost every other question/situation I raised were responded to by the simple statement, "Some things you gotta learn the hard way"!

We almost came to blows over driving in freeway/city traffic; he was the most aggressive driver I've seen, and insisted that I tail gate and keep so close to the next vehicle that nothing else could cut in. In either seat he was in a constant state of road rage. I finally told him that I wasn't judging how he chose to drive, but I certainly wasn't going to drive in any similar fashion. This sort of put a chill on any sense of professional comraderie we might have developed.

The chilliest moment was when we were delivering a load and were told that there'd be a three hr. wait to u/l. He told me to head downtown as he had errands to pursue. I told him that if he wanted to go down town, he could take the driver's seat as I had no reason to go there. He got in a huff, but took the wheel and headed up a busy avenue. He decided to park in a small lot behind a hotel; this called for a sharp left turn, followed immediately by a narrow right turn, cut three feet into an embankment. Well, there was too much speed, and not nearly enough room! The driver's side steer and drives went up over the embankment, followed by two fully loaded bins. When stopped there was a continuous sound of escaping air; driver thought he'd got a flat. No. Broke the drain #### off the wet tank.

He then looked at me and said, "You can explain this easily; you noticed that you were losing air and had to come off the highway to find a safe place to park." I looked at the ruts up the embankment and over the concrete parking barrier, and said, "No, I don't think I'll be explaining this; I wasn't driving!" Maintenance arrived and quickly remedied the situation. I never heard of any explanation being called for, nor heard of any recriminations.

I told him I wanted to shadow some other driver, as I'd never keep up to him and couldn't see any satisfactory outcome to our Trainer/Trainee time together. He almost cried as he apologized for being such an ####### in our time together. He said that he'd change and make sure we were together in shadowing. I gave it a try, and it worked ...for one delivery. the second one he offloaded, then, instead of waiting for me to offload, said, "You know where we're going next, when you're done head out and watch for me at TS's along the route. After that I went to my safety officer and requested another trainer; all I said was I felt that my training time was being wasted as we didn't have similar driving styles. Got a new trainer for one day, (supposed to be longer, but things got in the way), a great guy who showed me more in one day of shadowing than I'd learned in the previous two weeks!

I'm solo now, and it's much easier to breathe in my cab.