Mentor has TWIC card and I do not.

^^^^ THIS!

I speak as a mentor. Some mentors are on dedicated accounts or do port work, while others are OTR. IMHO if you want to get through your training as quickly as possible it is far better to get with a mentor that is OTR or that is on a dedicated account that runs a lot of miles. Port work doesn't strike me as one of those gigs that has a lot of miles in it.

When I mentioned to the driver development manager that my last trainee was taking a loooonnnngggg time to finish training on my truck, she pointed out that she was working on transferring a trainee that had only 85 hours behind the wheel after a month. The reason why so little driving? Because the mentor was on a dedicated account running locally that was mostly delivery work, I think it might have been the Dollar Tree account.

During the busy season running OTR most of my trainees were done with 200 hours in about 23-28 days. Think about it, if you are motivated to DRIVE and have the opportunity to get behind the wheel in the middle of a 2800 mile run and crank out 600+ miles for your shift you are going to book 10+ hours of work. Compare that to working on DT, where you could work out your 14 hour clock and then have to log off duty or sleeper berth for 10 hours... but only have 2-4 hours of actual drive time. The rest of the day was On Duty on deliveries.

I'd definitely go with an OTR trainer if you can and if you want to run OTR yourself. Port to port won't get you experience in the mountains or learning the quirks of delivering in the East.

 

I was a mentor on the port fleet at swift. They have a run that goes from san diego to Georgia and from san diego to new Jersey. You go loaded and come back with just a bare chassis.They have miles if you are willing to run team and keep up with the dm.

 

mentor i had was on port acct. long beach to houston. was only with a mentor for the 50 hr training and ran i-10. i didnt have a twic card, so he drop me off at a terminal or truckstop before he went into the port. not sure what route you be running in, but you should be able to get the hours or miles in. if you dont feel like you are getting the right training, request another mentor

 

With the wait time for mentors being sort of bad right now, I recommend that you at least give it a chance right now. At least it gets you started. You'll be able to tell pretty quickly if
1. He is a mentor worth keeping personality wise, and
2. You'll get the training you are looking for.

 

I wasn't aware that Swift had long haul port fleets. If that's the case, then that might be good for training. The only issue is that the pickups and deliveries that are crucial for training may be lacking. However, a creative mentor can find ways to drill those skills for a willing trainee.

 

Consider this fact : whatever your mentor does when you solo out you will be Fleet 05 , 48 state OTR . If you go with your port to port mentor , regardless the miles , you will be overwelmed and probably have an impossibly hard time succeeding . With all due and huge respect to Lepton , there simply won't be time for your mentor to be creative with your training. As InKeeper mentioned Swift is in a bind for mentors and there could be a significant delay if you don't go with your can cowboy mentor . As painful as it is to hear I would recommend waiting for a mentor who is OTR .

While I understand the need for drivers willing to mentor versus the number of new drivers , I believe Swift is doing our new rookie drivers a disservice by using anyone except OTR drivers as mentors . I also believe any non OTR mentor is the worst mentor possible ; the ones in it only for the money .
Frank

 

Lepton , this one seems to have the right attitude . Maybe you should train one more possibly great driver before you move on . There was a bit of hesitancy mixed with an obvious pressure situation with your bro. Maybe 200 hours btw would give you the thinking time .

I think I'd be a good mentor except for the fact I don't really like being around people in general and in my truck in particular .
Frank

 

That said as you all know freight everywhere is short because NOTHING is moving at any west coast port. He maybe doing any work to get a paycheck in and his trainee might get some OTR experience. That said because of the hold up we all know your lucky to get anything right now. He might have a chance. That said waiting in a gaurd shack for who knows how long if and when this guy gets a port load is different then loading and unloading at Amazon, Target, Hormel, Clear water paper or the plethora of OTR experiences.