My first month with a trainer…

Buy a gps at a loves, they have a better return policy. Your either getting a rand or a garmin. Not much difference, always check your route, both will screw you eventually.

I will give the opposite advice, stay out of truck stops, unless you get there early, until you know how to back. Rest areas, industrial parks with street parking, and rural walmarts are the new drivers friends.

And when you get your own truck, go practice backing during down time. Blind side, parallel, all of it. It'll pay dividends some dark rainy night. GOAL.

 

If YOU are doing the fueling then YOU are getting the fuel points period.
Tell the trainer that's how it works.
If he doesn't agree let him do the work.

 

Buying a cheap GPS now and an expensive GPS later is more expensive than buying the truck-rated GPS now. Rand McNally 5 inch GPS will give you all of the features necessary for semi-truck operations. It mounts in more places inside the truck than the 7 and 10 inch versions. You mostly look at the GPS for long periods when you are trip planning. While driving you take a quick glance for one or two things, but mostly you listen to the spoken instructions from the GPS. Garmin and RM have this feature. If I had a good nationwide cellphone network (Verizon or ATT) then you can use Trucker Path app and perpetually use the 7 day free trial of the Gold version. If you don't sign up for a paid version, or it's free-trial, Trucker Path will give you the Google Maps intended for automobiles. That will eventually get you stuck or ticketed for having a semi-truck on a truck-restricted road or area. If you buy a year-long subscription to the Gold version of Trucker Path I think it costs $120/year. That is about half or one-third of the cost of a new truck specific GPS. As you fuel you will earn reward points at truck stops. If you don't waste those pints on buying bad food and you save those points you can buy a RM or Garmin truck specific GPS for no money. I think RM's 5 inch GPS RM540? is $270-300. I used a 7 inch RM740 for 5 years. The larger size limited where I could mount it. Your first month of two using ANYBODY's GPS will be a learning experience as you adjust to the quirks of ANY GPS and see what mistakes is makes. They all make some mistakes. My RM would very occasionally indicate I would make a left turn to get onto a major interstate, right at the point the large overhead signs clearly showed a right turn was necessary. I think the Garmin truck GPS will occasionally indicate you should get off the major interstate and then get right back on the major interstate to complete your trip. Both of these are easy to live with once you recognize they have that quirk. NO GPS IS PERFECT and my experience, and reading this board suggests new drivers are very likely to follow a GPS off of a cliff instead of look at the route on a paper atlas and always compare wha the GPS suggests with reality. You will fail as a driver if you just do whatever the GPS says you should do. You will never get out of a ticket by saying "but my GPS said to drive through this cemetery."

The industry is desperately short of trainers so any Tom, Dick, or Mary that is willing to let some stranger into their truck and collect extra pay for putting up with a newbie is a trainer now. At a few big fleets the majority of all of their drivers have only 90-180 days experience in a truck. Some companies only require 3-6 months accident free driving to become a trainer. Your job is to learn what you can from the trainer you have and then be careful enough on your own so that you can learn the rest before you get any ticket or have ANY incident or accident. You should drive so that you never get any ticket, never hit anything. New drivers seem to think they can collect tickets and accidents/incidents like some people used to collect trading cards. Assume any ticket or accident means you will be unemployed. It could be the case, depending on the circumstances and the severity f the incident. There are hardly any cost-free "oopsies" in trucking. If a company is hiring/firing thousands of drivers in a year, they are not going to keep you around to see if you stop having tickets or accidents. A some places it is "one and your done."

Since your trainer is checked out and not very good. When you go solo make sure you back into a parking spot ever single time you stop for any reason. Every one of us has a certain number of backing attempts we needed before we knew our stuff. You have your own number. The new drivers now avoid backing up by doing stupid and illegal things instead of backing. All they are doing is making sure that they are incompetent at backing for a longer period of time. Frankly the newbies I just described quit early and often and never become competent at backing. If you suffer a little each day and practice backing you will be good at it sooner and that is one less stress in your trucking day.

Never cross a weigh station with ANYTHING wrong with your truck. If inspected it will be discovered and YOU will be penalized with points on your PSP. Even if there is no fine for that failed item it will stay with you for 3 year or more. If your truck has a fault that is in the FMCSA pre-trip, get it fixed or you could simply make your self only employable at junk companies that don't care about their drivers or their trucks. Only YOU can protect your CDL. Your company may be willing to throw away your CDL to make their lie easier for a moment. Don't let your company thro away your job for their convenience.

Never park at the fuel pumps except to fuel, wash windows, etc. once you fuel, wash windows pull forward. It's the professional way and it lessens your chances of getting a beatdown for being a lazy terd blocking the fuel pumps. Most newbies block fuel pumps like it's normal. It's the least professional thing you can do. Never park on the shoulder of the road unless it's an emergency. A real emergency. If you have ever seen the fatal accident that happens when some truck driver or car driver, looking at their smartphone, hits a parked vehicle on the shoulder you would know how stupid and dangerous parking on the shoulder is. It will kill you or he person that runs into you. HOS problems are not something you cure by parking 4 feet from 70 mph traffic. It is illegal to park on the shoulder for non-emergency reasons. Sleeping is not an emergency. Don't use your phone while driving. In trucking getting caught doing that is illegal and is treated almost as seriously as a DUI. You can be instantly fired and other companies may not hire someone with that ticket. You will be judged by the FMCSA regulations, so be wary of any driver giving your tricks he says will let you "get away" with breaking the Hours of Service. The cops know the common tricks and they know what suspicious signs in your ELD indicate they should look closer and give you a more expensive ticket.

When you fuel some of the truck stop chains require you fill-up with DEF before you fill-up with Diesel. It's not printed on any of the fuel pumps but the pump will only dispense one before the other. Hopefully I don't have that backwards. Either way, if I am corrected, the correct way works at almost every truck stop in the country. You cannot fill DEF and Diesel at the same time, and if you put DEF into the diesel, or vice versa, run off the engine and call your company. It's a simpler and less expensive problem to solve if you don't run the engine with contaminated diesel of DEF. You are not going to drive very far if you mix them so you are going to get discovered either way. Admit the mistake instantly and keep the issue less expensive, it could save your job. Ask your trainer.

Here is how to have unlimited email addresses for the free trial version of TP

 

Me personally, I have always kept a notebook. That way you can write load info down, truck stop locations, good restaurant locations, nice hideouts, etc. I'm not reliant on a GPS. Never bought one. You'll need an atlas because that will be a far better guide than any navigation system.

 

Most of the parking is at truck stops, some at rest areas, so get comfortable parking at truck stops. Once you can back and have confidence in your backing it will be a better place to park. If you want a shower, it is better to get one VERY early in the morning than at evening/dinner time as 90% of those wanting a shower get it then. NEVER LITTER ANYTHING. If you use a P bottle, pour it in the toilet when you get a shower. Don't pour it on the ground, in the grass, or throw the bottle onto the roadside. You don't have to be an animal to drive a truck, that is a choice many lazy drivers make because they like being an animal.

Don't hang out in the middle lane on a 3 lane interstate highway. Stay right except to pass. When you are merging onto the interstate highway, if a truck moves left to give you space to merge, keep your speed down until that courteous truck can pass you and get in the right lane. If you race him and lock him into the middle or left lane, he may very well block you in the right lane as slow merging traffic comes out in front of you. If in doubt be courteous. It's professional and it cuts down on road-rage or someone following you so they can beat your *** for driving like an idiot. Trucking is not an excuse to be filthy, rude, angry, dishonest, profane. You can be as clean and professional as anyone on the planet if you want to clean and professional.

I found several sues for these earplugs in trucking. They definitely help me sleep near loud trucks. Some people might even use them while driving to keep from going deaf if you do this job for years. No comment They are available at Amazon, Walmart and most Kroger/Fred Meyer, Smith's grocery stores. Usually they are near the pharmacy section. https://www.amazon.com/Macks-Slim-Soft-Foam-Earplugs/dp/B005YUW7A2/

Don't eat until you are full. Don't eat the same portion size as you would eat at home. In the truck you will get a lot less exercise. You may become lonely, you will definitely become stressed. It is easy to eat too much to overcome those things. That only hurts you. Adding weight will increase your blood pressure and set you up for diabetes. High BP and/or diabetes are the most common conditions that cause a driver to lose his DOT medical card. Eat just enough to not starve and drink water like it is your key to winning next week's lottery. Fast food is made to be salty and sweet and taste good. It's not made to make you healthy. Unhealthy food is everywhere and cheap. Getting fat or damaging your health doesn't help you or your family.

 

Everyone learns differently so if you learned a lot by watching a video game don't pay attention to these people trying to cut you down by saying that isn't the way to do it. So stuck in their ways are they that some of them are still using a slide rule in lieu of a calculator.

 

Questions:
1. You say your trainers really didn’t teach you much. That means that you were taught. What did they teach you?
2. Your comment about fighting for a parking spot every night makes me think that you don’t know how to maximize your time management. Did you see @Opus comment, and do you understand what he referred to?
3. You are concerned with the size of a GPS. Can you effectively read road signs while driving?
4. You are not impressed with trainers. It sounds as if they were not too impressed with you, as they put forth ZERO effort in teaching you any of the little tricks of the trade. Can you do the job that the company needs you to do?

@gentleroger , any thoughts?

 

As did I. Kept notes on everything. Never knew what a GPS was till I got off the road. I'll second the atlas.

 

I was taught using the Rand McNally Motor Carrier Road Atlas and before cellphones. GPS came into the industry long after I was a working driver. However it is foolish to deliberately avoid a useful tool. Thomas doesn't make something like a Thomas Guide for every city or town. A good truck GPS does have essentially a Thomas guide built into it. Cities and states don't submit their road construction detours years in advance so they can be included in the latest road atlas. Many times the cities don't even have signs beyond saying "road closed" or the signs are quickly stolen once they go up. As someone that has gotten severely lost while following bad directions from a customer I want every tool I can have to prevent a problem. If you have a dedicated run or you operate in a limited region and you have years of driving in that area you probably never will need a GPS. Someone without those years in that area and always going someplace new should use THE RIGHT GPS for their job. That's doesn't mean turning over your CDL to Google Maps. It doesn't mean driving into brick wall at highway speeds because the GPS never said to turn left/right.

 

And some are not bright enough to use a slide rule! If they had to.