My Journey With Schneider

I'll add in more details later, I put this on a couple forums and missed this one. Days 2-3 were a lot of classroom instructions and map readings. On days 4-5 we did half a day of computer based training and half a day in the yard going over our pre trip and driving around Gary. They let us go home over the weekend so I went back home. Drove back on Monday around 4 am to make it back to class on time. Our second week for days 6-9 was a split up exactly the same as 4-5. Half the time driving around gary and yard, with a little bit of yard work. They did exactly what some posters here said they would and tested me on Monday without me knowing. I was asking on Thursday what was gonna be on the exam and they looked at me weird like "dude...you passed on Monday " which was just driving around town and backing exercises in the yard . We had a guy leave who couldn't handle doing the CBTs so we were down to 3. Honestly I wish we could have done more backing because it was only 3-4 times and then we switched drivers and then went inside.

On day 10 they just had us come in to talk to us about our driving engineer and give us their info and to expect a call from them around Saturday or Sunday evening. Told us to bring a couple of supplies and a sleeping bag unless we wanted to sleep on a mattress that dozens of people slept in. I went home again and got a call from my TE, told me to meet him on Monday.

Monday came along and I waited at the terminal for him, guy was a million miler and had a dedicated account driving around a 4 state area. First 2-3 days were me driving 70-80 percent and him taking the last few hours and then eventually me driving 100% of the time the 4th day. I'll be honest I was NOT ready for going from 1-2 hours of city driving at 20-30 mph to full on 63 mph and running my 11 hour clock down to the minute. We would start at 2pm and end at 3 in there morning or so. First 2 days we had pouring rain come down and I couldn't see a thing, we were passing cars and trucks with there 4ways on and he didn't let me slow down cause he wanted to be ahead of the appointment time so I was white knuckle gripping the steering wheel scared out of my mind. Eventually it tapered off but night driving was a whole other scary experience. I started having 2nd thoughts. I got yelled at a lot for the first couple days because "this #### they teach you in the yard is just for that, the YARD, not the REAL world, you students always come in with your ######## setups that DON'T WORK" when I had to back with the tandems all the way back. Which I mean, it's all I knew... Aaaand well this was when I realized I wasn't ready to go out by myself in 3 days time, nor was I confident enough. We arrived at the terminal at 2am and he just told me to do my post trip and he would see me tomorrow around noon.

So I waited till he left and packed my stuff and left. Returned everything they gave me, sent my recruiter an email saying it wasn't working out and headed home. Should I have called and asked for a new TE? Probably. Should I have give up? Probably not. But well I came home and got my doubles / tanker/ hazmat endorsement and am now with another company that does no team driving while training as well, just for 5 weeks instead. I'm more relaxed and my instructors way of teaching is much less stress inducing than at Schneider and I mesh more with him. He's letting me do everything and in 2 weeks time I should be testing out and going solo. My problem was with me and my trainer, if you are confident in yourself and aren't a little wimp like me you'll do fine at Schneider. I just needed a longer teaching period, I don't like doing things without being dang near 100% sure I won't ## it up.