Option for team driving training instead of academy for new drivers with permit?

You shouldn’t be running in a team truck with a new cdl, and #### sure not without a cdl at all. #### that. Sorry, but no. You shouldn’t be running with a trainer that has less than 5 years experience. In my 20 months, I have come a very long way. I have hauled pretty much everything except really huge permit loads. I drive better than probably most people with twice my experience. And I should be allowed to train. Give advice? Absolutely! I know more than a person who knows absolutely nothing. Help spot someone into a tight hold at a truck stop? Definitely! Glad to help in any way I can. Give directions from anywhere to anywhere? No question, that I can do.

Still doesn’t mean that I’m qualified to train. And if you go with a trainer who is leased to a Carrier, rather than a company driver, you’ll be nothing but a check to them. Hell, I’d recommend someone running under their own authority and their own insurance train you but that’s not a thing one can do anymore. But when it’s their millions of dollars potential liability, you can bet your ### you’ll be trained properly. When it’s a mega carrier, they can just write off the damage.

Anyway... cdl school is a right of passage now. Do it and keep in contact with the people in your class. I have lifelong friends that I made in cdl school and most of them are still trucking. A couple still with the same company lol.

 

The cdl school I went to said that most insurance companies require 120 to 160 hours in training before they'll insure you. School provides that. It's not a legal requirement, it's an insurance thing.

 

Isn't this basically how Prime does it? You are not teaming until you actually get your full license but otherwise it is basically this from what I understand. I have not ever worked for Prime so I could be wrong.

 

At Prime you first do the PSD training which is a couple of weeks doing the class and yard work like you would do at a CDL school. Then you do TNT training where you and a trainer are in the truck, on the road, learning the real world elements of trucking.

 

The problem with skipping the CDL school and jumping right to the teaming is that you get very little practice at the backing and a little training at going around corners on roads. Those tasks are fundamental and you need to spend hours doing both of them, not just doing them infrequently as the job requires. Think of a pilot that never practices takeoffs and landings except on flights with passengers. He'll be incompetent at the landings for years.

For various reasons you need some sort of CDL training program.

 

I have completed school but haven’t passed the road test. I’ve been driving over the road with an O/O how does the hours of drive time work does the trainer and I share the 14hrs must we be off duty at the same time or are my hours of drive time my own