Orientation 02/29/12

I am monitoring this thread on the progression since this is one of the few prospective company s hiring students out of De.

Good luck, please update frequently.

 

Within walking distance of the hotel there's an Arby's, McD's, a sub place (USA uses that as your dinner usually), BWW's, Cici's, and a few others infront of the plaza by the hotel. Also there are two movie theaters and I believe there is also a game center somewhere as well.

Those bus rides suck... Took 24 hours to go from VanBuren to Spartanburg. I don't think I got any sleep either.

The hotel they use at Vandalia is one of the better regular hotels they use. Comparing this to Van Buren (which isn't too bad) and West Memphis (rather not stay there unless I have to, but its 'ok').

 

Also unless they have changed this, the hotel will take you to some of the nicer places on the north side of I 70. There is a fantastic place there, I forgot the name our last night in the hotel we all got a food voucher from USA Truck to eat there. The hotel van dropped us off and later came back to get us.

 

Sorry I missed you guys. I had to rollout at 7 to make sure I got to Richmond, VA in time to get a parking spot for the night. Maybe next time.

 

They must have changed it around. When I went through it was 170 hours total before upgrade eligibility with the first 40 or 50 being right seat training and the remainder being team ops. Nobody in my class had separate trainers, everybody stayed with the same trainer through both phases. I had heard that they had changed the program though where it had gone to 10-14 days with right seat trainer before team phase and the total hours being bumped up over 200 for upgrade. I don't know the specifics though. Seems the company realized that it takes more than 3.5 weeks for the average student to become competent behind the wheel out solo before upgrading. I understand that more than a few trainers quit or went back to solo driving over this. It just reinforces my point that a good trainer is one who is in it to pass on valuable skills to a student out of a genuine desire to produce safe and effective drivers. They earn the extra pay as a reward for their extra work and sacrifice.

 

The way I heard it was USA had rather keep a student with one trainer all the way to upgrade. But enough of the trainers balked at running teams because they refused to be in the sleeper with a student driving, that they changed it to allow a mix of one trainer or trainers doing only phase one and only phase two. I know I could never rest easy with a student driving especially in the winter. My information is very second handed scuttlebutt from talking to drivers, nothing official.

 

I know many of the phase two trainers work dedicated out of Georgetown Ky doing material runs all over the country, or at least they did. Most worked their students out of the Microtel hotel there. If students are sleeping in the terminals USA must have stopped using this hotel.