Rates are crashing and fuel to the moon!

Oh HELL YEAH!

I'd also like to arrest and prosecute CDL examiners who pass drivers that can't pass Schneider's orientation. All it is is an easy version of the CDL test, yet guys can't pass it on Day 1.

Or at the very least, let Schneider (or whomever) revoke their CDL if they fail orientation.

 

For a guy that’s all for it you sure do like to split hairs. Stopping it from being an oos is essentially stopping enforcement. And as far as cvsa it’s compromised of enforcement agencies who’s headed up by appointed officials. And those appointed bureaucrats get their marching orders from the ones that appointed them. That’s why it’s a memorandum and not an EO. Memorandum= Obama told me to make it happen closed door. EO= Trump said make it happen publicly

 

Let’s also be clear cvsa is Canada, us, Mexico. And this oos rule is only an American issue.

 

It was amazing to me......I went to Schneider orientation where everyone "presumably" had passed the state CDL test who had no idea whatsoever how to drive a truck. It was just friggin amazing. I mean they were bad, I mean really bad.
I'll bet @gentleroger has seen his share of WTF???

 

And that’s just Schneider. Take swift, prime, trans am and a 100 other companies

 

There's a big difference between an agency saying "this is what we think we should do" and an executive telling an agency "this is what I want you to do". If you and I could go spelunking through all the memos and meeting notes at the time, I'd bet you a Kringle to a raisin that the main driver was 'industry representatives', supported by government officials who owed their jobs to 'industry'. People like Chris Lofgren who tried to create a pipeline of South African drivers using student visas.

I also really don't oppose the current EO. I just don't think it's going to do diddly about squat. Trump can issue the EO, get a boost from his base while not actually changing things. Just like ELDT - it didn't do anything to increase the competency of new drivers, but it did create a money barrier to entry.

I didn't see a big increase in the number of trainees who struggled with English after 2016. The biggest decrease in ESL issues I had as a trainer happened in 2019 because Schneider changed their training curriculum. Instead of 1 week at an OC, 1 week with a trainer, then 1 week back at the OC for 'soft skills', it changed to 2 weeks at the OC, then 1 week with a TE for 'finishing'. Part of it was making the 'Training Group' sign off on a person's ability to have basic understanding of the dispatch software dropped the pass rate dramatically. The larger part was a CBT on FMCSA rules given on day 1. It is mind numbingly easy to pass for any literate individual but is extremely challenging for anyone who has marginal English skills. It was designed to be an English comprehension test under the guise of a FMCSA rules test.

 

It’s not the mega carriers that are employing the drivers in question. Not saying that the drivers that mega carriers are employing is a better class. But specifically talking about drivers that don’t speak English. Those are your Chicago and Michigan outfits. Setup by people from their home country and brought over and thrown in a truck to churn out miles on bottom barrel spot market freight. It’s about cheap labor for cheap freight.

 

Just depends where they start enforcing it at... if california takes hold of it. Half the trucking population in the state will be out of work and the ports will be filled up again with haji's hitching a ride back to Pakistan in the containers they came in on.

 

The problem is guys are taught to pass the test, not to drive.

To be fully honest, I fall into that category. I went to FVTC which has a 10 week curriculum. 3 weeks in Phase 1 which is mainly pre-triping and driving around the Keller with your co-student (a mile loop where you can practice shifting) with ocassional drives on the road with an instructor, then 3 weeks in Phase 2 which is mainly CDL prep with most people passing in week 5. Then 3 weeks of 'finishing' where you move from day cabs and 48 foot trailers to sleepers/53 footers and get taught button hooks. You also get to drive super tens, 13 speeds, tankers, and doubles until you get 1000 miles behind the wheel and can ally dock, parallel park, and blind side. Week 10 is the skid pad, sliding tandems, and trip planning. They also did an 'unscheduled' CDL test with a sleeper and a 53 foot trailer. On my actual CDL test I scored 4. On the week 10 one I scored 20 - still a pass, but WTF - I could still drive circles around the rest of my class. I thought I knew what I was doing.

I went to Schneider, passed the first week with no issues. It was straight 10s with a 48 foot trailer. Me and Hillbilly were the Stars of the County Down. Then I spectacularly failed with my TE. I was used to going gear by gear, he wanted me skip shifting/bump and running. I was used to set up "X Y Z" then back " 1 2 3" - no regards to space available or tandem setting. More importantly, I was used to being able to abort out of a back and try again - can't do that on a dead end. Most importantly I was used to avoiding pull ups, which screwed up my backing for the first 6 months.

I think the only reason I passed training is I popped the brakes and MF'd my TE for confusing the poop out of me pulling into a customer. I had wanted to stop in Sheboygan, but compromised to getting to GB so he could go home for the night, but then he wanted to deliver the load that night. He lit me up a little about 'missing the turn' when I'd been aiming at the yard, then started saying "swing wide" as I initiated the turn, which I interpreted as I was turning too much, too soon. What he meant was I hadn't cut in hard enough to clear the guard shack. Then I double MF'd him when he told me I had nothing to GOAL over when I was completely lost after setting up, then I triple MF'd him when filling out my log at the end of the day.

Jerry wasn't a bad trainer. I was a bad student. I thought I knew more than I did. I didn't make my needs aware to him until it was an issue. I came out of one of the best CDL programs in the country, with a lot of experience planning trips and I was a barely functional driver who got almost all the way through his first year without an incident due to luck more than skill.

What we need is a more holistic approach to training. If a person has a CDL, then a company should be able to toss him the keys and say "git r don". Other than training on company policies and software, the driver should be ready to go. But they're not because they trained in day cabs with 48 foot trailers and haven't ever kept a log book. They don't know how to read a map or what time zones are, heck most of them don't know what a BOL is.

Folks can tell me than ESL drivers are the problem, but they're not. It's the standards we set for CDL drivers. Standards that Trump V1 put into place. To claim that this EO is going to do anything to over come the "have money then the doors are open" policy that ELDT created is disingenuous.

 

You're assuming that

A) local enforcement is going to inspect those drivers
B) local enforcement is going to be stringent in their English language proficiency checks.
C) drivers are going to fail
​

Less than 10% of CDL holders are inspected each year. If it's true that 10% of CDL holders can't pass an English proficiency check (it's not), then there is less than a 1% chance that this results in an OOS under normal enforcement practices.