Started PTEC in St. Petersburg, FL

On our last day (Monday) we got to wash a couple of the trucks and trailers and put some air in some trailer tires before the compressor quit on us. While watching us wash the trucks one of the new students asked what did we do to deserve to have to wash the trucks, were we late? I said with a big grin on my face 'no, we're graduating!'

Laura put together a portfolio together for us which was great. It has our driving record, DOT physical long form, final grades etc. Stuff to show to potential employers.

Now we are just going through the hiring process with Schneider. I think they will be a good fit for us, they have that smaller company feel to them and they are big on safety. I haven't been able to find anything bad about them on the internet, all their drivers seem to be really happy with them.

 

cake??? NO, we didn't get cake! I feel cheated! lol.

Hubby and I went to Sarasota yesterday to take drug tests (urine and hair) and DOT physicals for Schneider, and we have a date set for orientation - Oct. 29th in Charlotte, NC. Now we just need to figure out if we want to take a greyhound or rent a car, and get things ready to be gone for a month and a half! Oh and buy our GPS woot!!

 

Thanks vmaggs I enjoyed following you through your training also! Maybe one day we will meet out there on the road!

 

Hey everyone, sorry I'm kinda late on this. Hubby and I just finished day 2 of orientation at Schneider National. It took us a while because we waited until the last minute to apply with Schneider. Lesson learned: don't wait until the last minute! Hopefully we will remember all of our skills and driving stuff once they put us in a truck lol.

Well let me tell you something, school was a breeze compared to what we are having to do here in Schneider. The week started yesterday, which was Saturday, and runs until Friday. The shuttle picks us up at 6:15 am, we get breakfast at the OC (they have a cafeteria), then class is from 7 am until around 6 pm (they feed us lunch too, woot!) and then we get sent back to the hotel with a homework assignment. Last nights homework assignment took hubby and me until 9:30 pm and we still weren't 100% done! Tonights homework assignment we did as a group in the conference room and we were done by 8:30 pm. It's tough stuff! What they teach in class just touches the surface of what you REALLY need to know. But I'm glad I did learn what I did in the school because it has helped.

We haven't touched a truck yet, so far we have gone over stuff like map reading, trip planning, permits, macros 18... only a few hours spent on paperwork stuff. Oh and today we did a physical test, we did all sorts of stuff like a step test, carrying a box (kind of like a milk carton) across the room a few times, a squat test, a crawl up on the trailer and back down test, a pull test and a few others... and then they checked our heart rate after each exercise, oh and they also checked our blood pressure in the beginning. I know one guy from our class failed the test, but he was extremely overweight (pretty much morbidly obese) and he had said he had blood pressure problems.

Anyway, I should probably be writing this in a new thread over in Schneiders board, but I just wanted to update you all on where we went. I'll come back to let you all know if we passed or not.

Sequoia: we took a rental car, and it only cost us $186 for the one way from Ft Myers to Charlotte, it was well worth the money to not take that greyhound for sure!

 

I uploaded all the pics I took in school to flickr, in case anyone is interested in taking a peek.. I think they are in opposite order of when I took them, and they don't have captions yet because I haven't had time to type them in... Jim I have one of that car hauler that got close to you going up the bridge!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/52672259@N00/

 

Yes we were surprised too. But we were told well in advance. They book the room for us for Friday afternoon.

After lunch today we met our trainers (1 trainer to 2 students) and they went over pre-trip and how Schneider wants us to couple the trailers. They are very strict on their coupling procedures, and let us know up front that if we EVER drop a trailer we are toast. The pretty much say, don't be a dumba** do it right every time and you won't ever drop that trailer. One of the many reasons why I am really liking this company. They also taught us the way they want us to shift, and do turns. Then after the trainer drove us around to show us what he wants us to do I got to drive. After just 5 minutes he said "you're ready to go with the TE" WOO HOO thank you Al and Laura!!!!!

(TE is training engineer)

Manuel gets to drive first thing in the morning.

Ok I gotta go do some homework now so I can go to bed early, I'm pooped! Sarah was right, this really is like boot camp!!