Starting Orientation for USA on Monday

these are all questions that should of been asked before you had a date to start i dont work there so i cant help you.

 

thats how my company does it 2-6 weeks training

 

You have to drive so many hours in each phase of training. I think it's 175 hours. When done they route you back to Van Buren. Newbies get the older trucks right out of upgrade. After that it's luck which truck you get. If your truck breaks down, you'll get the one that closest to your position on the map. As far as the so called FM's are concerned. You'll find out for yourself. Each one is a little different but trained the same.

 

If this is true for new hires right out of school it is a major change! Last I heard you were required to have 175 line 3 hours to upgrade.

 

It doesn't matter if you we're born with a gear stick in your hand, you are still going to do the min number of hours. And your truck will be whatever truck is near you and available from your assigned fleet

 

I don't even think its what truck is nearest to you. Unless they've made changes to the equipment assignment process. The best explanation I ever got (from Joe Lyons in Fuel Economy, not another driver) was that they just have a priority list with the trucks being out of service the longest being the ones that are first to get reassigned. Sometimes you end up going to the right geographical area and other times not. When I upgraded at Van Buren, they had a whole row of unassigned trucks. Out of 25 or so upgrades, 1 female got a truck off the terminal yard. The rest of us went back to the Greyhound. Almost none of us went close to home to pick up a truck, even though Karen Davis said thats what they try to do. I wanted to pickup one in the Houston area and I was given the option of either Atlanta or West Memphis. I chose West Memphis.

 

The way it has been lately is trucks are assigned to fleets, if you are in xx fleet you get what's available in that fleet near you. Which is also why they have been assigning brand new trucks to ppl right out of upgrade and some in old pos in same class. They have had 7 trucks tba in Vandalia and 3 got trucks and the rest were shipped out. I don't know when this changed but I found this out when I had my trouble trying to get another truck and found out its not just as easy as typing a few keys and assigning the truck to another fleet

 

Yeah... In my class... A guy that lived in NC went to Vandalia to pick up his truck and I (from Ohio) went to SC to pick up my truck. But that was back in 2010... At least they gave you a choice, did they tell you the truck numbers at each area or just gave you that option?