Swift Training

Yes, but Swift requires at least 50 hours of drive time before a student can go to team status.
It is up to the mentor when the student is ready, but 50 hours is minimum. As far as I know.
Until that point, mentor and student run as a solo operation.

If your mentor has you running as a team from the start, I'm sure Swift would want knowledge of that.

And if you found the need to strand yourself outside the truck for any reason, Swift should be more interested in why that happened, not that you need a way back.
They should provide a way back, and investigate this bad mentor with no question.

 

during swifts training yes you have to parallel to pass the cdl but they teach you a technique where its in the spot every time as long as you follow it. Yes Swift does fail students during test, if you cant drive then you cant drive....

 

I think pretty much all states want you to be able to parallel park, alley dock, straight back and side-by-side in order to pass your CDL range test. It's not just the companies.

 

I was told different states require different stuff, I was also told the DMV will randomly choose 2 skills for you to perform but I took mine at the academy so I had to do all the skills

 

I had to do them all, too. The state CDL test in CO chooses three out of five possible scenarios (including blindside parallel parking). Then you take your road test (mind the wheel-eating curbs).

 

im glad I did not have to do a blind parallel, heck I suck at blind angle backs and I will not do them unless I have to and when I do I get out several times to make sure I dont hit something. In my prostar I was able to open the curtains for my back windows and look out the window to see during a blind but I dont have windows on my new freight.

 

The trainer is there to teach you company policies and procedures. He is also there to help you fine tune you driving skills. He/she is not there to babysit you. I do agree that when a student first gets on the truck the trainer should be in the jump seat most of the time. But remember, dispatch may have had him/her running the day/night before picking up the student, therefore he/she needs some sleep. When I first started five years ago, my first trainer stayed in the jump seat for 1 hour on the first day we were riding together. He would check in with me every couple of hours when he woke up.

 

my mentor would check on me even once we went teams, if I was taking the load on in then he would wake up just to make sure I back in just fine or help me make the drop, once he got comfortable after a couple weeks he left me alone a lot more.

He has been trying to get me to go team with him for a few months now but im not the team type of guy, he said if he got a good team mate he would stop mentoring for awhile and we would bank money for him to buy a 2nd truck but I just dont want to team for months.


oh and i need to stop mentioning I hardly do blinds since every single time i do I end up getting one, im in a dock right now that was blinded but I had some extra room so it wasnt overly difficult.

 

where are you at dollar....