The Schneider adventure begins - Orientation process in Green Bay

Up early and ready to get this first day out of the way. My room mate is still sleeping, and i'm rather groggy from a pretty bad nights sleep. I think I may have gotten a few hours at the most. I think part of the problem were the terrible pillows, you know the kind where one is not enough, but two are way too much? I'll be grabbing my pillow from the car today to use tonight. I thought I wouldn't need it till my time out on the truck, but alas my trusty memory foam pillow will be making it's appearance tonight so I can hopefully catch up on some sleep.

 

Made it through day 1, mission accomplished! 13 if us to start the day, still 13 here. All in all it wasn't bad, but I found myself thinking throughout the day how after the thousands of orientations SNI has done, why it is they don't have it down to a smooth process. At best it could be described as "slightly organized chaos". Paperwork, and lots of it, interrupted several times for various speakers and or tests. My main worry with the whole process was the blood pressure test. I am typically sitting borderline hyper tension and tend to regulate it with my diet. I prepared myself with a sodium / caffeine free diet for about a week leading up to today. I was pulled from the class (while doing paperwork) to take the test and tested 149/98. Needless to say I was a little nervous about that number since I know the DOT likes to see them a bit lower than that. I was successful in obtaining my DOT (2 Year) card with a MUCH lower reading, and figured I was done till I sought out a doctor for the proper medication. The person taking the blood pressure didn't bat an eye and sent me back to the room to sit nervously wondering if I would be packing my bags and heading home later in the day. About an hour later she called me in again to do the "Pre work screen" Which involves various exercises, all while monitoring your heart rate. During some down time between exercises I asked (acting surprised) why it seemed my BP was so high? She responded "is it normally lower?" To which I said "Well, it was xxx/xx during my DOT physical" She said, "Nah, those readings are perfectly normal, you have nothing to worry about" WHEW! Not sure if SNI just has a lot of folks with high BP, or the DOT numbers are just really low, lol.

After the paperwork a lot of us were sitting around waiting for other folks to finish so one of the instructors handed out a workbook and told us to read chapter two and answer the questions at the end. I read chapter 2, 3, & 4 AND answered all the questions when I figured I should stop. the ONE and ONLY time all day to this point that I took out my phone to check messages etc. I get called out by one of the instructors... I'm not the type that normally sits and plays on my phone, nor am I addicted to text messaging, but I felt like a kid being scolded in school as he gave me the 'I'm disappointed in you stink eye'. I didn't appreciate the tone he used, but at the same time I knew he had a point.

Lunch time! and at this point I was starving having only had a banana in the morning (due to the BP test). It looks as if they have the food catered in, on the menu today was a bacon cheesburger, with chips, and a cookie. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't really good either. You could have fit 4 beef patties sitting next to each other on the size of the bun it was served on, lol. Picture a white castle/crystal burger on a bun for a 3/4 lb. burger from a restaurant. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow, I was just happy to have something to eat today.

Then the inevitable happened. A representative from Schneider Finance to talk about why EVERYONE should be leasing a truck (after their initial 6 months). He gave a good pitch, and I'm sure judging by the look on quite a few of the faces around the room that there will be some takers. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it is a good deal for some people, but I for one want some years in the industry under my belt before I have to worry about all that extra managing and responsibility. After talking about it they made a really sly move by bringing us to their "truck showroom". In the showroom they had a couple new Freighliners, a Kenworth, and a Peterbilt. They allowed everyone one to climb aboard them and dream about how it could be theirs. I gotta hand it to them, pretty slick salesmanship.

Schneider requires that you have a certain type of boot. It must be a leather upper, slip resist and oil resist sole. I just recently bought a pair to the tune of $130 with all of the above. However when I showed them my boots although it said "slip resistant" it did not say "oil resistant" I know #### well that they are, it says it all over the box (that is of course at home) They told me they did not qualify and that I would have to buy boots from them. I'm curious if anyone can actually get by with their own boots, because I'm pretty sure EVERYONE had to get a pair. Once I found out how much they were and what we were getting I did not mind so much. $25 to be deducted from your first check. I would say the boots probably retail anywhere from $80-$130. They actually have various pairs to choose from, and they are decent brand names: Rocky, Leigh, etc... and are either steel toe or composite toe. There might have been a few that were neither, but they all had the required soles. I liked the fact that they let you pick, they essentially have a boot store inside a trailer in their parking lot, lol.

At the end of the day we got to meet with our personal instructors that will be teaching us the Schneider way to drive the trucks. Guess who I got??? yep, the same guy that earlier chastised me for taking my phone out! Awesome! There actually came a point during his spiel where he was talking about how we are here to learn and not play on our phones, where as he gave me an awkward glance... sheesh, you would think I was a teenager caught for the 50th time. I just remained respectful and nodded with everything he had to say, bound and determined to prove to him that I was a worthy student.