The Schneider adventure begins - Orientation process in Green Bay

Day two in the books! 13 down to 12, my room mate seems to be MIA. I got back to the room today and all his stuff is gone. I stopped down at the front desk for some coffee refills and asked if he had checked out and sure enough he did. I have no idea why, all i know is the last time I saw him he was climbing into a truck with an instructor for his first drive.

Got up extra early to try and take advantage of the free breakfast. Unfortunately there is no breakfast at the Extended Stay where half of us are staying so we have to go across the street to the Settle inn. They still allow us access, we just have to get ourselves there, which is fine since that is where the bus picks us up anyway. It was a pretty good spread, Waffles, biscuits and gravy, assorted fruit, cereal, and pastries. Of course coffee and juice as well. They say 6am pick up time, you need to be there EARLY, they actually LEAVE at 6am. Nobody missed the bus but a couple people had to chase it down as it was getting ready to roll out.

First thing this morning we went over paper logs, piece of cake for those of us that went through them in school. It seems however that about 1/3 of the class has never even seen them... Anyway, after that we did a group coupling and uncoupling session followed by a pre-trip demonstration. It was cold out but we made it through just fine. We returned to the classroom and went over some FMCSR stuff that basically turned into a homework assignment for tonight. We split up and got into groups with our trainers and talked about what we were going to be doing. I was paired up with a South African gentleman, who has been a truck driver for quite sometime. If I had to guess I would say he is in his late 60's and has decided it's time to start driving truck in the good ole USA. Our instructor took us into the simulator room to test our skills with shifting. I gotta say, the simulators are pretty cool. Not sure what they cost, but they look expensive, and the practice was actually quite helpful!

For lunch today we had chicken enchilada with Spanish rice and a cookie. I actually enjoyed watching everyone trying to eat it with our plastic utensils, plastic forks and knives were snapping left and right, lol. Needless to say the tortilla was a little tough on the outside. Not really a great meal, but I was hungry and did not care.

After lunch it was my turn to drive and my partner went to what they refer to as "labs" which included a slow maneuver area, backing, and pre-trip. You basically rotate through each station till you get some time in doing it all. I hit the road with my instructor and was beyond nervous, probably mostly because I had the "phone" incident from yesterday still in my head AND it was my first real time exclusively double clutching. It started out pretty rough and he was all over me, but it slowly smoothed out and I was feeling pretty good about it at the end about 2 hours later. I'm not quite sure what to think about tomorrow, as I have been told we will be out on the road for a good 5 hours and another 5 hours at labs. I'm just gonna do my best to improve and smooth things out without too much awkwardness between my instructor and I. Everything at the labs went perfect and the next thing I knew we were finishing up our logs for the day and on the big orange bus back to the hotel. It's good to be back, and after dinner here I will be hitting the books to finish my homework and study my gears and speeds a little bit. Time to whip up another peanut butter sandwich and get to it!

 

Thanks for the advise! I will remember that when I hit the road tomorrow.

 

Indeed! I was a little worried about what happened till that dawned on me, LOL

 

Day 3 - Today was dedicated on fine tuning our driving abilities, and working on anything we might be lacking. I ended up with a different instructor today which was nice cause he was much more laid back, and a guy I could really get a long with. We did a good 5 hours of driving, practiced quite a few button hook turns, roundabouts, and a little freeway driving through construction zones and all. I was really able to get a better grasp on Schneiders way of shifting, and learned quite a few tricks with skipping gears and so forth. About a third of the way we stopped at a truck stop and had a very satisfying breakfast. I'm hoping I get the same instructor tomorrow. The weather man says we are supposed to get some snow tomorrow, should be interesting.

After driving we came back to have a "working lunch". Basically, our training manager met with us to discuss the various things we should be expecting in our week OTR and the third and final week back at the OC. They served us some sort of casserole, with a roll and cookie. I think I ate a couple bites and tossed it, was less than satisfying. I was glad I had the big breakfast earlier. Also, we found out who our training engineers would be, and where we would be meeting them. I was the lucky one that gets to drive to Kansas City, MO. It's about a 9.5 hour drive covering just over 600 miles. I need to meet him on Monday morning at 10am. I'm still not sure how it will work out yet, I'm assuming I'll be leaving Sunday morning and get a hotel in KC for the night. I was told I would be reimbursed for the hotel and all fuel. I'm still waiting to get a call from my TE so that I can work it out completely.

The second half of the day we spent on labs. My backing is quite good and I have a lot of confidence in my ability. I'm sure that will somewhat change once i'm out there, but I feel like I have a good foundation to work with. Slow maneuvers were no problem at all, pre-trip is also solid. It was a LONG day and I am exhausted. I'm gonna try and catch up on some sleep tonight, and get up and have a decent breakfast at the other hotel across the way before the bus arrives in the morning. That is all for now, more to come!

 

Thanks for the kind words!