Trainers!!! How long before one should be a trainer

I had 28 days of training when I first started. No accidents or tickets. Only one minor preventable incident. I've been hit twice while parked.

In this post you say 3-5 weeks is not enough. Then a couple posts later you say you had no training.

I'm a trainer now with 2.5 years of experience. I feel I'm good enough to train someone to run dry van, which isn't all that hard.

Going by years of experience isn't feasible. Some guys with 20 years of experience can have some bad habits.

 

ALL drivers especially with twenty years have bad habits.. thats one of the reasons that proper vetting and professional training of trainers is so important.

 

tons of good points guys and i gotta agree you should not be a trainer and then run team with a trainee. War Tazz and Fozzy also brought up good points. Alot of students dont get the best training due to the fact alot of these so called trainers are only in it for the xtra money. I dont begrudge anyone from wanting to drive a truck but i believe that if a person either male or female wants to learn then teach them properly (and for females that does not include some knuckle dragging sasquach trying to teach you sleeper berth standards either).

I agree also that some Vets have no business teaching anyone anything out here as they have bad habits also.we all had to learn some place and we were all rookies at one time and im no better than the next person. we are all equal just some of us have toned up our skills on driving while others are still learning. its a process that'
you dont learn overnite or in 6 weeks. you learn by your mistakes and correct them and to have a Certified Trainer who is commited to teaching a new driver the correct way is priceless. Thanks Guys keep the comments coming RW

 

That's also a problem.. there are a lot of driver who think that what they are doing is proper and safe when in fact, they are lucky they haven't killed themselves and others. Trainers have to be vetted and they have to sometimes be rejected.

 

thank you sir for the forward thinking and knowledge to know that you are still a student yourself.if everyone thought as you do,we would have a much safer country to drive in. i've been at it 24 years and still learning.i dont think i would make a good teacher because of my personality.i could if i had to but i dont know how well it would go.

 

Thank you, and honestly I don't have the patience to teach anyone. I've just never been patient, my dad says I'm just stubborn like him haha

Ethan

 

see its the honesty of guys like Ethan and Gator they admit they dont want to train and are NOT in it for the Money. You guys know you could do it for the money but you guys dont. Kudos to ya both.

 

mine is the same.thats why we are here.like george carlin once said.."i like people,in short bursts.i cant tollerate stupid bullsh-t." if i have to work for some dam bean counter w/no common sense i'll wind up in jail.i would only train a driver under the right conditions,money not being one of them.

 

I have to disagree with you.
Based on the numbers 80 Percent of the long haul industry is fleets with less than 20 trucks. 20 Percent is the large truckload carriers.
The large carriers can hire students out of school. The smaller carriers mostly cannot. This is due to insurance company rules. They will not insure drivers with less than 3 years experience.

The large carriers may have most of their drivers having less than 5 years experience. The smaller carriers average much more experience. Though I work for a large carrier with an average of 8 years experience.

The so called driver shortage is mostly based on low pay at many company's. And this is mostly due to rates being half what they should be at this point. The national average for dry freight is still only around the 2.00 per mile area. Including FSC. Yes, some company's are getting more. But it is the average. Truck prices are up allot. Fuel is up. Tires are up. Maintenance costs are WAY up.
So when you figure that over the past 10 years the average cost of a new truck is up 25,000. Tire prices have doubled. Fuel prices have more than doubled. And maintenance costs have gone up close to 200%. Most of these increases are due to emission mandates over the past 8 years.

Over this time rates have remained less than 2 bucks per mile on average.
This has led to driver pay staying stagnant as well.

If we have fewer trucks on the road the rates will finally start to be pushed up to where they have needed to be. To move the product the shippers will be forced to pay decent rates.
Yes, this cost will be passed on to consumers. But it will only raise the cost of the products by a few percent. While raising trucking rates by several dollars per mile.

When trucking once again becomes the profitable industry that it use to be, before deregulation. You will see former experienced drivers that left the industry coming back in droves. They have no accurate count of the number of OTR drivers in the country today. But they guess around 3 million. But we have over 10 million CDL holders in this country. They just are doing other things due to lack of pay in trucking.
The average pay for an OTR driver is around 35k per year. And they are on the road close to 300 days per year. Raise that pay to 60k per year for that time, and we will not have a problem finding drivers for those trucks.

I know one response will be that if we raise rates that high the shippers will go to rail. We cannot add many more miles of rail in this country. We could add some. They run at close to 80% capacity now. If rail goes to 100% capacity it will lower trucking capacity by maybe 4%. That is nothing. Not with the increases in goods that we will need to move in the next few years.

 

If we have 3 million current drivers, and another 10 million with Class A CDLs, then how is there a driver shortage???

For the past couple of months I've been thinking to myself that this "driver shortage" is a bunch of BS. I am hoping you are right in your claims.

Only 20% of OTR industry is large carriers? Hmm.....so it's not the large carriers that are driving rates down.

Maybe if they stopped giving companies these incentives to run people through the CDL mills, there would be a shortage. Then rates would go up again.


I'm wanting to save up enough money to go independent, but I'm afraid rates won't go up with increasing costs.