Training with a trainer?

How do most companies handle this? I know they will usually set a amount of hours a driver has to reach before they are "signed off" to drive solo or tested by the company to drive solo. I am more curious about will this training basically be running as a team and you take turns sleeping but constantly moving?

Or will he just be sitting there while the trainee drives?

Does it vary greatly from company to company how this training is handled?

 

Lots of big companies run the truck as a team. The one I drove for did. The students would sleep while the trainer drove. It sound bad but i don't think new drivers want to spend 8 weeks driving with trainer so the student driving time. So they ran them as team and 4 weeks as team. Another thing is the money loads only pay extra money if they are team runs. So it kinda hard to run two people on solo runs. The loads don't pay that much money per miles

 

Varies from company to company. Back when I went out with my trainer, we kept the same hours at first. The only day I didn't drive was when I was sick as a dog. I had to get past the basics before we went to a team op. If he didn't feel comfortable, we would continue to run the same hours. Did that for the 1st week and the next 3, we ran it as a team operation.

 

Yea, back when I drove with my trainer (90's) we drove 5 on 5 off rotated until we got to our destination. We ran hard and it was fun!

 

How is sleeping in a moving truck?

 

quite an experience. i had a hard time sleeping with all the bouncing the truck does.lot of these freeways are really rough. my trainer always let me stop and take a few hours rest and he would do the same thing if we got too tired. was nice when i went solo lol

 

My concern would be ending up getting extremely tired while driving if I couldn't sleep while the truck was moving.

 

when your trainer runs you as a team then near the last week he should let you run it as you were by yourself ! That way if you had questions you could get them now and not when your by yourself. I could never sleep while ruck was moving, but I just kind of catnapped for 10 hours. I would never be a good team driver

 

Yea I am positive team driving would not be for me. Do some companies have for the duration of training a normal schedule where both sleep at the same time or is that asking for to much?

 

It going to depend on the company... the one I work for its 5 weeks with a trainer, the first three weeks the truck is limited to 850 miles per day, the last two it can run 1000 but the truck has to be shut down for an 8hr break too... consequesntly they are pretty much dispatched as solo and the trainer is awake and in the jump seat the whole time the trainee is driving.