Transport America, Eagen, MN

I feel really discouraged. Transport America is my first job out of trucking school. As I've said in other posts about TA orientation was really good and more than anyone could expect. I was put with a trainer who had been training for years and who demanded I cheat on my logs. He also demanded I attend a safety presentation that I had attended at orientation a week before because, "if I have to, you have to." He logged it as part of his 10 hour break even though it was supposed to be on duty, and wanted me to too.

Two weeks in we had a discussion with a terminal manager who told me he was wrong in cheating his logs and she would talk to him about it. My trainer attacked me for not being able to drive tired. He criticized my safety inspection a day after I did it, and never pointed out any specific thing that I did wrong. He continued to want me to cheat and I refused, he then cussed me out saying, "you need to get the hell out of bed" and "I'm going to drop your ### off at the terminal because your ### doesn't listen to me," and things like this.

Now I'm at the terminal and the buddy-buddy system is coming into effect as I feared. The manager says that he's known this trainer for a long time and never known him to cuss a student out and he has a good success rate. My trainer is making up lies about me to avoid the issue of him cheating and harassing me. He says that he never cheated even though his logs won't match the satellite. He denies cursing at me, and says that he was at the terminal on time when he was late the first week, is saying he told me to be at the terminal at 10pm the second week when he told me 8pm because he showed up late. He's saying I'm the one that showed up late even though I didn't. If he looked for me and couldn't find me and I indeed was late, why didn't he call me? I called him when he was late to find out where he was. I feel really disappointed and discouraged, but the other drivers are really nice to me. I've asked to go with another trainer and show that I'm not the problem, that he is. I'm starting to second guess how effective that would be though. Even if I did really well there probably wouldn't be any consequences for this trainer.