U2's Trainer thread

Straight from the boss' mouth today.

Training miles are 40k miles up to 60k miles (10k credit to PSD grads)

In his words, "evaluation" commences at 40k. 40k does not immediatly put a trainee in the next upgrade orientation class. Accidents, Citations, Service issues, and performance will be evaluated... coupled with the trainers reccomendation for upgrade.

As we've seen with a couple individuals around here on TTR, the powers that be will tack on additional training miles for accidents, tickets, etc.

This is my 2nd trainee under the new requirements, so Ive already stepped up my training and responsibility timeline. All of my previous trainees had to run 60k.

The first under this 40k rule, quit after 2 weeks. The 2nd, and current trainee is on course for me to reccomend him for upgrade at 40k. However, the powers that be have let me know that they are still considering tacking on extra miles for a ticket he got last week blowing by a scale.... (is Iowa the only state that has "open" lit in RED?)

I guess there have been a string of trainees in a huff because the policy wasnt fully explained to them... a few of them getting upset because of the accident, citation etc additional miles. Most of the other ones getting upset are the guys that expect training mile number 39999 should be at the exit off I44 onto US65 coming into the terminal.

 

Im not sure if this is a new Company Driver policy, or policy for drivers on our Company board. Seeing how the Boss man was in and out of meetings, Im guessing this is the stuff that was covered and he relayed it to us in a fleet message.

It was stated today in the message that hometime will not be allowed until 4 weeks after upgrade.

Trainees either choose to take their hometime before they come in to upgrade, or they agree that their first available hometime will be after 4 weeks in their new truck.

On a seperate issue... I also want to mention that, from my observations of my current trainee, that these charges for passport, TWIC, Sleep Study/CPAP, and PSD loans add up... hence deduct from their paychecks.

Prime does a decent job by breaking them up into smaller payments, but if a trainee is hardcore in need of money, its quite a disapointment to see half or less than half of that garaunteed money on that first couple of checks because of these charges.

The individual payements themselves arent bad. However all of them coupled together can add up in the deduction department. Dont forget, taking advances reduces that next paycheck also.

So the new guys might consider getting one, then getting the other a few weeks later... I never go to Canada, so Im gonna tell my guys to get the TWIC first, Passport a few weeks later... if they havent already applied already.

Also trainees should expect at least 2 weeks before their direct deposit is finalized and working. Thats 2 weeks of paycheck loaded onto the fuel card that can be accessed by ATM. So if you've got people at home that need money, or bills to pay in that first 2 weeks you might look into Western Union type options. The Walmart moneygram seems to work good for my trainee. Just remember there are fees with these services.

Trainees, on their own fuel card, seem to have access to about half the amount available to a company driver trainer for advance on a give load. Ive never asked about the formula, however it seems to be proportional to the miles of the current load. So the trainee needs to understand that just because he was able to take $50 advance on this 2k mile load, if the next load is 1k miles he can probably expect to have $25 available for advance. Its good info to know, but I always reccomend against taking advances.

 

Iowa DOT: "We get complaints all the time about that sign, open is still open no matter which color we decide to display"

Officer made a convincing case not to give him a ticket, but gave him one anyway.

-He noticed my trainees liscense was a week old and he probably didnt have much in "scale experiance"
-It was near sundown.
-Based on the logbook it looked like he was near the end of his shift and looking for the truck stop exit 2 miles down the road to break or swap drivers (which was true)
-That scale was not a Prepass scale
-Red lighted open sign probably made him read it as closed.