USX Training Issues

HD, I really have no doubt that all will go well for you at USX. You are certainly to be commended for your thoughtful and tempered response to a very needless and unfortunate situation with your first trainer. Of all the drivers I met while working for USX, I can honestly say that I never met any that were anything but helpful and eager to assist a fellow driver. From the time in downtown LA where I had to do a tight 90' back off a narrow busy street and a USX H/W team helped came to my aid. The husband got out into the street and stopped traffic both ways while his wife expertly guided me up to the dock, opened the trailer doors and even pulled the tandem release for me. Another driver sold me his extra 1500w inverter and didn't have any qualms about taking a check from a total stranger, and even called me several weeks later to make sure it was working. And one in particular who I felt a special affinity with (we both served in Nam, 69-70). I was fortunate enough to run into him several times at shpprs or rcvrs. He owns a fine website that is worth keeping handy: http://www.coopsareopen.com/ . It's a list of the weigh stations, state by state with much useful info for each one, i.e.; pictures, xit #'s, hrs of operation, parking and where the MCRA got it wrong, etc. Well worth a look. And of coarse, the experience I had with my own trainer at USX was a time I will always remember with fondness. A more amiable, easy going, down home aw-shucks kinda guy would be impossible to find. Besides being unimaginably easy to get along with, he was a caring and thoughtful teacher who would take the take the time to stay in contact by phone, even months after the training was done.

The good trainers are out there and you've invested alot of time, money and effort to get to this point...you have every right to expect to have a trainer willing to be just as committed to doing the job he is being expected to do. Compatiblity issues can be just a roll of the dice, but ensuring that the experience accomplishes its purpose of giving you adequate preparation to be a safe and productive driver, should never be just a hopeful expectation. Keep a lively sense of humor to go with all your other fine qualities, and enjoy the ride.

 

We were for the training, but while we were int sure we had to back log the orientation days. That's when you use your emp ID and still may not get hired. They may have done it out of order because we were there during the holiday week and they were a day behind on the 1st class which put our group in a bind as well.

 

It's a great source of information. Makes me not want to revisit California as a truck driver! I'm almost tempted to subscribe to their premium stuff....

 

I'm soooo glad things are working out for you.

 

PooBah...if I haven't said it yet....THANK YOU BROTHER, FOR YOUR SERVICE TO THIS GREAT COUNTRY OF OURS AND I AM VERY THANKFUL THAT YOU MADE IT OUT...

 

DENALIDAD, nice to know you may have had a chuckle or two at my twisted and perhaps mis-placed attempt at humor. I've come to believe that a little levity every now and then helps us step back and see things with a little less anxiety and stress, so that hopefully solutions to trying situations can more easily come into focus.

I gather that you have an extensive background in aviation...lucky fella!! I can relate to your comment about the flight instructor. Years ago while practicing one wheel crosswind landings in a Super Cub with 26inch Tundra Tires, I was thoughtful enough to give an instructor one of those 9.9 "pucker factor" days. Things went OK on soft dirt or grass touch-and-go's, but when we got back to the airport and I planted the up-wind wheel onto the hard runway surface the increased fiction caused the soft rubber tire to wrap up around the rim. When it unspooled it would launch the plane back up into the air and we got to do that little dance several more times until the plane finally decided it was more comfortable as a ground vechicle than an airplane. We repeated the experience about 5 or 6 more times in 20 knot cross-winds. I don't recall if the guy slapped me or not, he just wandered away screaming something about if he ever recovered the seat bolts from his "backside" he would never sit in another airplane again!!

Did you ever have the chance to bring one of your children, or even grandkids to work with you? Whether or not you did, I hope you get a kick out of this!!

 

Thank You SheepDog...and much thanks and appreciation to you and your brothers over there in Tennessee and elsewhere as well. I've seen many changes in our country and all around the world since those days. Back then gas was .25 cents/gal or less, a new 1500 sq ft tract home in the S.F. Bay Area could be purchased for 19K or 20K (really), many still considered rotary phones the 'state of the art' (whatever that was supposed to mean), and no one would have ever dreamed that someday Americans would pay $100 or more for athletic shoes...made in Viet Nam.

As I get close to beginning my 67th yr of enjoying the blessings of my family, our country and the rare beauty of the pale blue dot (as Carl Sagan used to refer to our earth) we all together call home, I honestly could not make a list long enough to include all that I am grateful for. One thing that I know I would begin such a list with however, is that our fellow countrymen have softened their hearts towards and now openly embrace our men and women in uniform. Forty plus years ago, it was very......very different.

Safe travels to you SheepDog.

 

It sure was different then. I was paid the magnificent sum of about $150 a month, bought a classic Corvette for $350, and hadn't even heard of McDonalds or obesity. I walked around Long Beach, California, one day and saw what had to be the first phone booth with push-button numbers. Remember when the entire phone system was owned and operated - efficiently, I might add - by Ma Bell?

And 58,000 of our colleagues did not make it home alive from a country many now visit as tourists. I never forget that. And as PooBah said, it is nice to be appreciated finally, especially by the generation of young men and women who are voluntarily putting themselves in harms way. Like my own son and son-in-law.

Sure brings everything full circle...

 

The number I was given in DriverTech class was the number I kept.