Comments By Just 'G'

I think that's a just like everywhere thing.

There are a depressing number of people in the world who will not only take anything that's not bolted down, but who are not above carrying wrenches and undoing the bolts to get something.

Since I've got a little time on the weekend, I thought I'd give a little overview of Veriha itself and my class specifially.

Veriha seems to be a smaller company, they've got ~200 trucks and a few more drivers than that. I think they're pretty exclusively dry-van and while technically nationwide, seem to mostly stay north of the Ohio valley and east of I-35 with occasional forays into Georgia and Texas based on thier recruiting map. They've got OTR, regional and home daily options, but their highlight fleet is the Entertainment division, where you haul around sets and equipment for rock concerts. It doesn't really appeal to me, I think I'd rather be home more than that.

They seem to take safety pretty seriously. They run dash cams with a driver facing camera and have some sort of safe driving score that they get from that. It hasn't really come up for me yet. They also seem to be on the picky side for new drivers. They us hair testing for pre-employment screening. I think they're on the strict side on background checks and driving records, but I'm not really sure since mine were squeaky clean. They do make you finish all of that before you come to Marinette, so if anything does trip you up you'll know before you've committed to anything.

They also seem to have a pretty comprehensive approach to driver training. Their new driver training isn't just 3 weeks on the range and 4 with a trainer. It takes a full 2 years for them to consider me a "fully trained" driver. I think I'm even going to have some sort of "training supervisor", separate from my dispatcher, until the 2 years are up. I've already got hundreds of online training lessons covering everthing from pretrips, to trip-planning, to using the sat-com, to requesting maintnance, to accessing the company intranet, and I think there's even a couple on diet and exercise.

Training class

The current class is just 4 students. They had scheduled 10, but apparently a couple called off early and then 4 more backed out over Thanksgiving weekend. I didn't even consider it because I'd already given notice and made that Wednesday my last day.

They've had some people out and had to scramble a bit to cover all the bases, but the smaller class has kept that from impacting the schedule too much. It's also kept the range cycling quickly.

I'm not sure I'd recommend doing this in December (or other winter months), but since I've alread been through Navy boot camp, also in December, also on the shore of Lake Michigan, I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. At least I had pretty good idea how to pack for this.

The training has been pretty intense, but thorough. Once we start getting on top of one thing they hand us the next, but it still hasn't felt rushed. They handed us the pretrip checklist and went over it once on Monday and are planning to have mock-tests next Wednesday, but I feel prepared and reasonably confident. They're also going to start being strict on the backing maneuvers, but I feel prepared for that too. I think they're striking a pretty good balance between not just throwing students to the wolves and "we've got places to go, here's the path, devil take the hindmost."

All in all, so far it seems like they've got a pretty good handle on how to run a training program. I am pretty pleased with how this is working out and where it looks like it's going. So far, Veriha seems like a good fit, even if I do still think the trucks are very yellow. Oh well, my 2012 Mazda 3 has helped me embrace the idea, "When I'm driving it, I don't have to look at it."

I went to all this trouble to point these things out for the newbies and wannabes in here. You can make mistakes in trucking and survive them, but you can't ignore what was taught you in training. You are the one at the wheel. When you run over a tree it is your fault. It is always best to admit your fault and show what you learned from it. If all you can produce as what you learned is that the company's training is lousy and insufficient, you will soon be looking for a job.

As someone who has just been starting on all this I've been trawling the archives here a lot and I know I saw a thread about a rookie who completely rolled his truck 2 months in (it was litterally upsidedown in a ditch, there's pics) and managed to keep his job. I think he was even back on the road in under a week.

He did it by following Old School's script. He owned the mistake and took responsibility. I think the story ended with him emailing the safety director to ask if he could have a picture of the wreck to keep on his visor as a reminder.

This is of EPIC proportions.

Persian Conversion

It will ALWAYS resonate with me. My friend, Marc Lee, had a similar event at his company ... and never did post the 'stuff' .. and it's not my place to do so.

Someday, I'll share my other half's story....gotta find the disks and data.

Best to y'all~ MAD respect. . . . straight up.

~ Anne ~

That's exactly the one I was thinking of. Thank you Anne for having the link handy.

I went to all this trouble to point these things out for the newbies and wannabes in here. You can make mistakes in trucking and survive them, but you can't ignore what was taught you in training. You are the one at the wheel. When you run over a tree it is your fault. It is always best to admit your fault and show what you learned from it. If all you can produce as what you learned is that the company's training is lousy and insufficient, you will soon be looking for a job.

As someone who has just been starting on all this I've been trawling the archives here a lot and I know I saw a thread about a rookie who completely rolled his truck 2 months in (it was litterally upsidedown in a ditch, there's pics) and managed to keep his job. I think he was even back on the road in under a week.

He did it by following Old School's script. He owned the mistake and took responsibility. I think the story ended with him emailing the safety director to ask if he could have a picture of the wreck to keep on his visor as a reminder.

Day 5, end of Week 1, CDL test in 2 weeks

The morning was more pretrip and offset backing practice. Pretrip is getting pretty dialed in. I've also started to get a feel for backing around the corner to get in the box on the offset.

After lunch they were going to introduce the alley dock, but instead we went out a little industrial park and got some on road practice. Having the rear tires do their own thing takes some getting used to.

Overall things are going pretty well. Looking forward to week 2.

There could be many it seems that way, but let's put this in perspective. Wisconsin has more than 60,000 trucking companies registered in the state with a population 5.8 million, Utah has more than 21,000 with a population of 3.2 million, and California with a population of 39.5 million has more than 135,000. New York State as more than 37000 trucking companies registered with a population of 19.5 million. Of the estimated 1.2 million trucking companies in the United States, 97% of them run less than 20 trucks.

Even by your numbers Chris, we get for trucking companies per 100k residents:
Wisconsin ~1000
Utah ~700
California ~350
New York ~200

Trucking companies seem to show a clear preference for Wisconsin. Since I don't know of any major shipping hubs in Wisconsin, I doubt it's about where the freight is. There must be something else.

Why are so many trucking companies headquartered in WI?

Signed Someone doing their CDL training in Marinette in December

Cool, I have apparently been released from moderator purgatory. Yay!

And P.S. to the previous post: I've also updated my avatar to show one of our training trucks, if anyone wants to know what a Veriha truck looks like. From the front there's a big "V" over the cab.

Day 4

The temps made it up to the 40s today, so instead of snow and ice we had slush and mud. The backing course was getting well worn by the end of the day.

Today they introduced us to their simulator about mid morning. They used it to show us proper mirror set ups and give us a long clear straight-line backing run. We also got confirmation that the brakes will be much less twitchy when we're loaded. After that it was back to the range for offset backing practice.

I made a hash of the first couple I did, but the last one went clean. I'm not going to claim any style points, but I didn't need any pull-ups. I figure if I can do it once I'll be able to do it again ... eventually.

They say they want to get us started on alley backs tomorrow, and out on the road early next week with some practice tests starting next Wed.

Day 3

Light snow flurries 1st thing in the morning THAT WERE NOT IN THE FORCAST. I DEMAND TO SPEAK TO WHOEVER'S IN CHARGE OF THIS BS!

...

Anyway, alternating pretrip and straight backing in the morning. I think I've gotten that about 90% dialed in. I'm still getting a little off now and then, but I usually catch it early enough for an easy pull up to fix it.

The real fun started after lunch, when we got introduced to the offset back. I bravely/foolishly/recklessly volunteered to go first. I made the first cut fine, but then wasn't aggressive enough coming back around and got the trailer tandems in the lane, but off kilter. So then I tried to cut hard like I should have in the first place and technically overcorrected the trailer, but set myself up for an easy pull-up. From there it was just straight back like I'd been doing.

That was also my introduction to the beauty of GOAL. I like GOAL. GOAL is my friend.

Tomorrow is suposed to be more of the same. I think the plan is to start doing alley backs on Friday.

They're keeping it coming.