Comments By Landion

I've had this issue with students too. I'm not sure what you've done so far in your practice. But one thing that has helped my students has been making them get out to look with me.

I'm obviously outside already, then I have them join me at the back. Have them look at the situation and talk me through their next couple moves. Depending on the situation even if they give me the wrong set of moves I'll let them do them anyway.

No matter if they gave me the right set of moves or wrong set, I'll pull them back out pretty quick to see the results of their actions. It takes more than one time of doing this, but you should gradually start to see improvement.

I absolutely sucked at backing when I was done with training but I'm happy to say that all of my students have been better at backing than I was atvthr end of training.

Hope it helps!

I left England recently. My experience with them was not the best, I won't get into all the details here, but the best part about the company IMO is decent equipment.

I have a, friend that went to swift right out of school, and in comparing things with him I think I would have had a better experience there.

As for England's pay... .12 cpm for every mile your team truck moves for the first month. You get a .01 cpm raise every 30 days for the first 5 months. After that you join a division and get paid whatever the base is for that division, which is still only about .32 cpm solo or .18 cpm team.

England has A TON of recent cdl grads pulling their freight. After 6 months of being off the trainers truck they will pressure you to become a trainer. That is where you start making the big bucks. My trainer told me he made .42 cpm for all the miles on the truck (we did 5000 a week +/-), .01 cpm for each mile one if his students drove for a year after getting off his truck, and $200 for each off his students that successfully tested out of training on the first try.

The company that I'm with allows drivers to purchase the used trucks, and several of our trainers have put their students into trucks they own after they've completed training.

Benefits (health care, etc.) are a big difference that you'll have to deal with, and may not be anything major for you. You may have fewer restrictions working for him (I.e. Governed at a higher speed, no mobile eye, less restrictive policies, etc.).

Something to be cautious of... What happens if the truck you're in needs a major repair? Will he have the means to cover the repair? Pay you some type of layover pay? Cover your hotel?

This thought carries forward to all the financial related items that could come up. What happens if his truck breaks down and needs a major repair? Will your truck generate enough income to cover your payroll and his expenses until he is back on the road?

These are things that I would consider and maybe talk with him about before making a decision.

So I've been with my trainer for 2 weeks now. Good guy, very knowledgeable, most of the time not hard to live with. Today however he was nit picking the hell out of everything I was doing. Right down to the order of which I connected the trailer. As someone you may remember I was team driving for another company before switching companies around new years. The first company taught me to check the connection between the 5th wheel and king pin before doing any other connecting type stuff. This guy wants me to connect the air and electric line, then check the king pin. Neither are wrong.... just 2 ways to do the same thing.

So I was extremely flustered today... and forgot to hit the tandem release arm after sliding the wheels.... well driving down the road for a few miles and I thought we were in a wreck. ... the tandems hit the stop bar so hard. The trainer was sitting on the bottom bunk and flew onto the floor.

Bottom line, I need to be more careful... while nothing major happened today... that's not to say next time I'll be a lucky. All that said, I'm still laughing at the image of my trainer flopping around on the floor like a fish.

I pointed out that if he was nicer tomorrow is let him stay in bed :) hopefully revenge isn't as funny. ....

From what I've seen and heard most companies are going to want you to go through a school first. I went to school with a guy who was in his 50s, with 15 years experience otr. Since he had taken 5ish years out of a truck he had to go back to school first.

Aso far as your age, that is not at all too old. I went to school with a few people who were 5 years both ways of you.

I'm going in as a team, and we both have very little experience so we're starting at 21 cpm each with a 3 cpm bonus for running 21,000+ miles a month. I'm coming from a place where we were making 12 cpm each.

When I talked to the recruiter we discussed dedicated solo options and it was around the 36 cpm range. He seemed to admit that the 48 state solo drivers make the least... so I would talk to them about dedicated options if I were coming in solo.

Every orientation location is different then. i went to werner orientation last year. soo unorganized. the pay was horrible too, thats why i left. the only way to make money there is to train. even the guys i met running teams were only making 500 a week each.

I'm in Indianapolis for orientation.

I'm not saying (tho it does seem like it) that Werner is the best company for orientation and i have no experience with them out on the road. But from where I was to what I'm seeing now, and comparing just orientations, I have a better feeling about the company. It could be that the last company was so dysfunctional through this process that I'm more easily impressed. But I can't complain right now, and I couldn't say that at this point last time.

Today was the first day of orientation at Werner, and there are some striking differences between my last company's orientation and Werner's.

1) First Impression - Last company walked around aimlessly trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Half the people attending were not even on the roster.

- Werner Large signs, walked into a room with a couple dozen computers. Each of our names was on one of the PCs. They were expecting each of us, even after my partner and I changed days and locations at the last minute. Each station had some forms, our fuel cards, and copies of the DOT regulations, Hazmat regulations, and Driver handbooks waiting for us.

2) Organization - Former Comoany - Spent 18-20 hours in orientation over 2 days. During that time we spent 8 hours doing paperwork, learning about the company, testing, etc. The rest of the time was spent waiting for the office staff to print out TONS of forms for us to sign and go through everything to make sure it was done correctly.

- Werner - I've spent 9.5 hours in orientation today. Filled out 5 forms on a physical sheet of paper (including a lunch order form), the rest were done online. Instead of waiting for someone to look through each sheet of paper, the Web application identified missing parts or incorrect answers.

3) Program

- Former Company - we sat in a classroom for 4 hours watching video after video. No testing or verification that you learned anything. The driver handbook was only available online.

- Werner - We have a dozen +/- individual training modules to go through. The day was spent self paced going through each module, with a test and required minimum score for each. If you didn't learn what you needed to, then you had to do it again. There was someone thereally to help you if you couldn't understand something as the module explained it.

We were also given homework tonight. 5 pages of mostly fill in the blank questions from all over the drivers handbook. Kind of a pain in the rear... but I appreciate a company who has standards on what should be known prior to getting into a truck.

4) Morale

- Because of all the time just sitting around waiting everyone at orientation with me at the last company was upset and voiced their unhappiness. It felt like we were all wasting our time.

- Because there wasn't much down time, and we were far from bored, we all laughed, joked and it was ALMOST fun.

All-in-all the orientation process at Werner seems to be very well thought out and planned. If the same level of planning has gone into the rest of the organization I believe jumping ship and switching companies will prove to be a good decision.

Check these out:

Companies that hire drivers with felonies

I've not driven through too many areas where there's been obnoxious people on the radio. Most of what I hear is legit stuff.