Comments By FliteRisk

That's cool that you're getting paid! Hope they can get you out there ASAP. Keep us up to date and good luck! =)

I hope so too. Thanks

Hey guys and gals!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I’m sitting home waiting for my company to find me a non-smoking mentor. They are paying base training pay while I wait. It’s already been a week. I wanted to have my 200 hours done by Christmas.

FliteRisk - it says "Blue October" (and "write your own song") =)

Haha. My bday is in October!

SO scary!! Glad you're okay and so sorry that happened to you guys. Take care of yourselves!

Does your tattoo say something about October?

I totally forgot about the non animal. No smoke and no pets for me.

Anyone know if you can request Non-Smoking Trainers at Swift? I talked to Jackie in Arizona, but forgot to ask if I could request a Non-Smoking Trainer for on the road time. I do like the idea of still driving as solo while out with a trainer. I will be training out of Fontana, CA. and have a home terminal of Lathrop, Ca. for now.

You can. I’m starting my orientation on Monday. They asked me smoking or non-smoking mentor.

You might check with the training facility also to make sure they've done their part.

Thanks Old School. I did check with the testing facility and everything is good on their part. I guess i will just have to wait. I worked so hard for that little piece of plastic. I just wanted to feel it in my hands today. LOL!

It stands for "Reporting Out Of State Test results". I went to my WV DMV this morning tho get my CDL that i passed in Ohio on Thursday. I was told that it is not in the system yet and that it can take 24/72 hours after my test for the ROOSTr system to update.

*SIGH*

Congratulations. Mission accomplished and you now have a CDL-A. Trucking School accommodation certainly is never the Taj Mahal and nobody should expect that. As you discovered, people show up so ill-prepared for the experience that delays are common and the failure rate is high.

You, Sir, persevered and now the real learning begins.

Again, congratulations and we'll done!

Thank You all for your comments. After re-reading my post, I did kinda sound like a Diva complaining about the hotel. LOL. I cant wait to get back into a truck.

This was not the best experience in the world. The hotel was crappy and mold infested. My recruiter told me this was a 17 day class including weekends. It turned out to be a four week course not including weekends. Some people were not prepared for this. The first week of class was map training and log books by a teacher that was clearly overwhelmed. After a lot of a teacher that was MIA and telling us to read chapters while she was gone, I aced the test with no problem. This allowed me to proceed to the driving range on the second week. The driver training consisted of handing us some papers that showed us how to perform the various parking moves. After about a week of little to no supervised practice, i was evaluated on my skills. I passed but several people didn't. The third week was road training for about 1.5 hours a day with 3 other people in the truck taking turns. Within three days, I had to learn to turn, double clutch, up-shift, and down shift. The fourth day i was evaluated on what i had learned. I failed the evaluation due to coasting through an intersection when i couldn't get into gear after a failed attempt to downshift. This was the day before tanking my state test. They re-evaluated me the next day (on the way to my state exam). I passed the evaluation on the way and was trying to mentally prepare for the state exam that i didn't think i was ready for. I was the only one in my class that made it this far. I was raining super hard, traffic was terrible and it was time for me to test. I was raining so hard that i asked the tester to stop me as soon as i had enough points to pass the pre-trip test. He did and i stopped a little after the in-cab and air brake test. I breezed through the maneuvers with no points. I got the straight-line back, blind-side offset, and blind-side parallel. I took the road test and passed. I am now a proud owner of a CDL. I want to thank this site and everyone who answered my questions here. The high road was awesome as well. I will test for my Hazmat tomorrow while I am picking up my CDL from the DMV.