Profile For Land of the Free

Newly licensed greenhorn driver here. I would first like to say how awesome the truckingtruth.com community is. I've lurked on this site as a guest now for about 3 years, reading and learning from the driver's perspective the various nuances involved with the trucking industry, and again this community and the repository of information it holds is good stuff. Now for my first question:

As a prefatory matter, I haven't been able to find anything searching the site that directly addresses my question, and so I hope I don't get flamed, but here goes: I'm about to attend orientation with Shaffer. My OTR type training with a company trainer will be for 8 weeks (4 weeks, then 3-4 days home time, follow by 4 more weeks. Should I be expecting or ask for per diem on top of my training pay, or will I need to just plan on itemizing those 8 weeks next tax season? I realize there's a difference of opinion when it comes to per diem or not, but my question mainly has to do with whether a trainee who is away over night for 8 weeks is at least entitled to receive it on top of his/her base pay (whether or not the trainee wants it with pay)? I emailed my recruiter, but haven't yet received a reply.