Should I Ask For A New Trainer?

I think my real issue with the pre-trip is that she never does one and I think that says something about how concerned she is with safety.

And I'm not a confrontational person, that's why I'm so conflicted over this. I want to be respectful of her; she is the one with experience. But I also want to be safe and follow what I've been taught. It's very stressful having these 2 things pulling me in opposite directions.

Like I said, I'm going to do what feels safe to me on following distance, obeying posted signs , etc. And if she gets mad I think I will use the excuse "just trying to be safe because I will be the one getting the ticket". Hopefully this won't cause too much friction. I'll let you guys know.

Paul, Crete does 8 week training with the trainer in the passenger seat the first 4 weeks.

And thank you everyone for your advice. It's so nice to have varied points of view. And somewhere to vent!

The one thing that bugs me is 150 feet is a safe following distance at interstate speeds. REALLY!!!!!! 6-8 seconds is safe. I always keep too much distance if possible. If she drives that close to other vehicles on a regular basis, you, and anyone in the vicinity is in real danger. Also, if she is a yeller and screamer, there are a bunch of recording apps for your smartphone. Record what she says. If you want to be fair, play it back to her. Tell her if she keeps it up you will play these back to the appropriate people at the Company. I'll bet you a dollar to a donut she straightens up her act...fast. If not, there will be one less "unstable" and "unsafe" individual training for your Company.

Tell her if she keeps it up you will play these back to the appropriate people at the Company. I'll bet you a dollar to a donut she straightens up her act...fast.

Listen, you guys are kinda flying off the handle here. Everyone is screaming "get a new trainer" (I deleted one of those by the way) and telling her to get confrontational and make threats and all kinds of stuff. She's been on the truck for only a few days at this point. She wasn't shown a thorough pre-trip the way she expected to be and the trainer wants to talk about some controversial subjects. Let's not fly off the handle and encourage brand new student drivers to start wars or start filing reports or start confronting people a few days into their career.

Trucking requires a tolerance for an awful lot of things. The way training is done in the industry is far from ideal but it's what we have to work with so we have to make the best of it. I think this situation is going to work out fine. It just takes a little time for a new student to understand the realities of how training is done. It's not a nurturing kind of thing. It's more like a feet to the fire kind of thing. So there's going to be quite a few things that aren't what any student would expect and that's normal.

And 150 feet is about two and a half truck lengths. It's not quite the following distance you should have but it's not exactly scraping the bumper of the person in front of you.

So let's not overreact here. Toonces has the right idea. Drive safely and stay within your comfort zone, be patient with the training process, try to avoid controversial topics. Everything is relatively fine at this point. The trainer isn't screaming at her, she isn't hitting her, she isn't forcing her to do outlandish things. All in all things are ok right now.

Toonces, you're taking the right approach. Just keep us informed and we'll keep advising you about the best way to handle all of this. Right now there's nothing to be alarmed about. Just stay positive and roll with things.

Some of this reminds me of a few of my trainers. At my company, I'd get a trainer for either an entire week or two trainers per week. It depended on who was available at the time. I got home everyday running linehaul , so that's why it was easy to get a different trainer twice a week. My training lasted 3 weeks for linehaul, I had 1 week of mandatory P&D training.

I had some trainers that definitely encouraged me to follow too closely, so as to not let anybody get in front of us during times of heavier traffic. I've had a trainer exhibit road rage by provoking another truck driver. I never had a trainer do an in depth pre-trip like we learned in school - I don't know many that actually do this on a daily basis. Most cover the essentials - some don't even do that. One trainer, during heavy rainfall, told me to "trust in the equipment" and not worrying about adjusting speed. I actually had one trainer ominously preclude our time together by saying, "what happens in the truck, stays in the truck." Yikes.

My point is that training stories where the trainer actually does a respectable job are not necessarily the norm. At one point, I had thought about reporting one trainer, but never carried through with it. Sometimes it's just not worth rocking the boat. I stuck to my level of comfort during training and didn't let anybody push me around. I got through it.

Just asking what type of situations or times you should ask for a new trainer

Just asking what type of situations or times you should ask for a new trainer

Well, Brett kind of summed it up for toonces, "The trainer isn't screaming at her, she isn't hitting her, she isn't forcing her to do outlandish things. All in all things are ok right now."

Many of us have had to take it upon ourselves to learn how to do this thing called truck driving, after we went solo. Unfortunately, sometimes it comes down to just surviving a training experience. Each training experience is different. A trainer might even act differently depending on the trainee. There's really no vanilla answers, I think it comes down to a judgement call. Experienced drivers here can give suggestions, but ultimately you need to make a reasonable decision and do what's best for you. Making a 'reasonable decision' entails knowing when to give a little bit of grace to the situation, but also standing firm on your own personal safety. Definitely some gray areas - that's life.

What can help is to educate yourself ahead of time on the subject and have realistic expectations going into your training. Couple that with the idea that it is just temporary, and that usually allows a trainee to either survive a training experience or thrive in spite of a suspect trainer.