My Truck Driving Mentors

Another aspect of facilitating a mentor program is to have a pool of people that want to be mentors (like Daniel suggested) and assemble a pool of people that would like to have a mentor. Brett or someone could be in charge of assigning a mentor to a mentee or like Daniel suggested, the mentee chooses a mentor that he feels would have the expertise in the area he/she wants help in. You could have the email/telephone hotline in addition to dedicated mentors that could communicate in any way they set up with each other.

Just some ideas to kick around.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

For example, I know that Starcar is much more educated than me on the subject of prescription drugs and blood pressure and all that good stuff. So if a student needs someone very involved in that subject than they could seek out Starcar.

If someone is just starting their year with Central Ref. then they would seek me out because I worked their for a while.

Someone starting with Prime? Ernie is much more educated than me on Prime.

Female wanting a female mentor? Starcar or Redgator would do.

Going to be teaming up and running hard? Guyjax is doing that right now he would be an excellent mentor for a student going into that.

Need guidance with Swift? Logan can help!

Pulling flatbed? Starcar, Ernie, and a few others.

Pulling tanker? ThinksTooMuch is the guy for that!

Pulling reefer? You have a long list to choose from.

Want an ignorant, self-righteous, 22 year old in a Pink truck? Look me up.

You see? We all are different in some aspects than others. So whatever a student needs, there's a mentor that fits his agenda. We won't be having mentors answering questions about subjects they know nothing about. That's why I think my "draft" idea is a good idea.

I know I'll be ringing ThinksTooMuch's doorbell sooner or later as he is not only yanking tanker, but he is also with Schneider: my intended first choice.

Man! I can't wait.......

You see? We all are different in some aspects than others. So whatever a student needs, there's a mentor that fits his agenda. We won't be having mentors answering questions about subjects they know nothing about. That's why I think my "draft" idea is a good idea.

Interestingly enough, that's why I liked my email idea. Because that way a group email gets sent out to each of the volunteer mentors and whoever has the opportunity and the expertise to answer it can do so. And I'm almost certain I can set it up so that we can hit "reply to all" and everyone will see each reply. That way we'll all know everything that everyone has said - a group discussion.

And of course if the person requesting a mentor would accept or prefer a phone call instead of an email we can let them specify that. So as a mentor you might receive an email message that says:

"Hey guys, I can't figure out if I should use the split sleeper berth rule for my current situation or if there's a better way to do it. Could someone help me out with this?"

This driver is ok with a reply email or a phone call to 555-111-2222

So the driver would be able to specify if they prefer a phone call, an email, or both.

I totally understand what you guys are saying about driving all day and not being able to stop in order to send emails so you would prefer phone calls. Makes perfect sense.

I'm in the exact opposite boat. I'm kinda like a dispatcher where I'm always in the middle of things. I'm either writing computer code or doing chores outside or any number of different things so phone calls are something I try to avoid at all costs. I prefer to answer questions by email in case I'm in the middle of something when the question comes in. I also prefer email because I can take the time to think through my response to make sure it covers everything and is said properly.

I'm interested in hearing more opinions on how we can pull this off. Many of the large carriers have something they refer to as "driver liaisons" or some similar name. They're supposed to be mentors and you can call them up anytime you have an issue. The problem is that the liaisons are normally trainers and the complaints are often about things being done by other trainers. So there's not only a conflict of interest, but the student driver is taking a risk by questioning or ratting out a company trainer to another company trainer. That can end badly for the student driver. With us, we're independent. So we can answer questions honestly without any inherent risk on the student driver's part or a conflict of interest on our part.

I mean, mentoring is what TruckingTruth does. It's what we are from top to bottom. But adding a program like this would put us at a whole new level.

Brett, I like the idea of having a communication option: phone call or email. And I've noticed you avoid phone calls since you never call me! Haha!

Interested in other folks' ideas!

Does it necessary have to be drivers that answer the ?'s.

Could just be some volunteers that will go out and volunteer to help people get the answers. People like the wives of the drivers or retired drivers who may know the answers to the question or with just a little research can get the answer. Might even be those office support people that are on break or off for the day and being bored as long as they had some connection to the industry.

Setup it up in like a tiered response. Volunteers get the questions and evaluate whether they can answer or not and then escalate it up the "experience chain" until they get an answer. If they are like me they might have the question they had already answered on the site but have not found it or lack the computer experience to find it and a volunteer could get it for them.

Reasoning behind my thought is that the numbers previously posted for unique visitors to the site you could get a dozen or so "Mentors" completely bombarded with email and/or phone calls otherwise and getting them at all sidetracked from making their money, etc. is something I think all would like to avoid. While the driver will always likely have the best answers it is likely not needed to hit them over and over again with the same questions.

Just a thought to throw in the mix there.

Melton assigns all of their new drivers a mentor. They are usually trainers, too. Every time that I have needed a question answered, it was pretty time sensitive so a phone call was just about the only way it would work. That may be the way to phrase it, too. If you need an immediate answer this is the phone number. If you can wait 8-36 hrs, then an email would work.

Just my $.02

Brett, I like the idea of having a communication option: phone call or email. And I've noticed you avoid phone calls since you never call me! Haha!

Interested in other folks' ideas!

I pick Daniel. I'd love to have a someone to call while starting out solo when I get in a tight situation.

Six

Sometimes it can take a while to get answers through emails. Can take me a day or so to answer depending on what I have going on that day or how stressed I am from driving through bad conditions. And then sometimes I can get to them right a way.

And phone calls are a different matter. Talking on the phone is great and BSing can really pass the miles. But if someone would have called me today I would have thrown my phone out the window. Will make another post about today.

I guess it's about timing really. I drive during the day and sleep at night while my brother drives and I REALLY REALLY like my sleep. Only get about 6 to 7 hours a sleep anyway but I guess us old folks don't need to much. If I get to much sleep I feel like I have had not enough sleep if that makes sense.

Bumping back to the top cause I am betting there are still a ton of good ideas for this floating out there.