Then you picked the wrong profession to train for. There is no way in this current training environment that you can make much more "compensation" unless you run the truck as a team. In most training outfits, you are REQUIRED to run the truck as a team after a certain amount of time (usually two weeks). IF you are a decent instructor and or have any scruples, you will not remain a trainer for long if they do not allow you to train the people you are responsible for. I can tell you from first hand experience that if you do not play the game "their way", you wont play the game.

 

I have never trained and never will....no matter how much it pays. The only person I want snoring and farting in my truck is me. That being said I think it's BS and judgemental to be critisizing trainers for making money. That does not mean they are not interested in training a new driver also. If there was no financial incentive in it then there would be very few trainers. Why would you want to be trapped in such a small area with someone you hardly know that is a brand new driver scaring the hell out of you for weeks if there was no financial incentive?

 

Wrong! If you are teaming with a student.. YOU ARE NOT TRAINING THEM!

If this were any other career this would be unacceptable! I sure wish that this would hit the media and the industry would be forced to change, but there are far too many other important issues. Pick another career, Pilots? Doctors? Teachers? Where else do they loose the student on the GENERAL PUBLIC while the instructor/teacher goes away to SLEEP while this person plies their trade in the REAL WORLD? The fact that this type of idiocy has continued and GROWN (training used to be a serious business) just proves where the industry is, and where it is heading.

I've trained literally HUNDREDS of students to drive trucks, not once was I afraid! Again, when this training has such a reputation as to be seen as other drivers as DANGEROUS, that should tell you how bad off and desperate the industry is to fill seats and make money off of the unskilled trainee.

 

So you why should someone want to train?

 

I am a Finisher for CFI. Why do I do it? Because I am never in the sleeper berth when the student is driving. Because I am always aware of what the student is doing. Because I am always aware of what is going on around the truck. Because I have the ability to teach a new driver the right way and the safest way to get the job done.

The real reason I do it.....is because I am doing my damnedest to do my part to bring a new driver up to speed and help them become a professional safely and the right way. I am doing my damnedest to help create a safer envoironment for all of us on the road.

Do I get compensated more for it.... yes. But not so much that it matters in the long run.

I will say this: If you are interested in "training" only for what you perceive as "financial gain"..... your motives suck, and you are doomed to fail at the endeavor, and your product will ultimately be rejected as unfit and un-usable. In fact, its quite possible that your bad product will come back to haunt you.....

If you think my post sounds arrogant and nasty....good! Then it means you got the point.

 

I believe that trainers ought to be compensated for their expertise...BUT first the companies ought to make an investment in time and money in their potential trainers. First of all the trainers would have to do more than survive for sis months OTR before they are considered "trainer material". In a lot of fleets, this is the standard.

Trainers ought to have to pass SEVERAL tests on their general knowledge of the industry and then have to successfully complete a DECENT (40 hour) training course by an accredited school and be trained to handle students. There are many drivers out there that do a heck of a job and are the utmost in professionalism. This doesn't mean that they would make a trainer nor want to be a trainer.

Myself? Trainers ought to be paid a flat rate for their training regardless of how many miles are run. Training ought to be as a SOLO driver! The trainer is there to mentor the new driver and to teach them to survive and polish the new person's skills and work on their confidence.

The trainers really ought to go into training to share their knowledge and to improve the life and chances of a student to make it in the real world. Most trainers live for the day when a student that they have trained, starts training other people.

 

Why don't some of you enterprising types get together and draw up a set of standards for training. Get some industry wide organization to adopt them. Maybe CAD or OOIDA. Take a preactive approach to the problem before congress can.

 

...to answer your question, from what I've seen, it's Swift.

 

Never said that. I'll never train no matter what they offer. The cab is to small of an area for me to be sharing with someone other than my wife for weeks at a time. There are not a lot of guys like you that do it to give back to the new driver. I commend you but there are not many like you.

 

I agree with everything you say here but companies gotta be willing to pay the trainer well enough to take the time to properly train. Otherwise.........the current situation won't change. There will never be enough people willing to do it just to "share thier knowledge".