Talked to one of my friends who is still a trainer at my old company.

Now I know that the majority of drivers don't want to train or have the nerve for it. But here is what my friend has done it the last three weeks.
41 cents with trainee on truck

1st week ( 4 days ) 2100 miles = about $861.00 gross
2nd week 5700 miles = about $2331.00 gross
3rd week 6100 miles = about $2501.00 gross.

I guess there is still money to made in trucking.

 

What company? How do they manage 6000+ miles a week and do any training?

 

They're "team training." The worst kind of training, if you can call it that.

 

I wouldn't even call it training. It's called "team" plain and simple, there's no training going on period...

 

Sure there is - they're training you how to make yourself so tired that you can actually sleep in a rolling 80,000lb missle with a pilot with less than a weeks driving behind the wheel.

No thanks.

 

Seems like about a year ago or so that I was the one that first spoke out against the TEAM METHOD of training. (If there were others before that, I don't mean to "slight" you.) I'm glad to see so many others that agree with me. I would suggest that anyone on this board that is planning on going through school and becoming a driver, check on the companies method of training BEFORE you sign up with them. If their trainers run 6,000 miles a week, AVOID THEM.

If the trainer is not awake and alert while the trainee is driving, there is no training going on. The trainee may as well be in the truck all by himself/herself. Just give them the fuel cards, truck, load, and a day later, send out a flatbed to bring the wreckage home.

 

These miles are not hard to do when you load from cali to windy city and back or to atlanta and back.

Run 16 hours a day and have 8 for fuel, shower, eat and some time that both men can lay down with out the truck moving.

It's all about the type of trip and time management. Plus the trainee, some catch on real quick and others......you don't let them out of your sight for one second.

 

Then the trainer is violating his 14 hour rule, as all time spent supervising the trainee is ON DUTY (not driving), and 8 hours in the sleeper is 2 hours too few.

If the trainer is sleeping while the truck is moving, then he isn't training - he is teaming.

 

This is a real rookie question. When there's 2 in the truck are the log books filled out any different than if solo? Do both have the same 14 hour requirement or are there any tweaks involved for teams.

 

Yup, I agree with Rev, that would be a direct violation.

There's only one way you could run even remotely close to team during training and still be respectable in my book. That would be in a for instance that when the trainee hit his 11 hours of driving time and they still had an hour or so on the 14 hour clock and needed to make up a little time. Then the trainer could drive an hour or so to catch up a little. My personal opinion is that the trainee should spend 100% of the time in the driver's seat because he won't have the trainer's extra hour to bail him out once he gets in his own truck, but the above mentioned scenario might be acceptable.

I know when I was with Maverick, they were very strict about the trainee doing all of the driving minus maybe the first couple of hours or so to let the trainee observe. There was one trainer who did the exact thing above that I describe and the log department caught it. That trainer was reprimanded and all others were put on notice that this wasn't acceptable in their book. My trainer drove the first 100 miles or so and turned it over to me, then I drove every mile after that. He did the same thing with securement also, helped me on the first load or two and then supervised me the rest of the way. IMO, that's they way all companies should do it.