CFI Tales...
First of all, thanks to everybody for the wealth of information on this site. It has proven very insightful and beneficial for me as I've gone through the process.
I will be sharing the experiences as I continue here in Missouri and then proceed out to the road with CFI. The information might not be terribly valuable, but this is about as rustic a place as you will ever find this city boy and I'm bored. If the info is useful to you that's great. If not, that's fine too. I have a pretty level-headed, if not cynical, view of the world at large so you can rest assured that I am not a CFI cheerleader. I also don't go through life thinking somebody owes me something so you won't likely hear any CFI bashing either. I'll try to post at least once a day for the next week so I can capture some of the thoughts as this initial week progresses.
So, I received my confirmation from Christine last Thursday after taking the CDL test on Wednesday. My first lesson learned this weekend was to never travel by Greyhound again. To get to Joplin on Sunday I had to leave Detroit on Saturday. We travelled through the night and on into Sunday, arriving at the Holiday Inn around 5:30 Sunday night. The trip was a nightmare for a number of reasons. The legroom is marginally better than that of an airplane and I stand 6'2" tall so it was tight to begin with. When people decided to recline and sleep it was actually a painful experience. The stop in Indianapolis was okay as I headed over to White Castle and hung out with some local drunks. After leaving there, we hit every pothole on the way to St. Louis. Each time we hit a pothole, one of the air conditioning blades began scraping against something metal. Every seat on the bus was filled. Between the tight quarters and the noise, sleep was out of the question. Then, as we began to board our bus out of St. Louis, we were told that those of us in the rear of the line would have to wait for the next bus which was "just around the corner." We stood in the sun for an hour and a half, listened to various falsehoods from Greyhound employees who didn't bother to coordinate their stories, then got on another bus headed for Springfield. When we got to Springfield, the folks who had left on the original St. Louis bus were being held up pending our arrival. Apparently enough people had ended their trips in Springfield to allow all of us to be jammed back onto a single bus. The hour and a half to Joplin seemed like an eternity, but we made it.
I had big plans to order a pizza and root against the White Sox after hearing that my Tigers had already won. After I got out of the shower I fell asleep. I slept through five phone calls from friends asking how the trip went. I slept through to my morning wake-up call at 5:30.
I went downstairs and checked out of the Holiday Inn and caught the shuttle to the CFI office. We got over there at about 6:15 and were told that roll call would be at 6:45. My first thought was that an extra half hour of sleep would have been nice, but I bit my tongue. The day was filled with paperwork, a DOT physical at a local medical clinic, a quick lunch, more paperwork, some screening interviews (which cost us one of our classmates), some more paperwork, and a bus ride to Booneslick Lodge. We got here around 6:30 or so tonight.
My random thoughts on day one:
Greyhound sucks; The CFI terminal is an impressive sight as you approach on what I would think of as a pretty desolate stretch of road; The size of the new driver class coming in (25) is probably on the borderline of being too big for these guys to handle; The group is as diverse as one could imagine - ethnically, geographically, physically, occupationally, etc.; The majority of fact-finding and disclosures could probably be handled before somebody makes the trek to Missouri only to be sent home the first day. Some things likely incur a cost to the company so they don't spend on them until you show up, but others seem to be unnecessary at this point; I was a little surprised by the amount of CYA documentation that we had to sign today, but I guess it's a sign of the times; Greyhound really sucks; The number of semi trucks on the road in this part of the country blows away anything I've seen in the Detroit area; I was looking forward to some kind of southern hospitality while I was here, but we have a Taco Bell, Burger King, and Shoney's from which to choose; If one were quick to judge by appearance and accent, the stereotype of the redneck trucker would be easy to adopt. Most of the folks here seem to be pretty sharp, but there is a preponderance of the downhome drawl; The insurance is pretty cheap, but the coverage is woefully short of what a person coming from the financial sector has grown accustomed to; The DOT physical was much more thorough than the one I got in Detroit, so it took a certain level of toughness not to let the physician notice my cracked ankle; The atmosphere in Joplin shows that the folks at CFI either really care about people or fake it well enough to keep you around for day two;
Well, I guess that's it for today. We'll see what tomorrow holds.
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