My husband and I have been driving for a few years now, but starting out we went through Schneider driving school. The school itself is ok, and our instructors were great. Now for the nightmare, we were placed with a trainer that had no respect for driver safety, everything we had learned in class was not important to him, so he taught us "his" way. After 3 very long, nerve testing weeks we were finally issued a truck of our own. We had this vision of making a lot of money (which was promised to us to lure us in when we called to get info on their school) and couldn't wait to get started. Well after getting the crap runs with plenty of down time due to all the "maintenance" on our tractor or the search for empties for hours on end and always waiting for answers from our STL on times and appointments, and trying to get our sleep patterns down we were a mess and needless to say made just enough to pay our bills! We went through 2 STL's and 3 tractor's. They have a lot of tractors, but the newbee's get the older crappy ones. They say after you have driven awhile and proved you can handle it you will get a newer one, yeah right!! The day we were issued our truck there were several news ones with the plastic still on the seats, but ours stunk really bad inside and had yellow stains all over the cabin from the previous driver who must have been a smoker, not only that it threw black suet inside the cab and for awhile before we realized the reason for allergy attacks and cronic coughing was due to breathing it in. So a long story short the next 2 tractors weren't any better. I know I am going on about the tractors but unless you live on that truck for 3 to 4 weeks at a time, you don't appreciate what having a decent tractor means. But to end this post, I will tell you to be your own judge and do your homework, your STL will and should be like your best friend because they are your life line out there. Unfortunately for us the 2 we had was just drawing a pay check and I guess we were just a headache being the newbee's we were. The best thing we did was get away from them and found a great job elsewhere. If you are serious then make sure they know you are a person and not just a number on the Qualcom.
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