Beginning Company Sponsored Training With Roehl

Congratulations PJ. Great news. I know all about those nerves.

Day 12:

All classroom today. Guess they figured after going through the emotional roller coaster a short break was in order....Nah, it was prescheduled....The morning covered all the general stuff from the J.J. Keller book. It was actually death by powerpoint.....I hate those class's...But we got through it.

We spent 3 hours going over hours of service. Oh boy!!! I get the 11/14 rules and the 70/8 so that wasn't too bad. We did some exercises and I forgot to include the pre/post trip inspections. They insist they be separate from other activities, and I kept combining them into another function. Ooops!!!!

They did NOT cover the sleeper breath rule at all. Since I already got spanked for being to efficient I figured it was best to not ask about it at this stage. I already know the company stance on it, so I'll just save that one for another day with my OTR trainer.

We had info on the board we had to prepare logs for, and it was like to math word problems. I also hated those in school too....The instructor said they were not the best written in the world either, which I very much agreed with him on.

He said in the end as long as we got the concept down, and the process makes sense it will make much more sense in the fleet when we start doing it for real....The company uses elogs , but still ask us to keep a written one as a backup just in case....He says it's not mandatory, just a good idea. He could not recall a time since they rolled it out there has been an issue, but you never know. He said if we keep the paper and the computer crashes then we can at least keep moving, otherwise we would have to shut down till it's back up.

Makes sense to me...

I get today off, except for more homework on finding errors in logs.....

Tomorrow is sleep in day. Just have to meet at DMV at 0700 hrs. instead of being at the terminal at 0615 hrs. Yay.... They reward good behavior....LOL...Bob told us as soon as we get to the terminal first thing is find someone to photocopy our new license if he isn't in the building, then go get the truck pretriped, because we're going for a real ride....Not sure what he means by that, but I'm looking forward to it...Some new scenery I hope..

Congrats!!!!!

Congrats PJ, thanks for all the great info and descriptions of how everything went. Keep us informed on your progress. I am heading to school in Missouri right after christmas, I have been doing all the CDL training on this site so I'm glad to hear it helps.

Stay safe out there!

Day 13:

Woke up at my normal time. Errrr wasted a sleep in day..LOL. Went to DMV and turned my paperwork in for my license. Yay!!!!We all got in there as soon as they unlocked the door. Good thing too. I think every 16 yr old in town showed up to get their license this morning.

I looked at the license status after I got to the terminal. It looks like a fair amount of the alphabet. Class A,B,C,D,M. I always thought the highest worked, guess not.

Got to the terminal about 0745 photocopied my new license for my personnel file, and off to work. My partner was a bit behind and as my luck had it, I had the full pretrip done before she got there.

There are actually 4 of us in the class. 2 are going flatbed so they are in a truck together, and my partner and I are going dry van , so we share a truck. One of the guys in the other truck is kinda fun to mess with. This morning he seemed a little tired, and was moving a little slowly. They have had a dry van the past 2 weeks. This morning they had a flatbed hooked to the truck. The wind was blowing 20-30 mph and it was cold and miserable. I hollered at him and he said something about the wind. I said "yeah look what it did" as I pointed to his trailer. I said "it done blew your roof and sides off". Funny part was he looked surprised. Then he saw the flatbed and turned red.

Bob got in the truck and said we were going for a ride. We thought great. He said to Wisconsin rapids. We looked at him and said okay. He said well get your atlas out and find how your going to get there. Then find a truck stop in the guide book, and lets go.

We found a suitable route and truckstop. I made notes and stuck to the dashboard. We set out, and he got to talking to me and I missed my turn off. We got a little extra training time. Boy was I embarrassed. But I just stayed calm and rerouted and we got there all in one piece. of course we met up with the other guys, and I knew I was in for some ribbing. I wasn't disappointed, they got their shots in. Then I found out the other truck not only got a little lost, but collected a few curbs on tight turns along the way. I was a gentleman and didn't rub it in though.

We continued the seek and find locations till lunch. I got a first hand experience with a company drop yard, and the fabiolous way some people choose to park trailers. I did a straight back on one end of the lot, and an angled back on the other. No worries on either.

We made it to a restrauant for lunch the instructors go to a lot. I found probably the world's worst server....But made it through...

Back on the road for a bit, and Bob got a phone call. He nodded and mentioned our names to the caller. He then said ok then and then rerouted us back to the terminal. We parked and he said he had to go to the office for a few minutes, then we were going to do some truckstop pull through's on the range. Those were supposed to be Thursday.

Bob returned and handed me a piece of paper. He said I was going to do a couple pull through's then I had to report for a random drug screen. At first I thought he was kidding. I looked at the paper and sure enough, he wasn't kidding. I just laughed. He said it's totally random and my name came up. It's even funnier because on wed we have a hair follicle drug test, and just had a urine test 2 weeks ago. I did ask if I could get the hair folicile test out of the way since I was there anyway. They declined, but hey it was worth a try.

Today was a great day. espically since I don't have any homework for once......

Day 14

Up and at it at 0615 hrs. The instructor that takes the keys out to the trucks doesn't show up till between 0630-0645 hrs. so I had the bright idea of going into the office and asking for them at 0615 hrs. They gave them to me, and never said a word about me coming in. I guess yesterday after I left early for my random drug screen Bob told my partner we were to just wait by the truck till the keys arrived. DO NOT go to the office for them. Oops. I didn't get that memo. It just kinda came out in conversation during the morning. I apologized and promised to not do that again. He said it was good since I didn't get the word.

We set out for more road practice this morning. We covered about another 100 miles or so all total, and got to visit another drop yard. A bunch more close quarters driving, then back to the terminal.

Went through a short session on sliding tandems , and some more various backing exercises, instructor choosen at random.

Covered some more trip planning and log book stuff for the real world, and all of a sudden the logs started making sense.

My partner was struggling a bit more on backing and Bob was asking me about my future plans as I go out. He said he see's many, many students and he firmly believes I have what it takes to be very successful here. He made his pitch for me to get out there and prove myself and he hopes I will stay with the company long term. I have no idea what prompted this conversation, but it made me happy he has that high of confidence in me from what he has seen.

Very productive and long day. Tomorrow more road trips and a hair follicle drug test.

Then Thursday is graduation!!!!!!!!

That's great PJ, glad to hear things are going so well.

Day 15:

This morning we got all checked out, hooked up and hit the road. Bob told us where the destination was and let us plan and execute it. Everything went well. We did that truck stop hoping, and then had a great lunch.

Headed back to hopefully get some close quarter backing done. No sooner got started and another instructor kicked us off for a retest of a driver. We didn't know why he was there, but Bob said he probably hit something. I was watching as he didn't get out and look, then went zipping back and was no where close where he should have been. He tied up the box for quite awhile. While we were out there it started snowing and by the time we were done had a considerable bit on the ground. Roughly an inch or so as of now. Parked and post ripped and went over to the Dr. office for a hair follicle test.

Long day!!!!

Tomorrow is graduation!!!!!!!

Seems like yesterday you just applied! Haha! That's crazy, I'm getting closer to starting school. I'm ready to quit my job and start a new career. Studying for my HAZMAT test that I'm taking Friday.

Hope your graduation day goes awesome PJ!

Brian, yeah it's been a quick ride alright. I joined this site 5 weeks ago not knowing anything, or at least much about trucking. I had general ideas. It took Roehl 11 calendar days to get my class date set, for the following week. So in 5 weeks I went from a concept to graduating CDL school successfully with a job. That's pretty darn quick in my book. I'm enjoying every experience.....