Terminated By Schneider

Folks, what you have seen from Christian is typical sociopathic behavior. Sad

My only remaining question is how old he is. Sounds like a child.

Good riddance. Hopefully no one ever puts you behind the wheel again

Something to point out is that mistakes do happen. By drivers and by companies. It is quite possible someone somewhere will make an error. Give you a serivce failure, charge something to your pay.. etc. But being professional and proper communication will rectify these things.

In short, dont be an idiot

Please forgive my ignorance but if Christian had all those safety events can the company list them on the DAC? A reportable incident would have to meet specific criteria like loss of lol life, property damage, or the vehicle. Swerving or a hard break or any other critical safety event that doesn't meet the criteria would still get reported?

Please forgive my ignorance but if Christian had all those safety events can the company list them on the DAC? A reportable incident would have to meet specific criteria like loss of lol life, property damage, or the vehicle. Swerving or a hard break or any other critical safety event that doesn't meet the criteria would still get reported?

Yap, they can put it on his DAC. Companies can put pretty much anything they want on a DAC. If the person disputes a claim then the company has to prove their claim to be true within 30 days.

Christian. I mean this to be nothing but helpful. If you ever plan to make it as a trucker learning from your mistakes is probably one of the most important things you will need to do. Every day we all make mistakes. Many many many mistakes. Some we will make many times before we even realize we was making a mistake. If you can’t own them you will never make it as a truck driver. It might be driving through a city at rush hour when you could have bypassed it. It might be forgetting to take a 30 while you was getting unloaded and driving off with 29 minutes of on duty time logged with 30 minutes left on your drive line. It might be missing your turn or getting lost from the lack of trip planning. These kind of little mistakes can snowball into a huge problem. In trucking 5 minutes on Monday can cost you 10 hours on Friday or even worse. In your case it snowballed into getting fired. You failed to see your mistakes and correct them. I feel sorry for you but atleast you will live. Grow out your beard.

When you strip away the “stories told” by our friend Christian; perhaps the best takeaway from this saga is the system worked. I believe Schneider terminated a potentially dangerous driver.

Unless our friend Christian makes a significant adjustment to his crappy attitude, his trucking career is likely finished.

Thank you Schneider.

The fact of the matter is, recruiting and hiring and training new drivers costs a lot of Money.

Drivers that can go from A to B, safely and on time, (The basic bar for competency in trucking) aren't being let go for trivial matters. They make up the bulk of the fleet.

There are always certain themes that come up with people who fail to find success at new endeavors, and one of course is a biggie I talk about all the time - they incessantly complain, blame, and criticize. They always think they know more than everyone else so they never listen. They never think they're wrong so they never learn. When they are wrong and someone holds them accountable they get indignant, run their mouths, and find themselves on a bus home.

So here we are with another one, and he won't be the last.

I've known throughout this thread that Christian's driving was the problem because after 25 years in this industry I pick up on the little things which includes subtleties in their language and reading between the lines. Several things have been clear from the start:

1) Christian never thought he did anything wrong. It couldn't possibly be his driving that's the problem, right? Heck, he's been doing this for six months. What could he possibly have to learn, right?

2) He never pursued a proper resolution to this. He never talked to safety. He never reached for a manual or even asked any of us what he could be doing wrong. He made no attempt to improve his driving habits or learn from any of this. He assumed from the start that the problem was the truck and his dispatcher and his company, but of course not his driving. It couldn't possibly be his driving.

3) He was fired, but not his co-driver. First of all, I don't believe his co-driver had as many violations as he claims. Regardless, I knew there had to be a reason Christian was fired but not his co-driver, and of course it was because he ran his mouth to the wrong people. For those who aren't aware, the office personnel don't take kindly to some rookie talking down to them. It will indeed earn you a bus ticket home. You were both driving the same truck but only one of you was fired. The fact that you never tried to dive into that spoke volumes. It said there's a lot more to this than you're telling us.

4) He said he had 17 violations but only 5 were reviewed and some of them happened on straight roads. As Rainy pointed out there are numerous ways to trigger a critical event on straight roads. Not only that, but that only accounted for a few of them. What about the others? Mysteriously the road characteristics weren't mentioned in the others. What about the other 12 violations? Did you pursue a review of them? Did you try to learn from them?

I lost count years ago how many stories like this I've heard - people claiming they did absolutely nothing wrong but were completely wronged by everyone - the truck, their dispatcher, the company. I can't think of a single time this has ever actually been the case. The reason I haven't said anything to this point is because I wanted him to keep talking until he accidentally revealed enough information to let us understand this situation a little better.

You ignored the warnings, you refused to change your driving habits, you ran your mouth, and you complained, blamed, and criticized every single person and entity around you from the truck to dispatch to the company itself. These are not the behaviors of someone who is doing their best to learn their trade, be humble, and give it all they've got. These are the behaviors of someone who is arrogant, overconfident, disrespectful, and dangerous to the people around them on the highway, which is why you were given a bus ticket home.

I also find it hard to believe they've asked you to return. Naturally you're too good for the company, or at least that's the story you're telling us. Personally I find it hard to believe a lot of what you've said. Whenever a story comes from someone who is 100% right with everything they've done and everyone around them is 100% to blame the story is almost without fail a steaming pile of BS.

New drivers, just like Brett and the Mods said, I wouldn't believe a word of this story. I used to work as an Orientation & Training Supervisor at a large company (~2,400 drivers and a large CDL training program) before I decided to go back out over the road. When drivers were referred to us over critical events requiring intervention, most took ownership of their behavior and really wanted to improve their skills. But every now and again I would get a "Christian T" sent to us from the Operations department. Even in cases where the issue was purely behavioral - like this one - that company still made an active effort to retain every one of its drivers.

Schneider and other medium to mega carriers keep extensive records of our events, conversations (both phone recordings and QualComm/PeopleNet/TruckPC messages), and telemetry/videos. If HR decided it was time to terminate this guy, they had more than enough evidence to protect against a lawsuit and an unemployment claim. I pretty sure they talked to every staff member that interacted with Christian from the operations department to the training department before they made the decision. I'm willing to bet there was a documented history of behavioral issues. There usually is. It's actually really difficult to fire drivers in this industry; company owners are very sensitive to driver retention losses and don't want to be sued for wrongful termination. The company has to have its ducks in a row before terminating a driver.

I don't know exactly how Schneider does their DAC reporting, but this sounds like he was terminated for insubordination. That's most likely what will be on his HireRight report. Probably not going to impress many recruiters with that.

If you end up getting called back to a terminal for some additional training, swallow your ego, be willing to jump through a few hoops, and get something positive out of the experience that makes you a better driver, and move on down the road. If you don't understand why you are being coached by the office staff, tell them as much. Ask for additional training! Throwing away a career instead of seeking mentorship is just foolish.

Mark B: That is a great evaluation of this situation, and great insight into management mentality.

All of us inexperienced drivers need to make note of what Mark B. is telling us.

1) Companies know all newer drivers will and do make mistakes. 2) They want to help you correct your mistakes and keep you driving. 3) They will bend over backwards if you take ownership of your mistakes. 4) If you are called in because of any issue, have a vocabulary consisting of: "I'm sorry, I messed up and I want to learn how to avoid repeating this mistake." " I've thought about this and here's what I think I did wrong and what I can do to correct it." " I would welcome additional instruction."