US Xpress Orientation And Training

I've never enjoyed writing so this will probably be brief but I noticed there hasn't been a training diary from US Xpress in a few years so I told myself I would do it.

Today was our first day of orientation in Jacksonville, FL. The "shuttle" picks up people starting at 6am if you drive you need to be there no later than 7 preferably before. They wanted you to use your phone to complete a medical history first thing. Then went over a few general, common sense rules, don't be late, no harassment etc. Then we started doing some videos as a group with some questions about them. While doing those they started in on the blood pressure and heart rate for each student. We were sent down stairs to wait in line (lots of waiting around!!) to finish our medical history with a nurse then do the physical standards test. It was standing on each foot for 15sec. climbing on a platform going under that platform, having your heart rate checked after each activity. Then lifting a light box to about waist high 20times then a heavy box to waist high then to a shelf about 5ft high and down to the floor once. Next is a pull and push test simply pulling a heavy wheeled cart 20ft or so with a little threshold and keeping it within the lines the pushing it back. All pretty simple I didn't see anyone really struggle with it.

Next they did the hair test and urine test and a little physical with a doctor. Lots of waiting around!!

They provide a 6in subway sandwich for lunch with chips and a cookie.

After lunch the experienced drivers went out for their road/backing test and the 5 students stayed to do more videos with questions until the end of the day. The videos are company policy and general safety stuff mostly.

Not too bad of a first day!

Our day will start at 8am tomorrow!

Day 2

More videos and questions for most of the morning. They handed out paper logs and some directions for us students on filling them out for orientation, they will collect those few days. Then we started learning about driver tech (Qualcomm) broke for lunch (more subway) and finished out the day with more on the driver tech. We waited around for the office ladies to dismiss us one at a time as they checked our applications.

Very simple.

Day 3

Was really just waiting around the drivers lounge for the drug screening to come thru and them to finalize your employment. Didn't come thru for my husband or I so we were sent back to the hotel for the night.

Day 4

We came back in the morning and by lunch we both got hired!! They gave us each a packet of hiring papers and new books. Now we contact our training coordinator and they work on getting us set up with a trainer. Some people say it takes weeks and some say a day or two. I went ahead and got on a few US Xpress Facebook pages and asked if there were any available trainers out there, trolling the pages I've seen others get connected that way so hopefully we won't have to wait too long!

I like the idea of being proactive looking for a trainer on FB versus waiting for the company. Sounds like a good week.

Day 5

I located a trainer via Facebook. He has 5years experience training. I chatted with him and the called his current trainee and talked with her. She had nothing but good to say about him. The only downside is that he won't be available until December 1st so a two week wait. I decided it would be worth it for a good trainer rather than hope for a good one on the luck of the draw.

Now here is the interesting part, my husband asked his driver coordinator about finding a trainer on Facebook and the coordinator was all for it said it's a great way to find one. So I call my driver coordinator and she gets all snarky saying it NEVER works there is ALWAYS and issue. I tried to ask her what she meant but she just got all huffy. I told her I wanted to go with him anyway, that I felt from talking with him and his current trainee that it would be a good situation for me. Still huffy she informed me I had to go home to wait for him then and she would submit it to the planners. Hoping she can't tank my career right off! Probably call on Monday to see where we are at with it, not really looking forward to talking with her.☹️

The only downside is that he won't be available until December 1st

I think you're mistaken here. There's lots of downsides to this.

Amber, you just learned something. You circumvented your driver coordinator's plans. She wants to get you on the road NOW. You want to wait for a "good trainer." This has nothing to do with Facebook. It has to do with timing and chain of command.

One thing about trucking that is completely misunderstood by most drivers is this whole layer of management thing. There are many layers of management. Each one required to be measuring and reporting on the one below it. We drivers are at the lowest level. We have only ourselves to manage. One of our most important jobs is to make it so the level above us has an easy time dealing with us.

You and your husband need to start at close to the same time. The company wants to make you into a productive team. If you wait two weeks, and your husband starts now, you're causing another two week delay (maybe more) for your husband later on. Two weeks of not driving is huge for new CDL drivers. That's why companies want to hire people immediately following truck driving school. Your barely a driver anyway - your new skills go south really quickly if you're not driving. They have a term for this it's called having a "stale" CDL. Most companies won't hire someone with a stale license.

One of the biggest mistakes newbies make is rocking the boat during training. They have their misconceptions about training, and they allow their fears of "getting a bad trainer" dictate how they proceed. I say get over it! Training is uncomfortable. You are just going to be stressed during that time. In fact your next year is going to be somewhat stressful. It's trucking - it should be obvious it's not easy to make a good start at this. The statistics of failure rates are daunting.

I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just trying to get you to muster the courage to jump right in here. I would go with your driver coordinator's recommendation. Get the ball rolling. Training is not anything like what you are thinking it should be. It's exposure to the realities out here. It's a time for you to show you have the grit to do an incredibly challenging job. You are only hurting yourself by waiting.

It's not good (as a newbie) to already appear as "smarter" than your driver coordinator. There's nothing that frustrates our managers more than throwing a kink in their plans and purposes. Honestly, if she can find you a trainer, I would go with whomever she comes up with.

I know this isn't what you were expecting, nor is it what you wanted to hear, but I'm hoping you see the importance of the points I'm making. You're the new guy on the job. Right now you need to cooperate and make every effort at getting this early stuff behind you. There is so much to learn at this point. You need to get started. You have got the entire year ahead of you. It's all going to be challenging, educational, and ultimately rewarding. You need to cooperate really well at this point if you want them to be helpful and supportive to you in the future.

Go get 'em Amber!

Whew!!! Training was demanding! Took 3 weeks for me to get a trainer, ended up with the one I had requested.

He was decent, one thing I wasn't super happy with was him changing my duty status for me all the time not allowing me to get used to doing it myself, I said something a couple times but it didn't change so I know I need to work on that.

We did a pre trip the first day then never again together, I did one or two on my own when I had the time but was so rushed or he would say he did one, never really did a post trip, talked about it but didn't actually do it. We did pre trip the trailers we picked up, found bent/broken cross members, flat tires and brake lining's that were very thin and cracked, we didn't take those trailers and I got to learn how to report those issues.

He was super impressed with my backing so we did just a little practice mainly on the 45 because we didn't do those at the school I went to (it's not on the FL exam) I feel like I know what to do with backing I'm just very slow with it which is fine, slow is safe.

I had to get 175 driving hours to complete training, it took just over 3weeks. I'm set to upgrade to driver status tomorrow!!! So hopefully all goes well there! Not exactly sure what will happen next my husband and I are set for home time till the 28th so I don't know if we will be pulled off of that early or what. We tried to do all the shopping for our truck yesterday (Christmas Eve) so hopefully if we do get pulled off early we are ready!

So excited about starting with my husband!! I think we will be really good together out there. I can't say how thankful I am to have found this site, it has prepared me for so much and I love the community here!! I hope I can find the time and energy to keep up with it out in the road training was a little too demanding to want to try for me.

Congratulations Amber!

It sounds like you are doing really well. We're really excited to hear of your progress!

Thank you old school!!

I forgot to mention the very scary thing that happened. I did my pre trip in the morning at about 3am, one of the few I had time for, everything was good to go. I headed out and drove a couple hours to our drop off. One of the things I was surprised about was how ruff some of the freeways are!! That day I hit a good one that made me catch air in the seat and I was only doing 50, it was raining hard and still dark out. So not long after that bump I get off the freeway and I am making the turn onto the street where the yard is and there is a loud bang and the truck immediately feels weird!! My trainer is up immediately and I have already put my hazard lights on when I realize we are loosing air pressure. It's dark out and my trainer yelled at me to stop when he was getting up so we have ended up stopped in the middle of the road. I hop out to see what had happened, some how our air line came loose and when I turned they got caught under the tires and ripped them out of the truck. My trainer said the mechanism they have to hold the airlines up has a flaw that when you hit big bumps it can unhook and leave them dangling!!!! He said it had happened just the other day while I was sleeping!!! So we had a 43000lbs load so we couldn't drag the trailer out of the road. Set out our triangles and called breakdown, we were there for about an hour before a mechanic got there, he caged the trailer brakes and we eased on into our destination.

Now I'm new but the fact that the airlines can come loose from hitting a bump scared the sh** out of me!! I mean if those airlines had gotten torn out on the freeway that could have been a major accident! We were thinking of taking a good look at the system they have on our trucks and figuring out how to make this not a issue. I mean there are a lot of bumps out there!!!

I saw Susan had posted a safety quiz about a steer tires blowing. So what would the seasoned drivers say about having your airlines ripped out while traveling on a freeway in the dark with it raining hard?? What is the proper response??

In response to your reply; 2 basic points:

- if your trainer knew about this and continued to operate an unsafe truck, he is performing his duties to you and your company unsatisfactorily. His ambivalence is unprofessional and unacceptable.

- this should have been caught during a pretrip, your pretrip that should have been performed before you took over driving. The hardware that secures the air and electrical lines needs to be thoroughly checked during the PTI. This includes the slack adjusters, mounting hardware and bracket on the wall of the cab. And also under the trailer. The defect was not caught before you drove the truck. Know your equipment, learn it. Don’t take shortcuts or hurry the inspection.

What occurred here could have been prevented. An immediate loss of air (as described from the detached hoses) will cause the spring brakes to engage. At highway speeds this could have been a very serious and dangerous event by locking one of the wheel sets on the trailer potentially causing an uncontrolled skid.

As Old School suggested in his reply on the general forum to the same post...

Please learn from this Amber. Safe operation is the drivers responsibility.

Be safe.