New Driver. Incident On First Load. Now Fired.

I went through Schneider orientation as a new driver back in 2015. To say you only get one week of training is not true. All together it’s a three week course.

The first week you are assigned a road instructor and drive with him for several hours a day. The day is mixed with class room work and training on the pad.

Week two you are out with a trainer. Trainer cannot be on the phone or in the sleeper. You do all the driving. Week three is back with the road instructor. At the end you test out with a safety manager. If they feel you are not ready you are not going solo but will redo the orientation.

After that I did another week with a mentor and had to again test out with a safety manager from the account I was assigned to. So technically yes you are with a “trainer “for only a week. It’s much more than that.

The comment about one week of training is when someone brought up the company TransAm. I am sorry for that confusion.

I went through Schneider orientation as a new driver back in 2015. To say you only get one week of training is not true. All together it’s a three week course.

The first week you are assigned a road instructor and drive with him for several hours a day. The day is mixed with class room work and training on the pad.

Week two you are out with a trainer. Trainer cannot be on the phone or in the sleeper. You do all the driving. Week three is back with the road instructor. At the end you test out with a safety manager. If they feel you are not ready you are not going solo but will redo the orientation.

After that I did another week with a mentor and had to again test out with a safety manager from the account I was assigned to. So technically yes you are with a “trainer “for only a week. It’s much more than that.

The comment about one week of training is when someone brought up the company TransAm. I am sorry for that confusion.

Nailed it, thanks!

I was getting concerned you were referencing DML!

~Anne~

I went to all this trouble to point these things out for the newbies and wannabes in here. You can make mistakes in trucking and survive them, but you can't ignore what was taught you in training. You are the one at the wheel. When you run over a tree it is your fault. It is always best to admit your fault and show what you learned from it. If all you can produce as what you learned is that the company's training is lousy and insufficient, you will soon be looking for a job.

As someone who has just been starting on all this I've been trawling the archives here a lot and I know I saw a thread about a rookie who completely rolled his truck 2 months in (it was litterally upsidedown in a ditch, there's pics) and managed to keep his job. I think he was even back on the road in under a week.

He did it by following Old School's script. He owned the mistake and took responsibility. I think the story ended with him emailing the safety director to ask if he could have a picture of the wreck to keep on his visor as a reminder.

I went to all this trouble to point these things out for the newbies and wannabes in here. You can make mistakes in trucking and survive them, but you can't ignore what was taught you in training. You are the one at the wheel. When you run over a tree it is your fault. It is always best to admit your fault and show what you learned from it. If all you can produce as what you learned is that the company's training is lousy and insufficient, you will soon be looking for a job.

As someone who has just been starting on all this I've been trawling the archives here a lot and I know I saw a thread about a rookie who completely rolled his truck 2 months in (it was litterally upsidedown in a ditch, there's pics) and managed to keep his job. I think he was even back on the road in under a week.

He did it by following Old School's script. He owned the mistake and took responsibility. I think the story ended with him emailing the safety director to ask if he could have a picture of the wreck to keep on his visor as a reminder.

This is of EPIC proportions.

Persian Conversion

It will ALWAYS resonate with me. My friend, Marc Lee, had a similar event at his company ... and never did post the 'stuff' .. and it's not my place to do so.

Someday, I'll share my other half's story....gotta find the disks and data.

Best to y'all~ MAD respect. . . . straight up.

~ Anne ~

I went to all this trouble to point these things out for the newbies and wannabes in here. You can make mistakes in trucking and survive them, but you can't ignore what was taught you in training. You are the one at the wheel. When you run over a tree it is your fault. It is always best to admit your fault and show what you learned from it. If all you can produce as what you learned is that the company's training is lousy and insufficient, you will soon be looking for a job.

As someone who has just been starting on all this I've been trawling the archives here a lot and I know I saw a thread about a rookie who completely rolled his truck 2 months in (it was litterally upsidedown in a ditch, there's pics) and managed to keep his job. I think he was even back on the road in under a week.

He did it by following Old School's script. He owned the mistake and took responsibility. I think the story ended with him emailing the safety director to ask if he could have a picture of the wreck to keep on his visor as a reminder.

This is of EPIC proportions.

Persian Conversion

It will ALWAYS resonate with me. My friend, Marc Lee, had a similar event at his company ... and never did post the 'stuff' .. and it's not my place to do so.

Someday, I'll share my other half's story....gotta find the disks and data.

Best to y'all~ MAD respect. . . . straight up.

~ Anne ~

That's exactly the one I was thinking of. Thank you Anne for having the link handy.

I went to all this trouble to point these things out for the newbies and wannabes in here. You can make mistakes in trucking and survive them, but you can't ignore what was taught you in training. You are the one at the wheel. When you run over a tree it is your fault. It is always best to admit your fault and show what you learned from it. If all you can produce as what you learned is that the company's training is lousy and insufficient, you will soon be looking for a job.

As someone who has just been starting on all this I've been trawling the archives here a lot and I know I saw a thread about a rookie who completely rolled his truck 2 months in (it was litterally upsidedown in a ditch, there's pics) and managed to keep his job. I think he was even back on the road in under a week.

He did it by following Old School's script. He owned the mistake and took responsibility. I think the story ended with him emailing the safety director to ask if he could have a picture of the wreck to keep on his visor as a reminder.

This is of EPIC proportions.

Persian Conversion

It will ALWAYS resonate with me. My friend, Marc Lee, had a similar event at his company ... and never did post the 'stuff' .. and it's not my place to do so.

Someday, I'll share my other half's story....gotta find the disks and data.

Best to y'all~ MAD respect. . . . straight up.

~ Anne ~

That's exactly the one I was thinking of. Thank you Anne for having the link handy.

You're welcome; I keep it bookmarked on my PC!

~ Anne ~

That’s pretty harsh original poster, most companies will give you a rookie mistake as long as it’s not something severe. Squishing a little tree in a parking lot would not be considered severe in my opinion. Unless you’re leaving something out. No I was fortunate enough not to have a rookie mistake, but I did make some bonehead things happen my first few weeks, (driving where a truck has no business driving, turning down a frontage road that had a dead end in the middle of the night thinking I was going on the freeway) silly things like that. My company just laughed about it.

Honestly what you need to do is find an empty parking lot with some cones and over a couple of weeks back that truck in every which way you can possibly imagine. You’ll get the feel for it. And remember something else. Never have too much pride to get out and look. Never. At the end of the day if you don’t smash into anything you keep driving. Who cares what anyone else thinks. Your job is to keep that truck / trailer from touching anything.

The first year I was OTR I got out and looked all the time. If I was not 1000% sure about the cab door I came for a quick peek. Now I only have to do it maybe once a month or so. But I’ll still do it. I don’t know what’s back there I look.

That’s pretty harsh original poster, most companies will give you a rookie mistake as long as it’s not something severe. Squishing a little tree in a parking lot would not be considered severe in my opinion. Unless you’re leaving something out. No I was fortunate enough not to have a rookie mistake, but I did make some bonehead things happen my first few weeks, (driving where a truck has no business driving, turning down a frontage road that had a dead end in the middle of the night thinking I was going on the freeway) silly things like that. My company just laughed about it.

Honestly what you need to do is find an empty parking lot with some cones and over a couple of weeks back that truck in every which way you can possibly imagine. You’ll get the feel for it. And remember something else. Never have too much pride to get out and look. Never. At the end of the day if you don’t smash into anything you keep driving. Who cares what anyone else thinks. Your job is to keep that truck / trailer from touching anything.

The first year I was OTR I got out and looked all the time. If I was not 1000% sure about the cab door I came for a quick peek. Now I only have to do it maybe once a month or so. But I’ll still do it. I don’t know what’s back there I look.

Well, that little tree got stuck between drive tandems , if I remember correctly, so it's possible that it caused significant damage to the truck. Also, if the company had documentation that OP had been struggling in other areas, then that little tree is much more than just a little tree.

Even as a novice this mishap was 100% preventable!

Carmen everything you necessary to avoid this mishap I guarantee was taught in school and/or in training.

G.O.A.L. !!!!

That said... I don’t think we are getting the whole story here. Any Newbie reading this... if you do not GOAL and hit something you are responsible and will be held accountable, and possibly dealt with in a “so called” unfair way (tongue in cheek).

Own it!

Im a new CDL-A holder, worked at a mega carrier for about a month. Two weeks classroom then driving around the city for two days with trainer. One week OTR training. I felt I wasn't trained well enough and asked for more training for backing up. They pushed and said experience is all I needed. On my first solo load, I crushed a small tree in a dark parking lot. It was stuck in my tandems. My fault. No cops. No towing. No ticket. RIP little tree. 😞 One guy trained me on backing up for half a day. I told my supervisor I needed a couple of days practice at it. The trainer did teach me one good trick but I still need practice. She then told me I'd take a test. Pretrip, driving, and backing up. I thought, Oh great! They can see where I am and then I can practice on improving. Nope. The test was to see if they should fire me and needed documentation for their reasoning. Thought it was odd the instructor said he was not allowed to instruct me at all. Now I am fired for "Unsafe Driving Practices." It's fair enough to fire me for not being cost effective, since they churn out about 50 new drivers a week. But don't try to hurt my chances at a new job that would give me more training. My delimma is I have found a company that is willing to hire and train me but they need my DAC report. My first company one hasn't filed it with the state yet. I phoned to ask when they would file it and they said they didn't know. I asked for their copy of it to show my new company and they said their copy is proprietary and they never give it unless a lawyer pushes for it. Is there a legal time limit to make my DAC on this incident available to the TX public depth of safety? Is the company even legally obligated to file it at all? We have a family lawyer I can use but that feels weird to be so pushy. Should I just wait until they are good and ready? Thanks for any advice or suggestions. Much appreciated.