Prime's TNT (Train The Trainer) CDL Instructor Program

Thank you for the information I'm trying to absorb all the information I can right now about their program. Right now I'm scheduled for June 8th, and am looking forward to it.

Pack up my belongings, rent a storage unit and park the car at the parents. This is a heck of a life decision but I think I'm finally ready for it. Almost have the permit testing knowledge down pat. Plan on getting the permit here in California in the next few weeks.

Any advice for someone showing up for the first time? What's the weather like in Missouri this time of year?

If you're coming to Missouri in June from California, you're in for a real treat. It's not near as humid as the south but way more than California. The thunderstorms will be awesome to watch! Honestly It's not too bad. Prime probably told you to bring two weeks worth of clothes with you when you show up for PSD training. However while I was in CDL instructor training, they told us that they're going to start advising only one week. Students are showing up with 2 or 3 suitcases full of stuff and either having to send some back home or wait for another trainer with the room to accommodate all their stuff. Bedding (pillow, blanket, sheets or pillow sleeping bag will suffice.) and about a weeks worth of clothes is good. There are laundry facilities available at many truck stops. (Pretty much all the T/A's and Petro's and Flying J's have laundry. Loves tend NOT to) I always recommend soft ear plugs until you get used to the truck noise. And be prepared to sleep on the top bunk as well. You'll only get the bottom bunk if you're going to sleep while the instructor is driving. It's not all together all that comfortable I'm going to warn you up front. The mattress on the top bunk is only about 3 inches thick. But remember it's only a couple months you'll have to deal with it.

Anything specific you want to know I'll try and get back. I'm going to make another post real quick about my Day 1 on the road went before I get some sleep.

PSD training DAY 1

I checked in with driver lineup Sunday late afternoon and got a choice of loads. An 1800 delivery in Arkansas the following day or a 2200 delivery in Ohio in 2 days. (600 miles) I elected for the Ohio run because I wanted to have more time on the road starting off. We crashed at 1700 Sunday night and got up at 0230 to head out. My student (I'll just refer to him as "John" which isn't his real name) was actually up at 2430 very excited I guess to start his adventure. I went to outbound to get our trailer number and checked over the truck real quick. The day before a mechanic from Detroit came and fixed an oil leak I spotted when inspecting my newly assigned truck, that was coming from the oil adapter right next to the water pump. He had to pull the water pump (and a few other things) off to get to the gasket that had leaked and I guess in the meantime lost a little over a gallon of antifreeze so my coolant level was low. I put some in and told John: "Here is pretrip lesson #1. Always check your truck before you get going. Had this not been caught, we could have been miles down the road away from a truck stop and the computer may have thrown the low coolant warning and shut the engine down. It would have looked pretty stupid to have to call road assist and tell them the engine shut down on the interstate and now we have to wait for a costly road call just to put coolant in the tank which should have been easily caught during a routine pretrip."

I put John behind the wheel to hook up to the trailer and drive us off the terminal and east bound on 44. 0300, was in my mind, a great time to get going for a few reasons. #1 start getting him conditioned to night time driving into the sunrise. #2 Hitting rush hour traffic in St Louis for some heavy traffic driving practice. #3 It's the time I try to start driving anyway so we can be at a truck stop early and get some backing practice in before all the solar powered truck drivers fill the truck stop up. At first I just coached a few things here and there about scanning the mirrors every 5 to 8 seconds and just get a feel for how the truck handles with a load on it, since before this, he had only pulled an empty trailer for appox. 5 hours the two days before. This was a pretty light load weighing in at 23,500 pounds. Perfect to start with. I kept pretty quiet the first hour or two just making a few pointers here and there and mainly just watching his driving habits and letting him kinda get into "the zone."

He had laser focus ahead of him at first so I had to remind him a few times to keep checking mirrors and watch on exits for traffic turning onto the onramp that may be merging ahead of us. "Watch for merging traffic and keep watching for traffic coming up behind us in case we have to get over." After about 3 hours and right after the sun came up, John told me, "I'm starting to get tired." I looked on trucker path for the next truck stop or rest area and told him we had a rest area coming up in 23 miles. "Twenty more minutes and we can take a quick break, are you ok for twenty minutes?" He said"yeah no problem," so we took our first break about 3 hours in. During this time we went over the in cab portion of the pretrip. Every student will have to take this part of the pretrip on test day and I want to get him fluid in the break check portion which is a big killer on test day. We have alot of work to do here.

We hit stop and go traffic about 3 miles before our turnoff onto I 270 just outside of St Louis. My first instinct was to take a diversion before the back up as my GPS and google maps both told me of the upcoming back up. I elected to stay in the traffic for the experience for John. By the way I'll mention I turned both my Qualcom and GPS towards me so he can't see it while driving. No need to have those distractions going and better to get him acquainted with using signs to guide him rather than use technology and end up turning into a corn field because the GPS said so. We took one more 30 minute break in Troy IL for rest room and a stretch and continued on to I 70.

Now about 5 1/2 hours and 300 miles after we left I'm watching John very closely as out of the corner of my eye I saw him shake his head like a cat would if you dropped water on it's ear. His eyes pretty much stopped scanning and were starting to get glossy. I looked for the next truck stop or rest area and found one 12 miles ahead. A rest area just before Effingham IL. "Go ahead and pull off at this rest area bud," I told him and when we got parked I simply said: "Man you did one hell of a job for your first time out. You got us more than halfway to our destination and drove a solid 6 hours in early morning hours and heavy traffic and rain. But I can see you're very tired so I'm going to take over from here. You can either stay up and watch the scenery or go back in the sleeper and get a nap in." "I'll take a nap" he said. And he did for the next 3 hours. I got us 180 miles when he woke up feeling refreshed and told me he was ready to drive again. I took the next rest area and let him take over again for the 25 miles to the Flying J in New Castle IN. By then we covered a little over 500 miles and we're only 100 from our delivery which isn't until tomorrow at 2200. We did a couple ally docks in the back of the truck stop and then got out and cleaned up. And that's where I'm at now. I'm going to let him have a few hours to himself and I'm gonna sleep.

I forgot to mention one more thing about John. He is a younger guy that before coming to Prime had Never drove a manual transmission before. This is actually a good thing as there isn't the bad habit of single clutching to shift like you do a car. I took him out to the shifting range first thing and taught him how to use to clutch and break to get going from a stop and use the clutch and break to come to a stop. We did this over and over until his leg was getting tired from using the heavy clutch. He has picked up starting and upshifting extremely well and is doing downright awesome on downshifting even. I'm amazed at how fast he's picked this up. I have to do very little coaching with him as far as shifting goes. Maybe just point out what gear to start in if we're on an uphill and every now and then remind him of our speed and revving up the RPM's to get into the next lower gear or couple gears down. For those of you coming to learn this is very easy. Take your speed and add the two numbers together and that will tell you what gear you need to be in. IE 15 mph= 6th gear, 25 mph= 7th gear, 35 mph 8th gear etc. Rev up to 1500 RPM, while double clutching and she goes into the lower gear nicely. Now this is a formula for a standard 10 speed transmission. It may be different for a 13 speed or more but it's been over 15 years since I drove anything but a 10 so I don't really know. I'm sure an experienced driver with one of those transmissions can shed some light on that.

Excellent post so far. Would love to hear your internal dialog as you build your trainer skills. Over time I am sure you will find that describing or teaching in a certain way is most effective and passing that along might be helpful to all. Tell us the good and bad, the funny and not so funny. You don't need to use names as John or Jane Doe is more than enough. Making the decision to pass skills along to new hires is honorable if done for more than just money and I commend you. Better truckers on the road will result as a testament to your sacrifice.

Thanks you for the advice Bleemus and kind words. I think this was a fantastic idea. Wish I would have thought of it hahaha

That's wonderful your first training experience is going great right off the bat. Hope I find someone just as dedicated.

I'm not too worried about the confort, I spent five years in the Army sleeping on tan turrets.

So June 22nd is the date I got the acceptance letter today. I didn't even imagine humidity, haven't experienced that in at least a decade.

Looking forward to hearing more of your trip, it's nice know there's good trainers out there.