Basic Training: Day 2 …

Sunday:

Class started again at 7AM.  Our regular classroom instructor (Dennis Hughes), who will be with us through the rest of the class, was there today.  He elaborated a bit on yesterday’s orientation and gave us a more detailed schedule for the class.

Today was all classroom work, starting with about 4 hours spent on HOS (Hours of Service) Logging.  While this is a bit detailed and requires careful calculations, it isn’t really difficult.  Basically we’re required to record our work status for every hour of the day in 15 minute incriments.  There are four categories to chose from; Off Duty, Sleeper Berth, Driving, On Duty-Not Driving.

We also started to cover the 70 Hour, 14 Hour, and 11 Hour Rules.  I’ll explain them in more detail later, but generally they dictate the number of hours we can drive and/or work during different time intervals.

Other subjects covered included Defensive Driving and Fatigue, and we had several tests on material covered thus far.  It was a tiring day and I have homework to do, so this’ll be a short post.  Hope you’re all doing well.

Basic Training: Day 1 …

Saturday: 

Today finally got here!  I arrived at the Charlotte OC a little after 6:30 for the 7 AM class.  Being too early is a bad habit of mine (as you know) but there were plenty of other students milling around at the smoking area so I felt right on time.

I spent about 15 min. wandering around taking in the sights.  This place is in some regards just like a truck stop; there were fuel islands for the trucks, a service desk just inside the door, a small shopping area with a few goodys, and a cafeteria.  Beyond that were rest rooms and showers as well as the classroom areas.  That’s as much as I saw today, but the building is much larger than the area I saw and I assume the rest is administrative offices.

Phil Lathan was the only instructor there today (his title is Training Advisor) and he conducted the first few hours of class.  Most of that time was the usual first day things you’d expect; roll call, video welcome from the founder (Don Schneider), some light paperwork, more videos, and several short breaks.

The room was crowded as we had ~45 students (I didn’t get an exact count).  This is a fairly diverse group, but mostly young to middle aged men.  I have chatted with a couple of them a bit today and expect we’ll all get to know each other before long.  Besides, if what I’ve read holds true the crowd will thin to a more intimate group as the class continues.

One interesting thing about Phil is his accent.  He is Brittish and sounds amazingly like a close friend of mine, Andy.  I’m hoping to have a chance to ask him where he’s from at some point, but today he was pretty much mobbed like a celebrity at every break.

Once Phil finished his bit we were turned over to Brandy, introduced as the one who will handle our administrative needs.  The rest of the morning was spent filling out various forms and presenting documents to be copied for our records, with a few more short breaks thrown in.

I must admit I was somewhat amused by the whole process.  If you have seen the movie “Alice’s Restaurant” you may remember the scene where Arlo Guthrie was at the Army Induction Center and all the men were filling out their paperwork.  That scene kept coming to mind all through the process.

Anyway that was it for the day.  Brandy assigned a healthy homework assignment and we were out of there by 12:30.

Conference Call w/ Dennis and my ‘classmates’…

Tuesday: 

This afternoon I dialed in to a conference call hosted by one of our instructors, Dennis Yonish.  This is something new, according to my recruiter, and is designed to give the instructor a chance to chat with the students before their first day of class.

There were 16 of us on the call, and after calling roll Dennis spent the first few minutes giving us a general overview of the class; what to bring, what to expect, and a general timeline of our first 6-8 weeks at Schneider.  He didn’t say anything that I hadn’t already read in my research (mostly on pumpkindriver.com), but I did notice he made a point to stress some very important points:

• You will be busy, very busy, for the 14 days of class.  If there’s ANYTHING you think you need time off for, go ahead and reschedule your class now.
• You will NOT be readily available to family and friends, during class OR while on the road with your trainer.  Make sure they know that they can’t call on you for everyday “emergencies”.
• You live with your truck; there are no motel rooms except in rare instances.

There is no reason anyone should show up for class and be surprised by what we’ll encounter.

Anyway, after his prepared talk Dennis went down the roll again giving each of us a chance to ask a couple of questions; anyone who needed more time or discussion was encouraged to call him direct after the conference call ended.  There were a few questions, but generally it sounded like most had done their research ahead of time.

I don’t expect to post again until after class starts on Saturday, and then depending on how bad the first day whups my butt…

All set to go …

Monday: 

Our week in Destin, Fl. was just what the Dr. ordered; a little bit of sightseeing and dining out, and a LOT of relaxing.  The drive there and back was long but mostly uneventful; very few traffic problems, and the Jeep did great on the highway. 

This morning I faxed a copy of my DOT Medical Card, TSA letter, and drug test receipt to my recruiter at SNI.  When we talked a little while later he said he’s still waiting on the drug test results to come back and can’t confirm my seat in class until it arrives.  We agreed that he needed to do some digging to ‘find’ the test results and get things moving. 

I received another call from him about 15 minutes later.  Turns out that the paperwork was sitting on someone’s desk the whole time, but my name wasn’t on some list and so they didn’t know what to do with it.  Anyway, all is now confirmed and official; 

• Training start date: Saturday, 09/16
• Graduation date:     Friday, 09/29
• SNI hire date:       Friday, 10/06

He also scheduled me to join in on a conference call tomorrow.  This is something new according to him; seems one of the instructors hosts the call for new students once a week.  They’re supposed to cover in a little more detail what we need to bring and what to expect during training.  I look forward to what he/she has to say.

HOORAY! I’m not a terrorist…

Friday:

‘Course, I knew I weren’t, but they wouldn’t take my word for it.  Got my letter today from the TSA stating that I’m cleared for the HazMat endorsement.  That came in a lot faster than I thought it would.  One more item off the list.

Tonight we’re packing for our trip so I’ll keep this one short.  Hope you and your families have a great Labor Day weekend.