CDL Week: Day 1…

Monday:

Today we were supposed to start CDL week; 5 days of practice and testing (for the NC folks) for our state Class A Commercial Driver’s License.  As we’ve been told for the past two weeks, we would have to practice until ready and then test on three tasks; Pre-Trip Inspection, Straight Line and 45* Backing, and finally a road test.  We would have to progress through the steps in that order, and could not advance until the previous test had been successfully passed.

My classmates and I were at the OC and on the bus at 7am, waiting to head to the practice lot.  We didn’t arrive until nearly 8am (it is literally a 1/4 mi. drive).  Once we arrived we were divided into groups by state and assigned to ’stations’.  And that’s where we sat, doing absolutely nothing, until lunch time.  We were supposed to practice the Pre-Trip, and did for an hour or so.  But we’ve been practicing the same routine for over a week now, and at some point the practice becomes sheer boredom.  We asked to start testing, but were told it wouldn’t start until after lunch.  At this point there were no trucks available for backing practice either.

We were back on the bus at 11:45 and dropped off at the OC for lunch.  At 1pm we were once again waiting for the bus ride back to the practice area.  The testing started around 2, and by 5pm a total of three had been tested, a process that took on average 20 min.  The instructor took anywhere from 30 - 45 min. to smoke and shoot the breeze with his buddies in between each test.  In the mean time the rest of us sat.

Around 4:30pm we were told we could practice our backing; I got one try before we were again called to the bus to return to the OC.  And that was all I accomplished today.  I had a hard time believing how totally disorganized and apathetic the staff was.

If I sound frustrated it’s because I am.  Very much so.  Up until now I had the highest respect for Schneider’s instructors, but today’s experience was like nothing I’ve seen before.  I should add that this was a whole different set of instructors than the one’s we had the first two weeks, and maybe that’s the problem.  Or perhaps they were simply having a bad day.  The rumor was that the senior instructors were absent today and the rest were taking full advantage of no supervision.

I will keep an optimistic attitude and hope that today was a fluke and tomorrow will be back on track.  I certainly hope so…