Newbies - Tips From the Trainer

After graduating from school and being hired on by a company, do you have to go through additional training with the company? If you are hired to do long haul, are you kept local if the company wants you to have additional training?

The quick answer is yes! The vast majority of carriers will most definitely have you go through continued training. Companies that accept students or that have training programs for less experienced drivers will require successful completion of their training program. Training programs will last for a few weeks to a few months and will depend upon the company and on whether or not you take any time off during the training period. You will, in most cases, be assigned to a trainer on the fleet that you are going to go into. If there is a regional or local fleet, you will most likely be trained there. Most often you will train with a 48 State trainer that will take you on their truck and keep you for the entire training period. This means that when the holidays come up or the trainer goes home for time off, you will most likely be going to that trainer’s hometown and be set up in a local hotel. The training time is commonly accrued only with hours logged on duty and driving, so all of the down time just pushes the completion date further into the future. This period of time can seem like an eternity if you have a lot of down time for whatever reason.

I’ve been driving for 3 years now. About a year and a half ago, I got an overweight ticket. I gave the ticket to the company yard foreman and didn't hear anything more about it, so I thought my company took care of it. Two months after my court date, dispatch gave the ticket back to me. I would have taken care of it had they given it back to me before the court date. I don't know what to do and I’m afraid that I’m going to lose my license. Can you please help me?

I'm not expert on this, but the best advice I can give is to immediately contact the agency on the ticket, explain the situation, and offer to do all that you have to "to make it right". You probably can do all of this over the phone, but you need to check up on this pretty pronto to see what, if anything, they have done to your driver’s license. You want to do this as soon as possible because you may even have a warrant out for your arrest! Depending on the weight, the fines can be pretty hefty and you may even have to go into debt to pay it off, but you HAVE to take care of this and you have to do it rather quickly.

You do not want to get inspected or pulled over somewhere and have to handle this stuff from a jail cell. I'm not sure why you were overweight, but I have stressed to all the people I have trained that everyone needs to "get it right or not go" when it comes to loading trucks and trailers. If you are over gross or over axle and cannot get it legal for where you are, then the load does not go anywhere! Unless I have it in writing that the company will handle overweight fines, I would not risk my license and livelihood. I'm not trying to be a wise ass, but this is something that you have now learned the hard way. Please pass this experience on to others and let them know just how little the company stood by you. You could ask your current company for advice; they would probably help you to get this sorted out.