Schneider Bulk Training, Weeks 3 & 4

Our time with the TE was supposed to last two weeks. Mine was considerably shorter; I got picked up Wednesday evening in Houston and dropped off eight days later at our operations center in Gary, IN. That time included the Memorial Day holiday, where we sat for several days due to lack of loads. I admit I had hoped to get a bit more experience driving with my trainer engineer. I was getting pretty nervous towards the end of the scheduled two-week TE phase, as I really didn’t have a very good handle on operating the Qualcomm with relation to the work assignments or logging hours, the paperwork we were responsible for completing and sending in, and had hoped we would encounter more challenging roads than the relatively flat Mid-West had to offer. 

During my time with my TE I did most of the driving, with him sitting, awake, in the passenger’s seat. There were a few times when I ran out of hours and once when we were heavy on our steer tires when he took over. We did one pump unload and one air unload ourselves, and the customer unloaded us the other times. And I will say, in real-world scenarios the unloads went very differently from how we were trained. It was all accomplished safely and efficiently, just different. 

I experienced my first truck stop shower, and was surprised how clean & dry it was… towels were provided… as nice as a hotel room shower. My TE had an EPU on his truck, so our cab was cold at night, without idling the engine. I slept as well in the truck as I have at home. We’d park with trucks all around us, and in the morning they’d be gone, and I never heard them. 

The TE phases ended early on a Thursday as my trainer engineer had previously requested time off, so I had 3 1/2 days to kill before beginning my final phase of training, a three-day review period where I’d get tested or reviewed on my abilities to unload a tanker using the pump and the air compressor, my proficiency at driving a tanker to include slow-maneuvering and backing, and some book knowledge and trip planning. This was a breeze, and I got the impression the instructor leading me through this process was struggling to find things to coach me on after 2 1/2 days. 

I spent the second half of Wednesday making travel arrangements to get to my newly assigned truck, which was sitting in Dallas, TX. The company initially offered to fly me from Gary, IN to Dallas, but I rejected that idea and opted for a rental car instead to drive down, as I’d acquired way too much gear to bring onto a plane. It was an easy drive, fueled by my excitement of meeting my first truck and beginning this career/lifestyle for which I’d been preparing for the previous seven months.