Alright guys sorry for the delay but here's my recap post from Integrad.
First night you get to the hotel you have a quick little meeting with one of the instructors basically just to take attendance and give a quick brief on what to expect.
The bus left the hotel at like 6:25 each morning but the first morning was a little earlier. When I say it left at 6:25 I mean 6:25, not a second later so be downstairs by the door a few minutes early.
The first day of training is the longest, and has its own schedule, you get a brief in the beginning basically to assign your partner, get everyone set up in the computer and for the instructors to give their parts. After the morning classes you go through stations, the stations are A through I and you'll have about 30mins at each station. The integration station was always the last activity for us before Inside PM and then ultimately going home for the day. Lunch was a half hour and you get a 10 minute break before and after lunch.
You need to know the 5 Seeing Habits word for word, don't add or subtract anything. The 10 Point Commentary we only needed to know the bold titles word for word, as long as we could describe the description we passed. You don't need to do them in any order. The Pre-Trip wasn't as bad for me as I was thinking it'd be. You can miss up to 4 things out of I think 28. Test out as soon as possible!!!! I tested out on the 5 Seeing Habits on Monday, Tuesday I got the Pre-Trip and 10 Point Commentary and having those taken care of was a huge relief for me.
Thursday is the day that most people go home. That's the day that you test out on the road test and the Integration Station. The road test was a lot harder than I was thinking it would be. You go with a different instructor each time that you go out so ultimately you wind up taking a road test with someone that you've never driven with before. That probably sounds stupid but once you go out with one instructor you learn what it is that they're looking for, the next instructor might do things differently. For example the first instructor I went with told us that if we called a driveway an intersection that was okay, the second instructor didn't accept that and said we needed to call them what they were.
I don't think anyone failed the integration station, but you do that after the road test and the road test wipes out a lot of the failures. The integration station is the parking lot set up as a little town where you make deliveries to these little sheds. The thing about the integration station is that you have 19 minutes to complete like 5 stops, one pickup, and then a backing station. You only lose 2 points for every stop you don't complete so if you only do one stop but you do it 100% correctly and don't lose any points, you still pass with like a 90. I'm not saying that you should try to do that, but if you wind up like me and get stuck behind someone who can't figure out their DIAD don't sweat it, just focus on doing everything the right way and don't worry about someone in front of you slowing you down.
The final DIAD test and the multiple choice tests weren't bad at all. Those are what you do on Friday. On Friday we were back to the hotel by like 11:45.
Bring hem tape with you. Most of the uniform infractions that people had were pants that were too long.
All of the trucks at the Integrad that I went to were automatics.
Overall preparation is the best thing you can do to succeed at Integrad. Know your 5s and 10s before you drive out there and test out on them the first day and you'll be looking good for the rest of the week.
I was only the second person from my building to go through Integrad and my supervisors told me to expect UPS boot camp and that it was an intense school. In my opinion that's a bit excessive. It's like basic training in the fact that it's very structured and on strict time lines but none of the instructors are going to scream at you or get in your face or anything like that. Having been through basic combat training for the Army I can tell you it's nothing like that at all. The instructors are nice people that are willing to help if you need it, they want you to pass but aren't afraid to send you home if you don't make the standard. We had a 25% failure rate and the instructors said that was actually pretty good, they told us they've had some courses that only had 40-50% pass. Youre assigned a partner; use them to study and get through the course but don't let them drag their feet and get you behind either.
Best of luck to anyone that's going to Integrad.