Ya Dad
Gimme me more characters so that I finish this se
Man...this is been quite an eventful few weeks.
So I came from PM Air. I was a part-time driver Monday through Friday, and because the Manager decided to make PM Air a full-time combo position, I and a few other PT Drivers were given the boot and replaced with PT employees with more seniority who bid on our position. So it was back to sorting and loading trucks and about half my air driver rate. Ouch.
A couple of weeks go by and, since I don't have a time card, I had to keep telling my supervisor my times. She said she was going to make me a time card, and in order to do so, would take me out of my driver classification since "you never drive anymore anyway." Well about a month went by and I never was handed a time card. Turns out, I was a Bid Air Driver and because I did nothing wrong to displace myself from my position, there was nothing she could do. So I kept my classification, kept on having to tell her my times, and got to keep my driver vacation pay.
I was starting to hurt financially after working at my inside rate for a few weeks, so I decided that I would have to go full-time somehow or take up a second job. I had enough seniority to go Package Car, but I already had a taste of that when I was a Driver Helper and swore I wouldn't go that route (no pun intended) unless I absolutely had to. I had heard a lot of great things about Feeders, and decided to start studying for my Permit.
Flash forward a month, and after having failed the general knowledge test 3 times, and the air brakes test once, I was finally awarded my CDL Permit. It was great timing too, because the Feeder intent list was posted just a few days after I had gotten my permit. So I signed the list, went to HR and had them photo copy my permit, license, and DOT, and waited for "the call" (which was just 2 days later).
I started my unproductive week a month later. There was a LOT of signing and information thrown at us. Each of us was given a thick binder full of things we had to sign. It took the whole week to sign everything. Hours and hours of sitting there, reading, things being read to us, and signing. The ongoing joke was that if our hands weren't cramping by the end of the day, we didn't sign enough papers. Did a little bit of driving by the end of the week...but mostly just signing papers.
Week 2, productive week. It's crazy that the day before I started training, I knew next to nothing about cars. You could open up the hood of a car, and it'd be all greek to me. By the end of week 2, you could open up the hood of the tractor, and I could identify the water pump, power steering fluid reservoir, alternator, air compressor, radiator, steering gear box, pitman arm, drag link, knuckles, tie rod...my brain was working over-time retaining all of this information, and even though I was getting an average of 6-7 hours of sleep a night, my brain was fried and I was exhausted by the middle of the week. Glad I made it to the weekend, and through my second week.
Today...I took my CDL exam, which consisted of Pre-Trip (Over 90 items are on the pre-trip), Straight Back / Offset Back / Parallel Park (i thought it was nuts when I first heard that we had to parallel park a frikin' SEMI), and the on-road test. I am proud to say that I passed the exam and tomorrow I will be awarded my Class A Commercial Driver's License with doubles/triples endorsements.
It's been quite an eventful few weeks. I have 10 working days under my belt. I just have to not mess up for another 20 working days, and I am home-free.
So I came from PM Air. I was a part-time driver Monday through Friday, and because the Manager decided to make PM Air a full-time combo position, I and a few other PT Drivers were given the boot and replaced with PT employees with more seniority who bid on our position. So it was back to sorting and loading trucks and about half my air driver rate. Ouch.
A couple of weeks go by and, since I don't have a time card, I had to keep telling my supervisor my times. She said she was going to make me a time card, and in order to do so, would take me out of my driver classification since "you never drive anymore anyway." Well about a month went by and I never was handed a time card. Turns out, I was a Bid Air Driver and because I did nothing wrong to displace myself from my position, there was nothing she could do. So I kept my classification, kept on having to tell her my times, and got to keep my driver vacation pay.
I was starting to hurt financially after working at my inside rate for a few weeks, so I decided that I would have to go full-time somehow or take up a second job. I had enough seniority to go Package Car, but I already had a taste of that when I was a Driver Helper and swore I wouldn't go that route (no pun intended) unless I absolutely had to. I had heard a lot of great things about Feeders, and decided to start studying for my Permit.
Flash forward a month, and after having failed the general knowledge test 3 times, and the air brakes test once, I was finally awarded my CDL Permit. It was great timing too, because the Feeder intent list was posted just a few days after I had gotten my permit. So I signed the list, went to HR and had them photo copy my permit, license, and DOT, and waited for "the call" (which was just 2 days later).
I started my unproductive week a month later. There was a LOT of signing and information thrown at us. Each of us was given a thick binder full of things we had to sign. It took the whole week to sign everything. Hours and hours of sitting there, reading, things being read to us, and signing. The ongoing joke was that if our hands weren't cramping by the end of the day, we didn't sign enough papers. Did a little bit of driving by the end of the week...but mostly just signing papers.
Week 2, productive week. It's crazy that the day before I started training, I knew next to nothing about cars. You could open up the hood of a car, and it'd be all greek to me. By the end of week 2, you could open up the hood of the tractor, and I could identify the water pump, power steering fluid reservoir, alternator, air compressor, radiator, steering gear box, pitman arm, drag link, knuckles, tie rod...my brain was working over-time retaining all of this information, and even though I was getting an average of 6-7 hours of sleep a night, my brain was fried and I was exhausted by the middle of the week. Glad I made it to the weekend, and through my second week.
Today...I took my CDL exam, which consisted of Pre-Trip (Over 90 items are on the pre-trip), Straight Back / Offset Back / Parallel Park (i thought it was nuts when I first heard that we had to parallel park a frikin' SEMI), and the on-road test. I am proud to say that I passed the exam and tomorrow I will be awarded my Class A Commercial Driver's License with doubles/triples endorsements.
It's been quite an eventful few weeks. I have 10 working days under my belt. I just have to not mess up for another 20 working days, and I am home-free.
