I think the dumbest thing I saw was two gals at a truck stop trying to figure out their scale ticket.
They had just finished their training with See What I F###ed up Today and had been thrown in a truck to carry a load to NYC.
They were fretting because they were very overweight.
The look on their faces was so pitiful I asked if I could help.
Dear Lord they were dense.
They didn’t know their steers from their drives from their tandems. Plus they were looking at a weight table for SINGLE axle trucks!
I had them pull to the side and gave them an hour of Hands On instruction.
I made them place their hands on the steers and explained why they were called steers, ditto with the drives and tandems.
After that I went over the scale ticket and showed them how to read it and adjust their tandems. I took a marker and blacked out the single axle column to avoid future confusion.
I spent another hour answering questions they had.
They told me I had taught them more in those two hours than their “trainers” had taught them in three months.
I almost cried.
Anyone that relies on a GPS isn’t all there to begin with. Steering wheel holders, not Drivers.
When I started driving the guy who trained me didn’t let me drive until I could back into a dock with ease.
When I could back into any dock we came to he started letting me drive some. He stayed in the passenger seat and observed and commented as I drove.
While I was learning to bump the dock he had me planning trips from shipper to receiver and learning the log book.
That was about thirty years ago.
Can’t get training like that these days.
“When I started driving the guy who trained me didn’t let me drive until I could back into a dock with ease.”
I actually watched a truck back up 400 foot to then pull the 120 foot down my truck exit, jump out of his rig and then tell me “I don’t know how to back up”.
When asked if he saw the “no trucks” and the “truck exit only” sign he said “yes” but then extolled on how it didn’t apply to him.
One particular NFI driver has gotten her company branded ‘No (effing) Idea’ because we saw her every three days for near three years, always arguing that we were somehow the on ramp to the highway and we were trying to fool her.
And when she called her dispatcher, that moron insisted she was correct and we were lying, that she should just drive through our gate!
You sound like my “regular” experienced drivers who are retiring in droves.
I’m sad to see them go, but glad they’re escaping relatively safely.
I’ve heard lots of “drivers” whining about “darn four wheelers” then seen these same “drivers” turn around and do this little ditty to other drivers, they match speed with the other rig and won’t let them merge in or off the highway.
They also do this “special education hop” inside the rig where they bounce in their seat and slap the steering wheel with their hands while giggling.
When I see that happen, it gets called “Driver on driver hate crime”.
Many of my regulars have seen the same thing.
I’m losing four of them in the next six months as they hang up the spurs.