“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.
“And when she called her dispatcher, that moron insisted she was correct and we were lying, that she should just drive through our gate!”
I noticed the quality and intelligence of dispatchers dropping as well.
It seemed like the people who couldn’t cut the mustard as drivers ended up being dispatchers.
Combine a not too bright driver with a not too bright dispatcher and you have a recipe for idiocy that grows exponentially.
You would figure that in three years someone would set her straight.
“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.”
Aww, wasn’t he special!
Snowflakes behind the wheel are so precious.
He sounds like the SWIFT driver who showed up at a Wal-Mart distro center at 1:00pm and couldn’t understand why they were turning him away for being late.
His BOL showed his delivery time as 01:00 which we know is 1:00am. No one had told him the trucking business operates on the 24 hour clock.
Another driver and I gave him a tutorial on pick up and delivery times.
I blame a lot of it on the CDL mills that aren’t concerned about teaching but are only concerned with the money. If you can walk and breathe at the same time they graduate you.
I also blame some of the old timers who won’t take the time to help the younger drivers. I’ve seen quite a few who would rather bitch about the youngsters than help them learn to become proper Drivers.
Of course I ran into quite a few who went out of their way to help others because it was how THEY were taught.
Good luck with the new crowd. Just be glad Schneider didn’t import those 2,000 drivers from India some years ago.
That would have been a real clusterscrew of a goat rodeo!