 springfield werner orientation
I just wanted to post somethings about my experience at the Werner orientation in Springfield, maybe it will help maybe it wont.
Id like to first start by saying do not use the Greyhound bus line to get there if at all possible. This was the biggest frustration I had. It took 12 hours for me to go what would take three and a half if my own car. Werner will not let you park at the terminal. They tell you what to pack and most of it you will not need. Try to pack as light as you can because your going to drag all that stuff around with you wherever you go. The super 8 motel they put you in is not so bad. You will have to share a room with some one for the first 3 days. You can have a room to yourself if you want to pay twenty dollars a night. Which isn't bad considering you don't have to put up with someone you may not be able to stand. Also your belongings will be safer. They do have a van that will pick you up at the Springfield Greyhound stop. Its really not a bus terminal its a second hand store located in a strip mall. They lady that works there is actually nice, as are most of the hotel and Werner staff. The first day you will wake up and have to be in the hotel lobby by 6:30 to get the van ride to the terminal. The lobby will have Werner drivers hanging around and students waiting to get back and forth. The hotel is pretty much owned by Werner, there employees are all over the place. The continental breakfast consists of Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, Doughnuts, Bagels, Bread, English Muffins Milk, Coffee, and Orange Juice. They will drive you to the Werner terminal which is about 10-15 mins away. Then once you get there you'll sit and wait for them to call orientation students upstairs. There is free arcades to play which are kinda broken but work ok. Also there is vending machines with fresh food in them. After showing your I.D. you'll go into a room and start orientation. They take your picture to give you a Werner I.D. badge then you'll start the paper work, there is a lot. There good with giving you breaks and for lunch they may have told you that they supply it this is a bit of crap. What they give you is something called Werner Bucks which they only give you two of. Its like to fake dollars that you can use in there vending machines. Then after that you will do the E-Trainer you may have heard about. This is very easy and you would have to be extremely slow not to pass. Even if you fail you can take it again and the questions remain the same they show you the correct answers if you get it wrong. Then you go back to the hotel sleep and do it all again the next day. Bring money with you if possible there is a lot of fast food places withing walking distance from the hotel and restaurants. The orientation is really a breeze your not really graded on anything its more like a briefing of things. I left just before orientation was over to come home because after being there i realized it wasn't all cracked up to what i thought it would be. A lot of drivers are sitting around there not working, complaining about the company. It was really good to talk to actual people rather than reading post online. I had a company call me that is only a few miles from my house that I applied to before I left. With that I took the first bus back in a way sad to leave but on the other hand happy not to deal with the junk of OTR Driving for a big Learning type company. Werner isn't as bad as most people make it sound, I think the ones that come to these post and complain about everything would do so no matter where they worked. I just didn't want to be away from home for the 6-8 plus weeks they want for training. At 350 dollars a week minus taxes to be in a truck for almost 24 hours a day does not seem worth it to me. There is good money to be made truck driving but OTR is like being at work all day everyday. What I mean by that is when your not working, more than likely your sleeping in the companies truck or a hotel which to me is the same as being at work. There is plenty of free time but your always tethered to your truck some how. Oh one more thing, if you went to a truck driving school and are expecting the 100 dollar a month reimbursement from what I gathered that money is taxed so it wouldn't be a full 100 dollars. I am not really sure if it is or not because they only talked about it for a minute in orientation. For the correct info you might want to ask your recruiter. Good luck to everyone that is trying to make it out there as a Truck Driver and remember all those big companies are mainly training companies.
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