Don't Miss North America's Largest Expedited Trucking Show and Job Fair!
Expedite Expo 2011
July 22-23, 2011
Roberts Convention Centre
Wilmington, OH
I-71 at Exit 50
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Call 888-862-9831
Over 100 trucking exhibits, trucking career opportunities, plus live Music and family entertainment. Big rigs, little rigs and everything in between!
Admission and parking are always FREE at Expedite Expo.
Trucker Buddy of the Month
April 2011
Russ James
Kristen Belcher, a third grade teacher at Kaufman Elementary School located in Spring Texas says her class is excited that their Trucker Buddy has won the Trucker Buddy of the Month for April. “Our class is very pumped that he won! Wow!!! We are so excited for him! He does such an awesome job! The kids really look up to him. He emails us with updates on where he’s been and sends us pictures of places and landmarks he has seen including some storms that he’s encountered.”
Russ James, a driver for Titan Transfer has been matched with Ms. Belcher’s class for only a couple years but the bond that Russ and the classes have formed is tremendous. He does this by constantly communicating to the class via email, postcards and class visits. He also likes to stop on his trips and pick up items that the class would find interesting. On one trip he was driving by a famous meteor crater located Arizona and he stopped, bought a book about the crater and sent it to the class to learn more about that part of science.
Ms. Belcher said, “Russ loves to visit the class and the students love to see him. He makes the visits special my bringing some samples of the products he hauls and things he’s collected on his trips. One visit he surprised the class by bringing his wife and father to let the students meet them and ask questions.
Another visit he brought the class the steering wheel from his truck and presented it to them. He just purchased a new truck and thought they would love to have it to remind them of him. That’s why they care for him so much.”
Russ likes to turn everything into a teaching experience and uses his truck to teach the students about working hard, studying hard and finding a good job when they are grown.
Each of the students wrote an acrostic to show how much he means to them.
Here is an example of how they used:
TRUCKER BUDDY RUSS
Terrific
Rocking us out
Uh amazing
Cool
King of the world
Exciting
Russ is amazing
Best trucker buddy in the world
Uh lot of fun
Drives cool trucks
Does have amazing trucks
You will wish that he’s in your class
Russ is amazing with kids
Uh cool with his truck
Super super superstar
Superstar
Industry Task Force Brings Clarity,
Flexibility to PTDI Standards
High-level industry professionals representing labor, insurance, motor carriers, and driver training schools recently witnessed the culmination of their four-year process to revise the Professional Truck Driver Institute (PTDI) standards for entry-level drivers and driver training courses. Revisions include ease of use, updated terminology, more flexible standards, and inclusion of advancements in technology.
More than 25 years ago, industry stakeholders began meeting to develop the initial standards for entry-level drivers that they deemed necessary to produce a safe, skilled, well-educated driver. As a result, PTDI created skill, curriculum, and certification standards and, since 1989, has been certifying truck driver training courses across the United States and Canada. PTDI is the only certifying body for commercial motor vehicle (CMV) operator education and training in the trucking industry.
“Our goal was to make PTDI course certification a smoother process for the schools that wanted to be certified and also look into what was on the horizon so we could address issues such as distance learning, computer-based training, and other current technology,” said Mark Johnson, chairman of the PTDI Standards Review Task Force formed in 2007.
Another goal, according to Johnson, was to make the certification process clearer. “We wanted to come up with standards that were generic enough to meet everybody’s needs, yet specific enough to meet the industry’s needs,” said Johnson, who is the director of the Teamsters National Training, International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Contributing the insurance industry’s perspective, task force member Dave Money, CDS, CDT, technical director of transportation, Liberty Mutual Insurance, said, “If revising the standards makes a better driver, then that’s great. Our primary interest is risk reduction, so the better the individual we can get behind the wheel, the more that reduces risks in the long run. That’s what we’re really looking for, and that’s why we as an insurance carrier contribute time to this effort.”
“For me, the most important aspect of these changes is clarity,” said Robert McClanahan, director, Central Tech Transportation & Safety Education, a publicly-funded driver-training school. “These changes give people a better understanding of what we are asking for. The standards are now more user friendly, and if people understand what they’re reading, they’re more willing to look into it. I think these changes will expand the number of PTDI course certifications.”
McClanahan, who served on the task force for the entire four years, explained that “we worked hard not to change the meaning of the standards but simply make them more understandable. We received input from all aspects of the industry and we made sure we were all in agreement. That made the process more challenging, but, for the most part, it was very good because we could see each other’s point of view and come to an agreement on what the standards should say.”
Members of the PTDI Standards Review Task Force donated countless hours to discussions and research to ensure standards were up to date with current technology and equipment and to further encourage the trucking industry to provide the best and safest entry-level drivers possible. In addition to Johnson, Money, and McClanahan, the task force included Ginny DeRoze, former PTDI director; Don Hess, director, Transportation & Public Safety at John Wood Community College; Jim McKinny, president, Davis Transport, Inc.; Jeff Davis, vice president of safety, Motor Transport Underwriters, Inc.; Terry Burnett, CIC, CRM, president, Burnett Insurance Corp; James Fairbank, director of education, National Tractor Trailer School; and other industry professionals.
Johnson hopes the end result will be that “existing schools will recognize very quickly that we’ve made the certification process easier for them to comply with and that the standards are more flexible. With regard to new schools, they will see that the PTDI certification is an attractive model to adopt to show that their program does what they say it does.”
As the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Minimum Training Requirements for Entry-Level Commercial Motor Vehicle Operators initiative draws closer to becoming effective, most likely in November 2011, Money said he hopes the government will go to PTDI as the model. “That would be ideal, because as insurance carriers, we have minimum requirements for the transportation industry, and PTDI has the minimum training standards we desire for the driver we put on the road.”
McClanahan noted that the proposed federal regulations reference PTDI standards and certification, and the PTDI standards revision process “fits in with the timing of the proposed federal rulemaking.” As the director of the National Association of Publicly Funded Truck Driving Schools, he encourages driver-training schools to take a closer look at the certification process and the intent of the standards, because “there’s a lot of misunderstanding out there about PTDI.” Plus, he added, “Schools that have a PTDI-certified course already meet just about all of the federal regulations.”
The revised standards are available online atwww.ptdi.org/standards.
PTDI is a national, nonprofit organization established for the twofold purpose of developing uniform industry skill, curriculum, and certification standards for entry-level truck driver training and motor carrier driver finishing programs, and certifying entry-level truck driver training courses at public and private schools and driver finishing programs at carriers for compliance with PTDI standards. PTDI is based in Alexandria, Virginia.
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