Page 37 - ATR 1 2013

Continuing Education

FMCSA considers driver training edict

by Steve brawner

Contributing Writer

One day after joining the company,
Curt Valkovic, director of driver train- “wheN we TalK To The maJoriTy of schools ouT
ing for Maverick Transportation, stood There, There are a loT of iNdiViduals
in front of 25 entry-level student drivers who waNT To be TrucK driVers, buT The
and asked them to find Iowa on a map. biggesT challeNge is haViNg The fiNaNciNg
Seventeen had difficulty locating the
state. Only two could identify the map To geT There.”
legend – the part that explains what all
the symbols mean. —JohN frey, associaTe Vp-driVer school relaTioNs,
The incident was a reminder that commercial Vehicle TraiNiNg associaTioN (cVTa)
many new drivers come to the industry
lacking even a fundamental knowledge
of how to do their jobs. Even in an age
of GPS systems and smart phones, they hours behind the wheel. Class B and C Stephenson said that an hours-based
still need to be able to read a map, and applicants would be required to log 90 training requirement could result in
Maverick’s seven-week finishing school hours of training, 32 of them behind a sense of complacency where schools
will make sure they can. the wheel. Training would occur in and students believe they must merely
As Valkovic put it, “We have a operations, vehicle maintenance and fulfill that basic requirement instead of
moral obligation to do the right thing to non-driving activities. mastering the material and the skills
ensure we’re putting the right people in The carrier and driver training necessary. Different carriers have dif-
our trucks.” industries expressed concerns about ferent requirements, he said, so the very
As for all the other skills needed to the hours-based requirements during specific requirements may not be appro-
operate a tractor-trailer, there is no fed- two FMCSA public listening sessions priate for a truckload carrier versus a
eral standard that governs how much held January 7 at the American Bus package deliverer.
training a driver should have. But a Association Marketplace meeting in Richard Raiser, vice president
proposal, decades in the making, would Charlotte, N.C. many said that perfor- of government affairs at Werner
change that. MAP-21, the surface trans- mance and skills acquisition should be Enterprises, said his company has hired
portation bill passed in 2012, requires more important than the number of about 113,000 driving school graduates
the Federal Motor Carriers Safety hours of training. from about 380 schools over the past 10
Administration (FMCSA) to establish Boyd Stephenson with the years. Their training times vary between
basic training requirements for entry- American Trucking Associations (ATA) 150 and 500 hours. His company, Raiser
level drivers. said his organization does support said, has tried to track the correlation
The notice of proposed rulemaking required training, but the proposed between hours and safety but has not
on which the training would be based rule is too specific. He cited a 2008 been successful. Some students grew up
was published in the Federal Register American Transportation Research on a farm and have no trouble learning
on December 26, 2007, more than five Institute study of more than 16,000 how to drive a truck, he said, while oth-
year ago. commercial drivers and programs offer- ers have never driven a standard trans-
That rule would require 120 hours ing anywhere from 88 to 272 hours. mission, so schools need to have the
of training for Class A drivers includ- No statistically significant difference in
ing 76 hours of classroom time and 44 students’ performance had been found. 

arKanSaS truCKing report | issue 1 2013 37