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Post by bowtie on Nov 8, 2003 13:34:26 GMT -5
Don't mean to pry on anyone, but can anyone tell me roughly what kind of salary a driver instructor at the schoolhouse earns?
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Post by truckertom on Nov 8, 2003 15:47:54 GMT -5
At my first driving school in 1989, I was making about $13 an hour. In 2000 I started with my second one after a few years off at $11 an hour with the promise of $12 after 90 days. We had to threaten to walk off to get $13 and hour. Now it is 2003 and I am making $12 an hour at school #4. I work five days one week at 45 hours followed by a four day week at 36 hours and that cheats me out of the overtime I should have made on week one.
They all make big promises to the instructors about "taking care" of them later on...that later on is usually when the school goes under.
If you are considering becomeing an instructor, you better have other reasons for doingit other than money.
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Post by Rachelle on Nov 9, 2003 21:21:47 GMT -5
Hey Tom, what part of the country are you in? Sounds like you could be fairly close - here in Iowa the typical rate is $13-$13.25/hour. At the community college near where I live and where I used to work full time, the instructors received pay raises to put them around 32K plus benefits. The benefits were excellent, though, I must admit, and took a little of the sting of the somewhat low salary out of it. Prior to that raise, we were stuck around 25K and that, quite frankly, sucked pretty bad.
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Post by SilverBullet on Nov 10, 2003 0:39:32 GMT -5
When I lived in Arkansas, I was offered an instructor position at the Southwest Arkansas Community College in Hope, and it started at $80.00/day, for five 8 hr days a week. Needless to say, I turned it down.
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Post by truckertom on Nov 11, 2003 6:59:34 GMT -5
Rachelle
I am down here in Weatherford TX. I am making $12 an hour but the problem is I work 5 days one week, and 4 the next because of low recruitment. That cheats me out of 5 hours of overtime a week. No benifits at all. But when they start having the student numbers come up, they will hire any idiot off the street with a CDL to be an instructor. That means we regulars will have to train 2 truckloads of students for the pay of one. We call them "Babysitters". And the best part is the money the Owner saved by hiring the idiot during the large class, he loses when the attendance goes down because now he has another mouth to feed so to speak.
Owners have always been convinced the Recruiters are the important ones and hiring truckers to train is a nessasary evil. Many of these owners put themselves under after a few years because they get greedy.
The best part of it is this: guess who gets to listen to all the griping about contracts, recruiters and owners?...The Road instructor! Ours went from eating at a restaurant to having this person bring them breakfast at the school in the morning, Supper at night and a sack lunch. I'm going to laugh when all the students get sick at one time. I have taught at better schools. I should have accepted C.R. Englands offer when they made it!
I have been encouraged by an instructor at a community college to apply there. I don't know why I don't take one of my days off and do it. I guess after four dead schools I am convinced they are all about the same.
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Post by Drafter1964 on Dec 20, 2003 19:28:29 GMT -5
I had one of the fellow students at the school I an attending trying to insist that the instructors earne 80 grand a year. I turned and looked at them and asked them just what the heck they were smoking. These Instructors here are lucky if they get 11 bucks an hour. He asked me why I was so sure of this and I said. Look around you bub this is Florida a state where nobody gets paid well. There still are companies who think people can live on 8 bucks an hour here in Florida and I don't think they consider having a roof over your head as a part of lifes nessecities.
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Post by truckertom on Dec 22, 2003 21:32:27 GMT -5
After the first of the year I may give it up and go back on the road. The owner paid we three instructors a huge complement this morning, he said we were perfect and wished his instructors at the other school were as good.
But alas, it doesn't pay the bills.
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Post by SilverBullet on Jan 22, 2004 20:32:03 GMT -5
After the first of the year I may give it up and go back on the road. The owner paid we three instructors a huge complement this morning, he said we were perfect and wished his instructors at the other school were as good. But alas, it doesn't pay the bills. Tom, are you still considering on going back OTR? I was just wondering if things have gotten any better for you.
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Post by truckertom on Jan 22, 2004 22:49:45 GMT -5
Yes things are getting better, the President of Central Refrigerated visited us and said we were giving them the best students they have and has offered to share is some of our advertising cost. I have been working pretty steady and may wind up being the lead instructor.
We have also added some carriers to the list, and added a more lenient loan company to the list so we now have three. It is funny that the people who need work the most (the poor) have the hardest time getting a loan for school. We are also trying to keep the interest down but unfortunatly that is not up to us! We are getting some Texas Workforce Commision and Texas Rehabilatation Students from the state, but I have to admit the these are somtimes the hardest to train because of thier attitude toward it. Some of them don't want to drive and make no bones about it.
What can you do to motivate that? I usually take them out and scare the hell out them so they know they will have to learn to drive or hurt themselves...that is one thing they seem to understand. This is when I have to pull out the Marine Drill Instructor on them, and even I don't like having to do that.
But who knows how long it will last? it seems greed always plays a part in ruining a decent driving school. I have seen it kill three so far, if it happens here I am done being an instructor. This is my last roundup.
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Post by SilverBullet on Jan 26, 2004 13:17:53 GMT -5
Tom, I'm glad things seem to be going a little better than before. Lead instructor huh? Hopefully there's a pay raise in it for you, and not just the added responsibility and the title. Good Luck with it, and keep us posted on how it progresses.
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Post by truckertom on Jan 26, 2004 19:44:03 GMT -5
It was funny today I took a man that was to be our new instructor out on the road....he ran stop signs, didn't look both ways going accross tracks, and likes to run down the road in the left hand lane and best, wants to coast to a stop in neutral!!!!!
I volenteered to let my students critique this new instructors driving since they can out drive him. And tomorow I get to teach this instructor to drive!
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Post by JiminyCrickett on Jan 27, 2004 19:27:46 GMT -5
Hi Tom, FYI having been "released from my services" ;D on April 1, 2002 because our "first time pass rate" was unacceptable and "things don't appear to be getting better", I discovered I liked the idea of trying to put better drivers out there. Like you, went from $13/hr with full benefits to $11/hr & no benefits. Upside of this is that I really enjoy my boss and co-workers as well as the students. Guess I'm not in it for the $$$$!
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Post by truckertom on Jan 28, 2004 19:37:36 GMT -5
Jiminy
Right now, I am having to try and train a new instructor. What is bad about it is that this driver is a road veteran that has years and YEARS of bad habbits to get over. I have been trying to see what he can do and so far in the last two days, he cannot parallel park a truck. He coasts to the stop sign, and he never stops at them.
Here is the good part. The ower asked me what my evaluation of him was and I told him if I were in his shoes, I wouldn't waste any more payroll on him.
And here is the good part: THE OWER LISTENED TO ME!
I have done this elsewhere and the excuse was "We really need instructors, so I'm putting him in a truck anyway".
So thing are getting better, and sometimes I have to remember that we are building a school from nothing. We also improved our classroom instructor recently. So we are doing much better!
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Post by Fozzy on May 27, 2004 21:10:47 GMT -5
;D Is'nt training instructors fun? LOL. I've been snooping around and it's almost scary the similarities in what you post to what I've seen! LOL.
I worked in a School in Green Bay and my job was to train instructors and insure "uniformity" amoungst the staff. I taught everything from range work to the classroom.
The HARDEST part of training instructors is breaking the bad habits! While these habits are not neccessarily unsafe or dangerous, they are STRICTLY enforced "no no's to the DOT examiners!
Insuring uniformity is the only way to make sure that the students can move from one instructor to another and not get the living heck confused out of them.
We had meeting before and after every class went through and we listened to the students VERY carefully. If there was a student who said that "I wasn't taught that" we could easily tell by the scoresheets and the other students in the trucks scores if there was an instructor problem or a student trying to obviscate their poor preformance!
TWO HANDS ON THE WHEEL! For experienced drivers, this is something that they have been doing so long it's THE hardest thing to break them of!
SHIFTING IN TURNS This kind of goes with the first one, but this one is also tough to break! (This was my toughest to break myself of anyway)
My salary up in Green Bay was in the mid-twenties. We of course were working almost 300 hours per month. While that really sounds horrible, This work for me was VERY fullfilling. Someday I will find another school with some form of higher standards...in Southern Oklahoma, they don't seem to exist!
Good post Truckertom!
Fozzy
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Post by truckertom on May 28, 2004 20:26:53 GMT -5
"Someday I will find another school with some form of higher standards...in Southern Oklahoma, they don't seem to exist!"
The money men are the last to know how to run a school. We just rooted out a BIG cancer at our school and now that we have, thing are going alot better. The owner is now paying me to repair trucks (another thing I do, I was raised in a family of truckers) but he sees now how the old director was padding his own pockets when paying outside mechanics. I think ours is learning.
It is always funny when you tell a veteran of the road that he is going to hve to quit popping it out of gear two blocks from the stop if he wants to be an instructor. I took one down to a DPS (DMV) and had him take a driving test with a state examiner......he failed! Then he quit.
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