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School starts tomorrow
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Well, I cleared out my office last Friday, with no regrets, and have spent the weekend quietly with a few friends, swimming and walking the dogs. I didn't really think about what was going to happen tomorrow, until I decided to have a quick scan through the TruckNet boards. Now, I am thinking, "am I going to be in any fit state at five tomorrow morning to drive the 100 miles to the school?" "Did I do the right thing? I was well thought of in my last job," etc. etc. In short, i'm so nervous, I can hardly sit still. I guess that i'm gonna find out in pretty short order... KC Life? Don't talk to me about life... [This message was edited by sunteach on July 20, 2003 at 17:59.] Answer: Sunteach, Once you break the ice in school, the rest is downhill !!! Enjoy it, have fun and learn a lot and you will succeed. Just take it one day at a time. Everything will start clicking in and before you know it, the school will be over. Please, if you can keep us posted of your progress and let us know about the bumps and smoothness of school. GOOD LUCK !!!! Answer: You'll do just fine. I have Confidence in you. Answer: Take your time and keep focused on your goals....! Trucking has been a good move in my life.!!! I not getting rich(yet) but, I am not starving at all. Remember what choclt snda wrote "Breathe In......Breathe Out" Have fun and watch the number of ding ding's that get washed out.! Cigar ______________________________ ______________________________ You Can't Shoot Them. They Will Elect More !!!! Anonymous/or I forgot. Answer: Once I got into class, the nervousness fell away, and i'm really enjoying it (thanks to those who gave me encouragement). The week so far has been lectures, videos, and practice tests, to prepare for the written exams. The classroom instructor is a retired trucker, with a great sense of humor and lots of practical stories, who will give lots of extra time, in breaks and at lunchtime, to students who are having problems with a particular topic. If the driving instructors are like him, I will not have any complaints. I have not needed to have any extra sessions as yet, as I got a book out of the library (Arco Truck Driver's guide to Commercial Driver Licensing) a few weeks ago, and two members of my family bought me other study guides (Barron's How to Prepare for the CDL Test and REA's The Best Home Study Guide for the CDL Exam), so I have done a lot of reading and a lot of practice tests. I would recommend anyone starting at a 4 week private school (like mine) to do some reading beforehand, as the amount of information you need to absorb is huge. I know that Community College courses are longer, so can't say anything about how their classroom work is paced. We look at HazMat and start on log books tomorrow, and Friday most students will take the written exams at MVD and get permits. Three or four of us (including me) will be doing our written tests tomorrow as, of the three MVD offices in the Albuquerque area that give written tests, only two give them on Fridays, so the school wants to spread the load a little. The advantage for me is that, while the rest of the class are taking their tests on Friday, we will be getting a jump start on the trucks -- only pretrips, but apparently the examiners here want the pretrips done in a very exact way, so the more time I have to get the "script" off pat the better, plus, never having looked closely into the workings of a tractor-trailer, it will give me a chance to put some on the diagrams and terminology in a better context. Regarding the books I have, even if your library book only has a quite old CDL manual (mine is), it is still worth checking it out, as the affect on answers on the written test is minimal. The legal stuff (particulary since 9/11 may have changed radically, but that is not tested -- at least here in New Mexico, it isn't). The only real difference I have found that would change answers on a written test is concept of "snub braking" and the "5/3 rule" for downhill grades, so even an old book is very useful for preliminary study purposes. On an amusing note, the Swift recruiter was in today; a very nice woman. She bought pizza, cake, and sodas, (free lunch!) and talked about what a great company Swift is, what a great school she thinks this one is. Apparently Swift trainers "breathe a sigh of relief" when they hear a new driver is from here! We at least know which end of the truck we should get into (That would be that little square door thingy on the back of the trailer, right?), and have other basics down, like how to back, hook, and log, correctly! She also gave us some very interesting factoids: 1) Turnover rate target for Swift this year is 85%, and they are very close to that. 2) Governors on Swift trucks are there solely for the safety of the driver... tests have shown that the cab involved in a rollover at 60mph is probably survivable, at 65 much less so, and at 70, go meet the angels or the devil, depending on... yadda, yadda, yadda. 3) Swift is one of the safest companies in the industry, and they are quite proud that their accident rate has gone down! I had printed off the safety stats, "Inspect Recommendations", etc. from the 'net for Swift, Werner, FFE, and other companies that recruit locally, and had them with me. I was going to challenge her about #3 above, but unfortunately I had to leave to go for my drug screen and medical, so could not do so. Another course member had a copy of the stats, so I will have to wait until I get in tomorrow to see whether there was any fun after I left. Well, i'd better do some last minute cramming for the written tests tomorrow. Will keep you updated. KC Life? Don't talk to me about life... Answer: Originally posted by sunteach: On an amusing note, the Swift recruiter was in today; a very nice woman. She also gave us some very interesting factoids: 2) Governors on Swift trucks are there solely for the safety of the driver... BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! Man, that woman has some huge stones to be able to say something like that. Thanks for the laugh! Answer: Week 1 is over, and, although it is only a permit, I keep opening my wallet to take out the piece of plastic that reads Class A on the front of it and on flipping it over I read "Endorsements: Combination vechicles w/double or triple trailers. Combination of Tank Vehicle & Hazardous Materials Endorsements." I aced all the tests, and thought all those "100%" marks on the form were great, but when the woman handed me the permit, THAT was when it hit home. (more a ****-eating grin than just big ) The REALLY hard work begins next week... Lebowski: You put it sooooo much better than I could KC Life? Don't talk to me about life... Answer: Sunteach, That is great !!!! First of many success. Keep it Up !!!! Answer: Spent Monday mainly doing pre-trips until we were all heartily sick of them , but they need to be done, and if you are something of a mechanical moron, lik me , they at least teach you a little about the "bits and pieces" that go to make up a tractor-trailer. The rest of the week was equally spent between "backing" and "shifting", morning backing and afternoon shifting, or vice versa. New Mexico does not require the serpentine, "only": straight line backing alley dock parallel parking (drivers- and blind-side) Backing For me, straight line and, strangely (at least to me), blind side parallel came fairly easily, but the drivers-side parallel and especially the alley dock tied me in all sorts of knots. It is slowly coming together, partly due to my buying a toy from Wal-Mart (kindly delivered to the store by a REAL driver) and "playing" with it, along with some pennies for cones, on the hotel room floor each night , but each time I try either of these manoevers, it still seems to be a disaster waiting to happen - I get them somewhere near right maybe one out of four times. The other three times require going back to the beginning and starting over. Shifting We started out the week running from the Freightliner terminal on I-40 West of Albuquerque along a fairly quiet road up to Double Eagle Airport and back again, up the gears, down the gears (we have Eaton Fuller 10 speed boxes), and, aside from my very first gear change trying to go from 3rd to 4th when I had my right foot on both the brake and the throttle (we came to an immediate full stop and the engine died), I am progressing fairly well, although sometimes when moving through the lower gears, especially when downshifting to a stop it is just as well that there is no traffic close to the front of the tractor. We progressed to another, even more deserted, nearby road that has a huge, extremely steep hill on it. At least, that's what it looked like the first time I got to it, but as I was thinking "Oh, $h!*, what the f$@* do I do here?", the instructor calmly said, "You DO know about snub braking, don't you?", I just left it in 9th gear, and on we went. In reality, the "hill" is just a long, gentle, downgrade, but the extra height, and size, of a truck totally changes your perspective. At the end of it all, the instructor did think I have done well enough during the week to let me drive the actual CDL test route this afternoon, and I managed to miss only two gear changes, didn't hit a kerb, didn't speed, and didn't have an accident, although some shifts were "noisier" than they should have been, so I ended the week on a high note. Shifting was the thing that had really worried me, as for the past five years, I have only driven automatics, and before that stick shifting had been done with my left hand (due to Brits driving on the "correct" side of the road, instead of the "right"). Added to that is the fact that i'm left-handed, and can do almost nothing useful with my right hand, so I was very, very nervous, but in talking to other students, I think I had something of an advantage because I was able to approach it as something totally new, rather having to change the habit of driving a manual rhd 4-wheeler. I even went to Wal-Mart (again) to buy a plunger, and (again) sat in my hotel room practicing gear shifts I wonder what maid service thought! The week is over, and things are starting to click into place -- the only bad thing is that i now have two days to completely forget everything i've learned this week. Ah well, back to the toy truck and the plunger... KC Life? Don't talk to me about life... Answer: Hi sunteach, I did the same thing just over a year ago. I tell ya it was a real thrill to climb up in that big o'l truck for the first time. The CDL school I went to had all the backing challenges to do, serpinetine/slalom, parallel, straight, blind side 90, etc.... It was a lot of fun and I made it all fun. The only test for the CDL I had to do was a regular 90. However now that I've been driving I think the funnest part of driving is doing the backing. The most challenging backing I had to do while working now, (hauling rock, driving an end dump trailer) was backing down a culdasac, making not one, not two, but three blind side turns, then straight, then another 90 and finally a gentle blind side curve. Geeshh why do these residential neighborhoods have to have so many curves in them. Or how about having to back 5 blocks exactly straight. on the right is fresh concrete, drive on it and it cracks! On the left, fresh asphault, drive on it and is squishes! So I have about 3 inches of play on both sides, not a problem. Backing in the zone and everybody is happy, squish or crack and everybody mad.. I consider my self about as safe a driver as anyone, probably more than others. It may be corny but I think of the Smith system every single time I drive. It's a very good thing to just flat out memorize when you first start. As you drive if you use it you will see it working, everysingle time you drive. It's been just over a year for me, I have not made very much money. I found an awesome deal on a truck and I'm going to buy it. Now the money will be good. Answer: Sounds like you're working hard towards your goal. Good luck. Keep working hard and before you know it, it will be easy. Just beware of recruiters. Keep doing your own research. Recruiters are salespeople. The trucking company sends them out to certain schools to "get" drivers. Each recruiter has to get a certain quota signed up for training programs or the recruiter is out of a job. Typical salesperson. So it is in their best interest to promise the sun, the moon, and the stars over some pizza and drinks. When you get to orientation/training at the company, the sun, moon, and stars are gone and so is the pizza and refreshments and even the recruiter. Only you and the truth. So make sure the company you ultimately go with is one you can live with for the first year or two, and don't just take the recruiter's word or even the truck driving school's word for it. It has been proven that some of the major carriers pay truck driving schools a kickback for each student that goes to work for them. Best advice is to look at all options. Research on the Internet. Swift has a terrible safety record. So does Werner and several other large companies. But don't let that alone sway your decision. You can be a great driver at a company with a bad safety record or one with a good safety record. It is all up to you. If you drive a truck that only goes 60mph, you may feel safer, but you are not. A rollover at 60mph can be fatal, and you will see them out there. I personally don't want to be driving a 60mph "roadblock" on a downhill interstate where the speed limit is 75mph and the other traffic is going at least that. Always be careful and know the road and traffic situations. Never get the feeling you know everything. Understand you will also make less money governed at 60 because it will take you substantially longer to get places than even a truck that goes 65 or 70 will take. If the truck goes 60, the average speed on a trip will be only about 50-55mph. Over the course of a month, you will earn less money unless the pay scale is high enough to compensate for the difference (and most aren't). And forget passing anyone going over 55mph. Your truck won't allow it, so you'll have to slow down even more to stay off their bumper. Answer: I did not get chance to post my third week experiences as last weekend I was confident that I would pass the test this week, so spent all the weekend shopping for boots, work shirts, pants, etc., etc. and getting finances and other things in order. Now, the two weeks have merged in my memory, so I am not sure what happened when Mainly, it was backing in the morning, road work in the afternoon, or vice versa. As the school does not have its own driving range, we also had to drive out the the west of the city to 98th Street, which gave us extra driving practice each day. 98th currently goes nowhere if you go east off I-40, so some examiners use that as the backing test area, and set off on the road course from there. The school got POed with the examiner they normally use because, due to extensive roadworks (much of it digging up broken water pipes), the normal 98th Street road course could not be used, and the examiner would not tell the school what the new course would be. That and the fact that there have been complaints about him -- he intimidates students, apparently, and, as he is a tobacco chewer, either spits into a hand-held spittoon(sp.) or sprays the student if he has to give instructions at an inappropriate moment on the driving test The upshot was that the school arranged for another examiner, but he works out of a different area so we had to move to another driving range on State land to the north, on Alameda. In the end, I think it worked to our (the students) advantage, because all of a sudden we could not use little paint marks, a dead rottweiler, abandoned vehicles (yeah, 98th Street is a real dumping ground), etc. as reference points for our manoevers(sp.). It was a sort of wake-up call to the real world where we will have to go to different places to back up the truck Also, we got to drive lots of new routes to the driving range. To get to 98th Street from the school, the only real option was to hop on I-40, but to get to Alameda, we had numerous choices, and the instructors took full advantage of this. Towards the end of week three, we took some longer trips out, just driving for an hour or so each, some Interstate, some two lane roads, even a couple of dirt roads, but each day we spent some time on the range. It has been so hot around here lately that, especially in the afternoons, we would take an inordinate amount of time to carry out the manoevers just so we could be in the cool of the truck We were all supposed to test on Friday, but some test times opened up on Thursday, so the instructors asked some of us if we wanted to test then. I said "yes", because, if I failed, then I would get a second chance on Friday (there is no wait period in NM). As it happened, I did not need the second chance: Outside pre-trip - aced it In-cap pre-trip - forgot to mention high beams, one point Straight line backing - aced it Alley dock - aced it Drivers side parallel - dropped one point Blind side parallel - dropped one point Road test - crunched a couple of gears, made a bit of a mess of the tightest right hand turn (ended up with left hand tractor tires on left hand hard shoulder), and failed to downshift when a light turned red on me -- I first thought I could stop, but not downshift (from ninth), as I was too close, but realized I had the time, and room, to at least drop straight to sixth just before I stopped, and decided not to - I figured if I fluffed it, arriving at the light "fishing" for a gear from neutral (if I was wrong about sixth) was worse that being in any gear with the clutch in I now have a week off, mainly to do repairs on our summer place, an adobe near Taos, orders of the wife and then I go to Denver for orientation with Werner on the 27th. It's been fun, I met some great people, and now the really hard work begins... One final thing, for now -- I mentioned in an earlier post that I could not stop getting my permit out of my wallet to look at it. Now, it's a full-blown CDL... I'm gonna wear out this dang wallet in no time. KC Life? Don't talk to me about life... Copyright ? 2006 - 2007 www.thankhealth.com Privacy Policy
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