Question:
1. How similar is it (only gear wise) to drive a truck vs a 5 speed manual car?
2. On average how many hours a day are spent driving, sleeping and loading/unloading?
3. Most companys that I looked at say for every 2 weeks on the road you get 2 days at home? True or False (only on adverage).
4. If I work for a company, and do not own the rig, what happens to the truck when I am "ok'ed" to go home for X day(s)?
5. On a scale from 1 to 10 how easy was it to learn everything needed to drive solo? (10 = easiest)

Answer:

It is different. In a truck your engine speed and road speed must match before you can shift gears unlike in a car. Also in a truck you need to use the clutch twice per shift where as in a car you only use it once.

There is no real average to this, but once you have been on duty for 14 hours you can not drive any more until you have had a 10 hour break.

While companies may differ on this somewhat the industry average is 1 day off for each week out.

This depends on the company. Many companies allow you to take the truck home with you during your time off. Some companies may require it be left at a terminal if you live close enough or left in a secure lot.

This depends on the individual. It is not rocket science but at the same time you will always be learning something no matter how long you are driving. If I must use your scale I would say it is about a 4 or 5. It is not easy but it is not too terribly difficult as long as you really pay attention to what you are doing and ask questions about what you do not understand. Of course doing this will serve you well no matter what you do and no matter how long you may do it.
Answer:
Hi DarkCarnival,
Welcome to trucknet.
1) It is and it is not. Both have a clutch and a lever you move. And the similarities end there. I learned to double clutch in a Volkswagen and an old farm tractor. Didn’t do me a bit of good in the truck. With a truck, you have to be more precise with your shifting, or it will get very noisy from the grinding of the gears. Most trucks have a shift lever and a range button, on the gearshift handle. You run through the low range, shift to the high range and run through the gears again. Some transmissions also have a splitter lever (hand operated on the gear shift lever) that you will use, typically in the high range. It is not that complicated to shift a truck. Some people can get it on the first try, the rest of us just buy earplugs till we get the hang of it. .
2) It varies. I have gone months without touching a load, and then I spent a week where I had to unload every load I had. I think in 2 years of driving I actually loaded one trailer, with help. Typically I would get up at 0600, and be done driving about 2000. Sometimes I would take a nap and drive later into the night. Some loads were 30 minutes to get unloaded, had one that took 12 hours. Had a few that took 2-4 hours, which I would say is about average. You can only drive 11 hours in a day without doing split sleeper berth logging. I’ll let someone else explain that one, I don’t do it myself…. for the most part.
3) False. There were times when I was back home after 2 days, had one time I was out for 3 months, my choice. I liked to stay out for about a month at a time, again my choice. If you get a dedicated run, you may get home each weekend, but it is unlikely that will happen if you are just starting out.
4) It various, even within a company. with my first driver manager sometimes I could take my truck home; my second driver manager would never let me take my truck home; my third (and current) driver manager let me take it home most of the time. I keep a service tag in my truck and write down al the problems as I go along. When I get home I leave the truck with the shop to get the write-up's squared away.
5) YYMV Your mileage may vary. Something’s for me were 10’s, some were not. I aced backing, but struggled with shifting. Paperwork was easy for me. But after 3 years, I still can’t figure out how to do split sleeper berth.
-JHappy Dwellers Society
Company Driver Division

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Great information guys, Thank you very much!

Answer:
Can you explain "double clutching"? As I understand it, depressing the clutch petal separates the drive shaft from the transmission and letting up on the petal reconnects them. Why do you have to do that twice?

Answer:
If your upshifting-
You push clutch in, then shift into neutral, then release clutch pedal. Then let rpms drop back usually 300 rpms then push clutch in and shift into next gear, then release it again.
If downshifting-
Push clutch in, shift to neutral, let pedal out, then rev engine up about 300 rpm, push clutch in again and shift to lower gear, then release pedal again.
I usually only use clutch for starting from a stop, then i just back off throttle and do my shifts with no clutching at all. If you time it right and are easy on throttle and shifter, it will shift perfect with no grinding, and alot easier on your leg. Just don't get rammy with shifter, if it won't go into gear, or you might damage something.

Answer:
I see. Thanks. Is that intermediary step (going to neutral) a must? What happens if you go from one gear to another directly? Being in neutral means you don't have control, even though only for a second or so. If you had to make a sudden swerve you'd be outta luck. But I'm sure it's not a problem.
I'm thinking of seeing semis pulling away from a red light, and how slow they go till they get up to speed. Going into neutral gives the engine more time to rev up to the needed rpm's because you can gun the motor more I guess.
Stopping is going to be a whole lot more complicated that starting I think. With air brakes and jake brakes and down/double clutching..... I can't wait to get my hands on a truck an try all this stuff!!!

Answer:
You have to be in neatral too let rpms drop back enough to catch next gear. if you just try to go into next gear with out waitng for rpms to drop it will just grind.
When there pulling away from a stop light, the rpms are dropping, not going up, during gear changes. You only rev up engine when donwshifting.
You have to match ground speed, engine speed and the proper gear, to get a perfect no-grind shift.
Once you drive a truck for awhile you don't even watch the tach, you just know how long to pause in between gears. I make it a two motion shift. The first motion is shifting to neatral, then second motion, you pause and then shift to next gear. You just gotta learn how long to pause between gears.
It all depends on how heavy your loaded and if your going up hill or downhill. If loaded the pause is shorter, if going up hill pause is shorter, if going downhill sometimes you don't pause at all, cause the truck will speed up and match the engine speed by itself.
Some guys also leave the jake on when up shifting, then you must shift quicker, cuz the rpms will drop quicker. It helps you when going up hill, the less time in netral, the less ground speed you will lose. And then you can get moving quicker.

Answer:
This is confusing for me right now. I found this from the link:
"the trucker has to shift a whole bunch of gears to get up to speed because his quest for power has resulted in a very low maximum speed in the low gears. Some of the very low gears in a big trucks only have a speed range of a very few miles per hour - the lowest, from 0 to about 2 or 3 mph, the next from 0 to about 5 mph etc. When you get into the higher gears they are only good for ranges of speed like from 34 mph to 45 mph, but that's a factor of the engine power band. The engines, despite their size and power, cannot "pull the load" if the engine revolutions are allowed to go too low. "
http://www.southernhighrollers.com/tech/articles/gearing.html

Answer:
Also found this which is the same thing you are saying Bikerboy:
"The clutch was installed for a reason;;;TO BE USED
HOWever, experienced heavy truck and big rig drivers can and do shift up and down by using the throttle to get the engine turning over at the SAME rpm. as the transmission. I know because I did it too. It takes a lot of miles in the same seat to get the hang of it without stripping the teeth off the clutch assembly.
Some truckers who are really co-ordinated can jam gears with the 'Jake' brake switched on. THAT is extremely tricky. 'Jake" brake is the term used to identify the engine retardent better known as a Jacob brake. You'll know the driver has the 'Jake' on when you hear a loud growl coming from the exhaust as he/she removes the foot from the throttle to use the engine to slow the rig while saving the brake lining.
Some drivers will use the 'Jake' when they accelerate from a stop. You can hear the engine rev up then down VERY rapidly as the 'Jake' cuts in and out as the next gear is selected. This process is done extremely fast. It sounds really cool when the shifting is done SUCCESSFULLY.
Be prepared to part with mega bucks if you fail.
A greater number of trucking firms now have recorders built in to curb the practise. The recorders count the rpms for each gear selected and at the end of a trip the company usually reveiws this infomation. "

Answer:
That part about some gears having slow speed is right. In low range you can't really get going over 10 mph. When your is super low gear the truck barely moves. But you need this so you don't tear out a driveshaft or clutch when getting a heavy load moving.
It doesn't really take that long to learn to shift without clutch, i only drove a couple days and i could do it ok, just don't start jamming into gear when it grinds, if it grinds just keep adjusting engine speed till it will go in gear. Usually i will rev it up to like 2000 rpm and lightly push shifter into a gear, and when rpms match it fill just slide right into gear. Only do that if you miss a downshift. When your upshifting and you miss the gear let rpms drop back and see if it will go into gear, or else rev engine up a bit and go back to the gear that you were just it before you tried to shift.
I have seen lots of guys that can't shift too good and none of them have ever wrecked a tranny that i have seen. I seen a power divider that was wrecked from driving around with it locked. So don't do that. Usally a drive shaft or u joint will break before a transmission.

Answer:

Depends on your coordination. The double clutching is what throws many new drivers.

As many as it takes to get the load where it is going. I have been pushed to drive 20 hours before.

As little as possible.

I don't unload - period. If you do, you are a sucker. what is your CDL for, to drive or to lump? If you want to lump loads, become a full time lumper - you will make more money anyway.

Many companies have a 1 day off per 1 week on, some have 2 days off per week on, some are home on weekends. Just be careful to find out what their definition of a day at home is. I once worked for a company that tried to claim that stopping at the house on a Saturday for just long enough to shower and eat constituted a weekend at home.

If you have a place to park it, many companies will let you take it home. if you stay home too long, you will have to turn the truck in.
Too easy - should have been harder so that i would have been discouraged and went off to better things.
Answer:
A semi-truck weighs better than 34,000 pounds. You can either build a large and heavy high torque engine and drive train to get all that weight going up to 65 MPH, or get a smaller drive train and multiply the torque. You multiple the torque with a transmission. This is accomplished with the gears. In order to double the output of torque of a transmission you have an output gear that turns at half the speed of the input gear. To quadruple the output torque, you have to have an output gear that turns at 1/4 the speed of the input shaft. On paper the ratio to torque multiplication is exact, but in real life there is torque lost to friction, etc.
For the sake of discussion let’s say we have an engine that delivers 100 ft. lbs of torque. We called Click and Clack, with their scientific research and knowledge in the laws of physics, they determined that is only going to take 800 ft. lbs of torque to get our truck moving. We build our transmission with a gear ratio of 8 turns of the input shaft to 1 turn of the output shaft, read a gear ration of 8:1. The down side is with a ration of 8 to 1, you would not go very fast, maybe 1-3 MPH. Great for LA traffic, but little else.
A nother phone call to the Tappet brothers revealed that once we got the truck going, we no longer needed 800 lbs of torque to make it go faster. More physics laws. We needed only 600 lbs of torque. So we rebuilt our transmission with two gears: 8:1 and 6:1; and added a clutch so we could disengage the engine torque from the transmission so we could switch gears. We discovered early on in testing, that you cannot switch gears while the engine is still applying torque through the transmission.
Although faster with our second we were still being passed by bag ladies with shopping carts. Another call to the Tappet brothers revealed that as we got going faster, we didn’t need all that 600 lbs of torque, we needed only 300 lbs of torque. So we added another gear. And finally we removed all gear reduction making a straight through gear, aka 4 speed. In order to haul really heavy loads, we added a second transmission with a 2:1 and 1:1 gear ratios. So we are able to double out 800 lbs of torque to 1600 lbs of torque. We can now remove tree stumps.
This is an over simplification of how a transmission works, but I hope it gives you a basic understanding.
-JHappy Dwellers Society
Company Driver Division

Answer:

For starters, YES. I had a senior try to driver introduce me to clutchless speed shifting. I introduced him to “Greyhound.”
I think you’re getting ahead of yourself. You are going to have a short time in school to get the basics down to the point you can get on a truck with a trainer. As far as shifting goes, you just need to get from gear to gear without tearing up the transmission. The easiest way to do that is by double clutching. Once you get comfortable, graduate school, get signed off from your trainer and get some time out in the truck, then you can learn other techniques of shifting.
I road with a driver that had driven a truck for 12 years, he double clutched. I know several experienced drivers that still double clutch.
Shifting without the clutch is called, “Floating the gears.” I learned to float in LA traffic. To this day, for the most part I double clutch; I also float the lower gears, sometimes; if my truck is heavy and I’m pulling hill, I will double clutch with the Jake brake.
I know this sounds like I am being a hard azz, but if you’re swerving, you are not paying attention. I have at many times held off shifting because I saw a car with its turn signal on, stale green light, car at a store exit, etc. I’d rather delay a shift for a few seconds then spend an hour on accident paperwork.
Stopping is easy. Push in the clutch, and push the brake pedal. Don’t make this more complicated than it is. And if you’re doing a lot of stopping, chances are you’re in town and the Jakes should be turned off, IMHO.
-JHappy Dwellers Society
Company Driver Division

Answer:
About 2 1/2 years ago, I got into a big truck for the first time in nearly 8 years (I lied on the application-told them it had been only 4 years). Came in for my road test/first day of work, and was told to get into a Freightliner daycab with a 444 N14, pulling a fully-loaded reefer, ready to head 110 miles east and return. The truck had a Rockell 10 speed, and there was a sharp right turn, followed by a 10% grade, with a left at a stop sign at the top of the hill.
The "tester" was another driver who was 21, and had beeen driving for all of 6 months. I took a deep breath, got the truck up to 3rd, made the turn, and held my gear all the way up the hill. By the time we got on to the thruway about 6 miles further down the road, I was drenched in sweat. It had been a long time, and to jump back into driving with a fully loaded trailer, up and down hilly suburban roads on a busy weekday was one hell of a way to jump back into driving.
By the time we got to our destination, though, it was all coming back to me, and the short ride of the toll road was uneventful. Then, on the ride back (loaded again), I decided to float gears. My tester said "Hey, I didn't know you could do that!!".......
By the end of the test, I was showing him how to drive. I taught him how to do progressive shifting and skip-shifting, too.