Comments By Wile E.

Welcome aboard! As you're finding out, this site is a fantastic resource!

This happened earlier in the week in my home town of New Bern, NC, on the Trent River bridge. The driver survived, still in the hospital. The truck was not speeding, but thought to have been at or near the speed limit, which is 60 at this point, during heavy rain, tanker was empty.

Chuck Norris never has to trim his beard. It won't grow without his permission.

Congratulations!!

Congratulations! Wishing you all the best!

Best wishes on your test! You've got this!

Remember that the examiners are accustomed to new drivers having hiccups grinding or missing gears. Not a huge deal. They won't necessarily fail you for that. They will however judge you on how well you recover from your hiccups. If you panic and impede traffic or create an unsafe situation, you're done. Don't let it stress you out, focus on the task at hand.

^^This!^^

During my driving exam, I think I was nervous as I've been in a long time. Even so, things were going OK, I'm rolling along in 10th on the manual, starting up a grade and losing some speed. I missed the downshift to 9th, badly. Bumped the rpm, tried again, missed again. Glanced at my speed and realized I had slowed down even more, and went to 8th clean. Figured I had blown it, but tried to keep focus and get through the rest of the exam.

We got back to the range, parked, the examiner kept scribbling on his paper. He looked over at me, stuck out his hand for a handshake, and said "welcome to your new career!"

I asked about the missed gear. He said I didn't try to force it, and I recovered. He said no matter how many years experience I get, I'll probably always miss a gear occasionally. He told me the thing he dinged me for was not keeping both hands on the wheel when I wasn't shifting. He laughed and said I probably learned the bad habit of riding my right hand on the shifter when I was a teenager driving a 4 speed. I knew better, and I thought I was getting my right hand back on the wheel, but apparently I failed to do that a few times. So, I got a few points for that. More importantly, I got a tiny glimpse of how my nervousness manifests itself when I'm driving a truck, and a chance to learn from it.

Although I recently tested out on a manual, because I didn't want the auto restriction, I would have been fine had I tested on the auto. I drove many years ago, when all the trucks were manual, and it came back to me pretty quickly. The school I attended had both transmissions available, and I drove the auto on one of my road days to see how I would like it. Pretty sweet, actually! I'm talking with several carriers, and so far only one still has a few trucks w/manuals.

Many carriers' fleets are already fully automatic, or soon will be. If I'm in your place, and learning how to shift the manual was giving me issues, I would go auto without reservation. Later on, should you run into a need to get the "E" restriction removed, there are ways to do that.

Congratulations!

Instructors where I teach are split on which gear to have students start off in. I am a proponent that you get better at shifting by…….shifting. Going through each gear, starting in second. Develops muscle memory and helps you develop rpm control and smooth shift rhythm. And it kind of ****es me off when I get a student that has been out with other instructors that was trained to start in 4th and keeps stalling. Then they are resistant to trying it my way because they are scared to do something new. I have to explain that the other instructors weren’t wrong per say but to try it my way and see which one works better. By the end of our session they tend to agree that starting lower is definitely the way to go..

Bold added for emphasis. This was the opinion of the training I had back in the 70's through Ryder. Their facility in McDonough, GA had a track around the backing field and garage, and we went around that thing all day in low range. Trucks were 13 speed, we didn't use Low, so it was 1 ,2, 3, 4, then down through each gear to first. Over and over and over...

Then we got on the road, where again we were required to go through all the gears up, and when we took a ramp off the highway, or approached a stop sign, we started down shifting a LONG way before, and went down through each and every split in high range, to low range, all the way back to 1st. They told us, you won't do this on the job, but we want you to learn how to shift.

Fast forward to present school: the instructors demonstrated that you could start in 4th on the manual, but they don't insist on it. It felt like the truck was lugging a bit, so I start in 3rd or sometimes 2nd, depends if I'm on a grade or not. Just get it moving good with no strain, and I'm up into high range on the 10 speed pretty quick.