Comments By Grumpy Army Veteran

Day 7-

Sorry, I missed my diary for DAY 6. I was really tired yesterday and just went to bed and honestly forgot about it. Day six started out doing pre-trip for about an hour, and then we went out on the road. Spent a good portion of the day out on the road, almost all of it, there was about 2 1/2 hours of range time in the middle.

today was more of the same, started out the morning pre-tripping, the instructor signed off one of our people in the class today for going through the entire pre-trip. I guess I opened my mouth a little too much during the critique, because he told me that I would do the pre-trip tomorrow. I’m not scared, everybody messes up.

After doing pre-trip, we went out on the road. There was four of us, and we all got at least an hour driving. I went through a construction zone where the lanes were reduced in size by a noticeable amount, but it didn’t seem to bother me too much. The rest of it was easy driving after that.

After lunch, we went out to the range, and I was introduced to parallel parking. I had a little bit of a hard time on the blind side, but the sight side seemed easy. To be fair, I was in two different trucks for the two different maneuvers. On the blindside I was in the sleeper cab, and on the sight side, I was in a day cab. I got into a truck, and also practiced the offset lane change, which, by now seems fairly easy especially in comparison to parallel parking.

For the most part, it seemed like a fairly productive day, and while I still feel like I need a lot of practice I am starting to feel a lot better about the range time. I’m not sure what else we will do tomorrow, but it seems like pre-trip is a definite for that morning. I am looking forward to it.

~

Day 5-

Sorry I took a while to get this done. I got to go home Friday evening, so I have already told this story to some of the people reading this. Friday morning we started out by doing a pre-trip inspection on the truck. After the exterior inspection, we got in the truck and did the in-cab portion of the pre-trip. The instructor then parked the truck where we could drop the trailer, and we went through the drop off with him and left it there.

Next up was a drive around the pond on the school property, which is not very large, but it is enough to practice with familiarization of the start and stop, and to talk about turning with the trailer, without actually having it attached, so we could discuss any mistakes made by cutting corners too short. After we all got a turn on the property, we took the bobtail tractor out for a drive. We are driving an automatic transmission tractor, and my group is only getting schooling for automatic, so we won’t be learning about shifting any more than we already have. The bobtail drive went well, and we practiced watching all angles during turns and turning wide, so that when we drive with a trailer, we should be able to turn with both. A little city, and a little highway driving with the bobtail for everyone, and we went back to the school for lunch.

After lunch we hooked up the trailer, did our tug test to make sure it was secure and went out on the road with the trailer. We all had a chance to take several turns driving both on the road and on the highway, doing everything from easy turns, to some pretty tight turns that actually required other 4 wheel vehicles to move out of the way. We went back to the school, took a break, and then went back out for more driving until it was time to go home. It was really nice to be able to go home for the weekend, but it is very exciting to be able to get out and drive a big truck. Can’t wait to get back to it, but I am very happy to be home right now.

TTFN

Thank you for the excellent example of a real world application for the offset backing! Great explanation too.

Here is a photo I snapped when completed:

The point of this? Offset backing skills are relevant and necessary, often required when least expecting it.

Day 4-

Day four is history! Today we started out at the range, practicing reverse lane changes or “offset backing” (for those of you, that don’t know what this is, a short video, explaining it can be found at this link : https://youtu.be/-wVobD4Juhc). It was quite a challenge and it was fun but it had to end and we had to go back to the classroom at 9 o’clock.

Since today was our last classroom day, we learned the last of what we needed to know for the test, and then this afternoon first thing we took the test. I only got a 99%, so very disappointed in myself.

After all our classroom time, we got to go out and practice pre-trip inspections again. The hope is by the time we get to the test the pre-trip will be second nature and we won’t have to worry about losing any points there. We learned a little bit more of the truck today and everybody seemed to get a little bit better at it. It was a beautiful day and it was a good time to be outside because it was nice and warm. Really can’t believe I’m saying that at this time in November.

I’m looking forward to more range time tomorrow, and I believe we may even get out on the road. Of course, we will practice pre-trip first I think they said for two hours. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to learn the entire truck or what’s left of it . It’s a very repetitive process, but on these big rigs, everything needs to be checked, because if anything goes wrong, the truck could become a missile flying at someone unsuspecting .

~

Congratulations FR8 M4N!

Glad to report everything went very good and now have an appointment set up at my local SOS on next Tuesday to get the Class A license in hand.

Thanks !

Happy Anniversary!

Day 3-

Long day in the books. Today started out on the range. Started out doing reverse lane changes ( I got to do two) and before I knew it, we were in the classroom. Learned about a lot of regulations and safety rules about transporting hazardous materials, and then we took a test. After the test I went out and did some pre-trip inspection practice.

There really wasn’t much to say about today because it was one of the slower days which made it hard to get too excited. I guess we could be out driving as early as tomorrow because we are supposed to take our final classroom test tomorrow morning or early afternoon. Should be a good day.

I’m missing my wife today as it is our 26th anniversary. She is the best and my support system. Happy anniversary my love! I’ll see you Friday.

Day 2-

Day two is in the books. They say if you find a job that you like you’ll never work a day in your life, and I’m having fun here but I’m also not making any money at the moment. I’m really hoping the fun part lasts. Today we started out the day doing straight line backing. It went pretty well for me and I learned really quickly that the earlier you catch the trailer doing what you don’t want it to do the easier it is to correct it. I think they said that the lane was 100 feet, and you had to start with the trailer wheels outside of the lane forward of it, and end with the front of the tractor beyond the last cone. Long story short, you had to make it through the entire lane with the trailer straight so that you didn’t lock down cones. For the test they only allow one pull forward to correct. I think I should do pretty well on that. I only knocked down two cones in the two hours that I was straight line backing.

The next thing we did is go into the classroom and learn about the daily log book. A boring but necessary part of the job. It wasn’t hard to ace that test. I’m not really sure if I’m forgetting anything, but we also did a section on map reading. The atlas for truckers is really nice and it has a lot of good information. Aced that test too.

Finally, we went back outside to the trucks and started learning about the pre-trip inspection. We got small pieces of it yesterday, but we really got down and dirty with the under the hood and front axle inspection. It was very informative and I think I learned a lot not only doing the inspection myself, but watching others do it too. I feel like it was a really productive day, but I’m pretty tired now, and I’m ready to call it a day.

Please forgive me if this format is all messed up and forgive me for my typing errors yesterday, even though I can truthfully tell you that it wasn’t me typing. It was Siri. I didn’t proofread yesterday. I noticed that they are using HTML for their formatting on this blog, so I decided to include my own HTML to see if it made the format better. Thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoyed it, looking forward to tomorrow .

Thanks, and good luck to you too!

Good luck, stay focused, and stay on TT learning everything you can!

I’ve done a lot of different things in my life. From being a lifeguard at the local community pool when I was in high school to working at McDonald’s, to washing cars at the Ford dealership, and then finally ending up in the army for almost 12 years. After I got out of the army, I went to work for a company that promoted me through the ranks and took really good care of me and then I did something stupid and got fired. One week later, I was working production in lamination at an RV factory. They knew my background, and that I had a bachelors degree in information technology, so they gave me a chance to get into the office a little over three years ago. I’ve been a technical service advisor there ever since. With the help of a friend, I recently decided to try out trucking. My friend did a lot of research determined that Keller trucking would be a great fit for him. He mentioned it to me and after discussing it with my wife and doing a whole Lotta research myself I decided that I would go with Keller as well. I got with the company and they decided to sponsor me at Trainco. DAY 1- Today was my first day learning to drive a big rig. We started out in the classroom today went through a whole bunch of slide shows and basically learned or relearned much of the stuff that was already on the CDL written test that I had to take for the permit the nice thing was that we got to actually do the air brake checks multiple times in an actual truck today and watch others do it multiple times so I think I’m starting to get it. We also practiced drop and hook which seem to be pretty easy after doing the air brake test practice. Tomorrow we start out at 7 AM on the range doing straight line backing for two hours. I guess then we go back into the classroom but I’m not really sure what we’re gonna do beyond that.

If you’ve made it this far, I haven’t bored you to tears yet, so I’ll have to try harder tomorrow. Thanks for reading.