Profile For Steve W.

Well todays driving and parking/backing went way better than yesterday. I think it helped that todays instructor could speak proper english and not backwoods, farmboy, swampman dialect. He was a nice guy but he used words and acronyms that no one knew had a clue what they meant.

I got to drive about 50 miles and got my up and down shifting working pretty good. I still struggle with old bad habits such as using throttle as i feather out the clutch, 2 hands on the wheel, not resting hand on shifter, keeping truck in gear till it almost stalls then once clutch is used stop almost immediately. These were all a result of driving a standard 4 wheeler for many years. I know some or most of these rules can be tossed out the window once i have my license but till then its annoying.

As far as backing and parking, we started off parallel parking and after a few tries and some good explanation i caught on pretty quick. I then went back to offset parking since i struggled yesterday and now find it very easy since its a parallel park with alot more room.

I now have confidence that i will be able to grasp the actual driving of the truck before my actual test. The pre-trip is another story. It just got changed about 1 1/2 weeks ago and went back to the old, super detailed, name every part on the truck and use correct wording version. While i know what i am looking for its difficult telling someone else exactly what part you are looking at and how do you know its in good shape. It turns a 10 minute pretrip into a 45 minute ordeal.

Oh well, just keep telling myself i just have to get through this and i am home free. Already have several prehires though i am unsure where i wanna go at the moment.

Well, after 15 years of being an electrician i have decided to make a career change. I started my CDL training at a 4 week school on Nov. 30th. The book work and tests were easy for the permit and the endorsements.

Today i got my 1st opportunity of actually driving a truck. I must say it did not go as well as i had planned in my mind. I found that double clutching is much more difficult than i had assumed. While i did start getting the hang of up and down shifting after awhile, I probably ground a few years off the life of the transmission before i figured it out.

During the afternoon i got the chance to start doing some backing maneuvers. Before this i had NEVER backed up a trailer other than attempting to back up my little tractor trailer with a very low success rate. I started out with straight line backing over a 200' lane. This turned out to be pretty simple, though it was just at idle speed.

I then was set up for offset backing and that's where things got pretty ugly. I would either start off to sharp, over correct to much, steer the wrong direction or whatever else i could possibly do wrong. We are allowed 2 pull ups with no point deduction and that makes it very easy. But trying to do it in 1 move is still beyond my skills.

I just hope over the next 2 weeks i can get these backing moves sorted out. I feel i could spend the next 3 days solid practicing before i feel comfortable with this 1 simple move.

Will keep ya posted