Profile For Pianoman

Like Pianoman said, the set up is very important. How do you determine the right set up? You gotta get out there and practice, man.

Find a lot with open space and nobody watching. For my first year or so, I carried 2 small traffic cones with me. I would use the cones to designate a spot, then practice backing into it. 45 degree back, 90 degree back. The key is to establish “reference points” that make a successful set up “repeatable”. Setting up for a 45, for example, do you want to be 3’ out in front or 6’ out? Do you want to be one space ahead when you start your right turn, or do you want to be two spaces ahead? Each driver has their own criteria. The key is what works for you and what works for you is determined by practice.

In my memory, the most difficult backing situation I have ever encountered was at night, in the rain, and a very tight location all around me. It took me 5 different setups to finally punch it in. Probably an hour in elapsed time. Lucky for me, I wasn’t blocking anyone. But as NaeNae wisely pointed out, I got the job done without any damage to any thing. And just to say, about 20 GOALS.

Practice, practice, practice.

Hell yeah Bruce, I still GOAL too and I’m sure we’re not the only ones

This is going to be off the topic but I would like advice on this as well. I do have 5 months experience so far but this is still something that I struggle with. Backing, I understand the general concept of it. What I mess up the most is the setup. Any time I mess up at backing and it's taking me a little bit to get it in the dock or a spot at a truck stop especially when people are waiting I start to get in my head. That wasn't always the case though. My second run as a solo driver that I had I was at a receiver in Arizona and the lot was a pretty small lot and there were trucks everywhere I was struggling to get in the dock. About 5 minutes had gone by and a driver who was waiting on me got out of his truck and came up to me as said I need to hurry up and get in there he had places to be. I apologized to him and let him know this was my second run solo. He said I don't care your holding up the line and went back to his truck. I eventually got it in there about 5 minutes later and he drove by flipping me the bird. After that is when I started getting in my head. So any tips about getting the set up right would be great. I'll be pulling dry van if that helps.

First off, don’t rush yourself or let anyone else rush you. I’m sure you already realize that if you rush it’s actually going to take you longer to successfully complete the maneuver so what’s the point?

Second I 1000% agree with NaeNae about what a successful back looks like. Don’t worry about that at all. I’ve done my fair share of backing in the short 5 years I’ve been out here—I was a yard jockey part time for close to a year and drove local during at the same time, and I’ve done local driving for about half of my career—so I’m definitely comfortable backing up. Unfortunately with my current gig I don’t really back much so my backing isn’t amazing right now and I don’t really care what it looks like so most days my backing doesn’t look as good as I would prefer. It just looks ok, but I’m fine with that because the point is to get it in the hole without hitting anything and I do that every single time.

When you set up focus on where the back of your trailer and have your trailer more or less pointed toward the spot or dock you’re backing into but leave yourself enough space to complete the maneuver. Also don’t be afraid to readjust if your initial setup isn’t practical. My current truck has stacks that make it really hard to see the back of my trailer out my window when I’m setting up (and my trailer is a tad short which doesn’t help) so my setups aren’t the greatest sometimes. No big deal, just re-setup or start backing up and pull-up…whatever works best and gives you the necessary visibility.

Third, get a toy tractor trailer and practice your setups with that. Really helps visualize what’s going on

Sorry I’ve been busy this last week and didn’t respond, thank you for the replies. Gives me some options to consider if things don’t work out too well here but I’m just waiting things out. We should be picking up as soon as the weather gets warmer and we got some foreshadowing of that this week with the last couple days being especially busy. I actually used my entire 70 hour clock this week for the first time ever at this company so that’s a good sign

Today's Funny

Laura

Hahaha I feel this one

Congrats!!!! Yes the real challenge begins now but absolutely celebrate and enjoy this milestone. Most people don’t have any clue how difficult just getting through school is with how fast paced it is and how little time behind the wheel you typically get before having to test out. Great job, you get to be a real truck driver now!

Congrats sir! Honestly your responses and posts on here are so mature and reflect such good decision making I thought you had more than a year of experience already. Glad you decided to stick it out

Flash cards by category like

Tires (on front of card) On the back of the card have all the things you would look for.

1. Psi 100 or manufacturers specs 2. No cuts, bulging or flat spots 3. 4/32nds of tread on steers 2/32nds on other tires 4. No recaps on steers 5. Nothing stuck between duel tires.

All that fun stuff for all your categories.

I second the flash cards. Do them however you want but I made them in the order I would encounter them in my actual pretrip test and I read through them out loud every morning and every night before bed and then practiced them whenever I had a chance.

I had my pretrip down solid in a week and aced it on my test. Repetition, especially right before bed, helped a ton for me.

I also strongly agree with BK about using the visual cues on the truck. I still do this years later. My best inspections are the ones where I just stand back after going through the official pretrip stuff and just look at the truck to see if I missed anything. I’ve found bizarre things that I never noticed before when I just sit back and look everything over like a normal person.

On the official exam I recommend just stopping for a moment after each section and looking over everything to see if you missed something before going on to the next section.

Fwiw I would’ve been a little nervous as well done something similar

And I will admit one thing. If I park for my 10 hour break and do a decent post-trip, I don’t pop the hood again in the morning for a pre-trip. What I always do is to get out and walk around the truck to check things out before getting started.

Oh yeah I’m the same way. I spend most of my time on the post trip because I’d rather catch issues before my 10 rather than right before starting my day. I alternate between popping the hood in the pretrip vs the post trip.

But unfortunately most drivers don’t tend to do what they’re supposed to when no one is watching. Don’t even get me started on pretrips…

Maybe just a lot of drivers. Idk about most