Comments By Roadpilot

Quick question, does it matter which home terminal you get to go reefer? That was my plan but I don't see many working reefers here in Columbus

Roadpilot

Question regarding shifting. I have driven manual cars all my life. I am aware that you need to double clutch in trucking. Is this a difficult procedure to learn?

Enjoy your weekend! Looking forward to your road training.

Scot

Hey Scot, I start training on how to double clutch on Monday so I'll let you know how it goes. The instructors say it's harder to train people who already have experience on manual transmissions because they have "bad habits". I tried to learn how to drive stick when I was 16 with no success so I'm a bit apprehensive about tomorrow but I think I'll be ok

Road pilot

Thank you for the great review you are providing us. It is like we are at training with you. Congratulations on passing the backing maneuvers.

Scot2727

Thanks Scott, I hope this will helping people on what to expect if they decide to attend on of the Driving Academy's.

Hi roadpilot, in your opinion so far what is the hardest thing you have had to deal with in school or most stressful thanks , michael

For me personally, the most stressful thing has been getting consistent with the alley dock (or as its called "The 90"). All the other maneuvers you have little cheats to help you along with your sight picture but with the 90 it's all on you to figure it out. It has gotten better as I've figured out that being properly set up is key.....and that's true with all of the backing maneuvers, if you aren't set up right then you are already setting yourself if not for failure but to have a extremely tough time getting the truck into the box.

Now here's this disclaimer on this. I been driving buses for 13 years so some things like logs and trip planning that some off my classmates had difficulties with I breezed through. Once that had a extremely tough time with logs is out here on the pad doing the 90s with no difficulty while I struggle with it. Every person is gonna have there own strength and weaknesses. So far as a group we've been helping each other out, so that has been a real help when somebody's confidence goes into the gutter.

Day 11 7/28

Well another interesting start of the morning, a few of us got left by the shuttle. Our paperwork says that the shuttle will come for pick up between 615a-630a....usually it will be at the hotel by 625a. Well we have one instructor that likes to leave right at 615 and as we were just finishing up with our breakfast he pulled out on us. Called the school and the Academy Leader swung by and scooped us up. He agreed that it was a ****** move but that we really need to be ready by 615. We didn't get in trouble but I was not a happy camper at the start of the morning.

In anycase it was more of the same, practicing pretrips and backing maneuvers while other in my class finished their evals. We also got a chance to drop and hook a couple of trailers, which was fun.

We got let out early because the class behind us was coming out to start practicing their straight line backs but not before another round of drama. We have one of our classmates struggling pretty bad with the maneuvers and they failed the first attempt at the eval. They wanted to go AP (AP, is academic probation basically a do over week, but you can only do it once during the program.) However they had to take a second eval and fail to get placed on AP. We tried to encourage our classmates to take the second eval because you never know, they might have passed by the skin of their teeth. It became a circular argument that ended up getting slightly heated before we left. I'm not sure what the outcome was, I'm sure we'll know on Monday. I will say that particular student did get ALOT of help not only from the instructors but the other students, it just wasn't clicking as fast for them as it did for us.

So we have Saturday and Sunday off, thank god because my back, knees and feet are sore as hell! I plan on vegetating out this weekend so I can be rested and relaxed for Monday which starts to road portion of training. Have a great weekend folks!

Day 10 7/27

So today was about perfecting our backing maneuvers. I spent time on the alley dock and blind side parallel before finally saying screw it and decided to take my maneuvering evaluation. I passed, only taking 3 points! Somehow I pulled off a miracle on the alley dock, I only took one point there with an extra pull up. Took 2 points on the left offset for encroachment, I should have gotten out and looked....got ****y because it was my last maneuver. Afterwards I was pretty wiped so I just kinda floated around the backing stations because it rained a bit. For the last part of the afternoon I went out on the road with with the trainer and a student just to get a preview of what my next week in training will be like. Getting that eval done took a real weight off my shoulders and now I can focus on getting ready for road training and shifting

Thanks for reading and I'll update more tomorrow

I'm gonna combine Day 8 and 9 into one post.

Day 8 7/25

Today was another backing day on the range. Pretty much worked on the parallels, offsets and the alley dock. The alley dock is still kicking my ass. No matter what I do I end up taking out the first left side cone getting into the box. Just feel very frustrated with my lack of progress on this one maneuver. Also called the test site and set up my test for the 9th, so the pressure is on

Day 9 7/26

Funky start to the day, got to the terminal and as they do every morning they ask to see our license, CLP and medical card. Then we got asked to see the long form of the medical. Well I left it at the hotel along with the rest of my important paperwork. I was told we always have to have it on us as a DOT cop can ask for it. In 13 years of having my CDL B, I've NEVER had a DOT officer ask for the long from, I've always been told that all I needed to have was my medical card. I'm not sure if this a Swift policy or this is an actual DOT rule but in any case they ran me back over to the hotel to grab it.

Today we did evals for the pretrip. J can not stress this enough, study your pretrip, study your pretrip, study your pretrip! I've kinda coasted on the pretrip because of my previous experience but I did 4 pretrips this morning just as a last minute cram. Passed the eval taking only 8 points so I'm pretty happy. The afternoon I spent mostly on the alley dock, it's starting to click and get better but I'm still not at the point where I can hit the box consistently. We have to eval on our maneuvers by Friday, if I start getting consistent on the alley dock tomorrow then I may try to squeeze in the eval in the afternoon.

That's it until tomorrow

The Columbus terminal has some great mechanics staffed there. If you ever need work done and you can make it to Columbus, do so. Unless you're pulling reefer. They can't work on those there. Go to the back of the lot and you'll find quite a few broken reefer trailers.

Best of luck to you.

Thanks ACO476. I noticed a few of busted Central Refrigerated trailer in the rear near the training pad. Talking to the other drivers that are around it does seem like the shop here has its stuff together. Seeing as I want to go reefer it sucks they can't work on them here.

hello roadpilot, glad to hear everything is going good, out of curiousity where do they have you staying at? is it near the school or anything? also if you drive over there can you drive to the terminal or is there a shuttle to pick you up? thanks for the info. michael

Hey Mike, They put us up in the Motel 8 about 5 minutes away from the terminal. It's nice, there is a fridge and microwave in the rooms if you want to get groceries. There's a Steak n Shake and Bob Evans across the street and a 24 convenience store next door, so food is readily available.

They allow you to bring your vehicle is you want, I believe they will reimburse you for fuel and tolls up to the cost of what a they would pay for a Greyhound ticket. It's nice to have a car if you want to get around but there is a shuttle to and from the terminal so it's not a real big burden if you don't bring it

7/24 Day 7

First full day on the range.

Started off doing a Pretrip, did it in less than an 30mins but I'm still having problems with the verbiage.

Then went onto maneuvers, started off with the offsets, knocked those out then went to the blind side parallel. I had a extremely hard time with them initially, but after talking with the instructor I was able to get the truck into the box with little difficulty.

Then I decided to jump onto the 90 degree back (or alley dock). It was extremely ugly in the beginning and my frustration rose. After our lunch break I jumped back onto the "90" and it got slightly better. I'm able to get the truck into the box but I'm doing too many pull ups. I know it's my first day but I didn't feel like I was making much progress. The instructor said he thinks I'm doing great for somebody who is doing the 90 for the first time but by my standards I thought it was fair-poor.

That's pretty much it, back at it tomorrow

"I was told I was gonna get a new truck"

I saw this in action last Friday. A recently upgraded driver was assigned his truck, a 2016 Freightliner. He gets on the phone with his mentor and the mentor gasses him up to ask for a new truck. I saw him a bit later pulling out of the yard with a 2015 Volvo.

Now I really want a Volvo when I go solo but if they had thrown me the keys to a truck barely a year old as a rookie, I would have been gone before they realized what they did

Hi roadpilot, what can you say about the camera? are you excited to go with the trainer yet and hopefully you can give some views on that too, like where you went, etc. always enjoy reading post, michael b.

Hey Michael, I'm not to worried about the DriveCam, I dealt with the system at Greyhound and I'll just deal with it the same here. Our classroom instructor said you could cover up the inside facing camera when off duty or in sleeper berth status so that's a plus. I talked to a few other drivers that said Swift was disabling the inside facing camera so I may not have to worry about it at all, I expect I'll get more information when I go through orientation

And I will definitely do a diary when I head out with my mentor. Like I said I'm the first one on TT to go through the Columbus Academy so I'd like yo give the full picture if possible. I'm glad someone is getting something out of this!

Day 6 7/22

Today was a pretty short day.

Went out to the range, started off doing pretrips then just the in-cab inspection due to the heavy rain this morning. When the rain started to slow down we went out to our trucks. I went back to one of the offside positions and tried again with better luck. Taking my time and reading the maneuver paperwork really helped. After I got the truck in the slot a few times we switched and I went to the driver's side parallel park. Again, I slowed down, and went step by step with the paperwork and while it wasn't always perfectly in the box, it was light-years better than what I did the day before. Our instructor let us out at 1230 as he had a student that needed more road time before her test so we came back to the hotel to relax. We're planning on a study group tomorrow on our day off to talk out the pretrip and the maneuvers.

I feel alot more confident of the fact that I'll be able to handle the truck after today. Things were starting to click and I found myself being able to get myself out of the jam I would put myself in. We had a different instructor today and he was a bit more approachable and explained things in a pretty clear manor.

Another thing, G.O.A.L. is the real deal. Everytime I screwed up today it was because I felt ****y and thought I could back in without having to get out. It takes a couple seconds to do so, so G.O.A.L.!

Sunday we have off so the next installment of my adventure will be Monday. Enjoy your weekend folks!