Comments By Papa Pig

Man I love this thread. I’m going to venture that over 90% of the drivers on this site have done or will do at least one of the things you described. My first solo load…..I reported to the distribution center and had to go over a pretrip with my safety rep and he pointed out that I had signed for a truck with a fairly nasty gouge on the side of my drive tire. We then did some close quarters training and he cleared me to call breakdown and get a new tire. He wanted me to unhook from the trailer and go to the maintenance point. Luckily he had left. I was so excited that I remembered to drop my landing gear but forgot to unhook my lines. I pulled out and heard a rather large “thump” luckily there was no damage besides for my pride. Later that week I was doing a tight back at night that happened to be very close to some road construction. I had to get out and look multiple times. On one of the get out and looks I forgot to set my brakes. Luckily a mound of rubble “gently” stopped my trailer and there was no damage thank goodness. Locked myself out of my truck while getting fuel and when I went to find my spare key that was discreetly hidden on the back of the tractor I realized I had made the huge mistake of hiding it while I was bobtail so it was fairly difficult to get to. (30 minutes and very greasy dirty cloths later) You didn’t hit anything and learned. Roll on driver! Good luck!

Local routes can be hard coming in with some very tight backing. Also you can tend to work longer shifts and 6 days a week. I also agree that company sponsored training might be your way to go. A lot of regional flatbed companies have you home on weekends and also pay to get you a cdl. Maverick/tmc/ for example. Good luck!

Hi Brian

The first thing I would do is to start studying “the high road” program that this site provides for free.

2nd thing to get a leg up and make your schooling less stressful is to study the pretrip and get familiar with the parts of the truck. This site provides a pretty good pretrip inspection that one of the members created. I’m sure someone else will link it shortly .

https://youtube.com/@Ms.Abbott

This lady has a few videos on pretrip that should fall in line with whatever your school will teach you.

Good luck!

I’m gonna say the biggest thing is to try and never get in a rush and to relax. Any near bind I have ever been in has been due to a time crunch and self induced stress. Eat when you are hungry Stop when you are tired You can never turn too slow but will only turn too fast 1 time. Good luck!

What were the liftgate issues? Walco or one of the max pro? It wasn’t always possible but I did my best to learn how to fix as much liftgate stuff as I could on the fly because road breakdown didn’t seem to know crap or Sunday Evenings when we didn’t have anyone in the trailer shop

I wouldn’t rent a uhaul and have no idea how a rangefinder would help. I think you may be overthinking. Remember be calm. You shouldn’t get any points on straightline , and maybe have to use one extra pull-up on offset.

Don’t hit any cones, and use your get out and look while saving one for final position. Even though you are only given 2 free pull-ups, you could potentially pull up more than 10 times and still pass. Remember most times on the 90 you need to pull up to the left . When using a pull-up ensure that you are looking in your mirror while pulling up instead of ahead On the alley dock when you get your trailer initially cut in the lane ,you turn your wheel and when the tractor is straight in front of the trailer .. stop…get out and look. If you don’t have room to keep swinging pull up a bit.

When training my students as they get frustrated while shifting , hitting curbs, drivin in general.. I like to tell them “ drive with your brain and your eyes” leave your emotions out of the equation. The same thing can be said with posting on the internet. Take a breath , not everyone is gonna agree with you. Doesn’t mean the whole site is bad nor that all of your ideas are bad

I worked for Werner for a bit and would still be there if i didn’t need to get off the road. I did not use road master but I had a friend who did . I think they put you through the school and you pay it back through payroll deduction. Don’t quite me on that and talk to a recruiter.

As far as the company itself I enjoyed working there and did not feel micromanaged. If you are reliable and safe they stay off your case

And of course once you get straight. Don’t be in a rush. I’m sure you already figured out this hack but slide tandems ALL the way forward backing into that pos store lol . I would def get safety ti see about that one being an front door delivery

Is that store a mandatory and does it have a restriction size on it. To me that should be a 45 or 48 foot restricted trailer. It should say on the stop line of your paperwork. From looking at the overhead and then Seeing street view they either remodeled that store and changed the parking lot because I bet that they designed it originally to be driven around. I would not be surprised to see if that store wasn’t supposed a front door delivery at one point due to the safety reasons and that the dms weezled their way out of it. There isn’t FD anywhere on the paperwork is there?

Definitely the previous gentlemen have the correct advice for how I would approach it. But I would definitely bring it up to safety. That stop should be a front door mandatory delivery.They put those boulders there because trucks were having. I choice but to pull up in that area. I wouldn’t be surprised if many drivers hadnt ripped off a bumper there.