Profile For Ross M.

I just noticed someone talking about exiting the truck correctly, and earned an automatic fail for exiting forward. For a large truck, I guess you're supposed to turn around and face the cab while you exit. Am I supposed to do that with my little 550? I guess I could do that just to be safe, but it seems kind of weird.

Thanks for the replies. I talked to another instructor today and got most of my questions answered. Yes, I will have restrictions for no tractor trailers and no manual transmissions. I will not have the air brake endorsement.

I set up some cones to practice the parallel parking yesterday. That's much harder than it looked! I'm confident with everything else, but I'm really struggling with that. And I'm only trying it on the easy side so far! I haven't tried the right side yet.

Hello,

I'm going to get a CDL for my current job (in Pennsylvania if that changes anything). I drive a Ram 5500 dump truck, but we recently got a fairly large equipment trailer. The combo is over 26k and the trailer is over 10k, so I need a class A CDL to pull it. I'm not going to school or anything, so I'm basically trying to teach myself from the driver's manual found at the DMV and Youtube videos. The problem I'm having is that there are discrepancies between what's in the book and what's accessible or present on my truck. Obviously the manual is biased towards big trucks that have the whole front end tilt forward.

For instance, to check the steering components, I would need to get a creeper and go under the truck. Additionally, the Youtube videos are specifically mentioning things like the water pump, power steering pump, etc which I can't even without a step ladder or something. I did briefly talk to an instructor at the school where I'm going to take my test, and he mentioned that I wouldn't be required to bring a creeper or anything like that, and that I only need to point out what I can get to on my truck. From what I understand, you accumulate points as you check things. If I'm skipping items, am I losing points for that? I didn't think to ask him that at the time.

Additionally, being a dump truck, I have additional items that aren't in the manual, like the entire hydraulic system (pump, lines, filter, tank, cylinder, etc), dump body, hinges, etc. Am I supposed to add that stuff to the inspection? Maybe I'm over thinking this, but I'm just not sure what to expect. Thanks for any advice you can provide.