Southwest Truck Driver Training: First Day On The Road
Topic 10137 | Page 1
I took my tests today. The pretrip went very well, I got 100% on it. I made a few mistakes on my backing but still passed. I was most nervous about the driving test. Unfortunately, I didn't get as much driving time during class as I probably should have had, so I wasn't at all confident in my abilities. I'm still struggling with downshifting.
I hit a curb early in the test, so I will be receiving more driving time at the school before I test again.
As long as your willing to learn you're moving in the right direction. Sounds like your going to do well. Keep rolling on.
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After two weeks of class work at Southwest Truck Driver Training in Tucson (with some practice moving tandems , and coupling and uncoupling), today we practiced shifting on some frontage roads just out of town. I was pretty nervous. It's been a many years since I drove a manual 4 wheeler, and even then I was self-taught and didn't do it for long, so I was concerned that I was going to perform poorly today. Starting out I was shifting pretty poorly, but I improved, and it helped that my instructor was very calm through the whole thing. All-in-all I'm still not very good at it, but I did notice significant improvement through the day.
Tomorrow I should get to record the pretrip, and I've received permission to post it on YouTube for the class to use as a study aid.
Tandems:
Tandem Axles
A set of axles spaced close together, legally defined as more than 40 and less than 96 inches apart by the USDOT. Drivers tend to refer to the tandem axles on their trailer as just "tandems". You might hear a driver say, "I'm 400 pounds overweight on my tandems", referring to his trailer tandems, not his tractor tandems. Tractor tandems are generally just referred to as "drives" which is short for "drive axles".
Tandem:
Tandem Axles
A set of axles spaced close together, legally defined as more than 40 and less than 96 inches apart by the USDOT. Drivers tend to refer to the tandem axles on their trailer as just "tandems". You might hear a driver say, "I'm 400 pounds overweight on my tandems", referring to his trailer tandems, not his tractor tandems. Tractor tandems are generally just referred to as "drives" which is short for "drive axles".