Pondering The Last 13 Weeks...

So here I am waiting to get into a door and be unloaded at a reciever (again) and thought I'd jot down some thoughts on my training thus far.

Orientation week at Prime in Springfield, Mo. was just a flurry of busy, busy, busy. I was particularly stressed by the fact that I'd found out I'd lost my license on the bus trip and had to somehow scramble and get a reissue sent from New Hampshire so alot of the things I was supposed to be doing had to be put aside until it arrived on Wednesday. So I crammed in all the computer time I could to get those classes done and of course, the sim training. After Wednesday, now a full 2 days behind the rest of my class, I spent on the shuttle going to and from the dmv for my tests (which I managed to pass first time, thank goodness - so no return trips there), offsite physical and drug testing, and finalizing paperwork, TWIC , etc. The next day I get a panicked call from home asking why I took all the money out of our account with my atm. Well, I hadn't. At some point during my 39 hour bus ride down my card had been scanned remotely and then used across the country for cash advances. So now we're broke and I'm halfway across the U.S. with no money coming in until I get on a truck and start getting the cash advances to live off of while on the road. I somehow managed to get down to Prime East on Saturday for the 2nd round of psd/trainer matchups and latched onto my first trainer for my psd stint of 3 weeks. That went well for the most part. I was only completely terrified for the first 3 or 4 days of driving in the real world... After that was the litany of "ALWAYS go wide if you can. Even if you're not pulling a trailer. GO WIDE!" That phrase will come back to haunt me... Jump ahead 4 weeks. At about halfway into my TnT training, been all over the lower 48 a few times, learned how to sleep in a moving truck and feeling pretty positive about my choice of careers and my driving ability, thinking to myself "Wow. You can actually do this." Well, I was on the driveline while my trainer slept, going into my 10th hour, looking forward to some chow and shuteye, and was just pulling into the receivers when I cut the corner, DIDN'T go wide and ended up jacking the trailer up onto a high curb, leaning at such an angle that the corner of the bulkhead was jammed down on top of the tractors rear tire (probably the only thing keeping the trailer from rolling over). In other words, I wasn't going anywhere. Now I've had moments of bonehead moves out here but let me tell you, that was the worst feeling when my trainer gets out of the sleeper, looks into the rear view and says, "Shut it down. You're not getting it out of there." That just about said it all. I let him down, I let the company down and I let myself down. Talk about feeling like an idiot. I beat myself up for hours, days, heck, I still look back and kick myself for being so stupid. So I got an incident. Called road assist and a tow truck dragged it out. Luckily there was no damage done, save for a few ruts in the landscape. It was quite an event for the locals. The whole crew at the receivers came out to see and take pics of what the bonehead trainee did. Ya. All I could do was lower my hat brim and keep a stone face while just wanting to explode. So here I am. Nothing eventful has happened since. Looking towards the last 5000 miles before going solo and wondering if I can do this by myself. I know how to do all the things I'm meant to do but not very well. My mind races with all the "what ifs" that might occur. What if I get lost and can't get turned around? What if I can't find a place to park? What if a dock is so tight I can barely maneuver? But then I tell myself, look what you've already overcome, a 39 hour bus trip from hell, scrambling to replace your license, getting through your bank account being hacked, tests, tests and more tests, driving all over the USA in a big rig seeing parts of the country you may never have been able to see, jacking a massive trailer into a precarious position... hey you've got your cdl (the golden ticket!), you're almost through your training, in another week or so you'll be in your own truck! So ya, I've made some mistakes, will definitely make more, but I've learned from them. I've done something I'd never thought I'd be able to do. I've taken a challenge and succeeded. Just roll with it. Now on to worrying about something more tangible... like winter driving in thr Northeast.

Friendly advice I use to tell my students at the fire academy, You don't learn how to be a firefighter IN CLASS, you learn how NOT TO GET DEAD. You learn how to be a Firefighter BY DOING NEVER stop Learning the day you don't learn something is the day you turn in your gear and go else where. Don't see it as a failure, but a learning opportunity, it only becomes a mistake when we FAIL TO LEARN ....Same thing with trucking. You don't learn how to be a Commercial Vehicle Operator by sitting in a training room or training truck. You become a Commercial Vehicle Operator by doing it day in and day out.

So here I am waiting to get into a door and be unloaded at a reciever (again) and thought I'd jot down some thoughts on my training thus far.

Orientation week at Prime in Springfield, Mo. was just a flurry of busy, busy, busy. I was particularly stressed by the fact that I'd found out I'd lost my license on the bus trip and had to somehow scramble and get a reissue sent from New Hampshire so alot of the things I was supposed to be doing had to be put aside until it arrived on Wednesday. So I crammed in all the computer time I could to get those classes done and of course, the sim training. After Wednesday, now a full 2 days behind the rest of my class, I spent on the shuttle going to and from the dmv for my tests (which I managed to pass first time, thank goodness - so no return trips there), offsite physical and drug testing, and finalizing paperwork, TWIC , etc. The next day I get a panicked call from home asking why I took all the money out of our account with my atm. Well, I hadn't. At some point during my 39 hour bus ride down my card had been scanned remotely and then used across the country for cash advances. So now we're broke and I'm halfway across the U.S. with no money coming in until I get on a truck and start getting the cash advances to live off of while on the road. I somehow managed to get down to Prime East on Saturday for the 2nd round of psd/trainer matchups and latched onto my first trainer for my psd stint of 3 weeks. That went well for the most part. I was only completely terrified for the first 3 or 4 days of driving in the real world... After that was the litany of "ALWAYS go wide if you can. Even if you're not pulling a trailer. GO WIDE!" That phrase will come back to haunt me... Jump ahead 4 weeks. At about halfway into my TnT training, been all over the lower 48 a few times, learned how to sleep in a moving truck and feeling pretty positive about my choice of careers and my driving ability, thinking to myself "Wow. You can actually do this." Well, I was on the driveline while my trainer slept, going into my 10th hour, looking forward to some chow and shuteye, and was just pulling into the receivers when I cut the corner, DIDN'T go wide and ended up jacking the trailer up onto a high curb, leaning at such an angle that the corner of the bulkhead was jammed down on top of the tractors rear tire (probably the only thing keeping the trailer from rolling over). In other words, I wasn't going anywhere. Now I've had moments of bonehead moves out here but let me tell you, that was the worst feeling when my trainer gets out of the sleeper, looks into the rear view and says, "Shut it down. You're not getting it out of there." That just about said it all. I let him down, I let the company down and I let myself down. Talk about feeling like an idiot. I beat myself up for hours, days, heck, I still look back and kick myself for being so stupid. So I got an incident. Called road assist and a tow truck dragged it out. Luckily there was no damage done, save for a few ruts in the landscape. It was quite an event for the locals. The whole crew at the receivers came out to see and take pics of what the bonehead trainee did. Ya. All I could do was lower my hat brim and keep a stone face while just wanting to explode. So here I am. Nothing eventful has happened since. Looking towards the last 5000 miles before going solo and wondering if I can do this by myself. I know how to do all the things I'm meant to do but not very well. My mind races with all the "what ifs" that might occur. What if I get lost and can't get turned around? What if I can't find a place to park? What if a dock is so tight I can barely maneuver? But then I tell myself, look what you've already overcome, a 39 hour bus trip from hell, scrambling to replace your license, getting through your bank account being hacked, tests, tests and more tests, driving all over the USA in a big rig seeing parts of the country you may never have been able to see, jacking a massive trailer into a precarious position... hey you've got your cdl (the golden ticket!), you're almost through your training, in another week or so you'll be in your own truck! So ya, I've made some mistakes, will definitely make more, but I've learned from them. I've done something I'd never thought I'd be able to do. I've taken a challenge and succeeded. Just roll with it. Now on to worrying about something more tangible... like winter driving in thr Northeast.