Started Swift Academy (Columbus Ohio) Oct 8th 2018
Topic 23759 | Page 1
Congratulations!! 
Welcome to Swift.
Congratulations!
Congratulations. Mission accomplished and you now have a CDL-A. Trucking School accommodation certainly is never the Taj Mahal and nobody should expect that. As you discovered, people show up so ill-prepared for the experience that delays are common and the failure rate is high.
You, Sir, persevered and now the real learning begins.
Again, congratulations and we'll done!
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
Congratulations. Mission accomplished and you now have a CDL-A. Trucking School accommodation certainly is never the Taj Mahal and nobody should expect that. As you discovered, people show up so ill-prepared for the experience that delays are common and the failure rate is high.
You, Sir, persevered and now the real learning begins.
Again, congratulations and we'll done!
Thank You all for your comments. After re-reading my post, I did kinda sound like a Diva complaining about the hotel. LOL. I cant wait to get back into a truck.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
Congrats.... You accomplished the mission. We’ve all been there. It’s just a speck in time to the rest of your career. Oh and better to blow of steam here, rather than to the people you are frustrated with.....I run across stuff that frustrates the daylights outta me on occassion. My girlfriend is a very good listener , thank god. My planner or dispatcher never know.. and never will... I am a type A personality too the max, and when things go haywire it’s possible to get frustrated. Welcome to trucking
Dispatcher:
Dispatcher, Fleet Manager, Driver Manager
The primary person a driver communicates with at his/her company. A dispatcher can play many roles, depending on the company's structure. Dispatchers may assign freight, file requests for home time, relay messages between the driver and management, inform customer service of any delays, change appointment times, and report information to the load planners.
Good job! Keep us posted on the do's and the don'ts, the good and the bad.
Congratulations!
Nice job FliteRisk! You got through the easy stuff fairly well.
Hang in there for the next phase. Being locked in a truck with your trainer for a month can seem like forever, but the reward comes when you go solo and are all by yourself. Ooohhh, now that's a scary thought!
Hey, in case you haven't seen this, here's a Commencement Speech for graduates of truck driving school.
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This was not the best experience in the world. The hotel was crappy and mold infested. My recruiter told me this was a 17 day class including weekends. It turned out to be a four week course not including weekends. Some people were not prepared for this. The first week of class was map training and log books by a teacher that was clearly overwhelmed. After a lot of a teacher that was MIA and telling us to read chapters while she was gone, I aced the test with no problem. This allowed me to proceed to the driving range on the second week. The driver training consisted of handing us some papers that showed us how to perform the various parking moves. After about a week of little to no supervised practice, i was evaluated on my skills. I passed but several people didn't. The third week was road training for about 1.5 hours a day with 3 other people in the truck taking turns. Within three days, I had to learn to turn, double clutch , up-shift, and down shift. The fourth day i was evaluated on what i had learned. I failed the evaluation due to coasting through an intersection when i couldn't get into gear after a failed attempt to downshift. This was the day before tanking my state test. They re-evaluated me the next day (on the way to my state exam). I passed the evaluation on the way and was trying to mentally prepare for the state exam that i didn't think i was ready for. I was the only one in my class that made it this far. I was raining super hard, traffic was terrible and it was time for me to test. I was raining so hard that i asked the tester to stop me as soon as i had enough points to pass the pre-trip test. He did and i stopped a little after the in-cab and air brake test. I breezed through the maneuvers with no points. I got the straight-line back, blind-side offset, and blind-side parallel. I took the road test and passed. I am now a proud owner of a CDL. I want to thank this site and everyone who answered my questions here. The high road was awesome as well. I will test for my Hazmat tomorrow while I am picking up my CDL from the DMV.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
HAZMAT:
Hazardous Materials
Explosive, flammable, poisonous or otherwise potentially dangerous cargo. Large amounts of especially hazardous cargo are required to be placarded under HAZMAT regulations
Double Clutch:
To engage and then disengage the clutch twice for every gear change.
When double clutching you will push in the clutch, take the gearshift out of gear, release the clutch, press the clutch in again, shift the gearshift into the next gear, then release the clutch.
This is done on standard transmissions which do not have synchronizers in them, like those found in almost all Class A trucks.
Dm:
Dispatcher, Fleet Manager, Driver Manager
The primary person a driver communicates with at his/her company. A dispatcher can play many roles, depending on the company's structure. Dispatchers may assign freight, file requests for home time, relay messages between the driver and management, inform customer service of any delays, change appointment times, and report information to the load planners.DMV:
Department of Motor Vehicles, Bureau of Motor Vehicles
The state agency that handles everything related to your driver's licences, including testing, issuance, transfers, and revocation.