Training #7: Halfway Home

So today ends my first week as a student at the academy here. I can't believe how quickly everything is moving around here! Toady went remarkably well from beginning to end... well, okay, not the whole day, but enough of it to make me quite happy. As usual, it stated at 7AM, again with the driving. We practiced a few of the slow maneuvers I'll need: straight backing and 45 degree backing. Straight movement is just about idiot proof and I had it down the very first time. The 45 degree stuff... well, the first one the instructor did to show me the technique, I did two successfully, and then I did two more that were horrible. I don't know what went wrong on the last two, but on one of them I was getting bad directions from the instructor and ran over a cone by doing what I was told. :p

Once out of the yard and onto the road, though, things went good. I did a lot better with my turning, though after getting only six hours of sleep I was a little too tired to get the gears just right. I kept forgetting to toggle the gear switch down, so instead of being in 1st-5th gear, I was trying to go in 6th-10th. A truck will not drive uphill from a dead stop in 7th gear. I promise you, I tried this at least twice today and it failed consistently. That aside, though, I think I did wonderfully. At the end of the morning, the instructor told me that I was right on track, which was a huge confidence boost as well.

Then, at lunch, we had a couple meetings. The first was to discuss our collective progress as students in the first week of truck driving school. We received our maps, a book on trip planning, and a few words of encouragement. He also tried to talk us into joining up for team driving, pointing out the various benefits, the biggest of which is a 5¢/mi bonus for as long as you're on a team, with an additional 2¢/mi if each driver does at least 30,000 miles a quarter for a total of 60,000 every three months. So, if down the line, anyone wants to join me on a team then just let me know and I'll give you as much information as I can.

The one thing that struck me as rather odd, though, is that the manager came out to talk to us and said that, on a 1 to 10 scale, with ten being a perfect truck driver, we need to be about a three by the end of next week. Yes, a three out of ten. In short, if you can keep control of the truck and safely maneuver it, you're good. I'm still a bit fuzzy on the slow-speed things, but we're going to spend half the day tomorrow working on that, so I should get a feel for it then.

Our afternoon sims and labs session was refreshingly easy as well. The lab involved a few things, mostly discussing loading and unloading the trailer as needed. To be specific, we went over how to lift things, how to work with pallets, and how to use a king pin lock. Nothing complicated. Today's simulations focused on skid control and steer tire blowouts, which I feel pretty confident about being able to handle. With skids, it's just a matter of pushing in the clutch and steering while leaving the brake and accelerator alone. As for blowouts, just slow down very gradually by easing up on the accelerator and pull off the road; let off the accelerator too quickly and the weight will come forward too fast. Like the instructors said, I hope I never have to use that information, but at least I know what to do in those situations now, if they ever arise.

So now there's just one week more of training, then a week of CDL test practice before my hire date. The further I go through this school, the more I'm looking forward to driving.