Training #5: Great Expectations

At 7 this morning, I met with my trainer again. We spent about half an hour discussing a few things about my performance yesterday, a half hour going over a few of the pre-trip checks, and another half hour going over coupling with a trailer. Yes, today, I had a trailer to worry about. Oddly enough, though, I found it easier to drive both the tractor and trailer together than just driving the tractor alone.

Sure, I made a few mistakes, but I think I did much, much better today than yesterday. I only missed gears a couple times. I did a better job keeping the truck in the center of the lane. The only areas I had any trouble were actually getting the truck started from a stop and managing traffic lights, but those are somewhat minor points that I will improve upon with experience.

I got thrown a curve ball when we got back to the yard, though: I had to back the trailer up into a parking space. I had no warning about it, beyond getting told to put it in reverse and back in to the spot we had earlier. I pretty much panicked and choked; it took nearly ten minutes to do something that should have taken about one minute. I'm not looking forward to doing that again tomorrow, but at least now I have some idea of what I'm doing.

Then, for our afternoon, we had another day of sims and labs. The simulation today was for driving on mountains, then for driving in snowy mountains. The dry mountain was easy, but the snowy mountain with traffic sliding around was rather challenging. I ran out of air pressure (and thus ran out of brakes) in one scenario. In another, I got stuck behind a traffic accident and had to get the trainer to clear the road. I think I did okay, for having never dealt with such conditions before, but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement.

After the sim, we went out and went over the pre-trip inspection. The hardest part, at least for me, will be remembering all the things under the hood that need to be checked. The other items are spread out far enough that I can at least place them by location, but under the hood, everything is so closely packed together that I'm going to have to remember everything, remember what exactly to check, and what everything is named. I'm not at all mechanically inclined, so I haven't even looked under the hood before and most of this is completely knew to me. I have a feeling that, after doing it tomorrow morning before my next trip out, I'll be a lot more comfortable with the information. It will then just be a matter of remembering everything after I get out on the road.

If I keep improving this much every day, I'll have nothing to worry about. :)