Central Ref. Class 431 - Dec. 8th 2013 - Dec. XX 2013

Week 1 | Sunday Dec. 8th - Sunday Dec. 15th


Sunday Dec. 8th - Bus Ride From Hell


Got on a bus heading to Fontana on Sunday December 8th departing from Modesto Ca. Not even 40 mins into the trip
the left rear tire blew out. We ended up sitting for two and half hours for another bus to transfer to. While waiting the
bus I met Central student who did part of his schooling in Modesto was heading to Fontana for his driving test. By the
time we got to our transfer station in east LA, we had missed our transfer and had to wait an additional two and half
hours to catch another bus. I stepped outside for a smoke and was promptly offered a hit of crack(I politely declined).
Another hour by bus and we reached the San Bernadino Terminal around 1 am. It was cold and windy, there were
tweakers, ######, and the homeless wandering the streets, people yelling from a run down motel. Took 40 minutes
for the hotel shuttle to reach us and another 20 or 30 to get the hotel. checked in around 2 am, was put in a room
with no roommate and told I would be changing rooms tomorrow. School started at 6:30 am the shuttle leaves at 5:45.
Needless to say I didn't get much sleep.


Monday Dec. 9th - Orientation Day

My first day was kind of a blur. I made it on the first shuttle, grabbing some coffee and danish at the front lobby.
I was exhausted. I had trouble concentrating on the paperwork but I somehow managed to get through it all as wellcu
as the DOT Medical exam, drug test, and filling out all the contracts without incident. We were given study
material and CDL handbook and told we'd be doing practice tests all day tomorrow. The school director came in and
spoke abit. People were called out of class to make corrections on their paperwork. There really isn't much else to
tell about the about the first day. We lost 3 people due to unpaid tickets.


Tuesday Dec. 10th - Permit Practice Test Day


Second day. Our instructor was not joking about doing tests all day. There were 10 variations of tests and we
went through them all at least 3 times, grading them after each test. We all got 2 breaks and an hour lunch.
School started at 6:30 and we were let out at 4:30. People were pulled from class again to make corrections on
their paperwork. We lost another guy, he got up handed his paperwork to the instuctor and said "truck driving is
not for me" then he left. All in all I was confident that I could pass a test tomorrow with only 24 hours of practice.




Wednesday Dec. 11th - Permit Test Day... or Not!

I missed the first shuttle, they fill up quick, but what happened was that a bunch of people jumped on expecting
the shuttle to take them to the yard. The first shuttle is supposed to only go to the school, which is a different
location than the yard(where the trucks are). Instead the driver decided to drop people at both places. Well this
made me and dozen other people late for class. Wasn't held against us but I wasn't happy about it. We did a round
of practice tests again in the morning. But soon enough we were off to the DMV for testing. After a bit of a wait in
line, I found out I had a unpaid ticket, didn't show up on the DMV printout I had, but I was told it had to be paid
before I could proceed. I also could not pay it with a card or through DMV, it had to be paid through the courthouse
that issued it. Well after borrowing money, I had to get my wife to leave work and head to the courthouse to pay it
off. This took about 3 hours. Rather than have me get behind with the class, they had me go back to school and
get on with training. We watched several videos detailing different aspects of driving a semi, theft prevention, pre
trip inspection, and how Hours of Service(HOS) works. We were given a practice Log sheet and took a quiz on in it.
We lost 1 more due to a failed drug test.


Thursday Dec. 12th - Trip Planning 101 or Permit Test Day Round 2

I was told, I'd be shuttled over to the DMV @ 7:30am to test. Well this wasn't the case. They couldn't find me a
shuttle, so I ended up doing class work. No biggie. We were given an Trucking Atlas and a trip to complete, with
logs. We had to keep track of fuel, mileage, HOS, and DOT scales. It was interesting and I learned a lot. Through
all this I continued to study for my Permit test as well. Around 2 pm I was finally taken over there. I knocked the
tests out(4 in all, General, Air Brakes, Combination, and Class C) in 20 minutes and only missed 1 on all 4 tests.
Tied one other guy with best score in my class. I had to wait 40 minutes or more for a ride back to class, when I
got there I only had 40 minutes to complete my trip planning. I didn't finish, got more than half way but was told
that it was okay and that I looked as if I knew what I was doing(I don't feel confident in this area at all). Welp,
turns out the guy I've been sitting next to all week(who brought a cold with him and got the entire class sick) was
smoking meth just a few days before his piss test. So we lost another one. We were given material on pre trip
inspections to study that night.


Friday Dec. 13th - Broken Loose or Missing


First day at the yard. Today we focused on Pre Trip inspections. We watched the video pre trip inspections again,
we were instructed to fill out a log every day . When class started at 8 am. We were given 2 trucks to practice our
outside portion of the pre trip on. The main instructor walked everyone through it in person. We then split into
groups and started going over what we knew. Myself and another classmate teamed with a guy who was having
trouble and helped him for hours and hours until he had it nailed. This helped me, we both took turns being critical
of our inspections, by the end of the day I'm confident I can nail my outside portion of Pre-Trip. We also had
multiple instructors available to us to ask questions through out the day. Lunch was @ 11:45, not much else to
report on.

Saturday Dec. 14th - Hot, Cramped, Sick, and Tired

Another day, the cold has caught up with me, and it's kicking my butt. I feel like I want to curl in a ball and sleep
forever. But I need to show up and get stuff done so that's what I do. Our day started with a pre trip video, filling
our log, and then we were instructed to go with a trainer to practice the Air Brake portion of the pre trip. Well it
was supposed to be 4 to a truck, we ended up with 5 plus the instructor. There was no bench seating in the truck
so we 4 of us were crammed onto the bed. Turns out our Instructor is on day 2 with the company and isn't familiar
with what they were trying to teach. No biggie, I ended up making corrections on the other students attempts and
helping them out throughout most of the day. At just before lunch time though, I couldn't stand being in the truck,
sandwiched between 3 other guys any longer. I asked to be let out, the instructor started to panic and told me
they weren't sure they could. I told them i had to use the restroom, they finally let me. At this point my Non-Drowsy
cold medicine had worn off. My head was pounding, nose, throat, and airways were swollen and oozing.. I felt like
(insert expletive here).... After lunch the Instructor asked a seasoned instructor if it was okay to have a couple of
us hang outside the truck while we weren't practicing, fortunately they said that was okay... Non turns out a truck
freed up and a couple of us were invited to practice straight line backing! I jumped at the chance(sick or not) and
on my second try I successfully completed a straight line back!! They do testing in the yard, it was no longer my
turn my classmate just got behind the wheel to try it out, when they needed the courise to test. I was the only one
in my class to get a chance to run a truck, all because I volunteered first! Despite being sick I had a really good day.

Sunday Dec. 15th - Bored and Lonely

My first day off from school since I arrived. Spent some time reflecting on what I've learned, watched some tv, decided
to share my week with you all. I'll continue posting my week to week through out my time at this school. So far only
complaints I have is being sick and missing my family, can't fault anyone for that really.

 

Yesterday was rough, I'm still fighting the cold but I believe I'm winning. I won't miss a day if I can help it as I want as many opportunities to drive as I can get.

 

Week 2 | Monday Dec. 16th - Monday Dec. 23rd


Monday Dec. 16th - Idle Shifting, Straight line, and Offset

After a good nights rest (at least for me) myself and the class headed to the yard for another exciting day of trucking school. Much of
the same stuff was done. Pre-trip video was shown in the morning. The class was split into groups and assigned trucks to inspect,
some of us worked on pre-trip while the others started with straight line backing and offset backing skills. All in all it was a good day,
having a smaller class size allowed everyone to have plenty of time to practice skills and pre-trip. We were taught to double clutch while
idling, after we were comfortable doing so, each of us got to take 2 right turns, and we all got roughly 30 minutes of driving around a
block. I've driven standard transmission 4 wheeler's my entire driving history, it's what I learned on. This was a completely different and
I'll admit it was tough to learn. I definitely won't say I had double-clutching down today at all, in fact I probably had more trouble than
others whom had never driven a standard transmission. After driving we went back to the yard and continued practicing backing skills
(only Straight Line and Offset up till now) and pre-trip. One little thing to note. They are testing in the yard, if you are working skills and
they need the course to test, you get kicked off, so it's beneficial to try and go first every time you can.

Tuesday Dec. 17th - Tap, Tap, Toilet Paper?

I still have some symptoms of the cold, running nose, cough, but they are fading fast. Today started much like the previous days, but
instead of idle shifting we are doing some real driving today. We all got about an hour of drive time, I did much better today. We learned
how to down shift and take off from a start on a hill without having the truck roll backwards. At the end of the driving we were given
homework to draw the shift pattern 80 times, draw a real scale shift pattern and use a pen to practice going between gears, and we
were told to simulate pressing the clutch in using a roll of toilet paper! After the driving we went back to practicing skills and pre-trip.
I completely messed up on my offset. The course has pot holes, I got stuck in one on my second turn had to pull forward out of it
which threw me off and I ran out of time trying to correct, the instructor got a bit short with me, can't blame him really. Not much different
today, we have yet to move on the parallel park and the alley dock. The days are running together, I don't have much else to report on.

Wednesday Dec. 18th - Full Shoe, Full Shoe?

Once again, started the day much like the others. We got to drive and I feel I did very well. We went to a different part of town and got to
drive at higher speeds, I was in 8th gear on a 55 mph street for a minute before I had to downshift for a light ahead. When we got back
we finally got to practice parallel and alley dock. During my parallel training, instructor told us his trailer was a bit different and that we
needed to do a full shoe then (I thought I heard him say full shoe again) half shoe. Well I biffed this one pretty hard. My alley dock went
flawlessly. At the end of the day we were asked by the instructor to see the homework he assigned, I was the only one in the class to
actually do it. Then they did role call and we had to sign off on our score sheets. These were sent today to the dmv to show our progress
and get assigned a test day. Well my name was never called. After the class was excused I went into the office and asked about it. Apparently
I got overlooked and when the scores were sent off to DMV it showed me as not being graded for the day. In any case I wasn't top of
class to begin with but I certainly wasn't struggling either. Tomorrow we find out when we test.

Thursday Dec. 19th - Back Of The Class...

Just as I thought it would happen, I got put in with the struggling group. Most of the class was getting tested on Saturday, yet I was
scheduled to test Monday because of the little mishap with the scoring yesterday. Not really a big deal, except we've been told that we are
more than likely to be sent home for the holidays and I wanted to be as ready as I could be by Tuesday. In any case, clouds rolled in today
and it's going to rain. We split into groups, I was put with the people that were having trouble in all areas. We were the last to go out on
the road. Everyone got to do some freeway driving, except my group. The people I drove with this day could barely shift and the instructor
had them practicing idle shifting. It was the roughest and most frustrating two hours of being jerked around, having them stall the truck every
few minutes, and stomping on the service break slamming everyone forward in the truck, I'd yet experienced. When I finally got in the drivers
seat the instructor routed me back to the yard, good 30 minutes or so of driving. It was enough practice to get my up shifting smoothed out,
and it was raining so I got my first taste of driving in the rain. Wasn't the best day I'd had... but all in all I got to practice some and that's what
counts.

Friday Dec. 20th - 3rd Time In 25 Years...

Got an early start, I was first to drive, he routed me on to the freeway. He took me on a course with a bunch of very tight tricky turns, some
with islands in the way, or where I needed to cross into on the on coming lanes in order to not have my trailer take out a sign. I'm very glad
to have gotten the experience. I did great, he told me if this was the drive test I'd have passed. This boosted my confidence quite a bit. Well
the next up to drive didn't do so well. We were parked on a hill, he stalled the truck a dozen times before he was even able to get it rolling.
Not sure how, but he managed to stall in the middle of a turn at a busy intersection, after a couple tries to get rolling again, we finally made it
through. The instructor decided to by-pass going on the freeway. We drove down a few streets, after a few more stalls, we were sitting at a
light with a slight incline. Well he stalled again but this time we started to roll backwards and he wasn't stopping us. Everyone in the truck was
yelling for him to put on the brakes, the instructor ended up pulling spring brakes, only the 3rd time he'd ever had to do that in 25 years of
instructing... Needless to say we had a rough ride. We went back to the yard after that, I was allowed to jump out of truck and work on skills
while he took the others who still needed to drive out. All in all it was a good day.

Saturday Dec. 21st - Hurry Up And Wait...

Test day for most. I got put in a truck early with the instructor that I was scheduled to to test with. This was great as I got to ask him all sorts
of questions related to scoring. He had me go on a route similar to what I'd be seeing on the test. Got some more freeway time. He told me I
did great, with the exception of rubbing a curb... he said I'd have have passed. Well after the next driver got through with their driving they
we were routed back to the yard because several people needed to use the restroom. I asked the instructor if I could stay at the yard and work
on skills. I knocked out a parallel and a offset before lunch. Several of my classmates had tested and passed at this point. After lunch the
instructor I drove with was asking for people who weren't testing today if they wanted to get more drive time in, I spoke up and was told I
didn't need any more practice and that there were others that he needed to work with.. the people who tested were being sent back to the
hotel, so I asked to join them rather than hang around and do nothing since I got my driving and skills out of the way. So I got back to the
hotel around 12:30 and got some good rest.

Sunday Dec. 22nd - We Start When?

Not sure what happened here. On Thursday we were told to be in class on Sunday (this isn't typical, but because of the holidays we were asked
to come in on Sunday) at 7:00 am. Yesterday we were told the time had changed to 9:00 am. Well I woke up at my usual time, 5 am, headed to
the lobby to get some coffee and danish. Around 7 am I asked what time the shuttle would be heading to the school and was told it was scheduled
to leave at 7:30 am to start class at 8 am. Well my entire class was under the impression that we had to be there at 9 am and were still asleep. I
got a list of everyone's room numbers and made wake up calls. Everyone ended up making it to the school at 8 am. Turns out our instructor was
there, waiting on us to be there at 7 am, so we were all an hour late. We went over Com Data cards, watched several videos on all sorts of company
policies, reviewed hours of service laws, and was showed a lengthy video on how the Qualcom system worked, what Macros to send, and when. We
were given a company manual. We reviewed trip planning using an atlas. Took a few tests on what we learned. All in all it was a very informative day.

Monday Dec. 23rd - The Longest Day....

Today I test. I suppose because of nerves, I woke around 3:30 am. For those of us who needed to test, we were instructed to first show up at the
school before going to the yard. We got to the school around 6:30 am, started some more paper work, by 7:30 we were off to the yard to begin
testing. I scheduled to test first. I took my time with the both the pre-trip and skills and scored 100% on both. I was feeling very confident until I
sat down behind the drivers seat for my drive test... I didn't even know I was nervous until that moment. Not long into the test I started making
some obvious mistakes. My shifting wasn't as smooth as it was the past few days. My instructor got quiet after about half way through the test, I
figured I was closing in on my point cap, this only made me more nervous. But I finished the test behind the wheel, pulled into the yard was told to
wait on the bench, I still didn't know if I had passed or not. After 10 minutes or so he came out with some paper work for me sign and informed me
I had passed. I still don't know my score on what I missed as I never asked, but looking back on how I drove for the test, I figure I barely made it
through. I ended up getting shuttled back to the school, where I continued on with orientation. After a bit an instructor arrived with paperwork for
the school director to sign, I was given keys to a van, directions to the dmv to go obtain a paper print out of my new Class A license. The wait at DMV
was kinda long and I got back to the school around 2 pm. We watched a few more video's one of them was on Reefer unit's and how to operate them
properly. We were given our assigned Driver Codes, they took mug shots of us, and we were finally given our Com Data cards. After all this the director
came in with some paper work for a few people to sign, I spoke up and asked when and how soon we were going to be sent home. He said he would find
out immediately. Well all of 10 minutes passed and he came back into the class, I was told there was a company van heading close to my home town that
was leaving the terminal at 5:30 pm and I had a spot on it! Great news for me, as a bus ride is 10+ hours vs 6 hours by car. I called my wife and told
her she would need to meet me at some drop off point. Well I got a ride to the terminal, spoke with some colorful characters running the show there.
One of the DM's contacted the drivers who had the van and told them to swing by and pick me up. Turned out we ended up waiting a few hours for 4
other drivers to show up. Once we started rolling at around 7 pm we didn't stop for 5 hours, I ended up in one of the back seats, which didn't leave much
room for my legs, as I was taller than most in that van but I wasn't about complain. Ended up with leg cramps and but I still managed to catch a few
minutes of rest on way. We made good time and arrived at a gas station to meet my wife shortly after 1 am. I still had a 2 hour drive back to my house
so by the time we got home I had basically been awake for a solid 24 hours. I passed out with my wife in my arms. #### it's good to be home, but I
can't wait to get a trainer and start earning some money out on the road.

Quick Summary and Some Reflection:

The school served it's purpose, I'm not a trucker yet, but I have a CDL. As soon as I get some road time with a trainer, I'll begin a new thread detailing my
experience. I don't really have much else to say. I suppose I could talk about all the hearsay I heard from trainers/trainee's.. but it's just not really worth
repeating. Don't really have much else to add but just to let you know questions are welcome. Take care and happy holidays.

 

It's happening sooner than I thought! I got a bus ride to Fontana today and I'm out with a trainer tomorrow morning. I was told I'd have someone pick me up from the Stockton yard, oh well, what's one more bus ride?