See now this is good experience

One of the reasons I left doing beer to go over at work for GFS is because I needed the driving experience more then anything else.

Today I drove back to the office and for me personally it was 100xs better then my driving on Tuesday which was awful however I have picked up some real bad habits driving the beer truck and those are all having a light shined on them now though which is what happens. My problem is, is when I think I'm being tested I get nervous and it kind of makes me suck. It's a bad character flaw of mine, I'll be honest it's a bad personality trait.

However today I was more relaxed and did a lot better, even got to hook and back up my first converter dolly!
Actually that wasn't really that much of a blood letting just backed that thing up. I had to pull up once a little bit just to get it to straighten out, but it wasn't a big deal. For someone who never backed a converter dolly up before it could have been a lot worse.

The man who is training me said "You should have seen me back a converter dolly up for the first time. I was all over the place with it."

Me it was not biggie I learned on tuesday that these bigger Class 8 tandem axle trucks will throw a 28' trailer around a lot easier then a small single axle Class 7 beer peddler. So with that knowledge in mind I stopped over compensating as much and was a lot less with the steering wheel and was able to back that little converter up the other key is go nice and slow backing the convert up the slower you go the less time it will take and the easier it will be.

 

Here's what's such a trip, I pulled a 14 bay at the beer company and backed that thing up all kinds of times. Granted the tractor was a business class single axle tractor and not a full size twin screw day cab, but a 14 bay is shorter by a couple feet then a 28' really I don't have a ton of experience with long trailers, most of my time pulling trailers the biggest I've really pulled on my own was a 38'.

Anyhow, Tuesday we get to the first stop and it's a dock stop and good goodness I wasn't used to that big tractor handled it like I would a beer peddler and looked like I'd never driven a truck before. I did end up getting it into the dock by the 4th try (stupid).

The thing that I had to learn was these bigger tractors will throw a 28 foot trailer with a lot less steering wheel action then one of these smaller business class tractors. So that's lesson 2 to be learned. Yeah I felt like a real tool and it just got worse from there, some days you win some and some days you lose some.

 

A converter dolly is that fifth wheel that is on wheels that is used in a set of doubles. Here's a picture: