My journey with Swift begins tomorrow!

Sorry for the massive wait for the update...but I promise to make up for it!

I GOT MY CDL!

When last I posted over a week ago, I was getting so exhausted at night that I just went straight to bed. Turns out I was getting fairly sick from the heat. Here's a tip: DRINK GATORADE! You can drink two gallons of water a day but unless you are replenishing your salts and electrolytes, water does NOTHING! Stock up on Gatorade, or go to Wal-Mart and pick up the powdered version so you can make 8 quarts for $5. Was a lifesaver!

The last few days of the second week were spent on the parallel parking and offset skills, along with straight line backing if anyone needed it. Friday we had our evaluations on those three skills to prepare us for the road driving the next week. I was doing so good, Robert decided to play a prank on me. When I went out to look at the truck during an offset, he switched my glad hands on me. Took me a good 10 minutes to figure out why the truck wouldn't move, until I finally checked the the colors of the glad hands while Robert was laughing his ### off. All in good fun, and keeps people on their toes. After all, you need to spice it up a bit!

After two days of nothing but learning those skills, I was feeling good and went up to my instructor, Robert, and said "I know we have another two hours before we need to test, but I'm feeling as confident and ready as I'll ever be and would like to take my test now." Robert gave me the green light and I got a near perfect score (got 2 points for my mirror going over on the parallel parking because I wanted to pull forward to make it look pretty, oops.)

After getting that score, my adrenaline just wore off and I felt horrible. Muscle cramps, a large headache, and I was visibly wobbling. I wasn't sure what the problem was since I was drinking almost two gallons of water a day. Every vein on my arms and legs was dark blue and visible, and I had stopped sweating. I told my instructor that I didn't feel safe getting back in the truck for the rest of the day, and he understood I was suffering from heat exhaustion because I had no electrolytes. Half an hour later, someone in our class got written up for pulling into a skill someone else was already using - you get to the end of the day, and people get tired and do stupid stuff.

That night I called my mom who's an RN and got the information on the gatorade. Went to walmart and bought a huge half gallon and the powdered stuff - two of those later I was feeling GREAT. Saturday was a free day on the range where people could work on pre-trip or the three skills on the actual test site (The parallel parking is a bit narrower and the area for the offset is 20 feet shorter) if you knew there were things you needed to work on.

The last part of the day we were running convoy with 7 trucks for 11 people when something went down. I had finished my few laps and when I parked the truck to let someone else in, and the person who was up next waved us off saying he didn't need it. Our instructor (who really didn't get along with this guy anyway) heard this, and despite the rest of us wanting to get back in the truck, shut down all of us on the range and made us do pre-trip for the last two hours. On hot engines. In 106 degree heat. The worst part is that the person who ruined it for everyone else had no idea it was him. Myself and the other two or three who knew who it was avoided him like the plague the rest of the day because thoughts of violence kept dancing in our heads.

After that bit of BS, which was my only real problem with my instructor I had the whole time (otherwise he's a great guy) we got Sunday off. I rested up.

Monday and Tuesday we started our on the road training. Monday was a class day and Tuesday we went out for the first part of the day to learn how to shift and downshift through the gears on an old highway, which was fun. My instructor issued me a challenge and covered the dash with a towel so I couldn't see the guagues - I had to shift by listening to the sound of the engine, and nailed it the first time. Then we had a white knuckled ride through town. My partner got on the freeway, but I didn't until the next day.

Next day was more of the same, learning turns and how to negotiate traffic and make lane changes safely. Thursday we just drove. We were chatting, talking, having a great time and each got in about 150 miles of city and freeway driving and got a great lunch. So I'm feeling confident but a bit nervous for testing day on Friday.

Friday came and I got the instructor who has a bit of a reputation for being a bit of a hardass. I will say this: The road instructors and testors need to get together and get on the same page. I was taught things by my road instructor that weren't part of the test, but he ommited things too that I got dinged on. Two of the largest rumors that came into play involved an automatic fail. One instructor had said that if you hit the curb with your tandems, if you acknowledge your mistake and what you did wrong, it's not an automatic fail. The other was that if you miss a downshift and can't recover, and come to a stop or stall the engine, you fail automatically. While coming into the terminal, I missed a downshift and killed the truck. I was devestated because I thought at that point I failed...and as a result, wasn't paying attention to the last turn and my tandems went up and over. THAT'S what caused me to fail. Nobody in my class believed me that I failed - I was the one guy they said they thought wasn't going to have any problems at all. I didn't fail on points, I failed because of a bad day and one stupid mistake. One other person failed for a similar reason; he was taken into a construction zone and there was no way to make a turn without going over the curb or without swinging WIDE into oncoming traffic. So the choice was either fail automatically or take the points; this was BS. He made the wrong decision apparently and got to restest today.

Got a good night sleep and went back to take the test today with the same instructor. Not only did I pass, I only got a -8 on the exam, which was the best score anyone in the class got and none of the other instructors could remember when this guy passed someone with less than double digit marks! I'm looking forward to going home (I'm stuck in the hotel for the next few days) and relaxing before my orientation in Fontana.

I DID IT!!! I'M GOING TO BE A TRUCK DRIVER!

 

Also: A note to everyone who is thinking Flatbed in the west:

Swift has a huge shortage of flatbed drivers right now and are pushing the benifits over van. What people don't think about is the shortage of trainers. Phoenix currently only has two dozen flatbed mentors on roster, and with 2/3rds of every graduating academy class out here signing up, the current wait for a mentor after orientation is three weeks or more if you run flatbed. Meanwhile, van mentors are apparently begging for students.

Just a heads up.

 

Only 3 in our class went for van.

Some interesting things happened this weekend. One guy in the class who is diabetic hasn't been taking care of himself, eating, or monitoring his blood sugar. He went to the ER his third day on the range. The diagnosis? 14 kidney stones...he's going home.

Finally, someone in the class behind us got kicked out for threatening an instructor. Apparently he had a bad phone call over something, was angry, and mentioned to the instructor he didn't want to get back in the truck. After about 45 minutes he was in a good mood and was joking around with the rest of the class. The instructor was pissed and the two of them got into a huge argument on the range. That night, back at the hotel, he was telling everyone what a "punk arsed female dog" the instructor was and how much he wanted to kick his ###. Word got back to the instructor the next day. Kicked straight out of class, told to get his things out of the hotel, and that the shuttle would drop him off at the bus depot but he would have to find his own way home from there.

I'm waiting at the driver lounge to get on my bus going home in another few hours. Looking forward to getting back home for a week, then orientation in Fontana!