Newbie looking for advice.

Hi everyone. Quick background on me. I retired from the US Army in 2012. I have experience operating heavy military equipment including M915 tractors (an armored tractor) with flatbed trailers. I recently attended truck driver training and failed my third attempt at the state exam yesterday. First to fails were missing gears which caused me to impede traffic. The M915 has automatic transmission as do most newer military vehicles. Those two fails I accept full responsibility. The last fail was because I impeded traffic because I sat through a green arrow instead of making an unsafe turn. The road I was turning on had only one lane for me to turn into. The lane next to it was a left turn lane. The mini van that was stopped there was over the stop line by half his vehicle length. I told the state examiner that I would have to wait for that vehicle to move because I could not safely make the turn (this is what my instructor told me to do if this situation arose). I would have either took the mini van out with my trailer or went over the curb. Hitting curbs are an automatic fail in this state. The examiner failed me for that and said I should have made the turn and forced the mini van to back up. Any advice on this situation would be appreciated.

 

Thanks for all the feedback. Our state examiners all score differently. I talked to a student from another school that failed a few weeks ago because the state examiner said he blocked a service road. It was actually the entrance to a car dealer. Yesterday they failed a student from our school because at the exact same intersection he stopped before the "service road". His examiner said it was not a service road, it was an access to the dealership. I have seen at least twenty people take the test and 4 pass. I drove Army tractor trailers and other large military vehicles in Iraq for two deployments and never had an accident. I have never seen such a variance in standards for scoring.

 

Southwest Oklahoma! Fellow NCO's and I would evaluate Soldiers, if we were so varied on our grading, nobody would ever pass. Thanks for all the comments. I can test again after 20 April.

 

Sad thing is, the job I was trying to keep by getting a CDL was on a military base. I never would have left the base, it isn't even a tractor/trailer, it was an armored vehicle over 26,000 pounds. Lost my job because I could not get a civilian license for the same stuff I operated for over 20 years. Oh well, I will get my CDL and pursue a trucking career. Thanks again everyone!