I am begining the last leg of school training!

As some of you might remember I started driving school at Fox Vally Tech some time ago. Believe me when I tell you this school is NOT a CDL mill! The instructors and facility are 1st rate and this facility cost millions of dollars to build. The equipment is fairly new and the fleet numbers are high. Never have I drove with more then 1 other person in the truck with me. Before leaving here I will have driven a tanker truck, a double trailer as well as a standard 53 foot combo. They have every type of transmission available here and even some automatics! This school even has their own highway complete with railroad crossings , grades up and down, and stop and go lights just like in the streets. Before graduating I will have logged more then 1000 miles most of it on the city streets and highways. The total school takes 10 full weeks to finish 9- 13 hours a day 5 days a week, a total of 430 hours of training . Best of all this driver training course cost me $0 I used that federal job retraining thing from the state job service!. I am now In my final 4 week faze of this school I will be able to use a state of the art skid pad! The record spins for a tractor trailer is 9 I will try for 10 when its my turn! they tell you to ware a extra set of underwear to protect the seats when on the skid pad here I guess I will soon find out why. There is no skating through this program either the instructors do not give out answers to any tests you have to read and study yourself and you are rigorously tested at all points in the training. The instructors push safety all the time. My neck is sore from all the mirror checks LOL. I always have access to a truck here even if I wanted to drive it myself for my own practice and use. I have gotten quite good at blind backing and as we are taught here you cant back up enough!. This school is 10 weeks long but I feel the time spent here is well worth it! I wish it were longer!. I have no idea how these 3 week truck schools manage to teach you all this stuff.I guess that's why so many trucking companies send their experienced drivers here for advanced skid pad training. I will let you all know how the rest of this training goes for me. I wish to thank the many veteran drivers here for posting your experience and advice here for us newbies to learn from. when leaveing here I will also have earned the PTDI certification as well as my CDL, I hope this gives me some help in finding my first driveing job! (now if I only could remember to cancel the d** turn signal! DOHHHH)

 

Well, Next week is the big C.D.L. lisence test! I guess I should read the book as I fear the pre trip test will fail me!. I guess its only money and I could just pay for another test!. I will keep my fingers crossed!

 

Well, It looks like I will be doing my C.D.L. test tomorrow! Today we drove the trucks on a 300 mile trip to the Minnesota Wisconsin state line and back. I have not heard of many trucking schools that take drives that far before! All together our group burned 400 gallons of fuel! At $3.00 a gallon that's allot of cash for a school to spend on a joy ride. I will let you all know if I secede in getting my plastic tomorrow. Here is a short video of my drive!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hmGchOHgBE

 

Well, tomorrow we go on another road trip in school. We will be driving all the way down to Chicago to experience the heavy traffic of the windy city!. I sure feel sorry for those poor motorists. (I HOPE WE LIVE)

 

Well, I took the C.D.L. test today and passed! You are allowed no more then 25 points during the test to pass, I scored a 2. I guess its a ok score I wished I got a 0 but not many do.

 

Today I got to spend the day with a super 10 I don't much like the super 10 transmission but it was required we get checked off driving it. Before we graduate they require we drive every kind of transmission as well as lots of fully loaded trailers and tankers . I guess it may be a good thing to at least experience as many kinds of configurations as you can.

 

Graduation next Thursday! now the job hunt starts!

 

I got to spend 8 hours on a nice skid pad today spinning around in a tractor and flat bed truck. The skid pad was very educational The skill I learned there today might come in handy when driving on a icy road or avoiding a wreck. I believe its a good skill.