Should I go back to CDL school to get manual experience?

Instead of paying several thousand dollars for a few weeks of practice shifting, why not work for a company that will pay you to practice shifting? You don't have a restriction so you just need to apply and get past a company road test. Manual shifting is disappearing. It's almost as arbitrary as what color your truck is. Just work where the job fits your needs. If they have manual, shift. If it's automatic, don't shift. I would not pay more than a few hundred dollars for a week's worth of practice, but only if you had a firm job offer waiting for you.

 

Winner ^^^^....

--Lual

 

You have the legal ability to work in Australia? I suspect driving in another country involves more than just showing up in the country.

 

Chaining is a regional thing. There are hundreds of YouTube videos. Chains are very similar to any other although the makers will say that one feature on their chains makes them a million times better than any other brand.

 

Many or most CDL drivers never ever use tire chains. I worked 25 years before I used an alternative to tire chains, and that was only because I deliberately went out West to work.

 

he says 90% of drivers are using drugs because nobody can drive 12 hrs in a day???

horse hockey

had too much waaa waaa, crap for me.

not much different than here, we speed, drive over hrs, unsafe equipment

when was this filmed, can't believe they are using paper logs as a standard there.

 

u gonna pay 5 grand for some practice? if you already went through training but u still suck all you need is an empty trailer and a big empty parking lot and some cones. also if you have to drive a manual, know that u only need the clutch for starting off from a stand still, once you're moving, you just need two things to shift, pressure on the stick and throttle blips.

if you're in gear and you're on the throttle, if you apply pressure towards neutral the gear won't fall out. if you keep pressure towards neutral and let off the throttle, the gear will just fall out into neutral. you can do it with one finger. that's the feeling you're after, fall out of gear, fall into gear. no clutch.

if you line up the RPMs right and push towards the right gear for a given road speed, the same amount of pressure (one finger) will get u back in gear from neutral, you don't need the clutch, the gear just falls in, like a golf ball in a hole.

RPMs have to be above 1000, that's what the throttle blip is for, all you need is throttle blip and light pressure on the stick.

in a 10 speed, add the speedometer numbers to know what gear to push towards (15 = 6th gear, 25 = 7th gear, 35 = 8th gear, 45 = 9th gear, etc)

higher gears will always fall into lower speeds, but 8th might not do anything at 15 mph, just make a bunch of noise and not pull

you can use light grinding to your advantage until you get a feel for where the sync holes are. you barely have to apply pressure from neutral towards any gear to feel it rub. as much pressure as it takes to barely rub, that's all the pressure you need for it to fall into a gear from neutral. very little pressure, one finger can do it.

5th will go in at 15mph, but you have to blip up to 2k RPM for it to fall in. 6th will fall in at 1000 RPM at the same speed (15mph). if you in neutral and going 15mph, you can press towards 5th gear and feel it rub through the stick, when you blip the RPMs up you can feel it just fall into gear at the right spot, you don't need hardly any pressure to feel it rub, when it lines up right you can push it in with one finger, no clutch needed.

 

if you can't tie a knot, tie a lot!

 

We do but our bread and butter is pulling flatbed loads over snoqualmie to nw Washington. Unfortunately it’s just a fact of life 5 months out of the year in the PNW.

 

If you could do it well enough to pass your CDL road test a few years ago then I imagine you could figure it out. I had little more than driving school experience before being throw the keys and kicked out the door on my own. Since you've been out of driving for a couple years you might just want to go back to what you're comfortable with to get going again. I'm glad I had no choice but to go out there and look like a fool when I was new...automatics weren't as common when I started driving and that 2005 Volvo had already had a rough life by the time I got to it.