In school. will be getting on the freeway :/

The night we went out on RT hand turns (side roads) we did this. It was a one way road going 2 different directions, with a train track next to the on coming traffic. I had plenty of room, but there was a car coming, the instructor said he will stop, just keep going.... I think my eyes where as big as theirs. But they stopped and I made my turn with out hitting any curbs. Trust me... they have picked tight turns, slight inclines, yields.... even the ramp we go on to get on the freeway merges right into traffic with out much time. I had a 4 wheeler that was at the back of my trailer, and wasn't slowing down nor speeding up... so I chose to speed up... about the same time they chose to. I was like move over idiot, you have plenty of room and I'm running out of road.... I think he heard me, lol, cuz he changed lanes and I was able to smoothly enter the freeway.

 

Well it's not easy but it is a lot like the offset. Pretty much the same (1,3,2) moves once you get set up correctly. Now I say that cuz that is what we was told.... when I actually did it...there was a lot more moves involved, before I actually got it in position. For the next two weeks we will be working on offset, parallel and our "road test" which takes about 20-30 minutes. Includes the side roads and the freeway. There is 1 U-turn under the freeway, and one on a 2 lane divided road. The road we do our second U-turn is a dead end road, where truckers like to park. On the side where you come back up there are 2 spots you can do the u- turn. Well at the first one there was a parking lot on a day cab that looked like it was just parked there for the night... a little farther up was a flatbed. We had just enough room to cut it short as to not hit the parking lot... swing wide in front of it to get our trailer around without hit the curb and back into the left land as to not hit the flatbed. Well at the second turn was a small pick up truck with someone sitting in the truck. Since one guy on my husband's team was not very good at doing U- turns his instructor told him to go to the second one.... lol well he didn't hit the pickup but he sure did get the curb. That pickup quickly got out of there after that.

 

From what we have been told, the alley dock isn't on our CDL test, but it will be a part of our school test. The offset and parallel will be on both. It was so hot outside today and my leg was hurting from holding that clutch, I was happy to just get the truck in the parallel. I worked more on the offset today. Next week we will be on days and with the heat here.... I'm not looking forward to it.

 

I'm not sure what your talking about " telling us differently" we have 3 different yard/Road teachers. Billy teaches B team ( my team of 4) and "Ed" teaches A team (husband team of 3). "David" fills in if Ed or Billy is needed else where or is off. So basically team A has been taught by David till Thursday when we went on the freeway. That night team B had David and team A had Ed. They teach pretty much the same thing. The only reason the one guy did the second available U-Turn was because it was actually easier. Due to the trucks that where parked on the street.
We learned backing because you need to know how to back if your going to do alley docking, parallel park, or offsetting. Yes I know most companies DO NOT want you backing up at all unless you have to. I'm glad I learned how to back up the rig straight.

 

"Getting a paycheck" reminded me of a recruiter that came to the school. They wanted to be the first to give us a paycheck... so they handed out payday candy bars. I thought that was a good play on words. Plus I like payday candy bars. Lol