Offered a great paying job close to home, but manual trucks only.

I agree 5 years is too long. But just for kicks, how long would you say it would take someone who has no concept of this (other than a couple days on YouTube) to get proficient enough to “fake it till they make it”?

Looking back, I think I was a legit 2 days before I had it to the point I could comfortably get thru all the gears. Well, not comfortably, but I wasn’t getting yelled at and kicked by the poor truck anymore.

 

i think realistically, it would be at least 1 week to get it down, then maybe a month to be good enough to have some confidence and hopefully not sweat it. i say at least 6 months driving a stick, hopefully giving that person some all weather driving time as well. of course, 1 year should be all weather instances.

 

So basically, this poor guy has got himself in a situation. I can’t even imagine what he’s gonna be thinking the 1st time he stops at a red light on a hill. Holy cow.

 

Some people may have gotten the jist of it the first day of cdl school. Well that’s great and dandy. You had the comfort of knowing you had an instructor there to bail you out. If you are someone that never drove manual and go to a place you told them you can, well you will have your stomach in knots and gonna be worrying about a lot of things. That’s gonna cause you to look like a real fool. You will for sure be banging and clashing gears if you can find any gear at all. What they don’t teach you in schools is how to handle potential dangerous and costly situations. Try driving a fully loaded rig up hills where you gotta downshift all the way from your highest gear down to the low range end of gears. You will panic and fail. How about starting from a light that’s in the middle of a hill. Us veterans understand upgrades and understand that sometimes even driving up a hill it sounds like you can grab a gear but you know for sure that if you tried to grab a gear your gonna lose road speed and miss the gear so you stay in that gear. We know about using jakes and using proper gears going down a hill. This guy might fry his brakes and crash and burn.
YouTube videos make shifting look easy. Well I have had riders from my last construction company tell me that I make shifting look so dam easy and when they try to drive a truck that can’t make it out of first gear without putting a hurtin on the trans.
Moral of the story, maybe this guy is a natural but I doubt it. He would be in rare percentage.
All in all, would hate for this guy to look like a complete fool when it is an acquired art that takes time and practice. Personally I grew up in a family trucking bussiness. I learned very young.

 

i know. not rolling back is going to be an adventure in white knuckles, sweat, and pucker power. i'd recommend an 81 mg baby aspirin daily, for his heart.

 

I though driving a manual truck was far easier than a car. Just ease the clutch out and doesn’t matter if you’re on a grade or not, that thing is moving. Once i got into OTR training and learned floating, i was off to the races. I think the OP should be fine if he learns enough since the hardest part is learning to maneuver the tractor-trailer in my opinion

 

Your not just easing out the clutch fully loaded
On a steep grade from a dead stop.
You have to give it some throttle at the exact
Same time or that truck will buck around and probably
Stall out.
And don't let it roll backwards while your doing it.
What kind of OTR driving have you done to not know this.
Your not floating gears from a dead stop, you need the clutch
To get started.

 

is he going to know what to do crossing R/R tracks? making a turn?

 

Cars are synchronized and require no brain work. You can grab any gear you want. Doesn’t matter what your road speed or rpm is. So you find driving a truck easier and this guy will be just fine? No offense dude but you’re kinda blowin smoke. Explain how you find trucks learning curve easier than a car for the op and humor the rest of us lol.

 

he's not taking into consideration that an automatic when crossing R/R crossings will do or not do the shifting and the tester (such as the DMV for example) cannot fault him. or making turns, both hands are supposed to be on the wheel. the road test at the employer can nail the o/p for these two things, at the very least.