Delaware Technical Community College

Well, I started school 2 weeks ago. I am going to school for 16 weeks due to finishing up my military career. At DTCC, you attend school Monday, Tuesday, Thursday from 1830-2130 for courses such as Logging, Trip planning, and vehicle systems. We go to school on Friday evenings from 1730-2030, and Saturday and Sundays from 0900-1600 for the driving portion of the school.

So far, the classes have been very informative. I thought I know a lot about trucking until I started these classes. It has been a real eye opener as to how much one must know to be able to do the job of a true professional driver. Since I've been in the class, I've heard a few people in class say "if I knew I had to learn all of this to drive a truck, I would've stayed at my old job". All I can say is DUMB ARSES....

So far we've learned about logging. I've been driving trucks in the Air Force for the last 14 years and have never had to keep a log book. This was a little confusing to learn at first, but after a little reading and watching the instructor, I think I got it. We have to log everything we do in school and even have a few logging assignments for class. I like that fact that this is a requirement because it allows us to memorize all the different things and ways we need to log.

We haven't started our trip planning quite yet, but we should be getting to that sometime next week. From what I've heard from some of the others on here, it can be a pain in the ### to learn. I've started to look at my atlas and trying to plan various loads. I think I've got this down, but we'll see when the time comes.

Now, on to the driving, we started driving this past Saturday. We started on the range so the instructors could see how are shifting was. Being that I've been driving for a number of years this came easy. After I was evaluated on the range, my instructor told me to go out on the road. Again, no problem there either.

As far as the backing exercises, we get to start those coming up Sunday. We are required to learn straight line backing, offset backing (both right and left), alley dock backing, and parallel parking. Now, being that I don't have to back up very often with our military trucks, this will be a good learning aid for me.

Well, that is about it for now. I will make sure to keep this thread up as I'm going through the class so maybe it will be helpful to someone someday...

 

Well, week 3 is over and not real exciting. In the class room portions, we talked about how to read the gauges, more about logging, and a little more about Hours of Service (HOS). Like I said nothing real exciting.

During Saturday, we did more over the road driving. I was able to finally get out away from the little town the school is in and get on roads that were 4 lane and some two lane. Overall, I feel I did fairly well. Still need to work on my turning as I sometimes have a problem with turning to wide. At least I'm not turning to short and hitting stuff...

Sunday, we did more range work. This week was straight line backing. Overall, it was a good class, but just got boring after a while. We started out with our cones being 25' a part. We had to back up about 500 feet and keep it straight the entire time.... No problem there... So, after about 5 times of doing that, I get out of the truck and ask the instructor if he has anything harder... He says "sure do show off" and moves the cones to about 9' a part and says do this and show me how good you are... I just laughed and said no problem...

Now, I got in the truck and started looking in the mirrors and thought, "oh ######, this is going to suck"... Well stated backing it and realized that this really isn't a problem. So, I do it the first time really slow. As I'm pulling forward, I say to myself, now it's time to see if I can do it a little faster. So, I put it in reverse and did it again with a little throttle. I was able to get it done, but I don't think I've ever had to concentrate so hard...

Like I said in the beginning, this has been a great class. I'm glad I chose Delaware Tech because the instructors are really great guys and they actually care about what they're doing. If any of you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Take care and have a great week.