Swift Lewiston starting Monday 8/1

Lost a classmate today. Guess he decided trucking really wasn't for him and got out before he got locked into owing money to Swift. So L265 down to 5.

Started first thing in the morning on my nemesis. Yea no. I got started late because I was fixing my log book so only had the opportunity to "chat" with it about 15 minutes. Got it in the pocket once but she fought a bucked the whole way in.

Perfect score on my straight back in the truck right next to my nemesis.

Over to the other straight back station and rolled those two trucks for an hour straight with maybe three pull ups total caused by me experimenting with angles of attack. 2 or 3 dead cones cause by experimenting on how close I could purposely get to one side or the other.

Started on offset backing and 90 deg alley dock.

One of the 2 straight back stations got turned into the offset backing station....and wouldn't you know it my nemesis is the offset backing truck. Are you kidding me!

Well I got that ...truck... offset back twice sight side with 3 pull ups, and blind side with 3 pull ups and 2 looks today. First day doing offsets. Yea take that.

Alley dock only got three attempts at and all three came up short, just in different lengths. Figure tomorrow sometime those will click, I'll get plenty of practice Monday and eval on Tuesday.

In the mean time though still have to do Pre-Trip exam/eval tomorrow for first try so after school went out and practiced pre-trip as much as I could on my F150. A lot of the parts are there, the rest I just pretended was there.

So earlier today as I was into my 40th minute straight of driving a truck forward and straight back I thought to myself 3 weeks ago I was stuck looking at the same 4 office walls, now I'm driving an 18-wheeler. That's actually pretty cool...except for the 100 deg weather and today humidity was added.

Unrelated side note: The Swift Terminal here in Lewiston has a bunch of what looks like brand spanking new tractors sitting on the lot waiting to be assigned out. Probably for existing drivers as they come back to the terminal and then us rookies will get their old cast offs when we get cut loose from our mentors.

 

Week 1 down. It's Sunday, getting ready to go to bed for week 2. I was going to post Friday I think it was but every time I sat down to write something else came up so never got to it.

Still haven't hit the 90deg alley dock, but I can do the offset with an ugly but passing score.

Roommate graduated Friday so I had the hotel to myself, new roommate showed up earlier today.

Saturday was class time, various videos. Nothing to report really there.

So far so good. Except the heat! This is Lewiston, ID, it's not supposed to be this brutally hot. I think I drank about a gallon of water on Friday afternoon and it still didn't seem like enough.

 

There isn't a terminal in the Boise area anymore, but there is still a drop yard near the airport somewhere that I guess a lot of work comes in and out of for Boise area people.

Far as taking truck home, the first or second day of classroom they went over a list of various ways they allow you to take the trucks home.

 

Day ...um 7?

New class started today. There were 12 supposedly. 6 showed up. One was my new roommate to replace my old roommate that graduated.

Three got cut at the physical, including my new roommate. I'm the odd man right now so have my own room till another guy gets cut or next week. But even then might get lucky because the class before mine graduates this week so losing 6 people. Could have my own room till I'm done, but highly doubtful.

Training today was offset, 90 deg alley, 45 deg alley, and straight back. All day long.

I *think* I'm good enough to pass the skills test tomorrow. Still ugly but with 12 points to spread out on straight (0), offset (0), and 90 degree alley pretty sure I can take a bunch of pull-ups on 90 degree and as long as I get the rear bumper in the box I'll pass.

We are all nervous because my class has all passed the first straight back eval and pre-trip first try. We're afraid we're going to break our momentum and screw it up.

 

Guy that was my roommate seemed to be in better shape than me, and I'm just slightly out of shape and high normal BMI. I'm 39 and he looked like a kid, so 25 at best. Others that failed the physical not sure on at all cause only saw them briefly as they were going into class as we were heading out to the range.

Figure DOT physical also covers vision, hearing, and current medications. He may have had vision just good enough to get by but not corrected good enough for DOT. Hernias, certain meds are automatic DQ, irregular heart beat, there's a lot of things a "healthy" person could have an not even know it until an in depth physical. As mentioned in a previous post I had just gotten my annual a few month ago so knew there probably wouldn't be any surprises.

Having an appendix out is probably actually a plus, I know plenty of people that have had it done electively before going on long multi-year trips overseas, though not sure they can tell that or not from the abdomen pushing.

Haven't seen anything on tattoos but probably not a problem, plenty here have them, but they aren't covering every square inch of their bodies either.

 

Day 9 -

Worst day ever. The mighty L265 have fallen.

Started the morning on pretrip, went to range rotation. We were running Offset, Straight Back as one station alternating, and 3 trucks on the angle docks. Hit the 45, 90, 45, 90. Angle right after angle.

Was hitting the 90 deg (what we were testing on) every time in a Columbia. FLD's I couldn't get the 90's yesterday at all. Ran blind side offset perfect twice in a row and sight side with 3 pull ups in a Columbia. So guess which I pick for the skills test this morning...the Columbia. I even had a nice shadow mark picked out that I was putting the bumper into the box every time without readjusting. I'm ready for this skills test.

Straight Back/Offset first, instructor asks who wants blind side. I raise my hand and one other. Columbia is in sight side lane so classmate goes first, then me second for blind side. Then after me other classmates.

Classmate goes and after he's done I realize that that Banshee Nemesis truck is the Columbia I'm driving IN the lane that I absolutely HATE for the straight back. Great.

So I jump in, start the engine and turn the key back on accident killing it. DOH. Shake my head, take a deep breath and start her up again and go. Get the straight back perfect. Even better than the straight back eval in the truck next to it last week.

Offset: I pull Banshee out of the bad lane and start my blind side offset. Setup perfect so don't bother taking a look and pull it into the pocket. I see I'm going to tag a cone so I take a pull-up. Get it almost perfectly straight and slide into the pocket perfectly straight. Nailed it.

Get out and the instructor says "if your bumper even barely touches the edge of these cones I'm giving you 2 points" . ARG!! Okay no biggy I'm up 2 points out of 12 so 10 points left for the angle dock. I got this in the bag.

Whole class does great on the straight back / offset. Even the really ugly one was passing with 2 points for 2 extra pullups. L265 is on track for passing the skills test 100% first try. Going three for three.

And everything falls apart.

90 Degree: Columbia is already in the pocket so I jump in and go around. Classmate jumps in the FLD on the deck and nails it. No surprise he's been nailing the 90 since Friday. I'm up next.

Start the back right, take some back, left, left, little right, left left, straight, holy crap I'm in the pocket without any pull-ups, but I'm a little crooked. Take a pull-up to straighten out and backing into the pocket. I think I'm a little too far so I take a look to see where my bumper is. Yep sure enough went too far, 2 points. Oh well. Jump back in and pull up to my shadow mark. Get out, glance at the bumper box, get ####y and say I'm done.

Instructor then says "If you say your done and your not in the box that's an automatic fail, you don't get to fix it" What?! Would have been nice if we were told that before hand, but anyways... I look and say I'm in the box. The "box" is the three foot section at the end of the docks that on some States and skills have to put the back bumper in. Walk up and nope. I was probably less than 2 inches short. Are you kidding me! Fine. Threw away a 4 point skills test and my best 90 deg ever because my shadow had moved probably 5 inches putting me 2 inches out.

Third up, he takes his pull up, gets in the pocket but tagged the same cone twice so 4 points, he also overshoots the box. 2 points. Takes a look, doesn't make the same mistake I made and takes a fresh measurement. Pulls up. Doesn't get his parking break on fast enough and rolls back a few feet without realizing it into the out of bounds automatic DQ area. Bam 2 fails.

Fourth up. Hits the pocket with 0. Takes a pull-up to straighten out. Gets out to look at his bumper. Too far up to take a decent measurement. Pulls back, gets out, takes a fresh measurement to not make the same mistake as me. Gets in pulls back a bit more. Gets out again to not make the same mistake as the third guy and double check his position. He says "I'm done". Instructor says "You got out three times, you only get 2. That's an auto fail."

Three DQ's out of four.

Fourth up. Ugly ugly takes a bunch of pullups and tags a cone. Gets in the pocket. Gets out to measure. Pulls back, gets out to double check, still off. Pulls up and back. Now he's out of looks. So sits there in the drivers seat looking in the mirror for a good little bit. We can tell he's wondering if he's in the box or not but he can't get out to look. He goes all in and pulls back about 2 inches (for those keeping score that was my two inches) and puts the bumper in the box. Passes with probably 8 to 10 points total out of 12 allowed.

So 3 out of 5 auto DQ's, 2 passes in L265. The three of us are just pissed at ourselves for hours later, and probably will be till Friday morning. Only good note is that the instructor said that when people fail the way we did they almost always do perfect scores on the retest Friday morning.

The 2 passes got to go learn drop and hook, and sliding tandems. In the shade, next to the edge of the range so they can take 5 steps back and smoke any time they want.

The 3 fails get to run offset and alley dock for another 2 1/2 hours in this absolutely brutal heat in the three trucks that have crappy air conditioners.

Tomorrow is first day on the road for shifting training.

L265 also getting really close to our maximum range hours for the week already so will be spending a lot of time spotting the new class and other "lab" work when not out shifting.

 

Day 10.

Started the morning pretrip, spotting, and a bit of offset.

Hour of drop and hook, tandem slides, fifth wheel slides, avoided chains.

Then jumped into a bobtail and shifting on the roads around the Lewiston port. (sidebar: For those that don't know Lewiston, ID is the most inland sea port on the west coast) Yep got on the public city streets today, look out! 45 minutes on the roads.

Broke for lunch.

Am very rapidly running out of range driving hours so I have to manage my driving time to allow enough time for practice tomorrow before skills test Friday morning.

More drop and hook, tandem slides. Spotted alley dock for the guy that has to burn time because he's got too many available hours left and needs to run some out.

Jumped in a bobtail again for another 45 minutes of shifting training around the port.

Got back and some more spotting/drops/hooks. The Idaho State driving inspector/tester stopped by the school to do some third party non-swift testing on our range. Chatted with him for about 30 or 40 minutes waiting for the end of the day.

Nothing too exciting except the hour and a half off the range and into real world driving.

Tomorrow is supposed to be more shifting, about 2 to 3 hours range time, and probably a lot of spotting/drop and hook/tandems.

Oh yea and I guess we're washing all the range trucks tomorrow too. Hope it's hot and doesn't suddenly decide tomorrow is a good day to rain.