Watkins & Shepard - The Adventure Begins October 8th

If you make it through the ten day orientation and they think you're capable, they give you a truck. If you have a good attitude and you're trying as hard as you can, I think they'll work with you a little longer. If not, they send you home. That is my understanding of how it works.

I think the instruction has been excellent. I really like it here.

 

Yes, straight out on your own with no trainer. The learning curve goes straight up when you leave here.

 

Day Six

Mountain driving. We spent all morning on Black Mountain. It wasn't nearly as stressful as I was expecting it to be. Our gross weight was around 76k, so it was really pulling/pushing us. You could feel it. I was really glad I'd spent so much time practicing the "double-down" thing over the weekend. It definitely came in handy on the mountain and on those really short exit ramps.

We stopped at a truck stop to cash our T-checks and have lunch. Then we drove back toward Hickory, NC. We did a sort of practice route for city driving. A lot of turning and stoplights (on the outskirts of town) so they could evaluate how ready we were for city driving. I ground a couple of gears (still getting used to all that weight pushing you downhilll and causing the RPMs to rise really fast), but I didn't hit any curbs. I was told I'd get to try city driving tomorrow.

I had redone the last page of Logging Exercise #3, but it turns out I needed to redo the page before it also because I was still off by about half an hour. Finally got that all squared away before we left for the day. All of my written tests are done. We still have classroom work to do (including lessons on Qualcomm and trip envelopes) and more training videos to watch.

I'm glad I spent so much time practicing in the yard over the weekend. It definitely helped. Any time behind the wheel helps. When we went to hook our trailer this morning, I got it backed under perfectly on the first try. Big improvement over Thursday as far as backing bobtail is concerned.

 

Day Seven

We spent the whole morning in the classroom. First, RL gave us a lesson on the equipment. Parts of the truck, things that can go wrong with those parts and what to look for (lots of pictures) which drove home the importance of doing a pre-trip. He also showed us pictures/videos of bad driving decisions and the consequences thereof. You're driving a huge, heavy, fast-moving vehicle and you have to respect that.

Then Tim gave us a lesson on trip envelopes. We were each given a sheet of paper with all the details of a sample trip and were asked to fill out the trip envelope accordingly. We did that one in class and were given a second one to do tonight as homework. We are also supposed to read over the Qualcomm and Dispatch sections of our binder so that we'll be ready for that lesson first thing in the morning.

After lunch, we went out driving. I drove first. They had me do "city driving" which involved a lot of tight turns, a bunch of stoplights and a bridge I had to recognize as too low for me to go under and where to go/how to get out of that situation. I ground a couple of gears, but I didn't hit any curbs. I also killed the engine twice when I didn't realize that the incline was too steep (~76k gross weight) to start out in second gear and that I should have been in first. I'll remember that for next time. After I'd finished the city driving, they dropped me back off at the terminal and I had backing/parking/docking lessons with Tim for the rest of the afternoon while the other students were out driving with RL.

So some reading and a trip envelope exercise to finish tonight.