Starting school today

LOL I know Wooly Rhino. I should have rephrased that to say "we had THEIR backing down the 1st day". We know that's not real world. We have a 30 year veteran as a teacher who wants to teach us the real way of driving but the state requires us to learn a particular way and that particular way is pretty easy. She said if she can she will try to sneak in the blind side docking and real backing but every time she thinks it's clear the other instructor whose pretty anal about everything being by the book shows up.

 

I was reading another post about jakes and hills. My school books and dol books teach the 5mph slow down with service brakes but my teacher is teaching us to hold the service brakes gently down the hill to not overheat them but have them to use. She said her husband did the 5mph way and had an accident because he lost all the air pressure. Which way is the right way?

 

Thank you Chinatown. It seems to be working quite well but my brother who was a trucker had a cow saying the brakes would overheat.

I have my final grade for the class. Pretrip= 98% Backing= 100% Driving=96% Total grade 4.0 for the class.

I still have my testing coming up on Saturday but teach feels that I will ace that too.

Sadly, her son decided to not run over in Eastern Wa so she wasn't able to give us any names to start with so I've been checking worksource and craigslist to see if I can find any postings on drivers for the harvest season but sadly the only 1 I could find want's at least 2 years experience driving flat bed for cherry picking season. I'm not sure where else to look so may have to change my plans.

 

Thank you Chinatown. I believe "the way she explained it was kind of hard to understand" was that he did the "fan the brakes" method of slowing it down 5mph each time and used his air faster than the air compressor could build it so the brakes locked as he was coming down the hill with a load of logs. From what she said it was pretty wet and nasty so he wrecked. Thankfully he did survived but she has never encouraged that since.

Thanks for the post. She did explain about them but everything was so quick because we went through that whole book in 1 week and really there wasn't much time spent on the book itself. I did more studying out of the dol book than their trucking book. After that it was a whorl wind of learning how to shift and drive. She taught us a ton in the short time we had. The other class learned about half of what we got until the last couple of days when their instructor took some time off and their new instructor liked the way we learned so we went just driving around on all kinds of roads including coming down a 14% grade learning how to keep it under control. The last couple of days we all had a blast and the other class learned so much more than they had.

I was the first to go yesterday. I missed 10 on the pretrip which I still can't figure out what I missed other than 1 time I had to restart *which wasn't counted against the others*, and although I pointed to the skid plate he asked where it was and I had to actually touch it for him to be happy, and then I forgot to say "I would check the tractor axles and brakes the same as I would on my trailer" in the end and he had to prompt me. I do know that there were some changes that the tester made right at the end of our time in class but only part of it was passed on to us since we were already almost done and they didn't want to change to much.

I missed 8 on the backing which again I don't understand since I had no problem with the straight back nor the offset although on the 90 degree I did have to pull up 3-4 times 2 of which were freebees. Nobody in class could figure out why I got the score and the tester wasn't letting on.

On the drive I missed 6. I have some problems going from 6th to 5th and have an issue with grinding it to find 5th. I also ground it in 7th because of nerves. I did argue with him a little once when he said "when it's safe move to the left lane". I tried but there was a small pickup hanging by the back of the trailer and he/she wasn't moving. The tester said louder "when it's safe move to the left lane". I explained that I was trying but there was a pickup there and I was going to wait until it was safe. He marked something on his board and huffed but was quiet after that and as soon as the pickup passed us I moved over.

Even with all the oopsies I still passed with a good score and officially have my CDL.

5 of the 6 in class passed with me. The last one almost had it. He passed the pretrip and the backing with flying colors but when he went to get on the freeway he stopped at the red light up hill and following instructors teachings let out the clutch in 4th and didn't give it gas. The truck died and he was failed. We are going back Saturday to root him on. He would have passed if he had gone with his gut and given it gas but he did what he was told. Poor guy He felt so bad.

Now all I have to do is find a job and start learning how driving truck is really done.

Thank y'all for all the help. I appreciate it.