Attending Katlaw Truck Driving School - Austell, Ga

Completed Class last week passed permit tests last week. We started back up yesterday at noon. We started to learn outsidepre-trip. My oh my there is a lot of bits to that but one thing after a day and a half is large portions of the pre-trip are repeated multiple times so you see the same parts over and over again starting to feel like I am starting to grasp some of it. This morning we started in cab pre trip which is a whole another beast. Started the truck and did tugs was an interesting and amazing feeling. Then this afternoon we did straight line backing for the first time. So actually driving forward and doing the back granted it was only once it was awesome. I also didnt kill any cones or people for that matter.

So far so good. Tomorrow is my only day off between now and 2 Thursdays from now when we test at state going to be a long two weeks but so looking forward to going and kicking butt at the state test.

I will try to post every few days as I progress through class and how things go.

 

Will do! all day today anytime we were standing if there was a truck not moving a few of us would just go pre-trip since that was all we knew at the time.

 

Today was the third day of actually doing yard skills and driving. Yard skills are starting to fall into place with minimal guidance from instructors and putting it in the hole without hitting cones and minimal pull ups in most if not all cases not exceeding the "free" that are allowed. Test a week tomorrow. Have school ever day between now and then if things keep progressing at the same rate I feel really good about how things are going. The hard part for me currently is down shifting out on the road and getting the timing down. Will report back in a day or two.

 

Luckily they are now rotating all the trucks through all of the skills and on the road so we are getting seat time in all the trucks. Today was good starting to be able to do maneuvers with no instructor assistance which is good since I test in 6 days. The only one I had instructor assistance on today was the 90 degree alley dock which is claimed to be the hardest of the 3 maneuvers. Hopefully with the smaller amount of people on the yard we will really get it down this weekend.

 

Of course there has to be a struggle and an improvement every day. Lost almost all of my ability to parallel park the truck today but put the truck in the hole on the alley 5-6 times without any help so that felt good. Tomorrow there is going to be very few of us we should really gain ground tomorrow.

 

Well school has been kicking my butt so I apologize for not updating everyday but tomorrow is the big day leave out from school at 430am test in Dalton at 2PM. After the past two week I feel ready to go to Dalton and come home with my Class A CDL. The group going tomorrow all look really good. I hope we go 4 for 4 we are ready for it. I will let you all know how it goes tomorrow.

 

After taking a day to absorb the shock. I failed at the DDS location yesterday. I will be 2-3 weeks until I get to test again. All I can think is my nerves got me. I was nailing all of the yard skills at school but got a few points on the offset and then pointed out on blind side parallel which is also frustrating as I had been nailing that almost from day one at school. I got in too deep and tried to fix it in the hole I should have pulled out and reset. Also driving on that asphalt is so different than the dirt lot.

 

Wow. I just found out I wont be able to retest until the 20th of November. Right at a month between tests with a 2 days on the yard before going to test again. Is this common in Georgia, is that state truly that far behind? Wish there were options to test sooner or atleast get more seat time but dont see that happening.