Starting the Squire Program 10/10/14

That's great to hear!

 

My experience with knight has been very good. So far I have everything down but shifting and offset backing which will be covered later this week. The trainers are there to offer advice if you find yourself in a jam but for themost part stand back and let you fix your mistakes. Seems the next class will have it a tad harder than we did since they were hailed up all day at the doctors office and its surposted to rain tomorrow closing the yard for training.

 

So far so good. I have successfully done all the maneuvers but am far from mastering them. I can perform the task but am either bumping the cones in the back or out of the box. Due to the holidays coming up I was told to schedule my CDL road test now since some students out of Texas had to wait around 4-6 weeks to take the test. In my home city the soonist I could test would be December 10 but out of Dallas I could test as soon as November 25 and have reserved the date. Now all I need to do is improve my skill by Friday so that I can test out.

 

Wish I could take you out on my Truck, I used to train but when I bought the truck they said it became a "Conflict of interest" which is a shame. I always loved getting to know the new person and figuring out how to entertain our self's on long trips. Was lots of laughs out there.

Anyways GL Hope you get a decent trainer that will work to show you how its done. Just a FYI, If you get a total ### Hole don't be afraid to tell the DM or whoever your manager is why out training. We are all here to help, Not to belittle you and make you feel worthless. Don't allow that to happen. =) we are all adults and should be treated as such.

 

Today was an intense experience. Right after lunch a few of us were placed in a truck for road training and I got to see just how scary driving a huge truck can be. Upshifting is a breeze for me but downshifting requires me to think which I havent had to do in awhile. It is a pain getting off the highway since you only have 10 seconds to downshift from 8 to 3 gear before the stop sign. Ended up lossing my gear and just coasting to a stop. The other thing is making those sharp turns since I hit every curb and came only an inch away of taking my first stop sign. All in all not bad for someone who never drove before.

 

I know man, no one in my group were able to get off the highway without coasting since we suck at down shifting. We will get it soon enough since I only have 1 more week before my road test to learn.

 

Starting out in your trucking career, its best to 'over rev' your engine when down shifting as it will give you more time (and better probability) to make the shift.

When you get experienced (about 6 mos) you will just 'tap' the throttle and float the shift as the clutch becomes a nuisance.

The clutch then will only be used for starting out and if you let your rpms drop too low on a downshift going up a hill w/a load, to get it out of gear to make the shift...

Good luck! Nothing 'magical' about trucking just takes time....