Clark State Training Diary in Springfield, Ohio

Well I started school on June 11th. Will be wrapping up the week of classroom instruction tomorrow, so far so good. I got my permit wrapped up today with every endorsement minus passenger since I don't see myself ever hauling people, lol.

The classroom instructor is a nice old fella by the name of John, many years in the business and he's taught us a lot. I prefer just him ad libbing stories to the pretty dry learning material and videos we watch all day, but I understand it's stuff we need to know.

One more day of instruction tomorrow then we hit the yard on Monday to learn to drive these beasts. I'll post back and let everyone know how i do. Have a million companies to research this weekend, I swear, picking a company is as daunting as learning to drive itself. I never realized just how many trucking companies are in the U.S.

More to come....

 

Today was the first day behind the wheel, all day out on the pad mastering the straight back. Was a bit shaky the first couple runs, even killed a cone, but by the end of the day had it pretty well down. Depending on how the weather goes tomorrow will probably be more of the same. Wicked heat out today, darn near 100 degrees in June, in Ohio. Pretty unusual for this time of year.

 

Day two behind the wheel. Yesterday was all day straight backing, today was mostly offset back with a little straight thrown in. Offset is so much harder than it looks when you watch a pro do it. Definitely need to practice this one a bunch. Just watched a few youtube videos that explained it. The instructor did a good job explaining, I'm just the type that when I'm nervous (which I was) I don't take instruction very well. So it kind of went in one ear and out the other. Watching the youtube videos when I'm at home and relaxed helped me take it in a little easier.

So hopefully tomorrow goes a little better on that maneuver. I have to learn to not be so hard on myself when I mess up, it takes me off my game. Well, time for some rest, right back to it bright and early.

 

Well, day three is in the books. Instead of staying in the yard and backing we went out on the road doing a loop around our school. Just learning the basics, how to shift up and down, turning and learning about off tracking of the trailer. There is an easy, medium and hard loop and I'm proud to say I was the only driver out of my group of three to complete the hard loop.

Wow was it tough though. The instructor hinted that the hard loop is the actual course we run during the CDL exam so it was kind of neat to get to run it on day one on the road. Upshifting doesn't seem so hard once you get a knack for double clutching but I will need a bit of work on speeding up the downshifts. The blipping the throttle step slows me down. I'll work on it. We should be back in the yard tomorrow to work on more maneuvers.

 

Day 4 and 5 of drive training. Day 4 was 4 hours in the yard and 4 hours on the road. The road portion went pretty smooth. My upshifts and downshifts improved from the day before. My backing needs a loooot of work. I don't know why I'm struggling with parallel so much. I either seem to come in too deep or not deep enough.

Still have 10 days of instruction before my first cdl exam so I'm not panicking yet. Ready for a needed break this weekend.

 

Well an update is in order here. I didn't forget about my thread just had some unexpected setbacks to overcome on my school journey. During my second week of yard and road training in June I injured my right shoulder really badly, bad enough I couldn't even shift gears. So I had to drop out of that class and come back the next month after my arm had some time to heal up.

It's still pretty gimpy but I'm happy to say that I graduated class and passed my CDL A examination this morning. It was a long and tough journey, but I'm glad I stuck with it. I'm really excited to get my career going and get on the road. I'll keep everyone updated on which direction I end up going. Big thanks to this forum and it's members and staff, this place is a great resource to learn!