DCCC Truck Driver Training.

Went on my third trip out, we're practicing skip shifting and setting up turns and clover leafs. I'm much more comfortable with down shifting after this weekend, everything started to click. My up shifts are becoming cleaner and am able to recover a lot better if I miss a gear.

Next weekend we will be doing our night time driving and then on to mountain driving the following weekend.

Still a long way to go but everything is going good.

 

OK, part 1 of the night time class is over. We went out at 8 p.m. last night and got back to the yard around 5:30. I'm not used to saying up that late anymore so I was one whooped pup. We're going to do it all over again tonight... yea!

I had to drive a truck I never drove before so I had some adjustments to over come but by the end of the night all was good.

On a side note, there's some strange stuff that goes on in the middle of the night. It's amazing what goes on in the world while I'm normally fast asleep.

 

OK, finished the night driving, everything went well for the whole class. One thing I'll say about night driving is that it does provide a learning driver the ability to practice block turns with little to no competing traffic. It was still tough to follow your trailer tandems in low light areas. All in all I'm glad we did the night driving part.

Next weekend we go to the mountains. We'll be heading up to run Fancy Gap on 77.

 

Just thought I would give a new update. We started to run our qualifying routes over this past weekend. I/we have to pass all 24 skills during the route in order to qualify I started qualifying with 4 x marks, meaning I messed up on four different skills. I chopped that number down to 1 x mark by Sunday's last qualifying ride. There are two different routes we have to run and you have to qualify on both routes, using the Smith system of calling out everything during the ride.

We also changed the range course over to start practicing our other backing skills; jackknife, serpentine blind backing and 100 ft alley back plus the 90* L back. I don't see any problems learning these skills, it will just take practice.

This course is a lot more intense than I previously thought before starting school. I'm glad that I chose this course, I will be well prepared to start with a company as a new driver.

 

OK, I haven't updated in a while. We've been running qualifying routes, need to qualify on two different routes to graduate from the school. I have one down and one to go.

I passed my PTI for the school this past weekend as well. The school requires you do a pre trip in 20 minutes, their pre trip test is harder than what is done to get a CDL. So if you past theirs you won't have a problem with the state CDL test.

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IFzebra, You're making a good choice by going through this school. It's tough but you'll be a better prepared graduate entering a tough job market for drivers. This school is well respected by all the top trucking companies in NC and those who hire drivers out of NC. If you have any questions let me know.

 

Not much new to report from last weekend. Everyone is still working on getting qualified.

The school just bought two 2006 International day cabs. We put one into service on the training yard this weekend.