Do you need to double clutch?

Forget everything you know about driving synchronized transmission and clutch. I have 100's of thousands of miles experience with such and all it did was screw me up when I got in a tractor.

 

When your climbing a hill or going down, the rpms could go to a point where even floating can't get out of gear, so the driver would have to double clutch to get it out of gear and get into the right one. Or the truck will continue to sped down (or stall out if climbing) the hill.

You always need to be on a gear, coasting in neutral is a no-no and technically not in control

 

That is not a bad idea at all, although, double clutching is not difficult, it is tiring more than anything. I stopped doing it after I learned to float gears (except for my CDL exam), I do single clutch at times-when I cannot get the #### gear disengaged-clutch out, float in.

 

I never double clutched once well taking my drivers test. I was never asked to either.

 

That's good , but , there are some companies that require it , they may or may not tell you either , I've seen experienced drivers ( I'm talking about over 10 years too ) fail , because of not using the clutch , it varies from place to place. That's the main reason for me telling the OP what I did...hate to see him or anyone else fail , one thing is for certain using the double clutch method on a road test .......won't FAIL YOU , not using it might.

 

As will your clutch brake, which is the real reason why you don't depress the clutch all the way to the floor.

The only time I ever had to double clutch for a test was to get my CDL.... never was required to double clutch for any employment road test afterwards. However, if you ever get into an industry where you find yourself running down unimproved and barely improved "roadways", and you might suddenly find yourself having to drop several gears in one shot in order to keep those wheels turning to get out of what you're in before you get sunk in too far, you'd better know how to double clutch.

 

you don't have to double clutch while taking a drivers test. That's nuts.

 

Why would it be nuts to show an employer you have the necessary skill set to operate his equipment without tearing it to pieces , now , that's nuts.

 

I have seen this happen to experienced drivers before. Perfectly good drivers, safe for years, flunk a simple driving test for failure to use the clutch.

HOWEVER...in my experience, this has ONLY happened at large training carriers that were only looking at the experienced drivers for training positions. And the only experienced drivers who failed for not using the clutch were the ones who openly stated they would not train. So XYZ Mega Carrier would use this as an excuse (or reason) to drop an otherwise perfect driver out of orientation.

The lesson I took from this was to 1) never admit my full experience (fortunately I have quite a bit that isn't "verifiable) and 2) claim to be open to a "trainer" position.

Some drivers wonder why a big experience older driver would even think about going to XYZ Mega Carrier after running safe for all those years. I can actually understand it a bit. It's a lower stress gig. Face it, you got that much experience, you're gonna max out the pay scale wherever you go. Which means you AIN'T getting the busy busy cherry runs. At least at XYZ Mega Carrier you can slide into semi-retirement, still bring in a bit of income while you wait for you retirement accounts to mature, and not have to work all that hard. Plus, no longer having to get out there and hustle and boogie to keep up like we sometimes do running for smaller, more profitable (for the driver) carriers.