Help a trucker wannabe out!

Perhaps. I wouldn't know to be honest. We went down Rt. 611 to I84 all of the way to Dailville yesterday.

 

I'm definitely going for it. So far so good, but it's not like I'm employed in the industry yet. The verdict is still out, but I'm optimistic.

 

The course was 6 weeks. I should pick up my CDL license on 7/31/10 and graduate on 8/2/10. I expect to have a job with *some* company immediately, I don't plan to take some time off (this is my time off right now).

The amount of time I spend with a trainer is going to depend on the company. Usually it would be a month which would mean I would be on my own in early September. However, if I get into a company such as Werner, they require 300 hours of training which would take 6 to 8 weeks which would place me on my own as late as October. I certainly hope that doesn't happen, but we'll see.

 

Today I got another 1 hour and 15 minutes behind the wheel and drove 38 miles. This means I had more advanced, difficult driving today. I drove a lot of side roads, and some two-lane highways. I had to navigate through a lot of lights, deal with some pedestrians, and also had to deal with some cars cutting in front of me was I came along at 50 to 55 MPH. You'd think the Student Driver sign on the front of the Class A truck with 48 foot trailer might give them some pause, but I guess not.

My driving on the road has *so* improved from the first time I drove, it's not even funny. It's even a dramatic improvement from the last time I drove. Shifting was more smooth, I rarely missed gears, I thought ahead, I didn't miss signage, I kept the trailer off the white line to the right, and I was very relaxed. I drove safe, and kept control of my truck. I kept up with the speed limit, and handled a ton of hills today without a problem. I'm very happy with the improvements, and I even improved to the point where I performed close to Chris's (the mechanic) level.

The day is broken into two parts. Driving is half of the day and skills is the other half. For the skills portion of the program, we stay in the yard and learn to pull forward and straight back the truck (something which I now have down to a science), and have now learned Alley Docking and Blindside Parrellel parking.

Unfortunately both my blindside and alley docking need a lot of work. I can set both of these moves up flawlessly, but I can't seem to complete the deal, so to speak. I get the right angle, I get the truck straight, and I can straight back. But when it comes to turning at the right time, or as quickly/slowly as needed, I simply am not getting these moves down.

We have two more moves we'll need to learn in addition which has me a bit worried. There's the sight side parallel parking, and there's the serpentine which is a combination of right side parallel parking, straight backing, and blind side parallel parking.

The other day one of the instructors with 40 years of experience backed it up in high gear and did a complete serpentine followed by a backwards figure eight. How to these people learn to drive so good? It was absolutely amazing. They should have some sort of truck driver competition. If guys would manage to do these types of moves at over say 50 MPH I'd watch it on TV.

 

Personally I'd like to avoid the complaining. I'm hoping to find a company I can happily spend a minimum of 1 to 2 years with. But ultimately I'm looking for a company I can stay with for the long term. The last company I worked for it was for 8.5 years, so I'm hardly one to move around from job to job or company to company.