Joplin, MO 4/23

Thanks Wild. I'm heading down to Neosho in the morn.

 

Today mostly consisted of the physical, drug screen, agility test, and mounds of paperwork you'd fill out at any new job. Tomorrow will be the first day down here at the college. Will be interesting driving a 13 speed with a bigger trailer. Looking forward to it!

 

Had breakfast then jumped on the bus for the first day of Boot Camp.

Started out kinda boring as we had to watch some JJ Keller videos about stuff that is in our lovely green book. (Which my school had already given me) That was followed by a quick quiz just to see our knowledge on log books along with filling out a log for today and a video on CAT scales.

Then lunch, which I must say I was slightly surprised at the amount of food and the quality they had at the college. Everyone was stuffed.

After lunch it was time to go to the trucks. They did a PTI, wow, it's a Lot quicker and easier than what I had to learn to get my CDL in NC. Then we went to go work on shifting and turning. I choose to go with RC, he's a really cool guy. Keith seems fun too. He rode with each of use around the right turn course once and then they put some chairs in the shade and left us to our own devices. We did figure 8's while serpentining in the middle. Was a lil rough starting out as I kept forgetting where the gears were but by the end of the day I had a better grasp and did alright on my turns. None of us hit any of the barrels. Tomorrow we go hit the road.

 

I'm going to combine the posts for the last two days as I had to go to bed shortly after getting back to the hotel so I could get up at 3am for a night drive.

Day 3

Jumped on the bus at 7 again and made my way back out to the college. That place is pretty neat with all it's history. We started off watching another thrilling JJ Keller video and went over a test we'd have to take the next day. Once we were done with that we headed out to do some coupling and uncoupling and tandem sliding. The coupling is much easier than what they had taught me in school as we didn't have airbags we could drop.

Lunch was good. All of us were stuffed. Then came time for road driving. There's 6 people in my class so they did an even split between RC and Keith. I went with RC, he's a pretty cool guy. Reminds me of the head instructor from the school I went to. Didn't do too bad there, just gotta get used to that shifting pattern. After we were done with that we practiced the offset a bit and came back to the hotel to nap before our night drive.


Day 4

Had a hard time getting up at 3, also had a hard time going to sleep in the first place. (Mind you so did everyone else in the class. )
Did a lot better on my night than I did during the day, only had one rough patch of shifting, think I got tired. Thankfully we took a break after that so we could all stretch and wake up. Then we came back to the college to do the test we studied for the day before.

Breakfast buffet was alright though sadly lacked in the bacon department.

This afternoon we tested on our offset backing and Pre-trip. Don't remember right off how well I did. We had lunch at the college and they brought us back. Tomorrow is the skills test and final drive.

 

Nope, I'm still here. Though I don't think RC and/or Keith quite know what to do about me.