Lack of prior driving experience before getting into trucking

you don't really need car driving experience. it's how long you should have a license, before you can get a CDL permit. some states, you must have had a car license for 6 months, others one year.

so go to CDL school, you're fine.

 

Many people acquired their drivers license in high school "drivers ed" and haven't driven since. They attend cdl school and do just fine. Let the instructors teach you to drive a truck and don't reveal your personal driving experience.

 

Most people that drive passenger vehicles all day every day can't drive them safely, or efficiently to save their lives or preserve the lives of those around them.

You may be in good shape.
You don't have garbage habits that most of them do.

Be safe.. be smart. You'll do fine.

 

I'm gonna say it's probably better to have some recent auto driving experience before learning to drive a big truck, if only to learn the rules of the road and sharpen up your gross motor skills. Kind of like learning to ride a bicycle before attempting a motorcycle. A stepping stone, if you will.

 

The new Tesla trucks make it so u can just play on your phone and goof off while driving. Ask for one of them.

 

And drive with both feet up on the dash.

 

A 40 ton 18 wheeler approaching 60 to 75 feet depending on what's equipped on it is a monster compared to a little car. If you walk into a walmart and consider a pallet with a cardboard bin waist high of watermelons, call it 25 pounds times 25 watermelons or so 630 pounds roughly. Pallet is up to another 70 if it is a particular hardwood and built a certain way. 700 pounds.

Now three of those will equal most small cars at 2000 pounds. You can probably load about 24 of them on the trailer and it wont max out the weight ability of the truck. In fact major car makers used to pack 6 cars into a very special frame, slide it all into a van trailer and take off. That's around only 18000 pounds maybe give or take a few thousand on the frame.

When you consider the ability to take 48000 pounds of product such as Butter and load THAT into one truck. That's 24 small cars. Adding the truck, fuel, you and trailer etc bring it close to 80000 pounds.

I once had to force our 4 door chevy to stop very quickly from 70+ to save someone's live running across the freeway at night during rush. Runner number one made it across. Runner number two put a foot into my lane where my left front was and by then I was standing on the brakes forcing the car to try and use the ABS for all the marbles on that dry concrete. (The abs did not trip because the wheels for the most part was still rotating believe it or not, at least one squealed in protest and I think in about 140 feet I was from 70 to something below 20. A whole herd of people was doing the same thing.)

The runner saved himself by falling straight down next to my drivers door. If I was a 18 wheeler coming over the hill like that and presented with the problem which was developing as the two ran along side southbound waiting to zip across Im already process the potential problem, there is maybe 400 feet and it''s not going to be enough at 70. But whatever happens it will have to be enough with a final option if necessary.

The truck does have ABS and will absolutely use it. the last 50 feet and about roughly 2 seconds to impact with the boy number two will depend on where I am at with the speed and how the trailer is doing back there.

I also have to get inside boy number two's mind and use his body language against him. And then make a decision before he knows what he wants to do with this monster 18 wheeler pouring blue smoke, making horrible ABS sounds and dumping huge amounts of air and so on coming on to kill him.

I would not be able to stop in that time and distance. Maybe. Its sometimes that "Maybe" that last little bit will decide if someone ges to live today, scared really bad and shake for a week, but he will be fine. No one hit anyone. That's hat we all want.

Dumbkopt boys could have walked 4 minutes to a major bridge behind us with two wide sidewalks to choose from. That is what I want them to do from now on. No more of this running across the freeway BS. I know boy number one died a thousand deaths hearing the massive braking sounds from theherd that just killed his number two.

Ive almost killed people before in both cars and trucks most especially. Or almost was killed by several including my own in a situation you wont believe. I have to believe that I have not killed a human on the road. HOWEVER I have on occasion had to within the overall situation take the rig and move the wheel while applying power to take a large lab for example in the rain. I wanted to put his head on my center steel bumper and it wont suffer. (I had borrowed a shop truck because mine was in the shop undergoing some needed work. I had completely forgotten that the KW I had featured a total rubber air dam below that flops in the wind.

A soft thump a yelp as the rubber dam bounced the pet off the pavement into my engine oil pan along the transmission which I had taken out of gear for the impact as it went into the driveshaft and final drives. The rig shook a little and that was that.

Took about 30 miles for the texas thunderstorm to wash all of the blood, gore, parts and dog out of my rig and trailer. It absolutely cleared the car traffic for that stretch of road when everyone realized I had to make a animal kill rather than kill say 6 people trying to evade. There was no evading this one.

A soft thump, YELP! and a little shake as the weight passed along the driveshaft into the final drives which featured both the foreward shaft and a engaged interlock in between the axles back there for high water rain purposes. The landing gear cut what was left in half and scattered the teeth bones and what not into the nooks and crannies of that trailer tandem.

It's just a animal. No. It was someone's pet. It managed to get out of someone's back of a pickup before I reached where it was running back and forth in my center lane with cars lined up on each side of me. No place to go so I made the decision to apply power and make contact with the head. That is why I don't drive trucks with plastic bumpers. It is not my first or last animal kill with a truck but I must have a steel bumper so that if the situation develops I can at least try to make sure it does not suffer and maybe knock it off to the side clean and not make such a mess.

I do make a habit of going to the shelter to this day in various locations now and again and seeing if they have a older lab that has been too long in the far back corner cage. I'll grab a leash, get permission and bring it out with a ball or toy to play with in the special fenced off play area outside. Most of the time they get into the play and enjoy it enough to actually woof a little bit towards me when we take turns with the ball. Make a friend for life. But not me. It's too big for where I live. That's my way of chipping in a little bit of my time what with the horses and pets now and then. And maybe you can be human again after a while.

Anyway.

Trucking isnt like driving a car. What it has done is be much, much, much nicer than a car. If you have ridden a cadillac CTS or similar you will get a faint sense of what is possible with a properly loaded 18 wheeler running well with adequate power and resources to move along putting away maybe 1000 miles in 24 hours. You are running late. They need that meat in Boston yesterday. Waiting on you. Still two days and change to get there, if you loaded in Liberal Kansas at the meat plant there two days ago after waiting for three.

You are not done at any particular time. You are loaded, working and it is not about you personally until you reach boston, unload the meat the correct temperature, product count, product codes, no damage, shorts or overs and everything being in order They will sign for it and you get out of Boston asap probably to Foxboro or similar before you try to call into dispatch to tell them that you are empty. Right now they don't matter. You did make a delviery today. Take a few hours to fuel the truck, fix any problems, wash out the reefer trailer, fuel the trailer, feed yourself properly with a few boxes to go for your sleeper shelf (That you can finish off later that night or towards morning) coffee, news and maybe a nap with laundry etc.

All of that has to be done really fast. Dispatch is probably waiting on you and you are going to have to do what they tell you to do when you are ready to go. 8 times of 10 they tell you to go into PA, New Jersey somewhere as a deadhead to get out of the NE Empty. But not always.

You can count on a vareity of loads waiting for you from PA down to VA sorta. Western NY is a possibility too.

Pace yourself. You will be working in a office smaller than your bathroom closet and living in a home about the size of your walkin closet if you are lucky.

It's a journey, not a 8 to 5 job where you can tell the boss eff this I quit. (You are seriously positioning yourself to incu a great deal of damage at this point)

Say hello, be nice, (And have a plan to end a threat or kill the snaky SOB) and whatever you do, do not yell at dispatch in profane language making clear that their entire existance on this plant is of less value than say a eel. It's really electrifying. And what they can do to you would shock you.

 

One of the things that a truck driver has to do is read the road and traffic. We need more time and space to do anything.

My concern with a very inexperienced car driver moving into truck driving is that you have very limited experience reading the roads and traffic.

Will you recognize one way streets even if someone knocked down a sign? Will you properly judge the closing speed of a car approaching you in a traffic circle?

Do you have a feel for traffic flow?

You can be a very experienced driver and still be clueless.

You can also be an almost completely inexperienced car driver and be very aware and competent on the road.

But, normally, a person with little car driving experience will be more dangerous in a truck.

It is addressable. If you put an effort into learning and pay attention to the roads and the other vehicles, you can do fine if you are at least moderately intelligent and sane.

But you have to understand that you are at a disadvantage, and you need to be careful while you learn.

 

Why not get a job in the Public Transit System either driving the buses or working the Train/Subway?