Newbie Diary

Driveco is in Gary. the entirity of the staff is about 5 people.

Ok, been slacking off for some time now.. I'll try to catch up...

Day 4: the morning consists of me studying the Hazmat section of the CDL manual, while the class is learning about tankers and triples. By lunch time, I've worked myself into a tizzy, trying to memorize chemicals, and what hazard class they are. Now, I know that the hazmat test couldn't possibly be as detailed as I'm making it in my head, but I just can't stop myself. Lunchtime comes, and I ask the instructor if I can take a look at the hazmat guide he'll be giving out tomorrow, he declines, cause he doesn't want me to get ahead of the class. So, I leave, go to the DMV, and take the hazmat test. Failed. they're not going to put a hazmat endorsement on my permit anyway, so I go ahead and get the hardcopy for that, while I'm there. But, now the hazmat section makes sense. We study "Whistleblower Protection" pretty much with rolled eyes. "This is how the government thinks the world works.... if a company is doing something wrong, or unsafe, you can tell the government on them, and they can't fire you for telling on them. they can, however, fire you because you're eyebrows aren't properly trimmed. Here's the thing guys, if someone wants you to run illegal, or unsafe, say "No." Don't get tricked into just-this-one-time-to-help-out your manager. It won't stop there. If they fire you, just go somewhere else. Everyone wants safe, responsible drivers."

Day 5: Straight Backing!
I come home, not sure if my left leg will work again. RIDE THE CLUTCH!!!
I passed Hazmat at lunch. all clear now. They do 1 pretrip inspection, with the six of us watching. then give us a 12 page handout with pictures that were appearenty run though a commodore 64 before being printed. we've gotta memorize pretrip on our own time. Individual effort and all. Good luck! My weekend is spent looking for my kneecap. I'm gonna need that on monday...

Day 6-9
We're now at 7 students, 4 trucks. (We picked up a guy who had to leave the class before us, 2 trucks doing alley dock, two on straigt backing. due to cycling/ rotating... you pretty much get to alley dock about once an hour.
I did good straight backing on day 5.. but I can't do it to save my life now. on day 5, I was in a truck with the tandems slid forward, and between two rows of cones. now, on these trucks, they tandems are all the way back, and I'm trying to drive it 100 feet between to cones back there, I'm basically tryin to get a field goal. I also learned that we're not allowed to be in the trucks during lunch. So, I get to waste an hour a day sitting in the breakroom, since I don't eat lunch. don't have anymore dmv tests to take, this gets irritating. I've gotten into the habit of doing my pretrip-in-cab inspection every time I get into a truck for straight backing. So I've got it down.. much more than I do straight-backing, or alley dock, for that matter.
They don't have a good tolerance for people who want to Alley dock without pulling up. But, they're also standing outside in this cold snap with wind chills below zero while we just move between trucks.

Day 10: Double-Clutching!
out of seven students, no one sucked. The Trainer drove around, all of the schools trucks, are 10-speeds, so they'll only be teaching us 10-speeds. School policy is to only teach double-clutching, after you get your cdl, come on back, and we'll show you the other stuff. I was thankful to finally see us trying to right-turn into a two-lane road, with a car going the opposite way. I didn't realize the intimidation of "Get up in front of it, and stop... he'll back up. we got all day." was something taught.
Next monday we're supposed to have a class on something called "highway watch" and pretty much after that, we're out of the classrom for the rest of the class. Next week, we're supposed to get introduced to "blind-side paralell park" and the backward "serpentine"

 

Week 3 !!!

Biggest problem this week, the cold snap that hit us in the chicago area does not help with trucks that have to be stone-cold for 16 hours at a time. we loose two of five trucks. and now that we're doing alternating groups for road-trips, that leaves a group of 3 or 4 students, with two trucks in the yard, one that only does straight-backing, and the other for alley-dock.

Day 11: Highway Watch, and "The Smith System" of Defensive driving. Then, to the Road! "Shift, Shift, Shift, Downshift! Downshift! For the love of God, STOP!"

Day 12: Time to learn: "(Conventional) Paralell Park" Now, one guy does Alley dock, and Paralell Park, before driving back to the start line to give someone else a turn. In general, you can count on about 3 hours on a road-trip, and 3 hours of yard-time, on any given day. which comes out to 3 or 4 rounds of the Backing-skills, a day. We're dismissed after lunch, cause it sorta blizzard'ed.

Day 13: The Instructors are starting to snap. they're pretty much at a level of "OMG, only 7 days left, and they still suck at alley-dock, and they can't double-clutch! We've trained people who were better, so it's not our training... There must be something wrong with them!"

Day 14: Road-Trip, a few laps around the yard, and it's time to end the day learning the math of "Serpentine!"

Day 15: Recap of the math of "Serpentine!" now, it's Alley-dock, Serpentine, Paralell Park, back to the start-line, new driver. But, they got the other trucks going, So we're still able to get about 3 rounds a day.

Day 15.5: They let us in for half a day on the weekend, since they had to send everyone home earlier in the week.

More to follow, but I need to take a nap.

 

So, our road trips are through Gary, IN. Laidlaw is the company that the Gary School system contracts with, to provide school bus services to the city. On a 4 lane road, the school bus lets out some elementary students without throwing it's Stop-Arm out, and they dart across the other 3 lanes of traffic. The student driving the Truck, managed to slam to a stop. looked at the kid stopped in the road, pulled out the parking brake and said "OK, I'm done for today."

 

I have now technically competed school, having finished my fourth week. I say "technically" because I'll be testing tuesday morning, so I'll be going to school monday, for one last hurrah (those in the class that are testing on monday, go into class on Sunday, for their own last hurrah.)

I'm tired. Thursday was my final Pre-trip test, out of 108 points, I missed 13. 22 would be the failing number. and that was with me getting to the Fifth-wheel part and pretty much saying "and this is the fifth wheel, It's magical, and it does stuff, let's move on..." Friday, I did my Final Skills test, I got 9, and 12 would have been failing. I earned 7 of them on my paralell park, which, I found incredibly funny, since I'd never done that badly on it before. But, I learned a lot from it.

During a road-trip in week three, I hit a curb on a right-turn. I made clear to all the instuctors, that I need work on my right-turns into a two-lane street. In the last ~8 school days, I've done two.

I understand the boot-camp-esqe mentality that instuctors get into, there's a finite amount of time, to teach people how to guide a 40-ton rock that really wants nothing more than to go in the same direction that it was going a minute ago. But, it still wears me down.

Every instuctor has minor differences in what they tell you the CDL Tester wants to hear. Instuctors are very much like people, in that way. I went in on Saturday for practice, got there, and the only staff there was the instuctor teaching the weekend class. He tells me to go in the back office, and work on my pre-trip. they appearently have an "on-call" list for part-time instuctors hidden somewhere, So, some guy shows up and says: "OK, let's work on our pre-trip, and Air Brake!" followed by: "Fail! Fail! Fail! Fail! You Fail!" because *this* instuctor, believes that, for the Air-brake check, I'm supposed to say what, and why I'm going to do anything, before I do anything. whereas the instuctors that I've been with for 4 weeks, have me telling the tester what I'm doing, and why, *while* I'm doing it. I excuse myself and go help another classmate that's shown up, who needs help on his pre-trip, cause he doesn't quite have the engine compartment down.

Doom & Gloom, all week. The instuctors have become parodies of themselves. "If you do that on test day, you'll blow up!" "If you don't say "No more that 4 PSI" the Tester will find ways to handicap your children!"
"If you don't start shifting right, I'm not gonna be your friend anymore."
"You know what? you just go ahead and drive back your way, I'm not talking to you anymore."

 

OK, Road-Tested today. and I failed.

Out of the 5 of my class that were scheduled to take the test...

1 Passed.
1 Failed out of his 4-part air brake test (immediate failure)
1 Pointed-out during skills (The alley-dock ate him up, he'd never done that poorly in class)
1 Obstucted Traffic (Immediate failure) Doing a left turn in town, and drove in front of traffic headed the opposite way.

then me, pointed out on the road-test. just too many occurences of my rear tandems crossing the white-line on the right, I wasn't checking for cross traffic from side-streets, I just nickle-and-dimed my way too high. I had other failings as well, but those were the most recurrent ones.

The "Move along"'s during the pre-trip inspection are dis-orienting, you develop a rhythm and one leads into another. It's like trying to do the A B C"s, "A, B" (Move along) "... move along to what? the next vowel?" (yeah, move along.) "E, F, G, H..." (Move along) "I? J..." (Move along) "uh....la la la do do do oh, O, P, Q" (move along) "U. [pause waiting for him to say it] V.." (Move along) "Dag nabbit. I dunno... uh... Y and Z?" (Ok, let's get in the cab)

On being nervous: Why, if the inside of my mouth is dry enough to strike a match from it, do I feel a compulsion to swallow? then, to become distracted because I can't, because my mouth has a humidity level that would kill a cactus? I'm going to write someone about this, similar to my note that pre-hensile toes would be really cool.

I call the school tomorrow to see about another appointment, which will probably be next week. that would be, supposedly, the last test they'd foot the bill for.