OH Bound - April 15

Thanks man. Good to know.

Day 9: I went rogue and set up a box to match the alley dock described in the PA CDL manual, which is basically a square to the front left of the 12x20 that measures at least 70x70 feet. I couldn't even figure out how to set myself up for a maneuver in that space without taking out the rest of the imaginary warehouse first. Neither could Woody, barely. He did manage to get it set up and get the trailer in there, but not without two pull ups that went way outside the box and dragging the left trailer wheels beyond reason. Another award-winning bureaucratic success story for the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I guess.

Did another pre-trip today and I was surprised at how well it's starting to flow out of my mouth after such a short time. Certainly not perfect or at Bill-speed, but not too shabby for my second try. Looking forward to getting in whatever truck I'll be testing out in so I can nail it down better, especially the in-cab portion.

We had free run of the range today to do whatever maneuvers we felt we needed to work on. Did great during the morning and early afternoon, but between the sun, wind, dust, "Popeye leg," and whatnot, all three of us got pretty punch drunk on the backing by the end of the day. Yesterday's rain did nothing to relieve the dust out there; just kinda made it worse. It was nice and calm this morning, but the afternoon wind really kicked things up. I did manage to finish up a parallel through a momentary dust devil brown-out.

Woody showed us around his Cascadia after lunch. That's a nice piece of equipment. He quipped that if he ever had to get pre-trip tested on it he'd probably fail. "Look at this part. Do you know what it is?" he'd ask us. "No." we'd say. "Neither do I!" he'd shoot back. Pretty funny. I have noticed that most everyone likes to laugh around here, which is great. The younger fellas in the class think us older guys are pretty weird, but they'll get old too someday and figure out why we laugh so hard - mostly because otherwise we'd just break down & cry. :/

The good news is that I believe I have a great trainer lined up. Not gonna jinx it until I hear the word through Millis channels, but if it pans out it sure will alleviate the nagging fears I had about getting stuck with Adolph or Genghis Trucker. Fingers crossed...

 

Day 10: It was a good day. Passed the backing/basic control/range test. Although we had all day to practice before testing out, all three of us decided to it it in the morning due to yesterday's punch-drunkeness. I also figured out why I was able to maneuver easily in the Kenworth but had a harder time in the Freightliner. The KW has a 20-inch steering wheel while the FL has a 22-inch wheel. Makes all the difference in the world for someone with stumpy little T-Rex arms like me. Felt good to get that hurdle out of the way. "I'm a basic controller! I'm a basic controller!"

After an early lunch we were given free reign to do whatever we wanted so while one guy spent his time on more studying his pre-trip stuff, the other two of us set up a couple more challenging backing maneuvers just to see if we could figure them out. Downside of all this: While driving the shuttle van back to the motel today, I kept looking in the mirrors to see where my trailer was. Woody also entertained us with a couple outlandish trainer/trainee and other trucking stories.

Next week the three of us will hit the road will Bill - looking forward to it! Word has it that our first outing might be to bobtail to Indianapolis to retrieve the trailer that got laid on its side up there.

 

Best of luck! Just one tip - figure out something to do on the weekends during the three weeks of class if you're not going to head home. I'm killing time by rolling enough cigarettes to last at least a month beyond my time with a trainer and getting hooked on Weeds via Netflix. Next up: The Walking Dead or Lost...

 

Good luck to you, Harley!

Day 11: Seemed like a long time coming, but we finally got to put some actual miles beneath the rubber with Bill today. 69 is a different beast than the range units (10 speed v. 13 speed; not totally beat to crap by newbies like me). So it was grind, grind, grind; rev, rev, rev at some points. Yup, I stalled it in the middle of an intersection due to not flicking the hi/lo flipper. Crap happens. Then you move on. I'm sure I wasn't the first, and certainly won't be the last to do it.

Pretty unique first part of the day though. My hotel roomie was in charge of bobtailing up to Indianapolis to see if we could grab the trailer that got laid over on 65 and pull it back to Trenton. The back of that trainer cab when bobtailing ain't the most peaceful ride. I did volunteer to pull the trailer back to Trenton but once I got a look at its actual condition, I expressed some doubts. Bill said no problem, he'd pull it if we didn't feel up to it. The guys at the yard there had to detach the tandems, the ICC bar and the landing gear to roll it back over, haul it, and finish unloading it after the incident. There was an impressive gaping buckled hole in the roof and a split down the right side. They had already reattached the tandems and the landing gear (backwards), so we hooked up and were pleased to find that the tanks held air and the electrical rigging was still intact and functional. We parked it in an open space in the yard and they got a crane and a big skid loader out to try to straighten out the roof and the right side. The thing just kept popping right back out, so while applying pressure with the big boy toys, straps were affixed around the body to hold the roof down to 13'6". By then my doubts were not lingering so much, so I again volunteered to tug it back to Trenton. We took a different route to avoid going back into town, and then headed back toward OH. The trailer dogged about a foot to the right the whole way, but I think I did a fairly good job getting it back to Millis. Not to mention that now for all time I can relay an interesting story about my first 122 actual miles on the road.

Needless to say, all eyes were on us as we pulled back in of the terminal. After that we hooked to a proper trailer and the 3rd guy in our group took us out for another couple hours. All in all, it was another good day. Some of the other guys are starting to connect with trainers, so that's yet another sign that we're all on our way.

BTW, I posted pics of the trailer from before we got it 'road ready' on my FB page. PM me if you want to connect there and see 'em. Interesting side note: the towing dudes claim the driver fessed up right away to his responsibility for laying it over, so the cop didn't ticket him. Interesting.