Pinellas Technical College

Nope, I mean our actual CDL license. We will be doing range activities and local city driving with our permits with an instructor in the seat next to us. Once we actually pass our pre-trip test and road test and earn our CDL we will go out on long distance drives with two trucks. The instructor will be in one truck with two students and two other students in the other following behind, if we had more there would be a third truck. The instructor will have us stop periodically and change drivers.

 

The entire program is 9 weeks, the portion where we are doing long runs is approximately 2 to 3 weeks. It all depends on the size of the class and how close everyone is to getting their 1,000 miles of behind the wheel time. By the end of 6th week they want everyone to have their permanent CDL.

 

Something else I just thought of ... currently they are using J.J. Keller & Associates curriculum, we are the final class to use this curriculum. Beginning with the next class, which will start in August, they will be switching to Mike Byrnes & Associates, Inc. "BUMPERTOBUMPER" curriculum.

 

Day Four is done.

First thing this morning with rain threatening we went through a tractor pre-trip inspection with Laura ( she showed us how to complete it ). Now each day we will have a partner in the class ( there are only four us ) and we will be expected to complete a pre-trip inspection. One person will have the script and the other will complete the inspection, next day we will switch.

After the pre-trip presentation we then moved into shifting .... that was a task. We learned double-clutching, after a few days of practice I think we will all have the coordination down to shift smoothly. I think we all stalled the truck at least once. Overall I think we all did a great job. We were bobtail and started out in 2nd Gear. We revved up to 10 RPMS and shifted to 3rd, then to 4th and to 5th. We went no higher than 5th gear today. Laura told us we would work on that all day tomorrow.

I had a hard time going from 3rd to 4th, I would grind every time and have to start over. We have not learned how to recover gears yet, When we miss a gear or mess up we are starting over. I was getting frustrated and it was coming to the end of my time ( there were three of us sharing one truck, will have two trucks running tomorrow ). I shutdown at the driver change point and Laura caught me and said "Let's get you into 4th gear." so I climbed back into the driver's seat and she climbed in the passenger and off we went. Turns out I was revving to high and was trying to push the clutch down to the floor and obviously it was taking to much time and I was missing the shift point. I think part of it was that I was overthinking it as well. So we worked on that and I did it perfect, she complimented me and I immediately messed up again . She told me she would never compliment me again so I can get it, she was teasing of course.

So another day down in the books, I will be back tomorrow with another update.

On a side note, one of my classmates has been lurking on this thread. If you read this feel free to post your experience here too, it will be cool to get a couple of different viewpoints on this journey.

 

Day Five is in the books.

Today we started off with a pre-trip inspection on one of our vehicles. I was the one performing the inspection while the other two students were following along in the book and getting me back on track when I strayed away. I did pretty good, only had to ask for a tip a few times. Tomorrow someone else will perform the inspection and I will hold the book and we will trade off each day until we get it memorized and get ready for our pre-trip test.

After the pre-trip we began our driving exercises. We are still bobtail, trailers should be in the mix next week if we are following the syllabus ( we have followed it pretty close so far ). I drove first since I performed the pre-trip. We switched drivers every 45 minutes, I drove around the track a total of 8 miles. We worked on our shifting from yesterday except we went into the high gears today, just to 6th gear. It was to get the feel for the switch. We had a straight line back and parallel park exercise thrown into the mix too. After lunch it was more driving and we got a serpentine exercise thrown in. We had to drive around three barrels keeping our rear axles as close to the center barrel as possible, then do the whole thing in reverse. This was an exercise to get us comfortable using the mirrors.

We lost one of the Class A guys to the Class B side. He decided Class B was a better fit for him and jumped before we got to far in, good for him. He kept apologizing to us but it's cool, he made the right decision for himself and that is what counts. So now we are down to 3 Class A, 2 Class B and 1 Bus.

Based on the syllabus we should begin learning downshifting tomorrow ..... should be interesting.

 

Day Six Is A Wrap ....

Not much went on today. We started off doing our pre-trip inspections as we will do everyday. Halfway through it started pouring so we were instructed to stay inside the cab until it let up. It poured for about 5-10 minutes and we continued. Upon finishing I drove first and we were still working on shifting, straight line back, serpentine and parallel parking. We had our 15 minute break and the rain really started coming down and the radar was not looking good for the rest of the day so Laura pulled the plug on driving and kept us inside the rest of the day.

We moved to "Plan B" as she called it. We began working on our project for the class .... a mock trip. We received our 2017 Rand McNally Motor Carriers' Road Atlas we paid for when registering for the class. We went through it and she explained the different sections and how to read it, etc. We then received our trip packet. This trip looks overwhelming but I have no doubt I will do fine with it. We have three weeks to get it complete but I am going to try to get it done this weekend. We are "driving" from Florida to Louisiana then up to South Dakota, then out to Colorado from there to Kansas and then back to Florida. We have a trip sheet to fill out, log each day using the 11/14/70 Rules and we are filling out Bills of Lading for each load too .... seems like a pretty big project.

Tomorrow we should get into downshifting, that was the plan today until this toad-frog strangler of a storm hit us.

 

Day 7 was good.

This morning it started raining as soon as we got out to do our pre-trip inspections ... go figure. We pushed on and got it all done and Laura joined the three of us in the tractor. She showed the proper technique for downshifting and allowed each of us to attempt it ourselves with her next to us of course. Once she felt comfortable that we had the process down she cut us loose. We had two trucks running for the three of us so at least two of us were practicing at a time.

I was really worried about downshifting but it is simple. We worked on that pretty much all day. Monday we will be practicing shifting all day and then on Tuesday we will get into coupling and uncoupling. It's starting to get pretty serious now. Fun ... but serious.