Scared nervous and just a big mess!

I think you may have "fear" mixed-up with respect , 2 entirely different things....when you see these idiots in the ditch or jack-knifed , they are showing you and everybody else their total lack of respect , not only for the weather / road conditions , but also anyone that has the misfortune to be on the same road with them , including themselves....like I said fear causes panic...ie jack-knife situations , respect on the other hand means you either slow down and use some common sense or get off of the highway .....

 

man you beat me to it..I hate being a 1- fingered typist...LOL...funny what a few years of experience does to a persons opinion ain't it....

 

But they are two different things that will result in two different outcomes behind a big rig. Respect is a small amount of fear mixed with other ingredients. Pure fear is dangerous and will get people killed. The way the op described himself i have never been. None of my buddies in trucking school had fearful emotions that intense. A few guys did and the instructors gave up on them, i gave up on them and they didn't pass the tests. Respect is a healthy dose of fear to keep you alert and whatnot. Op's fear has him disoriented and unable to think straight. I am going to be blunt: with that behavior he is going to get someone killed.

 

Sad thing is...i think the OP is long gone from this thread...

 

believe so....maybe we made him think a bit though...hope so.

 

Hope he tells us the final outcome of his test. Wish him luck, I do.

 

He's still around

 

I think I get it. It's not the fear of controlling the tractor and trailer. It's the fear of being imperfect to the person judging you. These are two entirely different issues.

I work in a very stressful field right now where half of my job is to keep my staff who are working in very stressful situations from panicking. I'll be cool, confident and collected the most of the time, but as soon as my boss shows up, I start to feel very nervous and doubt I'm as capable as I know I am. That's half the reason I want to get into trucking: no direct boss looking over my shoulder all the time. I like being independent and doing my own thing, knowing on my own I'm giving it my all. For the most part, my boss leaves me alone and rarely looks into what I'm doing but sadly it just doesn't pay anything near what it should for the level of stress involved. I'm certain many of you went into trucking to avoid some ahole boss with a personality disorder watching for every little mistake you made and being a b-word about it. (You know you need cover sheets on the TPS reports. ) At least, this is what it sounds like to me.

 

Eh. Trucking is stressful. No "direct boss" whatever that means but you will have 5 people at a time blowing up your phone yelling at you and telling you how you ###### up. Most of the time it will be about stuff outside of your control.