Starting Training at Millis 5 July 2011

I may be floating through Trenton on Sunday on my way to Milwaukee. Give me a hello if you see truck 7077. Not sure yet though. Congrats on passing you skills test. Biggest mistake I think for trainee's on shifting is trying to be in a hurry to get to the next gear. Get to your speed/rpm's and take your time shifting. Slow down, you'll get it.

 

Yes we will be doing our orientation with your class from Cartersville.

 

Just catching up on posts and it seems your right in line with the ability of the rest of us at this stage in the game. in my opinion most of the gear scratching is pretty normal at this stage for most cause your catching them some of the time and believe you should nail it all the time but a new area makes you nervous or get a little anxious for a turn coming up and tend to forget a bout the rpm increase or decrease needed and instead of holding rpms where needed the foot tends to race with the mind and over revs or drops way past desired rpm. if this sounds familiar don't sweat it just accept it for what it is and try to focus on throttle control and speed. sometimes when we as a student miss a gear we stay focused on getting that gear and forget that truck has slowed dramatically while we focused on that gear not realiuzing maybe we should drop another gear now to compensate for the speed we lost. Anyway not telling you this because you haven't heard it from Greg many times just letting you know we've all been there and you'll be suprised what another few weeks will bring through this training and otr training. six weeks after you get issued your own truck you'll look back and think "wow, hard to believe I ever struggled with those gears or backing". Keep up the good work, I've enjoyed your thread.

 

Bear and Sully are "spot on"! I will add this though.......try using your RPM and your MPH this way. When you get to 15MPH - you need to be in 6th (1+5=6) then at 25 =7th (2+5=7) then 35 = 8th (3+5=8 ) and so on. Same for down shifting.

I struggled with this for a long time when I first came out and someone much smarter than me taught me this. It works well!!!

See if that doesnt help you -

 

This advice is right on. don't know why I forget to ever mention it but it made me think of another tip. If you have someone right down your speed in each gear at a specified rpm, let's say 1500 rpms. you will have a speed for every gear at 1500 rpm so if you get lost you just bring it up to 1500 rpm and when you hit say 50 mph( just a gues for this example) you know at 1500 rpms you'll slide right into 9th gear and if you miss that at 43 mph you'll catch 8th. every truck is a little different but once you have that designated rpm and speed you'll never be "lost". it'll look similar to this:

@1500 rpm

2nd gear=2mph
3rd=4mph
4th= 7mph
5th=10 mph
6th= 15mph
7th=23mph
and so on. but you have to look at speed and make a note(have someone else write it down for you as you tell them the speed for each gear. hope this helps as it helped me to recover quicker when i was training and missed a gear i actually wrote the shift pattern out, and instead of 6th gear it said 15 mph , and taped to an open spot on the dash near the shifter.

 

I was behind a Millis training truck yesterday (Thursday) on GA 20 heading toward Cartersville. I was behind the truck from the National Cemetary until the road went four lane near I=75. I was between the Millis truck (driving the speed limit) and a red Mack tractor dump truck ( who didn't want to be going the speed limit). It could have been a Ford F150 sandwich if that Mack had of pushed much harder! If you were driving I passed you headed back to Cassville and home.

 

Enjoy reading your updates Leather. Sure brings back a lot of memories. Continued safe and best wishes to you out there...