The adventure Begins!

The seat time on the road is about 1 hour a day, give or take, and then 4 hours in the yard doing basic skills stuff. So over the 7 weeks, I will have clocked:

5 days of ten hours in the yard
10 days of 5 hours in the yard.
2 days of 6 hours in the yard
9 days of 1-2 hours on the road in various situations.

Yard Time = Backing, Turning, Trailer control all at a idle speed.
so 112 hours of yard time.
10-12 hours in road situations

150 hrs seat time give ro take

 

Play nice, kiddies....

 

Today was a short day, and a rough one atleast for me, we practiced alley docking, and they teach it in a messed up way because of some state regulation thing.


Its hard to envision but ill try

Think of 2 lanes, like a highway but obviously much shorter:

Lane A
Lane B


Truck starts in line A, you do a offset to park in lane B.

Easy.

Now, about 1/3 of the way from lane B, to the end of the 'highway' (About 20 feet infront of your bumper if parked in b) is the 'alley' you must dock in. Drive a little past alley, hard right, point nose of truck at 2:45/3clock (If straight ahead was 12 in lane B) as soon as you hit 2:45/3 hard left and ride it out till trailer is mostly straight. then, back straight, swinging your ### at almost a 90 degree, then hard left to straighten and back in.


Now...it sounded simple on paper, but application is proving difficult, I have killed abotu 3 cones, destroyed one completely (Got stuck in the tandems )

Then at the end of the day, I was working on backing into my spot to turn the truck off and the instructor, decided he wnated to make EVERYONE (30 people) wait for ALL keys to be turned in, so obviously, everyone was in a group and STARING at me...waiting...so of course I messed up and had to correct etc...and the guy that was a jerk yesterday had a smug look and decided to make it worse about commenting on my backing.

I'm told you will wanna quit once a day....well....yeah, I admit it, I did

But soon, I wont have to see his smug self, and ill be on the road with my trainer.

 

Today I think im gunna treat myself to a nice dinner...I dunno what I want though. I hear there is a nice prime rib place down the road, and its 'reasonably priced' whatever reasonable is for prime rib o.o

 

You deservit. and remember you are ALL learning or Mr. Smmug wouldn't be there too.

 

Funny note: I saw Mr. Smugs things being walked on by a mouse today....

I'm not going to tell him. ^.^

 

Mister Smug walked into the kitchen while I was making dinner, and said "I want to ask you just one question." And I was like "Huh?" And he extended his hand and asked if we could start over...wich, I gladly accepted. Things are back to good. ^.^

 

so. went to commerce city today and got some more city drigving in. doing better with my shifts except getting the downshifts to a stop thing... going back to the yard here soon. but I gotta ask you guys when do you get the hang of where yor steers are? I get worried and a little nervious / early on the turns cuz it looks like im about to go in a ditch.

 

Unless you're driving a cabover, it's not much different then a car, except you're higher up in the air. Just like you got used to turning in a car, you'll get used to turning in a truck, with more practice.....practice.....practice.

 

WOW, and I mean ,WOOOOW,, are all the trucks in that bad of disrepair?
At least at Swift Academy,,even the range trucks were decent shape.