Wannabe to Watkins Shepard Driver

Wow, the last two days have been kind of rolled into one. Wednesday morning we reported to the terminal at 6:00 am and left with a 8 stop load of furniture. We had hooked to the trailer the night before. This is the nature of a LTL carrier, multiple loads on each trip. We delivered up Mt. Airy (Mayberry) and then zigzagged back down to the east side of Charlotte and back to the terminal, 412 miles total. Back at the terminal Wednesday night we dropped our empty and hook to our Thursday load. Finished up at around 8:30 pm. Thursday morning I reported at 2:50 am. We drove down the Wilco truck stop and took fuel. Then drove east on I-40 to 64 and then some two lane into Washington, NC. Got there 20 minutes before the business opened. Took off from there and made 4 more stops up near the Virginia line. Then on the way back to the terminal we met up with a W/S local driver who had made 17 stops in a day cab and switched trailers with him, this gave him an empty for tomorrow and we took the freight back to the terminal. Departed terminal at 7:30 pm, 636 miles for the day.
The amount of knowledge I have amassed in the last to days is way beyond my expectations. We have received on the job training like I have never seen before. We are driving a Freightliner Columbia (Condo Sleeper) with 53' trailer. Most of the stop are in the downtown areas of some small town to a mom and pop shop. They we built for maybe 20' straight trucks not semis. Real challenging to say the least. Heres what else they have been exposing us to:
- Fueling, fuel card and associated paperwork
- Tandem positioning and weight transfer, had to slide the tandems on one trailer
- Shifting techniques, Speed Match, Skip Shifting, Double Down (I love this) you go from highway speed to 20 mph in two shifts. 10 to 8 to 6th.
- Qualcom messaging
- Bills of lading
- Backing techniques in real situations.
- Country roads in the hills with no shoulder.
- Jake brake
- Hook and drop trailers
- Log books
- Trip envelopes
- Map reading, navigation, GPS
- Pre trip inspection
- Company procedures
- Weight Stations (three times)

And I'm sure that's not even half. Given the fact that you are riding with a person that has 30 years plus experience and desire to teach you as much as passable it's nearly overwhelming.
Sorry for the ramble, just so much in two days.
Today (Friday) we are going to the Mountains with a fully loaded trailer grossing us out at 79,900 pounds. Will up and down shift going up and down a 6% grade! Should be fun.

 

Mountain Training

This was totally awesome dudes and dudets! W/S is one of the few if not only companies that do this. About 60 miles west of Conover, NC is a little hill on I-40 called Black Mountain. It's 5 miles of 6% grade with three run off ramps. If you are coming from the west (down hill) you will see a huge sign that reads " All Trucks Must Exit At Next Right" this exit is like a weigh station in design. As you exit you will see two lanes, pick on and proceed. Each lane has a stop light at the end of it where you will see a huge map of the road ahead of you with all the run off ramps clearly marked. You will also see a huge speed limit sign stating the 35 mph for trucks. Once you get a green light you my proceed, and down the hill you go.

Ok, so here's the drill. You hook to a trailer that they have for training purposes thats loaded with cement. This will gross you rig out at 80K pounds. Then as you approach the hill you will start to loose speed and RPMs. The trainer will tell you to wait until the RPMs drop to 900. Then you need to shift down, you do, RPMS go to 1200 or less and are still falling in the new gear because you are still below the turbo RPM. So now you have to down shift again. This time the truck will pull its self out of the hole. They now let you build us some speed and up shift a gear. Now you practice the "technique" As your RP Ms drop to 900 you take it out of gear raise RPM to 1700 and drop two gears. Motor likes this and keeps on pulling. A lot less fooling around. Now part two, down hill. Same technique but you have to use the brakes. You start down the hill and realize you are in too high of a gear, the Jake brake will not hold you and your speed is increasing. If you try to downshift one gear chances are you are going to miss it because the truck will accelerate while it's out of gear and even if you do get in gear you will realize that you still need to drop another gear for the Jake to hold you. So heres what you do, stand on the brakes until your RPM drops to 900, then come out of gear and raise RPM to 1700, drop two gears and feel that Jakes power now. This technique works great. So thats what we did. Over and over again. This also works well when hammering down the interstate in heavy traffic and you need to get off but don't want to slow down on the highway. You exit the highway in 10th gear, just as your trailer is out of the traffic lane you Jake and brake to 900 and double down, repeat, and now you are in 6th (10, 8, 6) and can roll if the traffic light is green at the end of the ramp. Great training day, loved it!
Also just to make things interesting they are having us work on speed matching. At any speed below governed there is a MPH / RPM combination that will allow you the get into gear if you happened to come out while shifting. For example, at 8 mph and idle you can get into 6th gear. If you were to take the truck out of gear on top of a hill and let it coast until the speed builds to 8 mph you could easily drop it into 6th gear. This works for any speed, but sometimes the RPM may be 1500, so you need to memorize these speeds. As an exercise they have you come out of gear going up or down a small hill and wait a while, then they ask you "what gear you going to use" and you need to know the answer.

That's all for now, back to the terminal today to practice backing.

 

For those of you who have been following along in this thread you will know about my Jeepster project. For those who haven't quite caught up I get ya there real fast. I had a month to kill before I could get into CDL school so I bought a '48 Willys Jeepster to restore. Well the car sold last night, Praise the Lord! I go out on the road the end of this coming week and didn't want that hanging over me plus I can get all the money back that I've invested in the project and some profit! The timing on this couldn't have been better.

 

mostly after I'll put a couple up here.

 

Did you alert the authorities? LOL Just kidding, good deal man, where are they sending you?

 

Here is a link to my 1948 Jeepster photos.

http://s373.photobucket.com/albums/oo174/seawheeler/1948%20Jeepster/