What to expect during my mentorship

They won't put you in impossible situations. Please don't prove to them that new drivers call every hard situation "dangerous". There were 100 trucks there yesterday and will be 100 more tomorrow. You can be anxious and still do the right thing.

 

Please don't keep looking for a reason to swap trainers or quit. It would be nice if every driver was a textbook example, but you aren't going to change him or your company. Do the best you can, and try to seperate his personal habits and training. You can be super-duper extra professional in your own truck. Don't talk yourself into being a martyr. Your life will be much harder. They will forget about you 30 seconds after they get rid of you.

 

Even if you never drive a manual again, knowing how to drive one and how the truck reaxts when you shift in various situations is vital... Understanding hiw the truck reaxts to shifts is very important for safe driving... Especially on slick mountain roads in the winter. Learn that manual as best as you can... Once you get the hang of it you may not want an auto-shift.

 

Then you will need to plainly speaking grow a pair, making your right foot weight 50 more pounds. Add power until you quit stalling.

You WILL get the hang of it. And when you do, you will understand just how crappy automatics could be if they are not provided with manual mode for ice and mountains and sometimes very dangerous when coupled with forward radar. Slamming on brakes when you DO NOT want to even breathe on them.

 

This is the season to learn. Winter is coming.

 

You will in time get sensitive to heavy and illegally heavy. In time you will know where your fuel tanks are in liquid as well. all of that will come to you.

 

Yes, every new manual transmission user has done that. I've done that. It lasts a very short time because you will shift a few hundred times per day.

To avoid stalling in an intersection, such as you have a green light, you're turning right, pick one speed you will always take that corner at. And ALWAYS get your truck speed down to that speed. At that speed you use the same gear. It will take weeks or month to correctly guess what gear is needed to go around corners at various speeds. The shortcut above is simple, use the same speed every time until you have developed the skill to take it at other speeds.

I hope I'm wrong. Maybe I am. I am picking up signals that unless everything is perfect and simple you are getting ready to quit in some way. Not one driver who has ever driven a manual transmission truck as never once stalled it on the road somewhere.

Manual is harder, at first, than auto.
Once you get some practice with manual, you will have more trouble down shifting than upshifting.
It takes a couple of weeks longer to get comfortable downshifting, and doing it well, as it takes to get comfortable upshifting (accelerating). I presume the goal when you got into trucking was not to never have a difficult moment but to make a steady income. You can make a steady income if you don't quit.

Practice doing whatever seems hard. It's not easy but it pays off like a rigged slot machine if you do it.

 

Keep your eyes open and your lip buttoned , soak up all you can and be glad that you got a better start than a lot of us on here.
The worse the better Manhattan , L.A. , Houston , Miami , Boston will only make you stronger.

Its not all rainbows and unicorns , and remember this , you went to them.