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John's School Journal Male, 50 years young
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Range/Road Week 2 - 11/04/02 to 11/08/02
On Monday, we had lots more practice doing parallel parking. The type we learned Friday is called “sight side”, since as you pull up alongside the parking space, the parking space is on the driver's side - you can just look out the window to see it. On Tuesday, we also learned “blind side” parallel parking, where you pull up with the parking space on the passenger's side. Since the driver can't see everything on this side directly, it's called the “blind side”. I think the blind side parallel parking was actually a little easier than the sight side parallel parking, since as you finished up the maneuver (with the rig jacked 90 degrees and the trailer in the box), you had a better view of the results (or lack of results!) by just looking out the driver’s side window. But don’t lean out the window - if so, you fail! We were cautioned to never roll the window all the way down, so the remaining window would keep us from leaning out.
On Wednesday, we learned the alley dock maneuver, where you back the rig up to a simulated loading dock, starting from a 45-degree position. This was the trickiest maneuver, since a lot of distances and angles had to be “just right” to make it work properly. If you mis-positioned the truck, you would have to pull up or back up, or turn this way or that way. Certain types of corrections cost you “points” when you take the driving test, and you can't use up more than 16 points for all the range maneuvers combined. You also can’t hit a cone or hit the curb - these are grounds for immediate failure. The alley dock seemed to work fairly well for me. It wasn’t always perfect (hey, let’s be honest - it was RARELY perfect), but I could usually figure out how to correct problems without burning up too many points or getting flustered.
On Thursday, a recruiter from Werner Enterprises (a major trucking company) came in and talked to us. He had a pretty good presentation, very polished and with a little humor in the right places. But unfortunately, he didn't have any job application forms with him, so I'll have to get one elsewhere. The driving school encourages students to apply early to multiple trucking companies, even before you graduate, so the companies have some time to check out your background. If they like what they see, some companies will issue a pre-hire letter that says they'll hire you once you graduate. There's a fairly strict background check for new employees, especially since the terrorist attack, to make sure the employee is not a mad bomber or something like that. Also, most drivers must get qualified to haul hazardous materials, and the qualification process includes a background check.
Also on Thursday, we finally learned how to shift gears. Up to this point, we were doing all of our maneuvering in first gear. But tomorrow, we'll actually go out on the road in real traffic, and we need to know how to get the truck moving (upshift) and how to slow it down (downshift + brake). The truck has a nine-speed transmission, plus reverse. The shift pattern is similar to the 1st-2nd-3rd-4th stick-shift pattern of a manual transmission car, but the truck has an extra switch on the gearshift lever. When the switch is down, the shift pattern covers 1st through 4th gears, then you flip the switch up and use the exact same shift pattern for 5th through 8th gears. There's one more gear which is called “low”, but we haven't used it yet. Plus, of course, reverse, which we have used.
Unlike an automobile, the truck's transmission does not have gear synchronizers that allow you to smoothly shift between gears with just a single depression of the clutch. In the truck, you have to double-clutch. For example, here's how you change gears from first to second: assuming you're driving in first gear, you first let up the accelerator, push in the clutch, shift to neutral, then let the clutch out. Then you push in the clutch again, shift to second, let the clutch out, and press the accelerator to continue driving in second gear. Double-clutching is tricky at first, but once your clutch foot, accelerator foot, and gearshift arm get “trained”, everything works pretty well. In the beginning, though, it was pretty bad - if you don't double-clutch with the correct tempo and at the correct engine/driving speed, the shifter refuses to engage in the new gear and there's a horrible sound of grinding gears. You can sometimes force it into gear, but then the transmission makes a huge metallic “crunch” as the gears are forcibly jammed together. Instead of forcing it into a new gear, you can also go back to your old gear, or go to the next higher gear. If you demonstrated any reluctance to make the gears mesh (due to the grinding sound), sometimes the instructor would just slam the shifter into a gear, and you'd swear that the transmission gears would be totally stripped of gear teeth. The transmissions must be super-tough, though, because students have been using (and abusing) the trucks for years and they still work. The reason you might have to force it into a gear is that you can't let the truck roll down the road without it being in-gear. This is called “free-wheeling” and if it happens on the driving test, you fail!
On Friday, we finally got to drive on the road in real traffic. We drove what the instructors called “course 1”, which was a relatively easy course without too many tricky details. That doesn't mean it was easy - the first time I drove a tractor-trailer truck on the road it was DIFFICULT, period. The reason is that you must perform numerous skills all at once in “real time”, which requires a lot of concentration and coordination. It's not like driving on the range, where you perform the skills one by one, and you have all the time in the world. Now you're driving in traffic, with traffic lights, school crossings, speed limit changes, and all the other real-world conditions to contend with, plus, you have to do all the fancy hand and foot work to operate the truck. It was a little overwhelming the first time around the course, and I messed up numerous shifts (ground the gears, or forgot what gear I was in and mis-shifted). But the instructor said afterwards that all students have the same types of problems the first time they drive on the road, and that over time and with practice, all our skills will improve and we'll be driving just fine. We still have four more weeks of driving time, thank heavens.
Range/Road Week 3 - 11/11/02 to 11/15/02
At the start of the third week of driving, we continued driving on course 1, and we also got to drive the MVA course, which is the course we will drive during the official Motor Vehicle Administration driving test. This course is more difficult, with tricky turns, narrow streets, lots of traffic, plus it includes a high-speed section driving 65 mph on the interstate. For many of the turns, you need to swing wide and use more than one lane to keep the trailer tires from riding up over the curb (if so, you fail!). When you have to swing wide into the oncoming lane at a traffic light, there may already be cars waiting in that lane. In that case, you have to pull the truck right up in their faces, practically front-bumper to front-bumper, and wait for the cars to back up. As the cars manage to make more and more room, you creep forward to complete your turn little by little. When you see that your trailer tires are going to clear the curb, you can finally pull back entirely into your lane and proceed with the driving. The first time I had to do this, it was a little scary. What if the drivers didn't back up? Would I be stuck in the intersection for hours, maybe days? (News flash, film at 11: student truck driver takes three days to complete a right turn!). As it turned out, not only do car drivers move out of the way, when they see that huge truck looming up over them they positively scatter!
When we go on a road trip, there are usually three or four students plus one instructor in the truck. The instructor always sits in the front passenger seat; the student who's driving sits in the driver's seat. Behind the front seats, there's a big bench seat that is actually the sleeper berth where a long-distance truck driver would sleep. The school has installed individual seats with seat belts for three people along the bench seat. So while one student is driving, the other two or three on the bench seat watch what's going on. It's actually a very helpful way to learn, since when you're not driving the truck, you have more time to think about what's going on, and what you would do in each situation. Then when it's your turn to drive, you are a little better prepared.
There are no dual controls on the truck, so the instructor must let the student do all the driving. There's one safety feature that the instructor can use in an emergency. All trucks with air brakes have their parking brake controls on the dashboard, midway between the driver and passenger seat. If the instructor has to stop the truck, he can pull out an air valve button, which immediately slams on the brakes for both the tractor and trailer. This is only for emergencies, since slamming on the parking brakes will probably cause the engine to stall and the trailer to skid, so it's not without consequences. I only heard of this being done once for our class, by another instructor.
During the third range week, we got to practice all our range maneuvers just like we would do them for the MVA test. That particular day, there was a cold drenching rain all day. On the range, the student who's driving is the only person in the truck. Everybody else had to stand outside in the rain, watching. At least the students got to sit in the truck now and then - the poor instructor had to stand outside in the rain all day. You have to really like what you're doing to put up with all that bad weather - and the boiling hot weather in the summer, too. To their great credit, the instructors are all very good at what they do, and they maintain a very good attitude towards teaching despite frequent difficult conditions.
On Thursday, we took a road trip from Baltimore to Breezewood, PA, where I-70 meets the Pennsylvania Turnpike. This was an all-day trip, with each of the four students driving a leg. When we reached Breezewood, we stopped at a big truck stop for lunch and a break, then hopped in the truck and headed back to Baltimore. This was a fun day, and it closely approximated what we would be doing as real truck drivers working for a living - except there would be only one driver in the truck who would do all the driving!
At the end of the third range week, we took our midterm examinations (yes, even truck driving schools have tests). The exams simulated exactly what we would do for the official driving test, starting with a pre-trip inspection, then all the range maneuvers, then the road test. Since we only recently started driving on the road, the road test portion of the exam would take place next week. I passed fairly easily - I know the pre-trip inspection very well, and can do the range maneuvers fairly well. You don't have to be perfect to pass. For the pre-trip inspection, you can forget to mention quite a few things and still pass. For the range maneuvers, you can make up to 16 small errors that count as “demerit points”, but you can't make any major errors like hitting a curb or knocking over a cone (you fail!). The truck driving school itself requires a minimum grade point average of 70 to pass the course and get your certificate.
Range/Road Week 4 - 11/18/02 to 11/22/02
During the fourth driving week, we started going on some more difficult road trips so we could further develop our truck driving skills. Just driving down the highway is easy - stay in your lane and keep the pedal to the metal. But navigating this way and that way through narrow streets in the cramped old industrial areas of Baltimore is much more challenging. Remember, the truck is 60 feet long, and most of the streets were not designed for such a big vehicle. It was very challenging. One time I cut a corner a little too tight and my trailer tire rolled over the curb a little. As punishment, I had to go all the way around the block and do all four tight right turns over again without hitting the curb. I was more careful the second time around, knowing that if I hit the curb, I'd have to go around again and again! (News flash, film at 11: student truck driver drives around the block 863 times!)
We also drove on a devilishly difficult road near Ellicott City that I'm sure was designed during horse-and-buggy days - it was so narrow and so twisty-turny that sometimes when you went around a sharp turn you could look out the front windshield and read the license plate on the back of your trailer! (just kidding, the truck can't bend that much!) In one section, the road was so narrow that it went to one lane, and a narrow lane at that, perched between a cliff and a river. This area also had an 18% grade, which is unbelievably steep! The mountain grades out west are about 5% or 6% on the interstates, with some that are 7%. The road near Ellicott City was a local road, so they could get away with a steeper grade. 18% means the road descends 950 feet per mile; it looked like we were driving off a cliff! As it was, the descent was much less than a mile long, but what it lacked in length it made up in steepness.
The instructors took us on these narrow, twisting roads to practice compensating for offtracking. Offtracking is where the trailer keeps to the inside of a turn, more so than the tractor. If you drive around a sharp curve and keep the tractor centered in the lane, the rear of your trailer will drift out of the lane, due to offtracking. If the road curves sharply to the right, your trailer tires could go off the pavement; curving to the left, the rear of your trailer could wander into the oncoming lane, interfering with traffic. I always had to concentrate on compensating for offtracking, although with enough practice, I guess it would become more-or-less automatic.
This week, we also practiced our range maneuvers and heard from another company recruiter. We drove on a couple of road trips, one to southern Maryland and another to northern Maryland. Both times, we had a combination of highways, local roads, and narrow, twisty-turny back roads, so that we got experience in all kinds of driving conditions. On one trip, another student was driving down a busy road past a small area of construction that had the shoulder completely blocked. All of a sudden, a man riding a bicycle pulled out from the shoulder and on to the driving lane, to pass the construction area. He didn’t even look, but just pulled out right in front of our truck. The student who was driving hit the brakes and veered to the left (there was traffic in that lane), and narrowly missed the bicyclist. We all were shocked that a person could be so reckless as to pull on to a highway traffic lane without even looking. I’m sure the man didn’t know that there was a truck bearing down on him - a truck driven by a student driver, no less!
On Friday, the instructor posted the MVA test schedule. We would have two days of testing: Wednesday, December 11, and Thursday, December 12. The test dates had been reserved long ago, since MVA has a very busy schedule. We have two driving range courses on-site, and I would go second on course 2. In the morning, it was too foggy to drive on the road, so we practiced pre-trip inspections. After lunch, we heard from a recruiter from D.M.Bowman, then we practiced maneuvers on the driving range.
Range/Road Week 5 - 11/25/02 to 11/27/02
Our fifth week was a short week, since we had a break for Thanksgiving. On Monday, we each drove the MVA course twice, then we drove over to the Catonsville campus of CCBC (the school that offers this truck driving course). The school administrators were thinking about having other students in the vocational school paint the trailers used by the truck driving school. Unfortunately, the people who were going to measure the truck and estimate materials couldn’t be located, so we drove back to the range with the mission unfulfilled.
On Tuesday, we got to drive the cabovers for one road trip. The cabover rigs were heavily loaded with concrete “jersey barriers” - our truck weighed 71,300 lbs. The truck handled the weight surprisingly well, although the weight was very noticeable when going up hills. Even slight hills required that you put the “pedal to the metal” to maintain speed. Our cabovers had the same wheelbase as our conventionals. You sat very high up, and had excellent forward visibility. Our cabovers also had a big “doghouse” (engine cover) between the two seats. It was very awkward to climb back to the sleeper where the other students sat to wait their turn, and the guy in the middle had a very uncomfortable spot. I was a little disconcerted by how little “crumple room” the cabovers had. In any accident, the driver would be extremely vulnerable. We only drove the loaded rigs once, since they wanted to limit the wear-and-tear on the heavily-loaded trucks. For all our other road trips, the trailers were empty (well, not quite empty - each trailer had all of 15 orange cones!).
On this same trip, we got to visit a scale house and truck inspection facility along I-95. All states, including Maryland, have “weigh stations” on major highways where trucks drive across a scale to get weighed. Trucks can’t exceed a total weight of 80,000 lbs, plus there are limits for each axle. This is to make sure that overweight trucks don’t damage roads or bridges - plus overweight trucks aren’t safe, since their suspension and brakes aren’t designed for excessive weights. We watched from inside the scale house as numerous trucks rolled across the scale. This particular facility had special scale strips embedded in the main lanes of the highway that pre-weighed the trucks before they entered the weigh station. One oversized load carrying a big bulldozer came in, and was pulled over. The big blade on the bulldozer was too wide for his permit, and he had to remove the metal expansion strips on each side of the blade.
The weigh station also had a truck inspection facility, where randomly-chosen trucks were pulled into a building to be inspected by state officials. The inspection took about 15 to 30 minutes, and they usually found one or more problems with most of the trucks. If a minor problem was discovered, the truck driver might be given a written warning to get the problem fixed and could continue driving. If it was a major problem, the truck driver might get a citation that required paying a substantial fine of up to several hundred dollars or more. In addition, the truck driver might be ordered to wait in the parking lot until a truck repair crew could come to the scene and fix the problem. This is a very expensive and time-consuming way to repair a truck, so most trucking companies try very hard to catch all problems during scheduled maintenance stops at company facilities.
Range/Road Week 6 - 12/02/02 to 12/06/02
On the sixth week, I got to go on a special trip from Baltimore to Greeneville, Tennessee and back. Every winter, the college that operates the truck driving school volunteers the use of a truck and crew to deliver a load of donated goods from a collection center in Maryland to a drop-off site down south. This year, we were taking a full load of clothes, furniture, toys, and miscellaneous household goods down to an Indian reservation in eastern Tennessee. On Monday, we took one tractor-trailer truck plus a straight truck up to the collection center in Maryland, which made for a good road trip by itself. They brought the straight truck since it had a large crew cab that could carry several people, and we wanted as many “volunteers” as possible to help load the trailer. We spent a few hours loading our 48’ trailer absolutely full - front to back, side to side, top to bottom - full!
I noticed that I got much more tired driving long distances in the truck compared to driving my car. I think that truck driving is still new enough for me that it requires heavy concentration and is a little stressful, which saps my energy. In a car, this trip would be a piece of cake, but it was more difficult in the truck. I mentioned this to the instructor, and he said that he felt just the opposite. He is so used to driving a truck that he finds car driving to be more tiring. After a while, we changed drivers and the instructor drove on into deteriorating weather. We were driving into a big storm system, and rain, snow, sleet, and freezing rain were forecast at various places along the route. I tried to sleep in the sleeper berth, but it was very uncomfortable - remember, this is a school truck and there are three seats bolted across the width of the sleeper!
When we finally got to the drop-off site, we were met by a crew of people who helped us unload the truck and put everything into a mini-storage facility, all while it was pouring down cold rain. It was a tight squeeze getting the truck in and out of the mini-storage facility, and when we tried to leave after hours of heavy rain, the truck got stuck in the putty-like mud (which was the color of butterscotch pudding). The spinning drive wheels were digging ruts in the mud and splattering the truck with mud. The facility manager had a backhoe on-site and he used it to give us a push. That did the trick, and we were on the road again. The heavy rain washed all the mud off the truck.
We started driving back to Baltimore, but soon ran into icy roads that forced us to stop and spend the night in extreme southern Virginia (in a motel paid-for by the school). The next morning, we started early and got back to Baltimore in mid-afternoon. The instructor drove the entire return trip, because there was freezing rain that made the road too slippery for an inexperienced student driver. It was still an educational experience for me, since I could watch what he did to cope with the road conditions. I also got to watch him “float” the gears very smoothly (shifting without using the clutch at all), and got to listen to all the chatter on the CB radio, and got to visit several truck stops along the route. As an extra plus, I got to look at the very nice scenery that included mountains, forests, and farms, all with a fresh coating of snow and some ice.
We saw a number of accidents along the route - five or six trucks jackknifed, a couple of them serious, and maybe a dozen or so cars in the ditch or median, none serious. There were a couple of fender benders, including one where a pickup camper was partially ripped open by the damage. Of course, every accident had the obligatory traffic tie-up. We were stopped a number of times, but we would each just pick up a book and start reading. A few accidents were all cleaned up by the time we got to the site, so we couldn’t tell what happened. When we got back to Maryland and were driving on local highways, the instructor was merging on to a highway from the on-ramp, just as a snow plow was passing by, plowing the shoulder of the highway. The snow plow threw a big curtain of slush up over the cab and windshield, which was very startling - for an instant, we didn’t know what the heck was happening!
I enjoyed the trip very much, and was glad that I went, even though I didn’t get to do very much driving. All in all, it was an interesting and exciting little mini-adventure!
On Friday (the day after I returned from the trip), we didn’t go into class until evening, since it was time for our night drive. Every class gets one night drive, just to get a little experience. The road in our industrial park had never been plowed and was very icy. Our truck got stuck for a short time, even after locking the differential for “eight-wheel drive”. We had to back up and get a running start, and we finally got out O.K. We each drove the MVA course once. It was quite different driving a truck at night, since it was harder to see things in the mirrors, especially the rear of the trailer to make sure your tires didn’t hit the curb when making turns. Nevertheless, we all did OK.
Range/Road Week 7 - 12/09/02 to 12/13/02
We are now getting down to the wire - this is test week, and I’m beginning to get a little anxious. On Monday, we had our final exams for the school. I had a surprising amount of trouble on the sight-side parallel parking. When I started doing the maneuvers for the exam, I didn’t notice that the passenger side spot mirror was out of adjustment. I could see well enough to do things, so I didn’t think anything of it. However, in the sight side parallel parking, that mirror becomes very important - it’s the only way to see the trailer once you’re “jacked” enough to make the flat mirrors useless. Once I was jacked and trying to finish up the maneuver, there was a time when I couldn’t see anything, which was very distressing! At that point in the exam, it’s too late to make mirror adjustments, since you can’t get out of the cab or lean out the window. I crossed my fingers and finished the maneuver “blind”, and luckily my setup had been good enough so I finished up OK. I mentioned to the next guy that the mirror was out of adjustment, but he didn’t fix it, so he had the same difficulty. At least the next guy did adjust the mirror, so he didn’t have the same problem. I got an 84 on the maneuvers, which was a little disappointing.
By Tuesday, we were beginning to get worried about Wednesday, which was to be the first day of MVA testing (when I would get tested). The weather forecast was calling for rain, sleet, and freezing rain, plus windy conditions - not a very encouraging forecast! The head instructor at the range called up MVA to ask if the testing would still take place. Sometimes MVA does postpone testing if conditions are unsafe, but they said they would not be able to make that decision until tomorrow morning. So we would continue with our schedule as planned, and hope for the best. This morning, we all worked on the range, endlessly practicing our maneuvers. We had the option to make a road trip, but I’m doing pretty well with the driving part (and the pre-trip), and need practice mostly with maneuvers (especially parallel parking). In the afternoon, we all cleaned up the tractors, to make them spiffy for test day. The school likes to make a good impression on MVA, since it can’t hurt. We swept out the floors, cleaned all the windows and mirrors, wiped-down the interior, then waxed and polished the exterior.
Hey, it’s Wednesday, TEST DAY!!!! Well, this is the big day, and what a day it is: rain, sleet, freezing rain, and a brisk cold, raw wind! We all reported to the range as usual and were told that testing would take place as scheduled (the roads were still not slippery). If conditions deteriorated to make driving unsafe, the remaining testing would be postponed.
Our school has two “official” driving range courses on-site, and as long as the school has at least four students to be tested, MVA will send examiners out to the school and test us on-site. If there were less than four students, the students would have to take a school truck over to MVA in Glen Burnie and use the MVA driving range. Since we had nine students, we were tested on our driving range, which was a big plus. After practicing maneuvers for so long on our range, I knew where every crack in the pavement was, and could just follow the exact same path I had been taking for weeks. But wait! It was not all as expected!
It was raining heavily, and the storm drains for the driving range were clogged with silt and ice. There was standing water on much of the driving range, and the area where we had to do our parallel parking looked like a lake. The truck actually made a “wake” like a boat when we drove through the huge puddle. Due to the standing water, we not only couldn’t see our favorite cracks in the pavement, we couldn’t even see the white lines defining the parking space, which made it more difficult. We still had the cones at each end of the space, though.
I was the second student to be tested on range #2 - the first student passed. I did very well on my pre-trip inspection, since I knew it very well. At one point, I leaned over to touch things on the steering axle suspension (with the truck’s hood open), and wound up bumping my head into the steering shaft coupling, which was covered with gooey grease. Luckily, I was wearing my rainsuit (including the hood), so the grease spot was on my rainsuit instead of on me. But I then had to take my rainsuit off to keep from spreading the grease all over everything in the cab, so I got soaked. The poor examiner was not dressed very warmly and had a tiny umbrella that kept blowing inside-out, so he got soaked to the skin and must have been suffering. But he was very professional and very fair, although I did note that he looked like a sphinx. I would look at him while rattling off the patter, but his face was absolutely deadpan - his expression didn’t give the slightest hint about anything I was saying. I probably could have said “I am checking that the wobbulator is broken and on fire”, and he wouldn’t have batted an eye.
As for the maneuvers, I did OK on the straight-line forward to the stop line, and straight-line backing. When I started doing the sight-side parallel parking, my brain froze up and I started to get flustered. I wound up turning the wheel THE WRONG WAY at the start of the maneuver, and had to stop and compose myself. I did the rest of the maneuvers surprisingly well (but taking the usual number of pull-ups), considering that I couldn’t see the white lines for the parking spaces. The examiner came into the cab and asked me if I was ready to take the road test, so I guess I passed the maneuvers.
The road test wasn’t too bad. I had trouble seeing out both side windows, since the windows would fog up even though the defroster was on full-blast. I wound up rolling down both windows so I could see the mirrors - not a nice thing to do to the poor freezing examiner, but I felt it was necessary in the interest of safety. At one point on the route we crossed a high bridge, and the cold rainy wind was blowing right through the cab. I didn’t have any problems driving the course, and due to the inclement weather, traffic was fairly light. There were a couple of places where the road was looking a little shiny, as if it was starting to get icy, so I mentioned it to the examiner and slowed down. Normally, we are supposed to drive close to the speed limit (no more than five mph under), to avoid getting penalized for driving too slowly. On many of the roads today, safety dictated that I drive slower than that, but it didn’t seem to cause a problem with the examiner (hard to tell, he was a sphinx). I also knew that if a student failed the road test, they stopped the test at that point, and an instructor would have to come out and drive the truck back to the range. So I was pretty sure that I didn’t fail.
When I got back, the examiner gave me my very handsome certificate - I passed! The head instructor collected the certificates for safe-keeping until the very end of the course, when we would all go to MVA to get our official CDL. All the students hung out at the range for the whole day, to offer moral support to those about to be tested, and to congratulate those who passed. Despite the difficult weather, we had six students get tested this day, and everybody passed! On the second day of testing, the weather was much better. However, one of the students failed because he hit a curb while parallel parking. He got scheduled to re-take the test in a few weeks.
On Friday, we were basically all done, but we still had to come in a couple more days to accumulate the proper number of overall course hours and to take care of some final paperwork. During this time, we also got some miscellaneous lectures, including one from the head instructor advising us to “take care of our CDL - it’s our tool of the trade”. Don’t drink and drive, don’t do stupid things, because nobody will cut us any slack - we’re supposed to be professionals.
Final Days - 12/16/02 to 12/18/02
Because we had a break for Thanksgiving, we had two make-up days this week, but there wasn’t a whole lot to do. I don’t even remember what we did on Monday. Tuesday was our last day on the range. The head instructor handed out our final grades, and I got a 96 overall, with 100% attendance. The overall grade was the average of five separate grades: classroom (98), yard maneuvers (87), road trips (97), pre-trip inspections (100), and coupling/uncoupling (100). I felt proud that I had completed the course, and that I did as well as I did. I could remember, back before the course started, wondering if I would even be able to handle a big rig, and now I had my answer - “yes”. It seemed like we had been going to school forever, but at the same time, it seemed so short. I would miss the camaraderie of hanging out with my fellow students, and the wise counsel of the very helpful instructors. Believe it or not, I would even miss getting up at 5:00 in the morning - it was a good exercise in self-discipline!
The instructor also handed out the MVA certificates we received after passing our official MVA test. We went over to the MVA office to trade them in and get our official Class A CDL in return. On the way, I stopped at an Office Depot and made a color copy of the certificate - the copy looked even better than the original, except the official seal didn’t appear in the copy.
On Wednesday morning, we had one more official act, to meet with the program director who ran the truck driving school. He handed out our graduation certificates (suitable for framing, of course); I and one other student also got perfect attendance certificates. He then spent a while giving us many names and phone numbers of trucking companies that had contacted the school looking for drivers. Most of the other students were trying to get local driving jobs, but I’m looking for an OTR job. I have sent in several job applications, and have been talking to some people, but I still don’t have anything definite lined up.
All of that is still in the future, and one thing about the future - no one knows what it will bring. But that’s what keeps life interesting - anything can happen! I’m still quite “gung-ho” about my new truck driving career, but so far, I have only completed “step one”. There are many more steps ahead, and hopefully many interesting and exciting experiences. Stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll have more to say in part two of this saga!
Regards,
John
Baltimore, MD
(P.S. If you want to contact me, my email address is john_santic@hotmail.com.)
Comments and Observations
I’m not going to let you off that easy - I still have more things to say! (Maybe my CB handle should be “Windbag”). I have collected a list of observations and comments about my truck driving experiences so far. As a newbie, all of these experiences are brand new, and I’m trying to write down the important things I learned, what I thought was hard, what was easy, what I liked/disliked, etc. Of course, these are all my own personal opinions, so as they say, “your mileage may vary”.
Important Things I Learned
Be very careful backing up. It’s hard to see what’s around you, especially when the truck is “jacked”. Go as slow as possible (idle speed), and get out and look if necessary. To me, right now, it seems like it would always be necessary to get out and look. I still need lots more practice backing, especially in real-world situations.
Pay lots of attention to traffic on your right side; you have a big blind spot on that side.
Forget you car driving habits, turns are more complicated. When you make a turn, don’t even start turning the wheel until you’re almost across the intersection. Turn wide, then watch in the mirror for the trailer tires to clear the curb, then cut back into your lane.
It takes a surprisingly long distance for a truck to stop from highway speeds (more than a football field). Hope you left yourself enough room to play football! That is why you have to look way far ahead, much more than for a car, to anticipate slowdowns.
Watch out for traffic merging into your lane. The truck is big and not very agile, so it’s important to strive for smooth merges which will require more thought and anticipation/adjustment than in a car. This also holds for when you are merging on to a highway - observe your situation and anticipate/adjust well ahead of time. Try to leave yourself an “out”.
Watch your offtracking when going around curves. It’s easy for the end of your trailer to get into trouble. If the road is very narrow and you can’t avoid going out of your lane, slow down and wait for traffic, then use all the space you need.
Do a decent pre-trip inspection. A truck is complicated, and there are lots of important parts that directly affect safety. All these parts can (and do) wear out or break.
What I Thought Was Hard
It was very difficult the first time I drove on the road. There were so many things happening at once, and it was very difficult to handle everything at once and do it properly. Fortunately, things got much better with practice, and I now do pretty well. I don’t think I’m at the point yet where I can do absolutely everything. For example, I sometimes still miss road signs (due to being preoccupied with controlling the truck), and would probably have a lot of trouble trying to follow written directions.
It was harder than in a car to see things all around you, and especially hard if it was dark or rainy. It’s not like a car, where you can just turn your head and look out any of the windows. I also thought it was a lot harder with the truck to maintain a mental image of everything that was going on around the truck. For one thing, the truck is so much bigger - it must take a lot more “mental space” to develop the image. Also, the surroundings look so different because using the truck mirrors is so different than just looking around in a car.
It was hard using the mirrors once the truck was “jacked”. You couldn’t see anything useful out of one side, and could only see a little in the spot mirror on the other side. Everything looked so tiny and far away, not only because of the curved mirror, but also because it WAS far away. Be sure to adjust all your mirrors before starting to drive. They may be out of alignment and you could find yourself missing vital visual information once you’re driving.
It was sometimes difficult working in all weather conditions. Some days, it was pouring down cold rain, but we had to work, including standing outside for hours while we watched other students maneuvering on the range. The key here was to be prepared. For rainy weather, I wore my full rainsuit, top and bottom, plus boots, plus other layered clothes if it was cold.
What I Thought Was Easy
For me, the classroom portion of the course was relatively easy. I did especially well on the map reading and trip planning. I have gone on lots of trips by myself, and enjoy the trip planning part, so I’ve had lots of practice.
I thought the MVA written tests were fairly easy. Our CDL textbook covered everything very well, including having excellent practice tests. Personally, I don’t have any real problems learning technical information from a textbook. As a former “computer geek”, I have had lots of practice reading manuals and absorbing arcane details.
I didn’t have any problem learning the pre-trip inspection, especially the patter we had to repeat to pass the MVA test. I have a pretty easy time memorizing lists of technical details, so I aced this part of the course. I know I mentioned earlier that I made a set of flash cards, which was a big help.
It was easier than I thought it would be to get up every morning at 5:00 AM. I was committed to the program and “gung-ho” enough that I practically jumped out of bed when the alarm went off. I finished up the course with a perfect attendance record - I didn’t miss any time at all.
What I Liked About The Experience
Driving the truck was pretty cool. It’s a cool vehicle, so big and loud, slow but powerful. You can’t help but be noticed, wherever you go. You also get a great view from the cab, especially in a cabover.
It was great fun rolling down the open highway. It was easy - just stay in your lane and keep the pedal to the metal.
Once I got the hang of it, it was fun upshifting and downshifting (grabbing gears). Especially since it was such a big improvement from the way I was in the beginning.
The instructors were great. They were very professional and very experienced. They worked harder than any student, yet were patient and cared about our success. They also were friendly and easy to get along with. Each student got to work with each instructor, so we got to benefit from all their teaching styles and tips.
I liked that the course was a full eight weeks. This gave us plenty of time on the range and road, plus adequate classroom time, too. Some driving schools are less that 14 days, and I don’t know how it’s possible to cover all the material in that time. It’s got to be a grueling experience with many people dropping out or failing. To be sure, it’s not supposed to be a cakewalk, but it’s also not supposed to be an ordeal.
I liked that we learned in the Baltimore area - there were lots of different driving experiences. Baltimore is a very industrial city and has trucks all over the place, so we could drive nearly anywhere without being out of place. We got driving experience under all conditions: city, suburban, rural, and highway.
I liked that we spent enough time together to get to know each other. We also got to see other student’s strong points and weak points. We would learn from their strong points, and help them with their weak points. We all got along pretty well, and after a while, we were like a team, with everyone pulling for everyone else.
What I Didn’t Like
Our trucks had a ridiculous engine “feature” that caused the engine to automatically shut off if you were idling more than a few minutes. I think the reasoning was that it would improve fuel economy and reduce pollution, but I thought the “feature” was brain-dead. We were usually at idle as we did our maneuvers on the range, so you’d have to remember to goose the throttle now and then when you were in neutral, which would reset the engine timer for another few minutes. If you got preoccupied with the maneuver and forgot to goose the throttle, the engine would unexpectedly quit - the silence was deafening. If it happened more than once, we received a homework assignment: write 25 times, “I will not let my engine stall out on me”. (Don’t ask me how I know this.)
I didn’t like that I kept getting greasy, even when I tried hard not to. I got grease on my brand-new winter coat, I got grease on my jacket, got grease on my rain suit, got grease on my hands - I even accidentally stepped on a gob of fifth wheel grease and got grease on my shoes. Fifth wheel grease is about the stickiest grease ever invented.
The facilities at the range weren’t so hot. There was no electricity or running water, and at 7:00 AM in the winter, it was usually dark in the building. We weren’t even supposed to use the building - it had been padlocked and abandoned - but they had cut the locks off so we could at least have someplace to stand out of the rain. They did have a portable propane heater (noisy - one student said it sounded like the Space Shuttle taking off) and a portable outhouse. All things considered, though, the facilities were tolerable.
I was surprised how poorly designed the trucks were when it came to creature comforts. In most of the trucks, I had trouble arranging the seat so I could easily reach all the pedals - the brake pedal was very close to the floor and the clutch pedal was very high up. The seat wasn’t even particularly comfortable, and this was a truck that a driver was supposed to spend hours driving every day. The heater and defroster were poor, the power window on the passenger side was crude and balky, the mirrors were difficult to adjust then wouldn’t hold their position, and the windshield wiper and especially the windshield washer worked poorly. And with all the room in the cab, there wasn’t even a good place to store things like your logbook or miscellaneous items - everything wound up sliding around on the floor.
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