Profile For Joe W. ( aka hharleywood)

As far as the double clutching and shifting, you said you've watched videos. Get a baseball bat and a stuffed animal and practice what you've watched on video. Use the bat as the shifter and step on the stuffed animal for the clutch. It will help with the foot hand coordination. When I was in school (last week) I saw someone using a "slim Jim" to practice shifting. Yes the meat stick. Since you have not driven a stick before,that will make teaching you easier. I am a seasoned manual transmission driver. I had to unlearn stuff in order to shift the truck properly. So don't get yourself down about never driving a manual transmission before. That makes you more teachable and more receptive to what they tell you to do.

I just graduated out of school friday. They don't do a lot of log book stuff. I think we did maybe 3 hours. Their first goal is to get you to pass the cdl road test and log books are not part of that. Only advice I can give you is pay attention and do what they teach you. I struggled a little with the shifting because I have driven 5 speeds all my life. Shifting a truck is very different. I actually had to Un learn stuff that I had done for over 30 years to get the truck in gear. If you have driven manual transmission cars, listen to what they teach you and practice all you can. My room mate at the motel bought a slim jim, yes the meat stick, to use as a shifter so he could practice going through the gears. Good luck to you.

Heading to McElroy on the 31st for orientation. Hopefully all will go well and I will be able to update my status soon.

Well I've missed a few days, so let me catch up.

Day 9

Pretty uneventful. Same ol range and road driving. Nothing exciting happened.

Day 10

Same as day 9 except we had a pretrip evaluation. We all failed miserably. Instructor said we really didn't do too bad for a first time though.

Day 11

Road driving in the test truck. Man is this truck so different from the others. In this case, different was better. Downshifting was easier. Not grinding as much.

Day 12

More of the same as day 11. Nothing exciting.

Day 13

Road test. Failed the 3 point brake check. Bam, autofail. Done for the day as far as testing. More range and road driving and a lot of in cab practice.

Day 14

2nd attempt at the road test. PASSED! Kicked back the rest of the day and just absorbed the feeling of making this happen.

Day 15

Graduation!! Got our papers, certificates and road atlases and went home. Got to town early enough to get my license issued and am now the proud holder of a class A cdl..

Day 8

Not much happened today. More road and range driving. Didn't break anything today, that was good. Can't believe how difficult down shifting can be in these things. At least I know what I'm doing wrong, but it's still a task to fix. Now I know why it's easier to train someone that has never driving a standard shift vehicle before. I gotta stop pushing the clutch in so far. Like I said, at least I know.

As of today, we had a TMC recruiter come to the school. He told us that they pee only, they will not cut any hair.

I am at TDI right now in Indiana.it's a good school and very fast paced. There are plenty of jobs that can get you home weekly, just talk to all of the recruiters when they come to the school. If your wondering about how the classes are, I have a thread in the diaries category that will give you a little bit of insight of how my days go.

Day 7

Started the day driving around town again. Broke the cardinal rule of not impeding traffic. Wasn't my fault though. Tie rod fell of the truck while I was driving. Not an everyday experience for people learning to drive these big monsters, but it was an experience. After the other truck got there and connected to the trailer, we were off again. Tow truck showed up same time as replacement truck.. good timing there. Back at the yard my backing is getting a lot better. Doing offsets a lot better and almost got the parallel down now too. Straight backing is good. Thunder storms cut the day short. They won't let us on the range when there's lightning. All in all a good day. Even the tie bar thing..... haha

Day 6

Today started in the truck at the industrial park. Apparently we did ok because we hit the town right away. There is only 2 of us left in my class, so we got a good bit of seat time. After lunch we hit the range for backing. We both did well at straight backing and moved on to offset and parallel. I didn't get to the parallel, but will be doing it tomorrow. The instructor said he doesn't usually get to that til Wednesdays. So I guess we're doing good. Then we spent the last bit of the day going over the pretrip, then left for the day. Oh got frustrated a couple time with the offset, but I just got out of the truck for a few minutes, then went right back at it. More tomorrow.

I miss yesterday so here it is

Day 5

Did maps and HOS all day. Watched a couple videos on pre trips. Only 2 of us advancing to the range on Monday. I have 4 prehires now and am pretty happ with that. That's about it for day 5. On to the range and industrial park Monday. Later!