My Swift Adventure- Columbus Academy

Road pilot

Thank you for the great review you are providing us. It is like we are at training with you. Congratulations on passing the backing maneuvers.

Scot2727

Thanks Scott, I hope this will helping people on what to expect if they decide to attend on of the Driving Academy's.

Hi roadpilot, in your opinion so far what is the hardest thing you have had to deal with in school or most stressful thanks , michael

For me personally, the most stressful thing has been getting consistent with the alley dock (or as its called "The 90"). All the other maneuvers you have little cheats to help you along with your sight picture but with the 90 it's all on you to figure it out. It has gotten better as I've figured out that being properly set up is key.....and that's true with all of the backing maneuvers, if you aren't set up right then you are already setting yourself if not for failure but to have a extremely tough time getting the truck into the box.

Now here's this disclaimer on this. I been driving buses for 13 years so some things like logs and trip planning that some off my classmates had difficulties with I breezed through. Once that had a extremely tough time with logs is out here on the pad doing the 90s with no difficulty while I struggle with it. Every person is gonna have there own strength and weaknesses. So far as a group we've been helping each other out, so that has been a real help when somebody's confidence goes into the gutter.

Day 11 7/28

Well another interesting start of the morning, a few of us got left by the shuttle. Our paperwork says that the shuttle will come for pick up between 615a-630a....usually it will be at the hotel by 625a. Well we have one instructor that likes to leave right at 615 and as we were just finishing up with our breakfast he pulled out on us. Called the school and the Academy Leader swung by and scooped us up. He agreed that it was a ****** move but that we really need to be ready by 615. We didn't get in trouble but I was not a happy camper at the start of the morning.

In anycase it was more of the same, practicing pretrips and backing maneuvers while other in my class finished their evals. We also got a chance to drop and hook a couple of trailers, which was fun.

We got let out early because the class behind us was coming out to start practicing their straight line backs but not before another round of drama. We have one of our classmates struggling pretty bad with the maneuvers and they failed the first attempt at the eval. They wanted to go AP (AP, is academic probation basically a do over week, but you can only do it once during the program.) However they had to take a second eval and fail to get placed on AP. We tried to encourage our classmates to take the second eval because you never know, they might have passed by the skin of their teeth. It became a circular argument that ended up getting slightly heated before we left. I'm not sure what the outcome was, I'm sure we'll know on Monday. I will say that particular student did get ALOT of help not only from the instructors but the other students, it just wasn't clicking as fast for them as it did for us.

So we have Saturday and Sunday off, thank god because my back, knees and feet are sore as hell! I plan on vegetating out this weekend so I can be rested and relaxed for Monday which starts to road portion of training. Have a great weekend folks!

Roadpilot

Question regarding shifting. I have driven manual cars all my life. I am aware that you need to double clutch in trucking. Is this a difficult procedure to learn?

Enjoy your weekend! Looking forward to your road training.

Scot

Roadpilot

Question regarding shifting. I have driven manual cars all my life. I am aware that you need to double clutch in trucking. Is this a difficult procedure to learn?

Enjoy your weekend! Looking forward to your road training.

Scot

Hey Scot, I start training on how to double clutch on Monday so I'll let you know how it goes. The instructors say it's harder to train people who already have experience on manual transmissions because they have "bad habits". I tried to learn how to drive stick when I was 16 with no success so I'm a bit apprehensive about tomorrow but I think I'll be ok

Hi roadpilot good luck and can't wait till hear how it was for you kind of excited to go to school and see the u.s .

Day 12 7/31

Monday's suck!

Today was the first day of our road training. However we got delayed this morning as there is also orientation and a fresh class starting every Monday so that takes up some of the academy leader's time. We didn't get into the truck until after 10am and mostly just drove around the yard shifting. My upshifts are ok, downshifts are very ugly. To the point that I wish I could do the test in an automatic and just deal with the restriction. I knew I was gonna have a problem with shifting but I'm really concerned that this will be the issue that I can't overcome. I have until Friday or Saturday until the latest to get it down well enough to eval out. Hopefully it'll be better tomorrow

See ya

Roadpilot,

Sounds like you had a rough Monday. Stick with it and I'm sure by the weekend you'll be doing much better.

Thanks again for your daily updates.

Good luck tomorrow!

Scot

I'll combine Tue and We'd into one entry as it's mostly the same deal

Tue 8/1 Day 13

More on the road training. Upshifts are getting better although for some reason I have a tough time with going from 3rd to 4th but after that I'm usually good. Downshifting is still ugly.... I'm really had a moment where I was thinking that trucking might not be for me. Part of me understands that it's just our second day on the road but I don't personally feel like I'm making the progress I'm supposed to. Maybe I'm being unrealistically hard on myself....but I'm not giving up.

Wed 8/2 Day 14

Day 3 of road training, things are slowly coming together. My first time behind the wheel was ugly but during my second time things improved greatly, although it fell apart at the end because I shifted up and couldn't shift back down quick enough and ended up coasting and grinding until I was able to grab a gear. That's what kills my confidence but I will say I got to get on the highway for about 5 minutes and that was enough for me to realize that this IS what I want to do. I'm supposed to eval out either Friday or Saturday and Test next Wednesday but worse case I go AP, and push that back a week to get more time behind the wheel. I just have to keep relaxed and realize that "I can do this!"

Sorry for missing a day and I'll see you guys tomorrow

Roadpilot

Thanks for the update.

Sounds like your making progress. Keep up the good work tomorrow and stay relaxed.

Scot

Thur 8/3 Day 15

Well it was an interesting day here in Columbus.

I was first up out the yard driving. They had a multi vehicle wreck on I-70 so it had traffic completely jacked up first thing. However I did pretty good, my shifts were on point and there was a lot less coasting and grinding this morning. Still having problems with releasing the clutch during my shifts at lower gears but I'm making progress. One of my classmates that had a stellar day yesterday had a rough time after me though, it seems to be the belly of the beast. Traffic didn't let up as there was yet another wreck involving a TT on 70 and a splattering of other minor accidents around. After lunch I drove again, wasn't as great as this morning but passable. We got one final surprise heading back to the yard, a TT flipped (thank God not a Swifty) in front of us making the left off of Rt 40. We had had a conversation earlier about taking turns too fast and to have it happened in front of us was very sobering. In all today while fustrating was a good day. Tomorrow is eval day so we'll see if I can go 3 for 3 on passing evals on the first time.

Have a great night and I'll try to update this tomorrow

8/4 Fri Day 16

Well this morning is was more on the road training. I got a hour this morning and it went pretty well until we came back to the yard and coming down the hill I decided to be cute and tried to downshift and missed my gear and had to coast a bit to get it back. There was a voice in my head that said wait until I got on flat ground to downshift for the turn but for whatever reason in my mind it didn't look like I was gonna have enough room to get all the way down to 5th gear in time.

After lunch came the road eval, and I PASSED! Overall the instructor said I drove good, my points were basically for grinding gears and dropping the clutch.....oh and I made the bonehead move of shifting during the last turn to get to the yard. Both my other classmates failed their first evals, one passed on the second try and the other got AP, so he'll have another week to practice. It was mostly nerves on his part, he forgot about the splitter placement and stalled the truck on both evals.

Well because I passed I don't have to go in tomorrow so I can sleep in, so have a great weekend