New Driver, Pre Trip Question

OK went to school, got my CDL. I know what they tell you to do for pre-trip but what does the season driver check when doing your pre-trip? Check the oil, look at the belts, check tires, anybody pull on the slack adjuster's ?

OK went to school, got my CDL. I know what they tell you to do for pre-trip but what does the season driver check when doing your pre-trip? Check the oil, look at the belts, check tires, anybody pull on the slack adjuster's ?

If you know whats good for you ,you do you're pretrip the way they taught you in school. There is a reason why they teach you the pretrip....because its apart of your job to make sure your truck is safe to drive. Skipping the pretrip or even parts of it is only asking for trouble if the part that finally breaks is one you should have caught during pretrip. Do yourself a favor and do the pretrip the way you learned it.

Yep guyjax is right. You are the one barreling down the highway in 80,000 pounds of truck. You better pre-trip that thing like your life depended on it... because it does! You'll become more efficient at pre-tripping, it will only take you 6-10 minutes once you have a good flow going.

Welcome aboard Larry!

Ya know, I think I know what you're getting at. Generally speaking with any career there's "how to do things by the book" and then there's "How it's done in the real world". Trucking is no different in a lot of regards. You'll learn some stuff in school that you'll never do again the rest of your career and of course 98% of what you need to know you'll learn out on the road, not in school.

But the Pre-Trip Inspection is actually an exception. The way they teach it in school really is the way you'll do it in the real world for the most part. There might be a few checks you're not going to do every single day, but the overwhelming majority of them you will. Like I didn't do a pump-down test every day to make sure my low air warning signal came on and the emergency brake set. I'm sure most people don't.

But the overwhelming majority of what they teach you to do for a pre-trip inspection is dead on.

OK went to school, got my CDL. I know what they tell you to do for pre-trip but what does the season driver check when doing your pre-trip? Check the oil, look at the belts, check tires, anybody pull on the slack adjuster's ?

Thanks guys, yes Brett that's what I was getting at. I'm sure most of the drivers will not do the "pump-down" test at a truck stop. (If you do it will give all the other drivers something to talk about the rookie trucker)

OK went to school, got my CDL. I know what they tell you to do for pre-trip but what does the season driver check when doing your pre-trip? Check the oil, look at the belts, check tires, anybody pull on the slack adjuster's ?

Thanks guys, yes Brett that's what I was getting at. I'm sure most of the drivers will not do the "pump-down" test at a truck stop. (If you do it will give all the other drivers something to talk about the rookie trucker)

That's exactly not true Larry. No ones going to make fun of you for being extra safe. We truckers are constantly surrounded by noises so we probably won't even hear your brakes. I'm surrounded by people idling and the roar of my reefer engine. Even when all of this noise is happening I simply don't hear it because I'm so used to it. So no one is going to chuckle at you and you certainly won't be disturbing anyone.

The safer you are the better. They'll know you're a rookie by how you back up, they don't need to be staring at you pumping your brakes to make sure the buzzer goes off to know you're a rookie. There's so many other obvious signs, haha.