Prime PSD Training, From A Trainer's Perspective.

Turtle, I remember we had an experienced dry-van driver from Knight who wanted on this dedicated flatbed account because he thought he might be able to make more money. They asked me to hang out at the plant with him for the day and tarp a few outgoing loads so he could learn about securing the loads and tarping. That was his first and last day with us.

I climbed up on that first load - it was maybe 5 feet tall - and I started rolling out that first tarp all while talking and explaining everything. The whole time he's still on the back end of the trailer. Now, onto the second tarp. He's trying to climb up, but I can see the fear in his eyes. He gets up, but he's on all fours crawling around like a bear on ice. He looks like he thinks he's about to slip right off.

We talk a minute and he's telling me he's scared of heights. I'm being a little silly and I say, "Brother, this ain't high at all." If I remember correctly we tarped two loads that day, and he told me he needed to find the restroom. I never saw him again. Our operations manager came out and asked me, "What did you do to that guy?" He went right out to his truck and went home!

I'm not afraid of heights, just afraid of falling off of high things!

He's still hanging with me. We made it back to pittston earlier for a final marathon day of practice before his exam Wednesday.

I tried to get him a little more comfortable with heights, but clearly it's a no-go. Reefer seems to be more his speed.

As a typical 21 yr old, he came into this thinking he already knew it all. Boy did he have a wake up call. It took a threat of dropping him back at the terminal for him to realize I was serious about teaching, and that I won't tolerate a waste of my time & energy. To be fair, he's come around to the right frame of mind, but I gotta stay on him. I can't go into details now, have pad time reserved in 20 mins.

Ugh...

Here we go again.

Feeling any less anxious since your first student?

Hang in there, Uncle Turtle!

Nope haha. My heart is still in my throat.

Unlike the other, this particular examiner allows me to sit outside and watch the tests. Of course, being able to watch will have no effect whatsoever on the outcome. But it sure makes it a lot of easier. I can't explain why.

They've moved on to the backing pad, so he passed the pre-trip! Step one complete!

Omg I just about had a panic attack. Maybe watching the exam isn't such a good thing after all.

Straight back and offset right-perfect.

Passenger side parallel- not so much.

Although we practiced this a gazillion times, he muffed the setup for the parallel from the start, throwing the whole shebang out of whack. We also practiced how to recover yourself when you get out of position, but he sort of went into panic mode and forgot most of that too.

A few pullups, a couple of boundary infractions, and having to pull out twice to start over, he racked up either 6 or 8 points. It wasn't pretty, but in the end he got it in the box!

The examiner gave me the thumbs up from across the lot, followed by my student walking up to me all apologetic...

"Sorry Rich, I don't know what happened. I thought I had it pointed the right......"

"Dude, forget it. You passed. Maybe not the way you wanted to, but you passed. It's behind you now, and you never have to do it again. Put your game face back on and get ready for that road test."

And off they go..

Two down.....