Trucktographer's Dad

Day one of road training is in the books. Up at 5 pickup at 6:30. We had a little admin time and then out for pretrip and warm up the truck. Just as in the "real world" we wound up twiddling our thumbs for about 35 minutes with a regen.

After regen it was out to yard to move a trailer out of the way in the backing pad area, hook, move, park, drop, and move our van. Hook up and around the yard we go learning to up shift, stop, restart, and finally a few laps each up and down shifting. So, about 10:30 we were out the gate and in the wild. I tell you, putting all this together with what you know of driving is THE challenge.

Evals start Thursday so the pay off is just around the corner.

Just gonna tag this onto his thread.

I'm signed up for the Swift Mentor Class this Thursday. This way, once he gets his CDL I can take him on my truck for his 200+ hours behind the wheel as a trainee.

Should be fun.

So I've been thinking about how I'll schedule your training. The first day I'll probably drive first (just a few hours) so you can see all the other stuff that goes into being a driver. The QC. Dealing with a customer at the pick-up. Stuff like that.

After that intro I'll get you into the seat. I don't expect you to drive all day. I did that my first week with my Mentor thinking I could impress him, but all I ended up doing was burning through my 70 really quickly. At that point we did a rolling-restart. I don't want you to do that. Instead, those first few days shoot for like 6 hours in the seat. If our delivery requires more miles driven each day I'll drive a few hours to round it out. They call this Super-Solo. You'll still do the bulk of the driving, I just make up a few hours if needed. As you get more comfortable being in the seat for longer periods I'd like you to work up to 8.5-9 hours each day...or roughly 450-500 miles. Obviously days with multiple stops, or slow customers, will hamper us from meeting that goal. But those are perfectly acceptable numbers to shoot for when just starting.

As for your 40 backs, except for the blind-side ones, just regular backing at customers and truck stops will cover your needs. I ended up having to do blind-sides on my own time while just waiting around, cause we only came across two customers that had a set up that required it.

After your first 50 hours I'll ask Bel to put us on the 757 and we should start getting some nice long team runs. By then we should be able to easily average 1000 miles a day, when it's purely driving.

Other than that, it should be a pretty easy few weeks.

It is past time for an update: I got thru Columbus training but am officially on academic probation. Haven't seen the write up so I'm not real sure what the specific issue is/was but I need extra work on the 90 and trailer awareness. Four of us rode Greyhound for 27 hours on Saturday/Sunday from Columbus, OH, to Ocala, Fl. Today we met our trainer and got road time and skills practice. The weather is far better here in Florida. I was wearing one layer of clothing and a windbreaker for the first time in three weeks! If things go as expected all four of us will test with DMV in Jacksonville on Friday and start orientation next week. It has been a long, cold, sick three weeks. But, we didn't get any rain so didn't have to fight that discomfort and misery. Going to Ohio was the right decision as guys that came home from Millington last week won't start here at Ocala until probably next week. The trainers at Columbus are good and try to cover the other states requirements, but the roads up there suck, in my opinion, for training. But, it is what it is. I appreciate the extra instruction we all got from Bryan. Tomorrow we get picked up at 4:45. The other trainer and crew are headed to Jacksonville for third-party testing at DMV. Apparently Roadmaster is doing the evals. I'll try and update as the week progresses.

Dave, Academic Probation sounds bad, but it is your opportunity to work on what you missed and get it right.

I was in Millington just before you came up. Out of 20 or so in our class, seven stayed that extra week. (No extra charge for instruction or that wonderful hotel room!)

Yes, you do need to do the whole backing evaluation over, but you have those extra days to get that 90 down. The 90° alley dock problem got me the second chance myself.

I have been reading you and your son's wonderful journey and progress and I am proud of both of you!

Good luck, keep us informed and keep up the good work!

Dave, Academic Probation sounds bad, but it is your opportunity to work on what you missed and get it right.

I was in Millington just before you came up. Out of 20 or so in our class, seven stayed that extra week. (No extra charge for instruction or that wonderful hotel room!)

Yes, you do need to do the whole backing evaluation over, but you have those extra days to get that 90 down. The 90° alley dock problem got me the second chance myself.

Thanks, Errol. I'm not sweating it as you are correct that it's an opportunity to focus on the problem area. Re-evals are not a bad thing as they prepare you for the state exam.

Today had a couple of hours of quality road time and then a great session working on skills.

Guess it's time for an update. I pointed out on the 90 last Friday at Jacksonville Roadmaster. Three of us got the 90 and one got blindside parallel. I'd have killed for the parallel...but didn't. So, I've been home this week resting up and taking care of chores. I return to Ocala Sunday to brush up and try again with DMV on probably Friday.

When the weather cleared today I washed my son's truck. We'd cleaned and straightened inside earlier.

Looking forward to next week. I'm not sure what happened last Friday as I had pretty much mastered the 90. I will, in my defense, say that having two Roadmaster trucks pull into and park within my pull up area did not help. But, I didn't get it in the box so I get to try again.

I used all last week to hone up my backing skills and get more drive time. Unfortunately, I returned last Friday to the same Roadmaster evaluator that held me up the week before. I nailed the sight side parallel and then, according to Mr. Fail Half of All third-party test folks, impeded an oncoming pickup while executing a left turn from a strange "blind" left side/curve intersection. I'll admit I saw the pickup as I committed to my turn and I'll admit the pickup passed me on the right, but this was AFTER I'd returned to the left lane and was accelerating....dubious fail, but you cannot win any argument with an evaluator.

I fixed this problem of possibly returning to Roadmaster in Jacksonville for another retest by calling SMG Inc. in Crystal River, FL. It's a general hauling company that also runs it's own CDL school (for all class licenses) and does 3rd party testing for all classes. I drove up Tuesday morning and passed the road test in about 30 minutes. So, after returning home to Clearwater I had my CDL-A in my hand by about 2 PM.

I'm not saying the 3rd party testing in Jacksonville by Roadmaster is shady, but every group of four that I know about testing there had 2 failures...usually number 1 and 2 with number 3 and 4 passing. Now, obviously the Roadmaster students are not treated this way and they have the advantage of testing on all the test areas prior to skills or road testing. They also do not pay an additional fee every time they retest.

Bottom line: I have my CDL, I will call the coordinator tomorrow to get my bus confirmation to Ocala for Sunday, and will start orientation next week. My son should be routed down by Wednesday so we can get on the road.

Congrats. Looking forward to hear about your continuing progress.

Rck