Week Four - Monday

Today was a MOST EXCELLENT DAY !!!!

A new class of Newbies has taken over Classroom C. (The Cave) Today, I was supposed to arrive at 10:30, but I still went in at 8:00. We were done at 4:45 PM, but I stayed along with my team till 6:00 PM. Just for clarity, I call us my team because today we were out on the yard working with the truck, and we missed roll call. We walked back inside and talked to the Instructor. He looked right at me and said "Dohr, I am holding you personally responsible for these guys missing roll call" I smiled at him, and said "no problem, I came in early today, and plan to stay late, all week. I was serious too, I want to take full advantage of driving the trucks over the next seven weeks.

We went back on the field and met up with out Trainer. We spent the rest of the day doing "Straight Line Backing" This is just what it says, backing up the truck keeping the 50' trailer and the Tractor in a straight line while backing into a box. The box represents a loading dock. There were three sets of cones set up for us to pull up too. The first set of cones were like 50 yds out, the next were at 75 yds and the last set were at 100 yds. The Trainer said just go to the first cones. We all were able to do it fine, so we asked to move to the second set. Most of us hit that one too. On my next turn I went for the third set of cones and nailed that too. Then another Team member went for number 3 and he got it too. We were having a great time. Driving is alot of fun. But I can see how how easy it is to loose control of the trailer backing up. We only run in low reverse and first gear forward. We are not allowed to touch the accellorator when working on the yard. Good thing, controlling the trailer at this speed backing up is pretty tough.
We were all have a great time driving the truck, so much that when knock-off came we asked if we could stay till 6:00 PM and keep driving the truck. The Trainer said go for it. Around 5:30 PM he came over and collected the Team to have us watch how the trucks get moved into position at the end of the day. He said we could assist with moving the trucks if we wanted to stay each day. SWEET !!! :-)

Today was a really good day. Hot, Sweaty, but really good :-)

Tomorrow we continue with our Pretrip inspections, Drop and Hook Proceedures, Inline backing, and we will learn C-Side Backing.

Have great night.
Don