Friday, Feb 17, 2012, was a good day!

I passed the Michigan Commercial Driver's License practical test! Let me tell you about it. The test has three parts:

• The pre-trip inspection test 
• The basic vehicle control skills test
• The on-road driving test

Let me briefly explain each of them so you know what I did.

The pre-trip inspection (PTI) test. The applicant walks around the commercial motor vehicle and points to or touches each item on a lengthy list and explains to the examiner what is being checked. For example, the steering linkage, which on a truck is pretty complex, as you can imagine. I would point to it and say, "The steering linkage, steering shaft, pitman arm and castle nut and cotter pin, drag link, upper steering arm, lower steering arm, tie rod and steering arm are securely mounted with no cracked, bent, broken or missing pieces. There are no loose or worn joints or sockets, no loose or missing nuts, bolts or cotter pints." There are 17 pages in my manual that contain the items to check. The PTI took about 40 minutes for me to complete. Because all parts have to be repeated in case of failure like I had yesterday, I did better on today's inspection than yesterday's. In fact, I did not miss any; I was allowed to miss 29 items.

The basic vehicle control skills test. This test consists of four basic off-road (meaning not on a public roadway), the forward stop, straight-line backing, 90-degree alley dock (the task that kicked my butt for a couple of weeks), and a right turn (the reason I failed yesterday.

1. The forward stop requires driving into an "alley" (lines painted on the ground with cones at strategic places) and coming to a stop as close to, but not past, the end line, without looking out a side window or standing up to see the cone or line. It's harder than it looks, but I did not miss any points.
2. After that event, I leave the "alley" and position the truck for the straight-line backing. Then, on the examiners signal, I back the truck straight back through the alley until my bumper is clear of the other end. I did not have any problem with this one pretty much right away, so it was a 'gimme.' Not so the next event.
3. The dreaded 90-degree alley dock requires positioning the truck 90 degrees on the sight side to the alley. Then, at the examiners signal, I back into the alley, taking care not to hit any cones or touch any of the boundary lines and coming to a stop as close to the back line as possible. Keep in mind the back line is 60 feet away from the driver, so making that judgement is tough. And those cones and lines represent things like buildings, cars, and the alley dock itself into which a driver spends much of his or her time backing. This kicked my butt good for a long time. I was penalized four points yesterday and only one point today. Good show!
4. The right turn is the final event on the range and consists of making a right hand turn around a simulated corner with a curb, coming as close as possible to, but taking care not to touch, the cone on the corner. I killed the cone yesterday and did not come close today, so my total score was one point!

On-road driving test. After completing both of those parts, the examiner, applicant, and truck head out into the world for "real life" driving. Small city streets, Interstate highways, multilane road, school zones, busy and not-busy intersections area all included. There is no backing but there are lots or right and left turns, curves (some were pretty 'good' curves for a 60 foot commercial vehicle!), railroad crossings, urban and rural lane changes, and awareness of bridge, overpass, and regulatory traffic signs - the one he pick out for me was a "Bridge May Be Icy" sign somewhere in the middle. While following his directions, I was graded on speed and lane control (refer to 'good' curves comment above!), clutch usage, brake usage, proper gear selection (there are 10 forward speeds from which to choose), vehicle spacing, steering, my decision-making, and the one thing that cost me most points, traffic checks.

An applicant can miss 25 points on the on-road portion and still pass. I missed 10; the examiner said the average applicant will miss 15-18 and anything below 15 is "excellent." So having not done so well yesterday, I was pretty happy with the result. Even though my CDL does not show any grade, I came away from the test knowing I will probably not kill anyone (like I did that 5-year old standing on the 'curb' yesterday...) as I make the next step in this journey.

Next step for me is to go to work. I have picked a company called WEL Companies (http://www.welcompanies.com) based near Green Bay, Wisconsin, because they offer the best balance of equipment, range (how far do they really go?), pay, and whether I can take the truck home during my home time. Right now, my plan is to start their 3-day orientation on February 27, after which I will drive locally with one of their trainers for one week then go on-the-road, or OTR, for 4 weeks all over the country.

I am glad my initial training at West Michigan CDL is over. It was challenging, rewarding, very frustrating at times, and very intense at all times. I would not want to repeat it nor would I want not to have done it. And I think I am well-positioned for the next step on my path to become a professional truck driver.

There might not be many posts for the next week or so, dear reader, but please look forward to more as I move on to become a driver for the WEL Companies!

Thursday, 2/16/12

Bad news. I took my CDL test today and did not pass. I did well in the pretrip inspection; this takes about 30 minutes and is a thorough, front-to-back check of the tractor and trailer to make sure everything is safe for operation. Then I went to the range for Part 2 and did something I have not done since the first week I was a student here.

I crushed an orange boundary cone that was set up in a right turn maneuver on the range to simulate the curb trucks have to deal with when making right turns.

If a small child or handicapped person had been on that curb...well, the picture is not pretty and I deserved the failure.

Retest tomorrow!

February 11, 2012

Today is Saturday and I have not written a blog post this week. Mostly, that's because I have been just completely whipped when I get home after class. To be honest, we were told that the second week would be the most stressful but merely being told did not prepare me for what I experienced. The good thing is it ended well, albeit with a final city drive in 4 inches of newly-fallen snow. That, of course, made the drive quite, um, "interesting," to say the least, but it ended without incident. So what did we do to make the week so stressful?

It's not so much what we did, because we did the same tasks we've done for the week. But two events stand out - beside the 90 degree alley dock that continues to whip my butt - that made being there use a wee bit unpleasant. We have four students in my class: a young 20-Something whose Dad is a career truck driver, a Hispanic male, an Egyptian male, and me. Just that mix of cultural and age differences has made for a wonderfully diverse mix of opinions and behaviors, but two of them went off on each other this week. I won't say which two because I don't think airing that kind of stuff is appropriate, but I will tell you one of them has been consistently late for our early morning classroom session from 7:00 - 8:00 a.m. and has a habit of leaving early, even though we are to be there until 5:00 p.m. He has a somewhat superior attitude and does not take positive criticism very well, even when he does not perform the maneuvers in the prescribed way, as we all have done.

Well, the two of them got into it and if it weren't for one of the other students, there would have been a physical fight, but the other one did take one of the two away from the area and it calmed down...after a while.

The second unpleasant experience involved one of the two original "combatants" and me. It was quite cold on Thursday, though not snowing, and when it was my turn to drive, the fellow jumped in the right side of the cab, where it was warm. He said, "That is how we're going to do it now. One rides while one drives." I was not going to have that on my session and told him to leave or I would not drive. He refused many times, stayed in the truck, and I finally shut it down, got out, and went to the office to file a complaint. About mid-day on Friday, the company owner came to me and said he had received the complaint and would deal with the other student. He said he had a "heart-to-heart" chat with him about the first incident and would do so again.

That kind of experience did not help reduce my stress, I can tell you that. OR my performance, which just seemed to go downhill after that, making that day not so good.

Anyway, next week is geared toward fine-tuning our tasks in preparation for the state testers beginning Wednesday and for being exposed to some experiences we won't be tested on but might have to perform in the field, like the blind-side parallel park, the mere thought of which scares me to death! You know how hard it is to parallel park a car? Well, imagine doing that with a 60-foot commercial motor vehicle using only mirrors to "find" the curb on that side. Oh, boy....

Hopefully, the next time I write I will have good news about being the holder of a Commercial Drivers License. Then, of course, comes the matter of picking a suitable OTR trucking company to work for. I have narrowed the list to six, but picking The One will be difficult.

Thanks for reading, my dear reader. You have no idea how much it helps me, knowing that someone is reading my words.

Even on Super Bowl Sunday, I work

Today is Sunday, February 5, 2012, and it is Super Bowl Sunday, so you might think I would give myself a day off to relax and enjoy something. But no. I just returned from spending a couple of hours doing a pretrip inspection, or PTI, on the tractor and trailer in the West Michigan CDL parking lot because nobody is there, the weather is wonderful - 42 degrees and sunny - and the only deficiency I have found in training so far is the instructors did not do a step-by-step, item-by-item PTI early in the week. For those of us who didn't tear cars apart and rebuild them as teenagers, learning the difference between the air conditioning compressor and the air compressor and water pump is challenging, especially since the engine compartment of a commercial motor vehicle is packed with large, sturdy pieces of metal, hoses, and electrical wiring.

Fortunately, there is YouTube and there are examples from other CDL schools that point out each item, so I spent time doing that then validating the pieces on our own equipment.

I also have a take-home test to complete and must spend some time visualizing the shift pattern of this 10-speed transmission, especially downshifting and shifting from 7th to 5th, the turning gear. As I have written, this whole truck driving experience is very complex and I'm having a bit of difficulty managing the myriad tasks that come quickly to me when I am:

• Planning far enough ahead to make that turn up there, while
• Getting into the right lane to turn without hitting the curb and without leaving enough room for a 4-wheeler to squeeze to my right (which almost happened once, which is a VERY exciting experience, I can tell you) while
• Slowing down well ahead of the stop line, and
• Downshifting from 8th or 9th to 7th 
• So I can be in 5th gear before the turn.
• If the light stays green,
• I must be in 5th before the turn, so I can
• Make the right turn at a very slow speed, while
• Driving as far as I can into the left or on-coming traffic lane, so I can
• Complete the turn without hitting anything or running the rear tandems of the trailer over the curb.
• Oh. And I must remember to put the right blinker on and turn it off. A truck blinker is not automatic.

So, dear reader, the next time you make a right turn in your 4-wheeler, think about the myriad tasks you are completing without consciously thinking about any of them - you just do each of them to perfection and adjust to anything out of the ordinary, also without consciously thinking about it. If you can, try to remember what you were like when you were learning to drive and making right turns was not a natural, well-practived task. That is where I am in truck driving.

Then again, I have only been at it for one week and I have two more. I am pleased with my progress, dear reader, and thank YOU for reading and staying with me.

January 31, 2012; Day Two is in the bag

Well, dear reader, I have completed Day Two of my CDL training and I have to say there was much improvement from yesterday. The straight-back, left turn, and right turn maneuvers weren't much of a problem and there was improvement. The big change came from the 90 degree alley dock, which, as you may recall from yesterday, really sucked. I mean badly. I had no idea what I was looking for, how to set the maneuver up, or how to see if it was going to work or not. And worst of all, I had no idea how to put any of that in my mind.

Something happened today, though. As I was watching one of my fellow students, I took note of where he turned the tractor-trailer to get 90 degrees from the dock. For some reason, it all just fell into place and my first one was almost perfectly done. In fact, all but one of them today was what the school testers call "scorable," meaning each would have passed with minimal loss of points.

All that was before lunch, which we enjoyed courtesy of a traveling recruiter from Werner Enterprises, a large, diverse, nationwide truck company that hires "lots of students from Michigan CDL," as the guy said. After that, it was out onto city streets for the first time. And I must say it was there, first doing a 15-minute pattern of left turns then right turns on streets on the back roads of the industrial park  - no 4-lane major streets today - that I learned just how much there is in this business.

First, there are 10 gears, each with a maximum speed - and I need to know all those gears and their associated speeds by heart - made up of five gears in two ranges, a high range and a low range. Then there is the RPM shift range for each gear, both upshifting and downshifting, the double clutching for every gear, where to aim the tractor so the trailer doesn't hit a curb or a car in the opposite lane, and revving the engine up to the appropriate RPM, but only while downshifting, plus dealing with cars doing crazy things (like passing on a double yellow line, in a blind curve) and other 18-wheelers that are actually out there working, and you get an idea how busy my poor brain was.

My one-hour session just about took all the energy out of me and I was quite ready to be replaced by the other student, but then, right at the end, the instructor asked me to skip a gear while downshifting, something that is often done. Go from 8th to 6th, which isn't bad, because both of those are in the same range. Or go from 7th (high range) to 5th (low range). Doing that requires moving a lever on the shifter, but only while in neutral....

Oh, yeah. Like I'm ready for all this! Perhaps as you read what I just wrote you will get a sense of how much is going on. Also imagine increasing then decreasing speed to use all 10 gears, watch for traffic, watch the changing speed limits, the curves, the crazy cars, the....

Well, you get the idea. I will say I am ready for bed every night, which is good! And I definitely appreciate the 3-week course length and quality of instructors much more than I did even yesterday. I am confident I will be ready, but, OH, have I got some growing to do before then.

And homework. This week: Safety-related information, how-to-do a pre-trip vehicle inspection (which takes about 45 minutes and requires much memorization.) Next week, regulations and trip planning. Third week: more trip planning and detailed logging.

Whew.

CDL training begins!

Today is January 30, 2012, the first day of a 3-week CDL training course and I have finished it. Let me tell you about it.

The day began with a pretty bad night's sleep, which is pretty unusual. Since my retirement one month ago, I've slept very soundly all night. Not so last night, probably because of my excitement about what I would start today. No matter, in very cold temperatures and yawning all the way, I drove the 30 minutes to Grandville, Michigan, the home of Western Michigan CDL, my home-away-from-home for the next three weeks. I had to be there at 6:30 a.m. to sign papers and give them copies of my Michigan CDL Temporary Instructional Permit, my DOT medical card, and my Michigan driver's license. I met Bob, one of the senior staff - and one of several state-designated CDL testers that I might have to deal with later on - Mike, the owner, and Doug, our first range instructor. After a couple of hours in the classroom talking about the course, defensive driving techniques, and why you "4-wheelers" really need to understand more about us truck drivers (See? I'm already developing "The Attitude!"), our class of four students moved out onto "the range," which really means a huge parking lot owned by the company in which we will train for much of this week. As an aside, we will be going out onto city streets tomorrow.

We spent half the morning and the afternoon working on these basic CDL maneuvers:

• Straight-line backing: This is backing the tractor-trailer combination in a straight line between two sets of cones. Sounds easy, but it's not that easy. It is, however, a whole lot easier than the next one.
• 90 degree alley backing: This is setting the truck up 90 degrees from the same "alley" and backing in. It is one of two "most difficult" maneuvers and one I need work on. The key is getting a sight picture of where the rear of the trailer, which is leading the charge, so to speak, in the right place to put the trailer in between the same cones as aboves. It is not easy and I did much better than one, as well as one, and not as well as one of the students.
• Left turns: Not much excitement here, actually, because of the way we drive in this country - in the right lane.
• Right turns near a curb: This is much more difficult because a 60' tractor-trailer combination does not turn like a car does. It takes some getting used to the new sight-picture to make it work.
• Hooking and unhooking the trailer: We spent about an hour doing this, which is pretty straight forward.

All in all, I learned that my left foot - the one that used the clutch - hasn't forgotten everything it knew; that I'm pretty good already with backing in a straight line and making left turns; and need a lot of work on 90 degree alley docks.

We will tackle blind-side (the right side) parallel parking next week. Try to imaging how THAT will go!

More tomorrow and I hope to continue posting these progress reports, so I appreciate you reading, dear reader.

Today was a good day!

Thursday, January 26, 2012: A very good day in the life of this federal retiree, to be sure. First, I went to the local office of the Michigan Secretary of State to get the Commercial Drivers License (CDL) permit and passed all four parts of the test on the first try! I now am in possession of a Michigan CDL Temporary Instruction Permit and an unrestricted DOT medical certificate that says I am medically qualified to operate a commercial motor vehicle. Since I hate taking knowledge tests and this one is a bit complex, passing it on my first try is very good news, indeed.

After taking the tests - and sharing the good news with my children! - I came home and received a telephone call from the owner of West Michigan CDL, the school I hope to attend as soon as my annual leave payment arrives, which should be "any day now." The owner said they have an opening in the Monday class because one of the students who was going to be in the class did not pass his DOT medical check so he had to withdraw. They offered me the slot with the understanding that if my money doesn't show up in the next 3 weeks of school, they will withhold the graduation certificate and other paperwork until I do pay them. I said I understand and accepted their offer.

Beginning Monday, I will be in training to become a truck driver! I promise to keep you up-to-date on how class goes, dear reader. This is a very exciting time in my life.