I feel that before I delve into Day 5, I need to apologize to my school & instructor for my depiction of Day 4; I spend the better part of a paragraph downplaying the early-morning instruction, and less than one sentence backpedaling and stressing its importance. Being knowledgeable about the history of this industry is important, for several reasons. It instills respect, for the pioneers of this industry and for those still on the road who have been driving for 25-40 years; it lends a greater appreciation to the advancements made in trucking technology and to the infrastructure that allows us to get from Point A to Point B, and provides us with historical lessons and experiences that we can learn from and use to better ourselves, ultimately earning greater profits for ourselves, our families, and companies, of course. I think that those who make time to learn and appreciate the history and traditions of an industry, this industry, will respect it more and find themselves in the upper echelons of this business and their companies. With that said, on to...
Day 5
Entire day spent in the classroom. We covered HAZMAT, Transportation Technology, Compliance-Safety-Accountability (CSA), Driver Health, Safety, & Security, and lastly, Whistleblower Protections for Professional Drivers. All are chapters in the textbook, Delmar's Tractor-Trailer Truck Driver Training. Each chapter began with a powerpoint presentation, which are awesome. We then spent time reading through the chapter in the textbook, and concluded each section with a quiz. I began to ignore the powerpoint presentations and just began reading immediately through the chapters, because even though I love powerpoint, I find it mildly irritating to look at the display on the screen while someone simply reads it back to us. And besides, there are plenty of useful tips and interesting facts in the margins of the text that I probably wouldn't have had time to read if I hadn't gotten a head start. I also became more familiar with the material that way, which led to near-perfect quiz scores. And by the way, it's a private school, we all paid big money to be here, so pretty much everyone is going to pass the quizzes anyway.
With regard to the chapter on Transportation Technology, technology in the trucking industry must be Sponsored by Volvo and Qualcomm, because it seems like those two companies are responsible for 99% of the advances made in the past 10 years. The chapter on Compliance, Safety, & Accountability was a hodgepodge of acronyms...CSA, FMCSA, SMS, CR, CRWG, BASIC, DSMS, PSP, MCMIS, FOIA, COMPASS... were all introduced in this chapter; I needed a cheat-sheet to refer to just to keep up while reading the dang chapter.
The last exercise of the day was quite fun: we were given a 57-question worksheet where we had to familiarize ourselves with by consulting the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations handbook/pocketbook. This green book is the Bible of the trucking industry's safety regulations. Each question was prefaced with the FMCSR code where we could find the correct answer, but sometimes we had to read through the entire code, including all of its letters and roman numerals or subparts, to determine the correct answer. I can't imagine how long it must have taken to compile that handbook. I have new appreciation for Rick S., who always seems to be able to cite codes from this book almost as quickly as someone can post their question on the General Forum.
Looks like all of next week is going to be spent in the classroom, so the diary may lean towards the dry side, but I'll do my best to keep it interesting. I know that Monday we're going to cover Hours of Service; I'm going to have to find a way to entertain myself as I've already spent easily a week studying/reviewing/quizzing on the HOS on my own by engaging in... what else... the best online trucking resource available today... don't make me say it twice... The High Road Training Program's Hours of Service Regulations beginning on p. 92.
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