Truck Driving School, Thursday, Week 4 (driving backwards better than forwards)

Thursday/Week 4

Back in a truck the past two days... yesterday, driving around town, on the interstate, and to my instructor's favorite rural road, a nice stretch with lazy curves, few cars, and several ascents/descents... the perfect place to practice working up and down the gears. Today: on the range, practicing backing. 

My shifting improved greatly over the previous day, but I still have a long ways to go. I depend on the tachometer, especially with the downshifting. I had many more good sequences of smooth shifting up and down through the gears, but still had several moments where my brain farted, I missed gears, and just got completely lost on which gear I needed to be in. I also may have run up too close to a stop sign on two occasions; if a truck had been making a left turn onto the road I was on, he probably wouldn't have had enough room for his trailer to get by as my nose was stuck too far out. I've got at least two more road sessions (eight hours) remaining, maybe three, so I'll have more chances to redeem myself and develop my road skills.

At this point, I'm not worried about backing at all. Today on the driving range I worked in a different truck than I'd been using; it's a Kenworth with dual stacks, making it difficult to hang your head out the window during the 90º/alley dock backing, but I tried anyway. My weakness remains the right-to-left off-set backing, but I've got four more hours on the range tomorrow and then most of the day Saturday to continue practicing. Saturday's a bonus day on the range; no one's scheduled to drive Saturday, but an instructor will be at the school anyway to hold make-up classes, so I've made it known that I'd like to show up and use the range for additional practice. Well, I'm going to be here anyway, I've got nothing else to do but prepare for my CDL exam, and the trucks and range are available. I'd be stupid not to take advantage of the opportunity. 

The instructors are really cool about letting us practice when we can, when we're not scheduled. As long as we're not keeping them there past quitting time at the end of the day, they're o.k. with us using the range. And when I say "us," I mean "me." It doesn't seem anyone else is too interested in being there except when they're on the schedule. Maybe they don't need extra work. All I know is that next Friday night or Saturday morning, I need to be on the way to my new job, CDL in hand.

"Good stuff Pete. Quick suggestion, start to use your ears to know when it's time to shift. Eventually you won't look at the tach. Keep up the great work."  -  G-Town

"Thank you G-Town; I'm trying, my ears just don't recognize the shift range yet, at least in that Peterbilt. In the Kenworth I was driving on the range today, I could pick it up easier, there was a higher-pitched whine to the engine when it wanted me to shift, but the Peterbilt must have a quieter engine."