into the truckin' life

Graduation!

2006-06-09T08:36:00.000-06:00

Our graduation dinner was held last night and we all received our diplomas. It was a really fun night, good meal and great stories. It's funny how after 8 short weeks you can make such good friends with somebody...and that's what everyone in my class is to me now, a friend. Yes, we're all going to split up for a while but next time we see each other, it will be out on the road and we'll be getting paid for driving those big rigs! For me, I'm off to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan tomorrow(June10,2006) for company orientation, which is 5 days (paid!!) long. We're driving our trucks with our trainers back to Winnipeg next weekend, have a couple of days off and we'll be dispatched out on our first trip on Monday, June 19 2006. So, this is where my training journal ends and my driving Journal begins. I've said it many times before to anyone who would listen to me... I really can't wait to start this new career and "pound pavement" now that school is done and I'm a licensed class 1 driver!

Keep the shiny side up everyone!

Kris... a.k.a "Cowboy"

Graduating class...April17, 2006 - June 9, 2006

WOO HOO!!! I passed the testing!!

2006-06-04T22:30:00.000-06:00

Alright!! It's official, I'm a licensed truck driver. I finished up all the schools testing on Tuesday, with an 89% on the "range" test, an 88% on the road test portion and a 92% on the written exam final. I took my provincial class 1 testing on Wednesday and I didn't do so good the first time out. I miscounted the amount of pullups I took for the backing test and went 1 over. Other than that, the rest of the test went great. I retested the next day and I succeeded with no problems. So, we have a week left of school, probably just playing around and our graduation is on Thursday night. I will be flying off to company orientation Saturday night and taking a driving evaluation Sunday, and driving home with my trainer 5 days later. It's a great feeling to know I succeeded in this, and now that the stress is off, I can relax for awhile before I get on the road and start making some money!!

Kris

It is testing time!!!

2006-05-27T15:13:00.000-06:00

Well, this coming Monday...The 29th of May, I will be starting to test for the school I am in. The testing will take place over two days, Monday being all the "range" stuff... pre trip and air brake pre trip, coupling, uncoupling, straight backing, alley dock backing, serpentine backing and a slack adjustment. Tuesday will be a road test with an instructor and I'll be writing my final written exam in the afternoon. Wednesday is the one that counts...the provincial exam for my actual license. I am fairly confident for all the testing so hopefully I will be reporting back here on Wednesday evening to say it all went good and that I have my class 1 license with an authorization to do slack adjustments! Only two weeks of school to go, then it's off to orientation!

More to come...Kris

Here are a couple of pics of our training trucks. The white one is a '96 Volvo and the green one is a '00 Mack. Both pretty good trucks considering they have millions of miles on them and have been used and abused by all the students that have trained on them.

Week four

2006-05-14T22:11:00.000-06:00

Well, the time has arrived. We have finally started our in-cab portion of training!!! The first day was spent in the yard learning how to do pre trips and airbrake pre trips. The afternoon was spent bobtailing around the yard getting used to upshifting and downshifting. Tuesday, we were off onto the road pulling a 53 foot tandem trailer. Started out on a quiet stretch of four lane highway, just to get used to being on the road and to practice shifting at higher speeds. Wednesday until Friday was spent in the city, with Friday being right in the fire...Downtown. Winnipeg was definitely not designed with a 53 footer in mind...tight turns and lots of ignorant drivers that don't understand what "training vehicle" means, but we did alright. Jumped a few curbs, but it went well. The course is half over now and I will be going for the provincial class 1 road test in 2 weeks and then I'll be off for company orientation the week after. I'm really looking forward to starting work, but that is still some time away yet. Next week will be fun as well, more driving in the city and we'll do our straight backing and hopefully start into alley docking as well.

More to come...

Kris

Week three...

2006-05-06T07:28:00.000-06:00

Week three has seemed very long, but it was interesting. We covered accidents, backing and map reading/trip planning. It was our last week in class and we are in to the trucks on Monday...FINALLY!! I did learn a lot of stuff in class and now that I get to put it all to practical use I am confident it's all going to click. We will be on the "range" for the first couple of days and by Wednesday we will be doing some highway driving, then by Friday we'll be on the city streets. Hard to believe for me, but in six weeks I will be going on my first long haul trip!! I don't even know what words to use to explain how excited and happy I am that this is all coming together. I've been meaning to get some pics up here of the school and our training trucks, so I will try to do that on Monday. That's all for now.

Kris

Week two...

2006-04-25T17:41:00.000-06:00

The last two days have been a little tough on me. Yesterday we learnt all about the sliding 5th wheel and sliding tandems. I've always been a "hands on" learner and trying to learn this out of a book is difficult. For those of you not in the trucking industry, the sliding 5th wheel and sliding tandems are there for you to move the weight off of any one set of axles to another set of axles for more even distribution (all while staying in the weight limits for a particular axle, but that's another story!) This will come to me when we actually get to do it on a real truck in the yard. Today we learnt the legal maximums for each axle and legal weights for Canada and the US. Again, as I am learning very quickly through this course...two different countries, two different laws. This afternoon mad my brain bleed as we went into bridge law formula for US regulations. The company I will be going to work for runs mainly to the US, this formula will come in handy. It goes like this: Although, your truck may be legal on total weight and legal on the axles, if the wheelbase is too short, you may be overweight on a particular set of axles, be it the three sets of axles on the truck itself, the two sets of tandems(1 set on the truck, the other set on the trailer) or on all 5 axles of the truck and trailer combination. This formula will change of course based on the number of axles touching the ground. I wasn't really a star pupil in math during high school, so it took me awhile to catch on but after many examples done in class, it has started to come to me. I will have to keep practicing because I don't want to get an overweight ticket when I start driving for a mistake like that. I know it will come as second nature when I start using it often, but not knowing it now is frustrating me like crazy. I guess it all boils down to me wanting to be a great driver and a little bit of my perfectionism shining through. "I should be able to do this right...the first time" has been my way of thinking ever since I started in the working world, but It's something I have come to realize that I shouldn't think that way. Anyways....the rest of the week will be really good, we have 1 presentation a day now till the end of the week. Tomorrow is the city police coming into the class to talk to us about various traffic laws and such, Thursday is going to be a great presentation...compliance officers from transport Canada will be in. Transport Canada is the equivalent of the US' DOT. They will have many questions from the class I'm sure and Friday will be the railway police coming in to give a presentation on railway safety. Time for me to get back to studying!!

More to come...

Kris

Day four

2006-04-20T16:56:00.000-06:00

It's been a pretty intense week so far, although the class is very laid back. We've watched a whole bunch of movies, ranging from Jacknifing, accidents, brakes up to different types of transmissions. We've been taught lots this week, but as our instructor Ron says, the hardest two parts of the in-class portion are over(but memorizing it all is a different story!!), the hours of service laws and the air brake pre trip. I will have to go through the air brake pre trip many, many more times before I nail it and I am also convinced that it will become much easier when we actually do it on a tractor and trailer. We have only been using an in class "air board" so far. The air board is just an air system mounted on to the wall and I've never been the type of person to do too well in class anyways. Yesterday afternoon and this morning was all about transmissions. I didn't realize that a truck could come with so many different tranny's but I do now. When we were in at the company a month ago, we were told that after our training was done and were given the keys tour own trucks, we would have a choice between three different transmissions, a 10 or 13 speed or an auto shift. I was convinced back then that I wanted a 10 speed, as I was used to shifting the 9 speed tranny on the old Ford I used in the yard at my old job, but after watching the Eaton-Fuller videos we saw in class today, that auto shifter is looking pretty damned sweet right about now! Not good on grades I hear, so I'm sure I will stick with the 10 speed. This afternoon, we started into the theory of turns. Didn't cover much, but we'll finish it tomorrow. Just the four days that we've been in class now, I am certain that this was a good choice for me and am going to love being in that truck when the day finally comes when I'm on the road hauling freight somewhere. I can't wait!

More to come,

Kris

Day one...

2006-04-17T18:53:00.000-06:00

Well, It's finally arrived. School has started and I am so pumped!! The first half of the day was nothing thrilling, we got to introduce ourselves to our classmates(there are 16 students in total in this class), gave a brief description of our life and past career and got to meet our in class instructor. Then came the paperwork. Sign the schools contract, sign the payment agreement(yes, we still had to sign it even though, some of us have been sponsored by the company) Apply for FAST(free and secure trade) certification. All this took about 4 hours. Lunch is from 12 noon to 1300hrs. After lunch we jumped right into the course. Today was logbook day and a very brief session on Canada's and US hours of service laws. The logbooks are relatively simple to fill out, no problem there but the HOS is going to require a little more attention as Canada and the US DO NOT have the same regulations. We will be continuing tomorrow. All in all not a very exciting day but that will all change as we get more involved in the course. The instructor wanted to take it easy on us the first day I think, so as not to scare us away. Just an observation from my first day: I couldn't help but notice that many of the folks in my class are probably not going to make it in this industry. Most of these people in particular are seeing dollar signs right off the hop and from what I have been told and understand, this is definitely not the case for a year or two. A couple of the people in the class have already stated that they do not want to(or can't because of a failed drug test) cross the border and drive in the US, they don't want to run east or into the mountains...yet they still want to run OTR. I couldn't help but think to myself "what the hell do you want to do then?" I'm also pretty certain that if you were to tell this to a recruiter that your application would be on a one-way trip to the trash bin. But who knows...Maybe they will come around and see that they, like every other newbie will have to "put in their time".

More to come soon,

Kris

Waiting...

2006-04-14T07:48:00.000-06:00

April 14, 2006

It is all final, I finally start in school on Monday, April 17th. The school I will be attending is Reimer Express driver training in Winnipeg, Canada, my home town. This school was chosen for me by Yanke, the company that has hired me into their new driver training program. It was great how this all came to be, I'll explain. Back on February 17 2006, I got the dreaded lay off notice from my previous job, at a sawmill in the city which I had worked at for 6 years. I was really committed to making the change to truck driving for a few months prior to me being laid off, but financially it wasn't going to happen...Those schools are EXPENSIVE!! Anyways, I picked up a newspaper to go through the help wanted adds and low and behold, Yanke had an add in that paper for a recruiting seminar they were holding at a local hotel. At the very bottom of the add, there was one sentence that grabbed my attention. "We have limited opportunities for new driver training" This had definitely grabbed my attention, so I decided to attend the seminar. I got all the information I needed from that seminar and two days later, I had an appointment to meet with Yanke's recruiter. He went through the program with me and I was Impressed with what they had to offer, so I applied. I hadn't heard anything from them in about a month, so I figured that my application was passed on. This was not the case, a day or two after I started to think that I was passed on I got a call from the recruiter, telling me that the company would be bringing us 4 guys in to do some aptitude testing and to sign our contracts. That was a good day!! All four of us guys that were taken into the new driver program were very excited that day to say the least. Last week on the 7th of April was the last stage in me being accepted into the program, the pre-employment medical and drug test, which all went good. So, now all I have to do is wait until the first day of school on Monday and I will be on my way to doing something that I have wanted to do for a long time. At this point I know that 2 of us are starting school Monday morning, 1 of the guys failed his medical, due to extremely high blood pressure and the last guy I don't know about. I'll let you know how my first day of school went come Monday!