Years ago, I was working as a Safety Manager and driver trainer at (another) local company, which by now, no longer exists, and noticing all the drivers who were coming in, knew different things about the transportation industry, and about their jobs, however, none of the drivers knew, what I believed, they should know about the industry.
Obviously, not everyone comes from the same place of employment, has the same learning capabilities, nor do they have the same teachers. I mean, for sure, they've gone to school, right? Wrong. Years ago, there was no requirement to go to school. You could just know someone in the industry, get taught some lessons in shifting, read a book, and go try for your license.
Keep in mind, this is before industry standards, and before the governments stepped in, and said: "OK, that's enough. You're crashing all over the place, let's put you to school."
Let me tell you what a school is, because I went to a good one, where the instructors cared, were experienced, and treated you like military recruit. Wait, what? No really, but you'll understand what I mean in a few paragraphs.
The school layout was huge! They had a large enough in-class area, with a projector, white board, and a smart instructor, who taught you what in-class should teach you about: paperwork, permits, logbook, weights and theory behind shifting the tandems, mapping, how to search for truck stops, what to expect in the industry through lots of stories, what to carry with yourself when driving long, short or local. Sure, there was a book involved which was thicker than a bible, and he went through most of it, and told us to read the rest. There was some light testing, but most of the learning took place through stories compiled from years of driving.
Then there was the yard. HUGE! Lots of space to spread out a class of 14-16 people. There was two retired trucks, which were parked there, and served purpose to show students how to do proper pre-trips. Oh sure, there was things wrong with the trucks, some parts missing, but they served their purpose. Pre-trips were military style drilled into your head, not like boot camp, but through repetitive action. Pre-trips, by the time we all finished, were muscle memory.
Then, there were two yard trucks, which were full-size bunk units, an old Peterbilt 379, and an old Freightliner Classic. Sole purpose of these trucks was to practice backing up, and the other was to back up around large blue barrels in figure-eight, to simulate parallel parking, and backing up around obstacles.
The truck, which was designated to backing, gave drivers a chance to take turns in every direction. Blind-side backing was concentrated on, as it was the hardest to do, so after every driver-side backing, or 45 degree backing, you had to take two turns backing blind side.
Here's the catch. You did not get to jump into a road truck until you were proficient in backing up, and in shifting without grinding the yard truck's gears.
You had eight weeks to complete the course, and after you were comfortable, they booked you a road test, and you drove there, and (in my case) passed the test.
This school had it all, and it shut down approximately 5 years after I got my truck driver's license, never to be replaced in my area by anyone who cared half as much. During the eight weeks, they had industry recruiters show up and talk about the industry, about their company, and give out packages, water bottles, trinkets, whatever they could put their company name on, and promise to give you a chance. Not for me, as I never wanted to be a number, and work for a mega-carrier, so my instructor hooked me up with a local flatbed company, and this is where my career started.
Over the course of my career, I had a chance to drive flatbed, dry van, refrigerated, tank trailers, equipment floats, over-sized and over-weight loads, shunt trucks, construction trucks, liquid asphalt distributors, you name it. I wanted to try it all. I've travelled through 48 United States, without ever having a chance to go to Alaska, or obviously, Hawaii, and all of Canadian provinces, but for the last bunch of years, as I wanted to stay close to my family, I remained local, operating day-cabs, sometimes fork lifts, wheel-loaders, dozers, moose (very large forklift, and by large, I mean we would transfer an entire load from one flatbed to another in one go, no joke), plow and salt-trucks combinations for cleaning highways, and smaller units for cleaning out schools.
OK, let's go back to why I've built, and decided to re-build this site.
The drivers I was hiring, needed help. There was a lot of misconception about the industry, a lot of misinformation about the common knowledge items I believed everyone should know, and this brought me a lot of concern. So much concern, I asked, and got permission, to build a three day course at the company, to help pour some knowledge into the drivers who were coming in (and some of them veterans of the industry), so they can be informed, and do their jobs properly. We covered everything from pre-trip inspections on trucks, to pre-trips on refrigerated trailers, to documentation, to weights and tandems on all the types of equipment we had. There's a program called C-TPAT by the Homeland Security and PIP by the Canadian government, which covered inspections to make sure your truck isn't a target to throw on illegal packages, and there are inspections every driver who crosses the international border should know. We did it all, pretty much. If you were a new driver, I would even spend time with you in the yard to give you a chance to get a little better at backing before we sent you off with a trainer for a while.
I was so proud of what we were doing out there, I wanted to give others a chance. I couldn't afford to start a school, but I can try to build a place, where you can come and browse for answers, maybe learn a thing or two, and get a little better educated at least, and not get bombarded with ads jumping into your face. I'm not saying it's entirely ad free, but I can guarantee you, there will never be one that will jump up into your face that you'll have to close to read what's on the site.
Well, if you made it here, you're a reader. Congrats! No real reward, just real-talk. If you're a like-minded individual, like myself, and you wish to share a story, main page has a contact form, or feel free to hit us up on Facebook (upper corner of the menu), and send me a story, an experience, a lesson you learned. You can disclose your name, or you don't have to, just simply ask me to post it anonymously. If you're a regular, the driver's section of the website will get your own section, where people can visit your area, and read what you are saying.
Cheers, and happy surfing!
