Thundering forward Unstoppable momentum, Another driving test. My first ever attempt at Haiku (does it show?) I was trying to be all ambiguous there, the first two lines to suggest the truck, the third to suggest it is my training to which I refer. Please yourselves. You got in here for free you know! Perhaps I won’t give up my day job just yet. So, pretentions of poetic competence aside, it is my test tomorrow. Again. I’m clocking up the frequent flyer miles. The examiners ask after my family and want me to be a best man for them. Seriously though, my instructor has bought "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins on the strength of my recommendation. He’s only twenty or so pages into it, so hopefully I’ll have passed before he’s finished. I’ve been in the cab that long that we’ve even got around to discussing religion (not, I would suggest, a topic one raises with a stranger, unless it’s a very small stranger and you are carrying a very stout stick.) The cut and thrust of theistic debate invariably ends in a gunshot. As a Buddhist I am, of course, philosophically opposed to the concept of violence and will thrash soundly anyone who disagrees. I digress from my digression. I was merely saying that I’ve been under instruction for some considerable time. And if today is anything to go by, will be for some time to come. I booked four hours training for today, to get me back in truck mode. Bloody good job too. I was terrible. I mounted about three or four pavements, went into two islands too hot, and nearly took out one of those orange plastic light things they have on the little lane-dividing islands. Hopefully that will have shocked me back into alertness for tomorrow. I can’t stress enough how not good I was today. And I’m still too close to parked vehicles. It’s the curse of the biker. I’m not picking up on it because, unlike the pavements, my brain doesn’t automatically register it as a mistake. I know I can get through a gap, so am looking for the next problem, get through the gap and don’t panic that there was only a fag-papers distance twixt truck and passed object. It takes an ashen faced instructor to point out my …, over competence, shall we say. It will be down to luck again tomorrow, I have passed both parts of the test, now I have to do them both together. *Sighs deeply* Ho hum, Tomorrow will tell. Later, Buck. PS Unbearable tension Unrelenting, infinite hour Repeat ad nauseum. That’s right, I failed again. Still, I have the reverse sussed now! I mounted another pavement, and made a few silly mistakes due to flapping. I get to do it all again on the 28th. Joy.
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General ramblings
Hi, today has been a taxing one. I crashed a pallet truck last week (they don’t have a brake, just a forward or reverse. If you want to brake you switch to reverse. I shot on to a wet trailer, put it into reverse, no grip so no brake, meaning the truck crashed to a stop and I slammed into the corner of the steering column. Just on one rib it feels like.) So that was less than fun. However after the initial staggering about like a shot hero’s death scene, it wasn’t too bad. If anything though, it seems to be getting worse. Silly things like lifting on my right hand side, bending over, sneezing or breathing deeply are to be avoided. This makes a physically demanding job all the more enjoyable. However, after me slagging off the shunters at work they finally came good. On Sunday one of them took me for a bit of a spin in one of the works trucks, showing me how to use and position it. As a bit of a bonus he took me around some of the assessment course the works examiners use. Then we went back to the yard and he showed me a few reverses and talked me through a bunch of goes. The main thing I took from it was a realisation of how to make the trailer do what I wanted in reverse. Not that I can make it work yet, but that horrible moment when the trailer is pointing one way, the cab the other, and I know where I want the trailer to go but get totally confused as to how to make it happen, should be behind me. The instructors have a trick; if one side of your trailer comes out and you want to be straight just steer towards the side you can see. Alas, when I am half way through a move and don’t want to go straight, I can waste lots of valuable room going the wrong way then having to correct the error. Not forgetting that as soon as you run out of room and have to pull forward, that is a minor fault on your test, and one of the two you are allowed. Three, as I know all too well, is a fail. It really is simple; get halfway through my move, think ‘fine, now I want the trailer to start turning right’ put left hand down. The other thing I learned, before my last test, was how to steer the trailer. You’ve got trailer turning towards your target area, but if you leave it it will carry on steering and go too far, so you have to get the cab straight behind the trailer to make it reverse in a straight line. This I was doing, but by the time I’d got behind it the trailer had steered too far. Simple again; BIG steers. I was shuffling the wheel round and taking too long to straighten up. […]
Continue readingWell, I’ve mastered the reverse!
Am I an optimist? If so then I’m super happy that I’ve cracked the reverse manoeuvre. If not then I’m really outrageously pissed off that I then went and failed on the road! This time he said I was passing too close to parked vehicles (if I’d have touched one then I would have agreed with him, as it was I was only close. If some fool can’t see a truck that is thirteen feet four inches high, the width of a lane, and the best part of sixty foot long they deserve to lose the door they are opening! Doors width gap my arse. We were going around Manchester, if I’d have stopped every time I had less than a doors width clearance I would still be on my test now.) That and my left turns. He rightly said that on a few occasions I should have hogged two lanes to get the position for a left turn, but again I think it should have been a minor fault (as opposed to a serious/fail one) as I still made each turn. I didn’t have to force anyone to give me more room, I did it all legit. I made it harder for myself, but I still did it. He reckoned I had mounted one pavement. I dispute that. As far as I’m aware I scuffed one. Not the same thing at all. So, I finally got the hang of the reverse, (though I still had to take one shunt) then blew it on the road. I seriously do think I was marked harshly, but until I pass I’ve got to do it their way. To rub salt into the wounds, as we were turning into the street off which the training place’s yard is situated, an artic coming the other way saw how tight it was so just drove over the pavement! Six wheels, deliberate! Real world. My run out today proved that it was just through being rusty. I flew through my first road test, the second I made two silly mistakes, this time I just wasn’t thinking truck. I was driving it confidently, but without the proper preparation for each arising situation. Just down to being rusty, and tired. I got about three hours sleep last night. Coming off a 2-10, trying to wind down, then trying and failing badly to get to sleep. I had terrible sleep when I did get off, and was awake before the alarm at about four thirty five. This meant a tired and rusty Bucky. I got home in a state of high dudgeon. I only had enough credit to take one more test, no more lessons, and that not for three weeks. I could only get rustier. I had to reset my credit card internet account (as when it had asked me what the third letter of my password was I went A, B, C. The third letter is C. Three times! Yes it’s the third letter of the alphabet […]
Continue readingWorried, me
Hi all, I’ve had a turn around and again with my driving. I was inconsolably gutted after the fail and the realisation that the money was running out. Then I went in to work and a couple of the shunters at work were saying they would try and sort me out with some driving and pointers if they could ( they would have to do it unofficially, but they said they would try and sort me out tomorrow if they can manage it. I’ll be sure to write about it if they do) and then one of managers asked me how I’d done, when I said I’d failed again he said he’d see our main manager to try to get me some time with the site driver trainer for officially sanctioned training! Even better! Today we had a driver backing onto the dock where I work, and he hit the guide barrier four times before he backed it in. I was a bit made up, I was thinking ‘I could have got that in from there in one shunt! They’ve given him a job, I’m a shoe-in!’ Then it all turned around again. I was talking to the union rep for the drivers and he reckons due to the stipulations of the company insurance policy they can’t employ drivers with less than two years experience. Totally bummed out. Since I’ve got home I’ve been thinking about it and there are some hints of light at the end of the tunnel. The main transport manager said to bring in my license as soon as I’d passed and they would take me out for an assessment drive. If I was any good they would be able to call on me whenever they needed a driver. Surely he knows the limits of the company insurance policy as well as anyone. Also there was that initial conversation I had way back, when I still worked nights, with that shunter. I was asking if it was worth taking the training and if DHL/Iceland employed new drivers. He said it was and they did, citing a recent case of a chap who had just passed his test (after being a welder by profession) and got his first driving job at ours, after passing the assessment drive. The story hadn’t ended well, he had a roll-cage full of stock fall on him and break his leg so they had sacked him (he was still on his probationary period). The point I was focused on was that they had given him a job with no experience. Lastly there is the ‘warehouse to wheels’ scheme. If they are taking people off the shop floor and putting them through thousands of pounds of training to get them their artic license, it seems unlikely they are then going to say ‘off you trot to some other firm for two years while you get some experience.’ Logic would suggest that they must,therefore, employ new drivers. Long and short of which is; I […]
Continue readingDammit!
Well I’m pissed off. I went for my test today. In practise I actually managed to do the reverse manoeuvre first time, no shunts. I was well made up thinking I had cracked it, my second go I totally ballsed it up, but with shunts made it in. At the test centre I totally lost it. It was going too near the barrier again so I took a shunt, but left it in a really weird position. Started to reverse and ended up in exactly the same place. So I took my final shunt, but then I was everywhere chasing the damned trailer. In the end he stopped me, said ‘you’re not going to get it in from there’ and again I’d failed before I left the test centre. This time I only accrued four driver (minor) faults, as opposed to the eleven I had last time, but picked up two serious/ fail points. I clipped a kerb whilst trying to squeeze down the left hand lane of a two lane road (stupid, stupid, stupid) and mistook a line of waiting cars for parked, so tried to overtake them all! Incredibly stupid! So, four minor errors, two stupid mistakes I shouldn’t repeat, but still not got the hang of that reverse. I can’t afford to take any more lessons (not that I show any signs of getting the hang of reversing anyway) so I’ve just put in for four more hours and a test. Which is to say you pay for four hours, in which time you have a few reverses, an hour and a half run out, then your test for an hour and then your instructor drives you back, immeasurably gutted. If I don’t pass next time (April the sixteenth) I reckon we can afford one more test, then that’s it. Until such times as Wendy gets a paid job, or I leave DHL/Iceland and risk getting a class two/ rigid driving job with more money. The downer is I’m alright at the actual driving (two silly mistakes aside). My instructor said on the first day ‘ a lot of people worry about the reverse. That’s what? Thirty five yards? It’s the other twenty one miles on the road you have to worry about.’ I beg to differ. And he was still enthusing after this fail, saying how I could throw a good reverse in, and how well I’d done on the road, etc. I can’t throw a good reverse in because I don’t know what I’m doing, and whilst instilling confidence is all good and well, without competence it is at best misplaced, at worst lethal. One bit of advice I’ve heard off several drivers is to go and get a toy artic and play with it until I get my head around the concepts involved. I’ll nip Asda in a bit see if they’ve got any, if not Toys r us. I’m tired, sweaty, and incredibly pissed off. If at first you don’t succeed, don’t take […]
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