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Skills Challenge - Team Driving competition |
Bob and I have a passion for driving but most of our experience was on back roads with very little traffic in the southwest corner of Kansas. The closest traffic light was 35 miles away and the closest interstate was over 150 miles in another state. I had to overcome these obstacles, gain experience, and confidence in a large vehicle. Bob had all ready dealt with this when we were with a large truck load carrier.
While driving a manual car is not a problem and I learned to drive trucks with a manual transmission I did not want to learn how to handle city driving while shifting. One of the first things we learned in expediting is that a manual transmission in a straight truck is an oddity so that took care of one of my fears.
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Slow, steady, and aware of my surroundings is how to get through this for me. |
My second fear was being "forced" to drive when I did not feel safe due to adverse weather conditions. Communication is the key as the customer and the trucking company does not want their freight damaged or to have a truck with their branding in the ditch. When the word "safety" is mentioned this gets everyone's attention.
So we buy our first Freightliner and we head off to orientation absolutely scared to death and super excited that we are starting a new chapter in our lives. I still remember getting behind the wheel of our truck for my first drive time and the feeling of pride I had. That pride is still there when I get through a complicated road construction site, thread my way through a truck stop, or get through a city that used to intimidate me. (that was most of them)
Orientation was a breeze and I took lots of notes about how to do everything, filling out paperwork, phone calls we needed to make, what to do if we could not find a customer, and what were good areas of the country for freight. We run a QUALCOMM unit and when that beeped with the first load offer my adrenalin went haywire and we were off to pick up our first load, in our first truck, and our first load as team drivers. The next part of the story is where it got interesting and it got real.