Senior Board Member
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Manchester, NJ
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When I went thru swift school, after the first in class week, the 2nd week is all range work. We started at 6am, and went until 4pm. We spent 2 hours at each station. The first day was all about learning the clutch and shifting, and the only movement of the truck we did was go back and forth in a straight line. The second day we did that for a half of day, then went to the rotating range positions. It was basically 2 45 backing stations (In different spots), 2 Virginia curves (Paralleling), and 2 straight lines. Though there where 2 of each station, they where both radically different, plus on top of that every single truck had a different issue (on purpose) you had to work around. The worst one was the one straight line station that had a trailer that dog tracked like a mother. One of the 45s had its 5th wheel dry as a bone, and one of the Virginias had a mirror that refused to stay where you put it. Ontop of it the clutches where about as bad as they get. That first week was a lot of cone running over, grinding gears, stalling out, 'jumping' the truck, etc etc. After that week of range hell, was the week on the road, also 6am to 4pm. 4 to a truck, each person got about 2 to 3 hours drive time a day, totaling 12 hours drive time for the week. First day we went to an industrial park, that had barely any traffic of any kind, and used that for our learning to up and down shift at speed, as well as simple turning, stopping, etc. After the first day, the rest of it was all spent in and around the city of Richmond, a descent mix of hills, city driving, highway driving, etc. Really most of the time was spent going in and out of downtown Richmond!
I also never drove stick before, and believe me, you are at the advantage, you don't have bad habits to unlearn. I learned it very quick, and in fact during the swift driving test (before going to dmv), I was told I was one of the quickest to pickup shifting, and at the DMV I was told I was one of the best at shifting for a newbie. Actually, that reminds me too, after my 6 weeks out with my trainer, and I came back to my home terminal to test out to go solo, I did my road test floating, and the guy evaling me didn't even notice I was floating until he happened to look down at me feet when we where pulling back into the terminal, and said, "Damn you shift so good I didn't even realize you where floating that entire time, just make sure that in the future if you are doing a test of any kind double clutch!".
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