Quote:
Originally Posted by jlc22
i am having fears of being on my own (not being able to back, puting my tandoms in th right place,) i'm sure its normal, but i was wonderin if i could get adivce how to over come my fears. Thanks!
Accept the fact that you're likely to screw something up, and commit yourself to learning from it when you do. I made some spectacular blunders when I first went solo. I could spend hours talking about my first year or so on the "Amusing Factual Stories" forum.
I've made a successful career out of this because I learned at every step of the way. One of the first and hardest things I had to learn was to READ ALL THE SIGNS. If you miss one, nobody will stop you before you go 40 miles past your turn or whatever. You have to develop instincts for what kind of road this route is likely to be, and how it's likely to go through where. You have to learn to look at a map and see everything all around, so that if you're going to Frumpstown, and you suddenly find yourself in the middle of Yiddlesburg, you realize you *must* have made a wrong turn somewhere.
As far as backing, I've been out here 10 years, and there are still times when I miss a setup, don't cut right, don't follow right, etc., and I have to pop the brakes right in front of all the people on either side giving me dirty looks to get the hell out of the way, and GO LOOK to see if I'm about to clip something. I go to the same places every day now, and there are some days when I have to spend 15 minutes backing into the same damn hole I backed into yesterday and the day before and the day before perfectly.
That was another hard learned lesson early on. They're not kidding about GOAL. After I had been solo for a few months, I started to get cocky. I had to blindside around a corner, and I knew how to hit this dock.
Oh yeah. I don't need to get out and look. Not me buddy. Jack, jack, jack, jack, yeah, this is just about right, I just need to jack it a little more, and there, perfect.
There was a very subtle, quiet popping sound.
It sounded vaguely like glass breaking, but it didn't sound like I had actually hit glass.
So I got out to look that time, and I had my ICC bumper through the rear quarter panel of a Ford Taurus. The glass broke when it popped out from the pressure of the distorted metal.
Oooooooooops.
ops:
ops:
ops:
ops:
Most new drivers have probably busted a marker light, busted a cab extender, torn the corner off a door, punched a hole in the side of the trailer, folded the feet on the landing gear on some kind of hump, etc. I did my share of these things, and maybe more than my share. Maybe I was a worse screw-up than normal, and maybe my career would have prematurely terminated if I hadn't been with a company that valued me for my outstanding customer service skills more than for my driving ability.
In the end, I don't think it really matters. I found a successful path. I learned from my many mistakes, filled my head with amusing stories, and, most importantly, I learned how to avoid repeating these mistakes.
I think learning is what most companies are looking for. If you keep doing the same thing, you're an idiot, and you need firing, but if you fold a cab extender in too tight of a jack, and that teaches you to WATCH YOUR DAMN CAB EXTENDERS, then the price of the damage you did is all part of investing in making a useful driver out of you.
Very few people can hack this crap. If you have the right personality, the right attitude, I think that will buy you all the slack you need until you get your idiot phase over with and become a real freight relocation engineering technologist.