I may be wrong..and I'm not going to read the post again to find out...but I don't think anyone is questioning that Steve has done a good job.

Many others may not have been so careful.

 

Driving a tractor-trailer requires a mixture of skills, most of which can be taught between the classroom and the driver's seat. But intelligent decision-making depends more on the individual. If you're an extreme risk-taker or have a poor attitude, you're going to screw up, no matter whether you went to a truck driving school or learned on your own. As someone who started out more than 30 years without the benefit of formal training, I believe it's no more dangerous for a newbie privately trained versus a driving school graduate. Your first snow storm or extreme grade or drive through NYC rush hour traffic will test your mettle, regardless of your training. Training gives you a solid base to make good decisions from; whether you make the right call is up to the individual.

 

I was privately schooled but it was by the owner of Road Master driving school. I met him one day, told him I wanted to learn to drive, he and I hit it off and he said he would teach me at night and on the weekends.

We didn't just drive around the industrial complex like the other students in his school or the other school. We actually went out driving in the city, highway and country roads. He also has a side business selling and delivering pellets for wood burning stoves which I picked up and delivered as practice.

I'm going to tell you though. None of that made any difference the day I drove off in this MONSTER truck compared to the day cab I trained on. The first load I took I made it only about 200 miles that day because I was physically and emotionally drained from freaking out.

I mentioned this before in another post but it was about 4 months of driving before I felt comfortable. It's been 10 months now that I've been driving and I feel real good about going into any situation.

I've asked the police for help twice and they were awesome. I've pulled over numerous times and shut down when things just plain got out of hand with other drivers driving beyond there capabilities like 70mph with fog and only 20 foot visibility.

I can tell you one thing. It's real hard to learn to give up your "Right of Way" to some A-Hole 4 wheeler.

The old timer 4 wheel drivers are the best. These 80 year old guys see well in advance what you need and either back off, back up or stop short of the stop sign. For them, I make sure I roll down the window and give them the biggest wave I can.

 

My school was set up like this:

-40 hours classroom
-40 hours in the yard (backing, dropping, hooking)
-8 hours on a skid pad practising your jacknifing (you haven't lived until you've done a 360's in a truck)
-Air brake course

In addition to this was 40 hours of driving. All of my driving was done on a FLD120 Condo with 244' WB + 53' van. We did 35 of those 40 hours after work, at night, in the snow and rain, in a city of 350,000 people. I estimate that I shifted 13,000 times in that 40 hours. I was glad to be done.