E{emum} | Your Truck Driving School May Be Setting You Up to Fail

This episode is being split into two parts.

You're about to watch the first part of my Q and A session with Josh, the school director at Midwest Truck Driving School, talking about what you should expect when you go to a CDL program, things to look out for, things you should learn, and what you should maybe be paying attention to as you think about getting into this industry.

If you're thinking about a career in the trades and you want to know what employers actually look for, what the work is really like, and what nobody tells you before you get started, you're in the right place.

Built in the Midwest features conversations that'll help you figure out if this path is for you.

Welcome to episode 19 already of the Built in the Midwest podcast today.

I've got Josh Barron with me today, school director here at Midwest Truck Driving School.

And I'm going to be asking Josh some questions that have come up in some of our comments, some that I've seen on other schools across Reddit at different places you can.

And I've kept it anonymous, so we're not going to blast anyone about this.

But when you see questions pop up enough, then it means that people are thinking about it.

And for everyone who asks, there's probably hundreds that haven't asked that question.

Absolutely.

We're going to be addressing some of those questions today, talking through things.

We're going to keep things as honest as possible.

And with anything, there is always differences in experience.

And something I want to iterate is that we are in the Midwest and we are speaking on broad topics with regional context.

So there are some things that are, I think, applicable everywhere.

And then there are other things where it's a little bit more applicable to just where we tend to operate and where our students and like, our base tends to be.

So if you happen to check out our show and you're in a wildly different area.

Thank you.

But also some of the things might not be as what your experience has been.

So that's my little disclaimer before we get into it.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's one of those things that I've seen, I've seen a lot of different, lots of comments over the last several months about this and that.

And so something RJ brought up, like, hey, let's put on a podcast show specifically addressing everyone's questions and different questions that have come up.

So if other people have questions and I do not know what RJ is going to ask me right now, which I'm a little nervous about, but we're going to, we're Just gonna go for it.

But if anyone else has questions, put em on there, put them in the chats, RJ looks at em and maybe this is something we can do every couple of months to be able to answer these questions for everyone out there and under the context of kind of.

We're in the Midwest, the upper Midwest and our own experiences.

Like you said, everyone's got different experiences.

This is our experience.

Not that yours is wrong, but it's just different.

And so I think that's an important aspect to understand.

Yes, absolutely.

So let's just hop into it.

One of the recent kind of debates that we can, we'll call it, okay, we'll say was to make it seem civilized.

One of the sort of topics of debate was regarding double clutching.

So we put out a video recently of kind of walking through double clutching.

So first of all, is double clutching pointless?

Why do we, why is it being taught?

No, absolutely.

So that.

Actually it's funny you asked that question because that was a comment that I saw on there too and I figured this topic would come up.

So let's start off with why double clutching is important.

Double clutching is important because that is how a non synchronized manual transmission is designed to be shifted.

It's designed to be double clutched it and it's also once you understand double clutching then you understand the shift patterns.

And with a shift pattern there's a window, there's a window where that shifter will go into that gear at that speed, at that rpm.

Now if you don't understand shift windows, and that's through your double clutching training, then your idea of floating, which is what a lot of people talked about, like why don't you float gears?

And now I'm not gonna lie, I floated gears for a long time when I was on the road.

I that's pretty common.

But you still have to understand where those shift points are.

So getting back to double clutching, I went on a road test here.

This was maybe a couple years ago.

I do road tests for different companies to see how those drivers drive.

And the guy had asked me, he's a 20 year veteran driving, he's like, do you mind if I float the gears?

I said yeah, that's fine.

And we hop on the road.

And his idea of floating the gears was.

And I'm looking over, I'm like, oh my goodness.

Like that.

Like no, that's not floating the gears.

Like that grinding is metal on metal.

I was like, you're going to take out this transmission.

So I had him pull off to the side of the road.

And I was like, that's what you call floating.

I was like, you're going to take out this transmission?

He said, well, that's just what I've done.

And I'm like, yeah, you've probably gone through transmissions and clutches and everything else.

And so the idea of that being floating to that particular gentleman was just wrong.

Right?

And you talk to any diesel tech, talk to any transmission shop, and it's like, you know what, if you don't know how to double clutch properly, chances are you don't know how to float properly either.

The other aspect of this is the state test.

Now on the state test, if you float all your gears during the state test, you will fail your CDL test, right?

And so if it's none other than that, then that's really important.

And so the double clutching, it's multifaceted that way.

But double clutching is important to know how to learn to Understand where your RPMs need to be, which gear you're going in and make sure your speed, everything's got to line up.

So to people out there that don't understand a non synchronized transmission, they might think of a synchronized transmission which is your typical 5 speed or your 6 speed that you see in personal vehicles.

Not so much anymore, but they were really common back then.

Still really common in like sports cars and stuff.

They'll put a little five speed or six speed in there.

That might be where they first learned manual.

It's where they first learned manual.

And so for synchronized, yeah, you push the clutch right to the floor and you grab a gear, all right, Let the clutch out, push the clutch to the floor, grab another gear, let the clutch out, and you cannot shift a non synchronized that way.

So one, the last two inches of a clutch is what they call a clutch brake.

You only activate that when you're starting or stopping.

Other than that, you never push that clutch to the floor.

So what we call bump the clutch.

So the first part is what we call a free play.

And then just past that is going to be to engage or disengage the clutch.

And so you do just a couple inches past the free play, we're bumping that clutch.

We're not pushing to the floor, all right, but we are pushing it, we're bumping it.

And so every shift we hit it once to put a neutral, hit it again to put it in gear, hit it once to put a neutral, hit it again to put it in gear, and that's that double clutching.

Now just because you double clutch doesn't Mean it's going to go right into gear because everything's going to line up.

If you're not at the right speed or you don't have the right RPMs, or you're not going into the right gear, the transmission is going to grind and you're going to hear that, that metal on metal.

Now a lot of students ask early on because they struggle with this a lot, right?

And they're like, well, what's the whole purpose of a non synchronized?

Why do they make it so difficult to get into gear?

And I says very simple, right?

We're hauling £80,000.

Say we're going down the road and we're doing 55 miles an hour and you accidentally put that splitter down and you go into what you thought was ninth gear, which is in fact fourth gear, right?

And you, and you're able to get it into gear.

You let that clutch out, what's going to happen?

You're going to over rev the motor.

Pow.

You're going to blow up that motor, you're going to dynamite that transmission, you're going to get into an accident and it's going to be horrible.

It's going to be horrible.

It's a horrible situation, right?

And so the transmission, when the transmission grinds, that's a transmission's way of communicating with you, telling you that you are doing something wrong.

And so that's what is best about like These Eaton Fuller 10 speeds or 13 speeds or 18 speeds.

But it won't let you go into a gear that you shouldn't go into because it's protecting itself and it's also protecting the truck.

And so a lot of people don't understand that, that, that's, that's why it grinds, that's why it doesn't let you go into gears that you shouldn't go into because God forbid you were in 10th gear and you go to drop to ninth and you had that splitter down and now you're in low range and you go into fourth and you let that clutch out.

Well, you just blew up a $50,000 motor, a $20,000 transmission like that because of one little mistake.

It stops you from doing that.

And so this goes back to the non synchronized, back to the double clutching and shifting these things properly.

I hope that answers your question.

Yes, and I think there's a component here of when someone is, maybe they've been driving for a while and they're, let's say they're even being effective of floating the gear, which I will want you to Define exactly what that means.

Just for someone who doesn't.

Yeah, absolutely.

So once you understand where those shift patterns are at and what gear needs to go into, where that shifter needs to go into gear at what speed and at 1 rpm.

Now these transmissions are also designed where you can float them, which means as opposed not touching the clutch at all, but revving it up to say 1,500 RPMs, which is very common for like you're eating fuller 10 speeds with a DD15 motor and you get up to 15 RPMs, you can grab a gear which literally means you get it up there, let off the fuel and literally go into your next gear.

And that because that shift window will open up and allow you to put it right into gear.

And then, and then boom.

Get back on the throttle and continue on back up to 15 RPMs.

Grab another gear where you're not clutch,.

You're not touching the clutch.

You're not touching the clutch at all.

No.

And that's what they call floating.

You're floating those gears in and yes, if you do it properly.

Absolutely.

And the majority of veteran drivers do it and do it properly and they know what they're talking about.

And that's why people say, why don't you just float the gears?

Well one, if you don't know how to float properly, all right, you're gonna do damage to the transmission and the clutch as well as you're gonna fail your state test.

So you gotta understand those shift windows, gotta to understand your RPMs, your what gear you're trying to go into as well as is.

Does your speed line up?

Everything's got to line up, but if it doesn't line up, it's not going to go into gear and you're just going to grind on you.

So floating.

Absolutely.

There's nothing wrong with floating.

However, you got to be able to do it properly without damaging that transmission.

So a big takeaway there is once you know how to do it properly and you know the patterns, you know the RPMs, you are at a comfort level where you, you know what you need to do, which should not be a driver that's either in school or just coming out of school, you should practice doing it procedurally until you are it's subconscious.

You don't have to think about it.

You know everything that you need to hit.

So then you're not putting yourself in a bad situation.

Absolutely.

And also there are requirements for passing the test to begin with.

So why would we teach something that would guarantee they fail?

Exactly, exactly.

So it doesn't make sense.

And floating is something that you're going to learn in your trucking experience.

But what I like to tell students is you got to prove to me that you can do it right before you can do it any other way.

Right?

And you got to prove to the state and to the state tester that you can do it right before you can do it any other way.

So, you know, and that's where some of these veteran drivers that have been on the road a long time, they never had to take a state test.

They were grandfathered in.

Back in the day, the chauffeur's license was a cdl.

And back in the day, you go down to the dmv, sign your name, boom, you got a cdl.

So you never had to take a state test.

So people that say, oh, no, that's not true.

Well, well, maybe from their experience, they could be right.

But the laws and the rules when it comes to getting a CDL now is very difficult.

There's a lot that goes into it.

There's a lot of specific things that are articulated in the FMCSRs that need to be taught.

And, and we teach them accordingly.

And so people that have been in the industry for 30 years, well, guess what?

You don't know what needs to be done nowadays.

And honestly, I would challenge you to take a skills test nowadays.

A veteran driver that's been out there for 30 years, and I would guess that they would struggle with it incredibly, because for the simple fact that there's 137 points on the pre trip inspection, the yard maneuvers are difficult.

The.

The road, I mean, you know, talking about the road for just a second, you grind it at all, that's a point.

If you don't look left or look right at every single intersection, that's a point.

If you touch the white or the yellow line, that's a point.

If you're not checking your gauges every 12 to 15 seconds, that's a point.

If you're not checking your mirrors every eight to ten seconds, that's a point.

If you speed just five miles over the speed limit, that's an automatic fail.

If you go under an overpass and you don't know what that overpass said, or you don't know how high your truck is, right.

That's pointable.

And so there's a lot of these veteran guys have never gone through any of this.

And so they don't know what's on the state test, and they don't know what needs to be taught.

It's a whole nother Boulder ride, you know, compared to 15, 20, 30 years ago, which is probably some of these guys experience, it's just very different nowadays.

Yeah.

And for those that I've seen that I think where it becomes fairly quickly apparent that that is someone's experience and they haven't had to deal with it in the same way that someone just getting started with.

Which is fine.

Again your experience can differ from someone else's, but it doesn't mean, it does not dismiss the reality that new drivers have to go with now.

But something I also seen is people who have gone to CDL schools recently, maybe within a handful of years and they said well I didn't have to learn it or they said I didn't have to double clutch and I still got my cdl.

Which I will raise a point that in the last 18 months, really starting late 20, 25, for a number of reasons, 40 plus percent of CDL schools have been shut down.

Shut down.

I want to give a little context to that because that seems like some of them were only active on paper.

Some of them were out of compliance because of multiple criteria.

They weren't meeting federal regulations for training standards.

Absolutely.

So when you look at that number, it was 44% was the number that I saw.

So of 16,000 schools that were active two years ago, almost half of them are gone.

So when you look at that and you're like, does it really require that much disbelief to think that maybe if you went to one of those schools, maybe your training wasn't up to the standard that it should have been?

Exactly, exactly.

Not to put blame on the student.

Yeah.

And it's one of those things where all of our experiences are different.

And if that's the school that you went to and that's what you've learned, it's like some of these, you know, one day, two day, 3D, three day CDL programs, I want to know how they do it because for a lot of students that I train, it takes three, four days just to learn double clutching, let alone the pre trip.

And that's just to shift the truck.

That's not to turn the truck, to drive the truck to go on highways or rural areas or in town where it's a whole nother Boulder ride.

Learning how to do button hook turns and jug handle turns depending on the situation, how, how to back people up, how to change lanes safely when you got 70ft of truck and trailer and you got massive blind spots.

So it's one of those things where maybe you went To a program that was subpar, that didn't teach you these things.

That's important.

I mean, I see comments and evals all the time at the end of the class.

Like, wow, I had no idea what went into getting a cdl.

Just learning how to couple and uncouple properly.

Just learning how to load and unload heavy equipment and secure it down properly using the right chains and chain binders.

Learning how to slide tandems.

If you're getting into reefer or dry van, you're sliding tandems all the time.

Those tandems cannot be forward.

When you back up into that dock, they have to be all the way to the rear.

So you pull into your empty trailer, into a manufacturing plan, you've got to slide those tams through.

You're doing that all the time.

And that's really important to know.

Just the bridge law, understanding your weights and what they are.

I mean, a lot of new drivers get out there and they get these overweight tickets.

And they're not overweight via their gross, they're overweight axle weight, which means they don't know how to slide tandems.

They don't know how to do the calculation to make sure you have no more than £12,000 on your steers, £34,000 on your drives, £34,000 on your trailer tandems.

And say you're at £40,000 on your trailer tandems.

What do you need to do?

Okay, well, we got to move those axles back.

All right?

Moving them back is going to put more of that weight on the drives.

Those are really important aspects to understand.

And legally, there's massive ramifications.

You get into a dot scale and you're overweight.

Those are massive fines that could have been prevented if you were just educated properly when it comes to this industry.

Now, who's liable to that?

Does that get billed to the company or to the driver?

It's officer's discretion, which is a beautiful thing.

You know what I mean?

So you don't know if he wants to build a company, he'll build a company on that.

Or if he wants to build a driver, he'll build a driver on that.

However, every company I've worked for, if they build a company, who's responsible.

Per the company policy, overweight tickets are the driver's responsibility.

So regardless, you know, the circle goes back to you.

And at the end of the day, as the driver, you're responsible for that truck and trailer.

You're responsible to make sure that that weight is evenly distributed on that truck and Trailer, you're responsible for that truck and trailer going down the road, including the fines, tickets violations that you get with will go on your personal CSA score, which could make a big difference in what jobs you can get later on down the line.

Okay, so I don't want to get overly in the rabbit hole of the technical specs of sliding tandems and that sort of thing, but from a practical, to make this as visual as possible, what are we actually talking about?

Someone has to adjust weight for maybe someone who doesn't have a clue even what we're talking about here.

Okay.

All right.

You've got stuff on a trailer.

You need to position it.

So what?

Okay, so for what?

So dry van.

Dry van.

Box trailers are the most common type of trailers out there.

You travel on the road, it's better.

Part of 75 to 80% of the trailers that you see are dry van, right?

Those are 53ft long, swinging doors, 102 inches wide, blah, blah, blah.

And so your tandems is what we call a bogey assembly, but it's your rear axles, right?

You can slide those forward or back.

And so anytime you pick up a load, the majority of loads, I want to say the majority, but a lot of, like, manufacturing plants will have a scale right there where you scale that load.

If there's not a scale right there, you got to go to typically, in my experience, cat scales, which are at the majority of truck stops.

So that's why we go to Peshtigo with all the students and go to the Catskill, and we go across the Catskill, and then we weigh our truck and trailer.

Now, in real life, that's exactly what you do.

You weigh your truck and trailer, and then you get a scale slip.

And on that scale slip, you got your gross, which is everything.

And then you have your axle weight.

And so axle weight, you have your steers, your drives, and your trailer tandems.

There's three boxes on there.

And now your steers.

That number can't be over £12,000.

So that's kind of the front of the trailer.

Yep.

No, that's your steer tires.

Your steer tires.

Yeah, the front of the truck.

And then you have your drives, which is your drive tires.

And that's going to be no more than £34,000.

And then your trailer tandems no more than £34,000.

And so when you pick up that load, you have to what we call scale out, which simply means we got to make sure that those numbers are good.

Plus, we're not over £80,000.

Typically, manufacturers are pretty good.

They're going to load you out, you know, 77, 78, 79,000 pounds.

Every once in a while, they might make a mistake and put two extra rolls of paper on.

All right?

Which puts you at £84,000.

And, and at that point, you got to turn that truck around, go back to the manufacturing plant and say, hey, you got to take two rolls off.

You overloaded me, right?

It's rare, but I've seen it happen.

And so say we get there and it's never going to be right on, ever.

So say we're at, you know, 38,000 pounds on our, on our trailer tandems.

Okay, so now we got, if we go across a DOT scale, all right.

With a DOT officer, we're going to get a 4,000 pound overweight ticket.

And that can range anywhere from, know, 5 cents a pound to a dollar a pound.

I mean, it's, it's discretionary.

And so, so we got that £4,000.

Now we want to take that £4,000 and we want to put it on the drives.

How do we do that?

We move our tandems back.

And typically if the holes are, are closer together, you get about 250 pounds per hole.

If they're a little bit farther apart, you get about 500 pounds per hole.

So say we move those tandems back eight holes and it's going to put that 4,000 pounds onto the drives.

And now the drives are going to be right near 33, 34, and the TAMs are going to be right near 33, 34, and our steer is going to be 12.

So that's an important aspect for drivers to understand on the road, because like those overweight tickets, I mean, I've seen 10, 15, $20,000 overweight tickets before because a driver did something stupid.

And these are preventable stuff.

You just got to know what you're allowed to be and scale out accordingly.

So not only avoiding the tickets, but also just from.

Not to go into a physics lesson, but there's also just the distribution of weight, of going in a straight line.

You might be okay, but if you're wildly uneven in weight distribution, then bad stuff can happen.

Absolutely.

You can lose control of that vehicle.

Actually, this funny you say that this was the other day.

There was a guy hauling a side by side on just a little trailer.

And that trailer was all over the road, right.

And he pulled off the side of the road.

I happened to be behind the guy and I pulled behind.

I was like, hey.

I was like, you need to back your Side by side.

What are you talking about?

I was like, you don't have any tongue weight.

You don't have any tongue weight.

All your weight's on the, on the axles.

There's no tongue weight.

I was like, you need a minimum 10% tongue weight.

So no one ever told me that.

I was like, well, you're gonna end up flipping over your trailer and your side by side is gonna be falling off.

I was like, you know, the motors on a lot of side by sides are near the back, the center back.

I was like, you pulled it on, you gotta back it on.

All right.

That way you're getting that minimum 10% tongue weight and, and you're not going to have that trailer all over the place.

He's like, man, thanks so much.

So you're exactly right to maintain control of the trailer and the load, it's got to be distributed evenly.

So in the spirit of disaster prevention, something else that kind of comes up.

And we've talked about this before, but an aspect of training and driving is the pre trip.

And just categorically it's meant to.

It's pre trip inspector checking over everything to make sure you are safe to drive and you know, kind of giving your full vehicle and trailer an inspection.

Absolutely.

So we know that pre trips are important.

We know that you have to get it right to pass a test.

Like that's regardless of how you feel about it, you got to do it the way that you're going to be tested just to get your cdl.

You just have to do it.

You don't have to like it, you have to do it.

And then you fall into some rhythm as, you know, working professional of how extreme or, you know, how thorough do you go, depending on your app from a standpoint of those who have maybe cut corners or who have they didn't check something, they should have.

What have you seen happen that an effective pre trip could have prevented?

Oh, my God.

There's so many different things and there's a few stories that come to mind.

But going back to why you do a pre trip, I think is important.

CMVs are the heaviest vehicles on the road.

There's nothing heavier out there.

They're the heaviest vehicles on the road.

And so the heaviest vehicles on the road and interstate Commerce, we're at £80,000.

Michigan's a heavy haul state, so we can haul up to £164,000.

Now to put that in perspective, how heavy is your personal vehicle?

I'll put you on the spot for a second.

Three, four, thousand pounds, three, four thousand pounds.

So you're looking at putting 30, 40, 50 of your personal vehicles, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Stacking them all up on top of each other and putting you behind the wheel of that combination vehicle.

So because of that, you.

You gotta make sure that everything is where it needs to be.

And now I will tell you, there is a difference between the DOT FMCSA pre trip inspection and the inspection that you would do at a trucking company.

Right?

But the dotfmcsa pre trip inspection, which is about 137 items, all right, that is designed to make sure you understand what all these components are.

You have to know what leaf springs are and U bolts and brake chambers and hoses and slack adjusters.

You gotta know where all the fluids are at.

You gotta understand, you know, air hoses and charge air cooler hoses and radiator hoses.

And it makes sense because as a driver, your responsibility for the maintenance of your truck is to recognize defects.

Right?

Now, a lot of that stuff you're not fixing, per se.

Right.

Easy stuff like maybe glad hand seals and lights and headlights and stuff.

Yeah.

But the big maintenance stuff, you gotta be able to recognize defects.

When you have a breakdown and something's going on, you should be able to look underneath the truck and say, well, there's a pile of oil underneath the truck.

I think we got an oil leak, right?

Sure.

Or if it's riding a little rough and you get out and you see a broken leaf spring, well, there you go.

There's your problem.

And so a driver's responsibility is to be able to recognize those defects before that defect becomes an imminent danger to you or others on the road.

So one of the things that I just saw a handful of months back, the students were out doing a pre trip and they come back and say, josh, I think there's something wrong with this tire here.

It's just full of oil.

And I go out there, it was a steer tire.

And the race, which is your bearing, had blown out on the inside and the whole thing was just covered in oil.

And they said, well, is that a problem?

I was like, yeah, that's why we do a pre trip, guys.

And I was like, so say, for instance, we decided not to do anything about that, or we didn't see that.

Right.

And we drove down the road.

Well, now that bearing, all right, would not get the proper lubrication that it needs.

And it's going to heat up.

It's going to get hotter and hotter and hotter, and it's eventually going to start a fire and it's going to burn down our truck.

Right.

So.

And there's a video that I'll share with you that actually shows that it was on a trailer tandem.

Trailer tandems.

That literally one of the axles, one of the seals, hub seals or axle seals in this case were broken and sprayed out.

All the oil, axle heated up to the point where it started on fire.

All right, so that's a big problem.

And this is another story.

This was several months ago.

Student goes out, we do our pre trip as we do every single day.

He says this tire is completely flat.

Right.

And I asked him like, what would happen if we drove this truck and trailer down the road and it was on a trailer tandem.

Like I don't know what would happen.

Well, it's a floppy piece of rubber that's going down the road.

I was like, it's going to start breaking apart.

You have big chunks, you know, 20, 30, 40 pound chunks of rubber flying could go through someone's windshield.

It can cause an accident.

I was like, and now we're liable because it's on our truck.

But because you found this defect, because we recognized it, now we can bring it over to the maintenance shop, get it fixed and we have nothing to worry about.

So, you know, the biggest reason is for your own safety.

I mean, the pre trip.

Yes.

It's federally mandated.

Legally you have to do a pre trip.

Yes.

And they will get you if you don't do your pre trip.

But more importantly, like, it's just, don't you want your truck and trailer safe?

Going down the road isn't important that you don't have tires flopping around or major oil leaks or you know what I mean?

So it's one of those things that common sense tells us.

Yeah, it's probably important to check out and do a pre trip inspection on the heaviest vehicles that run on our roadways.

That's common sense.

That just makes sense.

It would seem so.

So there is probably some divide of where people tend to fall on this.

And in a couple different areas of those who are, they're in it every day.

They're working, they're feeling the pressures of their logs and just the expectations placed on them in the modern role of truckers.

And I think a lot of them tend to get a little persnickety on discussions like this.

Like, well, here's what you should do, but here's the reality of what I can make happen or kind of the.

They won't call it cutting corners usually, but then I'm.

I can do it in 10 minutes, get on the road and go.

And where I want to kind of lead with this is we had also had a clip where you mentioned just like, take your time, don't be in a rush, which is one of those sort of statements that is general.

And people might be like, ah, like that would be nice if I didn't have to rush.

But I've got to hit, you know, I have expectations that I need deadlines.

And different things and I get it.

Like, I need to be places on time and like, so I've got to do what I've got to do.

And again, regional context.

So we live in a place that is not.

We're not on the New Jersey Turnpike, we're not in LA traffic, we're not in.

So that's your life in like, mazel tov.

But I think the broader lesson here is not to just hit parables of go smooth, to go fast or, you know, that sort of thing, because we've said that before.

But where is sort of the balance line of how do you, how do you balance the pressure of your shippers and your dispatch of like, all right, you gotta make this happen.

Yeah, this is what we expect of you.

And everything's competitive, so you've gotta meet it.

We'll find someone who can.

Absolutely, absolutely.

No, that's a good question.

Because there is a lot of pressure out there.

A lot of pressure.

Now you have your dispatchers beating down your throat.

This load's got to get there at this time.

You got to go, go, go, go, go.

You have maintenance, you know, beating down your throat.

Hey, you know, you got to get that truck back to the shop.

We got it.

We got a PM that's doing it.

Or an annual inspection.

Right?

That's a, that's part of a DOT inspection that they check your annual.

If it's not up to date, I'm going to get.

Put that truck out of service.

Right.

And so there's a lot of your logbook, Right.

Nowadays everyone's on electronic logging devices, so there's no flexibility in your logs.

Once you start your day, you got to start and you got to go.

So I understand the problem pressure there.

And what I like to say is we're not talking about, you know, an hour or a half hour here, all right?

We're talking about 10 to 15 minutes.

Now you can do a good Pre trip in 10 to 15 minutes.

Right.

And now are you doing a dot FMCSA pre trip inspection?

No.

All right.

No company on the planet does that.

All right?

But every company does a pre trip.

And so typically speaking, typically speaking, a lot of companies that I've worked for, lights, tires, fluids, and taking a good walk around the truck, right?

That's what it comes down to.

And so what I would do in the morning, and here's the other thing, is your truck in the morning is out of air.

It takes five to 10 minutes to build up your air pressure in your truck, right?

So what I like to do is start up the truck, push in the red valve, keep the yellow valve out.

And this is after I've checked the fluids.

And now I'm gonna check my lights, turn all our lights on, take a walk around, engage my johnny bar to check my brake lights on the back of my truck, back of my trailer.

As I'm walking around, I'm listening, I'm listening for air leaks, all right?

I'm looking for broken leaf springs or leaf spring mounts.

I'm looking for broken frames, whatever.

I mean, those are pretty obvious, right?

And I'm thumping my tires all the way around, checking my lights, tires, fluids, and anything major all the way around.

Literally 10, 15 minutes, right?

And honestly, from a. I don't know if it's paranoia, right, but it's like there's a really good feeling when you get behind the wheel.

Sorry.

Ah.

I know my truck and trailer is good.

And now I can hit the road and have that.

Like people that don't do a pre trip and just start the truck and go.

I'll tell you what, like you are.

You.

You are a lot riskier than I think.

You think I'm a risky person.

Now those people, all right, you are living on the edge because how do you know someone didn't pull your pin in the middle of the night, which happens once in a while?

You know, truckers will do that, unfortunately.

How do you know that you didn't run over a nail or a screw the day before?

And that tire's completely flat now because it was just the smallest leak last night, but overnight, all your air leaked out of that tire.

That happens.

How do you know that your truck didn't bust an oil leak the day before and you didn't get out of the truck and see the 5 gallons of oil on the ground?

You go to start that truck with 5 gallons oil low, you're going to blow it up right there in the parking lot.

And I've seen that happen before.

Truck will blow up without oil.

You gotta have oil.

Like that's something you gotta check so if people actually do that, like, wow, like you are, you are a risk taker, and you're taking a lot more risk than I will when I can just take as that truck's building up air, take 10, 15 minutes and take a walk around that truck, thump the tires, check the lights.

Not to mention, you get to a DOT scale and you have a bad tire or your brake lights aren't working, or a.

That's an out of service.

And without services.

An out of service, per DOT definition, is an imminent danger to yourself or others on the road.

So if you don't have brake lights, that's a big deal.

All right?

You're gonna put out a service, and now you have to get a service truck to come out.

You cannot move that truck until that's fixed.

So you could be waiting hours, right?

You could put out a service.

You call a service truck, they're not gonna come right out.

It could be a couple hours, but it's more likely five, six, seven hours.

And now you're waiting there.

So did it save you any time?

And so that happens one time and you're waiting there for six hours.

How many pre trips could you have done if your average pre trip is 10 to 15 minutes?

A lot.

A lot.

You know, and so at the end of the day, you're not saving time, not doing a pre trip.

And honestly, you're taking a risk to yourself and others on the road.

And I think people got to understand and recognize that who's on the road, Your wife's on the road, your family's on the road, your grandparents are on the road, your kids are on the road.

Right.

Would your son or daughter like the idea that their dad is.

Is driving their semi truck without doing a pre trip, knowing that something could have happened?

I mean, I don't know about you, but it's not worth it to me.

And so I think it's important.

I think that perspective, I think, is important for people to understand.

10 To 15 minutes isn't a lot of time when it can literally save you significantly.

And like I said, going back to that hub seal, like I said, we'll see if we can put that video on there of literally the tandems engrossed into flames because that driver didn't do a pre trip and that axle seal had blown out.

Yeah.

So I think this really boils down to when we share stuff.

We're speaking to people who are not already established drivers.

We're talking to people early in their careers primarily, and everyone else.

Again, thanks for Being here.

But for those that they don't have that years of experience, muscle memory, where they can do a quick look around and they know what they're looking for.

They're just in any new endeavor and new experience, you have to go through it a little bit.

You know, you've got to run through a process, you know, checkbox by checkbox so you know what to look for, because you don't know it just at a glance.

No, it's same with the shifting thing.

Like, if you don't know your patterns, your RPMs, your timing, you're going to freak yourself out because you don't know, you don't have it naturally ingrained yet.

So you've got to learn it the textbook route so then you can develop the competence and proficiency to be able to do it a little bit quicker.

Because that's the graduation of.

Exactly.

And I want to clarify on that, because you brought up a really good point is the average student that comes to the school, their pre trip is one hour long.

When they do a dotf is one hour long.

Because you're exactly right.

They don't know exactly what to look for.

So they're.

They're learning.

Okay, we have our leaf springs.

Okay, this is what our check in our leaf springs for.

We have our leaf spring mounts.

This is what we're checking our leaf spring mounts for.

We got our different fluids.

And if our fluids are, if our oil is low, you don't fill the oil on a semi truck where you check it, there's a different place to fill it.

So you got to know, all right, if it's low, I'm going to add here.

Looking at a brake chamber and pulling slack adjusters, all right?

Making sure there's no more than one inch of play in your slack adjusters.

And that ensures that your brakes are adjusted properly.

What does that look like?

How do I do that?

Right?

Just on the coupling system.

There's 10 things on the coupling system that you have to check on your pre trip.

And a lot of people, these are very specific things and they all have specific terms.

So for instance, you have your apron right up top.

You have your kingpin.

You've got your locking jaws locked around the shank of the kingpin.

You got your fifth wheel skid plate.

Is it freshly greased?

Is it properly greased?

You have your platform, you have your mounting bolts.

You are just sliding fifth wheel pins.

All this stuff that is foreign to a lot of people, right?

And so they got to find it, understand it.

What does that do what does that look like?

And then what defects am I checking that for?

Yeah, 100%.

So I don't want to get too into the.

Yeah.

Some of this is going to be like, I have no idea what you're talking about.

You're just saying, you're saying words that sound made up.

But so one of the things that is very, very common, especially on Reddit, and I've seen it a number of times on like on YouTube, is people will kind of, they'll say like CDL school is really.

They'll vary from like it's a scam entirely.

Which.

Okay.

To you're not really going to learn anything beyond just passing the test.

And you're really going to learn most of what you need to know actually doing the job, which I mean, let's maybe give a little bit of some of those spectators there do of like, I mean, to an agree.

You can't learn a full career in four weeks.

No, no, absolutely not.

It's to get started.

So from the standpoint of what can you expect to like when you show up to a CDL school here in general, what should you expect that you're going to learn there?

And then what should you kind of expect it's gonna come later.

Yeah.

So going back to kind of some of those individuals that said that, that's unfortunate.

That's unfortunate because that would be.

You've heard the term CDL puppy mill, right.

That's just bare bones, just teaching the test, nothing else.

And then boom, you end up with your cdl, but you don't know anything.

Right.

And so it's unfortunate that people have that experience and so kind of going back to that point, don't just go with any CDL school.

Do your research.

And so if you go with one of those schools and then you're mad because, oh, I just learned the test and nothing else.

You didn't do your research.

You didn't actually go on Google and check out their reviews, Check out the program.

What does it entail?

Pick up the phone and call them and say, what is part of your curriculum?

I want to know, is it just the CDL test or is it more?

And so talking about what else it should be.

Now, granted it's only a month long, but it's a month long.

It's like a semester course that's condensed into a month and we're talking eight hours a day, five days a week over the course of a month.

So you can learn a lot with that.

Right.

You know, right on from.

Of Course the basics like the pre trip inspection, the yard maneuvers and the road and the yard maneuvers.

You should be learning eight different yard maneuvers minimum.

All right?

So you should be learning the alley dock, you should be learning the blindside alley dock.

You should be learning the parallel park, the straight line back, the forward stop, the reverse offset, the 45.

You should be learning all these things, right?

And so ask those questions, am I going to learn this stuff?

Because backing up, I was just at a conference, this was last fall in Phoenix, Arizona.

And Warner Enterprises got up there and they said 80% of the accidents they have with new hires is backing up, right?

So you gotta spend a lot of time backing up these trucks and trailers.

And the reason for that, because there's no rearview mirror, there's no backup camera.

You just have your left and right outside mirrors and you have blind spots all over the place.

So you gotta spend a lot of time backing this stuff up and understanding how this stuff works.

So you know the other things that would be kind of in that curriculum, that is a strong foundation, right?

Truck driving school should create a strong foundation.

And that's a really important aspect of it.

But pulling different types of trailers, like, you know, if you're just pulling a flatbed behind you, well, you can see a lot more behind you.

Pulling a flatbed as opposed to a drive in, drive in, have massive blind spots.

Pulling a drive in makes you a much better driver because you have much bigger blind spots.

Are you learning how to slide tandems?

Are you learning how to thump the tires and actually listen?

And I know on the state test we gotta say check em with a gauge, but the fact of the matter is everyone thumps their tires.

But learning what sound are you listening for, right?

You actually have to tune your ears.

And it's simple.

And I'll give you the tip here, I'll give you some tips on this, rj, but we're looking for a ringing, dinging, tinging sound, right?

If you hear a ting ding, that's what we're looking for.

If you hear a thud or a deeper sound that's under inflated every time and just 20 or 30 psi in a tire, I could pick it up easily.

But those are the things that you're teaching to what am I listening for, right?

What am I listening for?

What does it sound like when we're pulling slack adjusters, right?

What does that look like?

How do I measure that, right?

Walking around the truck?

That's why I like to have my red valve pushed in when I do my pre trip Because I'm listening, right?

You hear an air leak, it's kind of obvious.

But if you're not trained to listen for that and you think that's normal, that's a problem.

Because that's an air leak somewhere and that needs to at least be written up and get fixed at some point in time, depending how bad the air leak is.

And so I think that's really important that a truck driving school shouldn't just prepare you for the state test, but it should prepare you and give you a solid foundation for the road.

That's why we go to, we have, we do, we do long trips where we go to.

That's where I was literally all day yesterday.

I was in Marquette and we, we did roundabout day and some of the students like, oh, why do we gotta go all the way up there?

I was like, because they have single lane roundabouts, they got double lane roundabouts, they have roundabouts with gores, roundabouts without gors.

How do you navigate a roundabout?

What does it look like?

If you have a double lane roundabout without gores, you need to straddle the center line.

You literally need to block cars from coming in on the inside of the outside of you.

And this literally happened yesterday.

There was this person that tried to squeeze on the inside.

I was like, yeah, block them center, right in the middle.

Straddle that center line.

So they can't get on the inside of the outside because if you let them get in, we're going to run over their front end.

Right?

And granted, trucks have the right of way inside of a roundabout, but as, as professional drivers, we have to be able to mitigate as much as possible and prevent these accidents as much as possible.

And, and depending on how you drive is a part of that.

There was a turn yesterday, actually, I might be able to pull the video footage for you because it's pretty good.

It was over in Perkins.

We're making a right hand turn and this lady comes up like 15ft in front of the stop line.

Now stop lines are there and designed and a lot of times they're pulled back to allow for trucks to be able to make wide turns.

If you're stopping in front of the stop line, one, you gotta go back to driver's ed.

Two, you don't know how to drive, or three, you're just being reckless.

It's one of them.

I don't know which one it is, right.

And so literally what I told the student, I was like.

And there is a power pole right on the corner.

I was like, if you take this corner sharp and miss this car.

I was like, we're going to run over that power pole, and we're going to.

And we're going to take out the power in Perkins completely.

I'm not kidding.

And I was like.

Or I was like, we can use this as a learning lesson, and we can teach this four wheeler how they should have driven and how stop lines are important.

So I said, bring the truck and.

And pull right up in front of the car.

Right square in front.

And so we turned, and the lady puts her.

Puts her arms up.

I put my arms up, and I said, you need to back up.

You need to learn how to drive.

There's the stop line.

It's 15ft behind you.

You got to be behind it.

All right?

You stop at or before the stop lane.

Those are basic rules of the road.

I learned this when I was 14 and eight months when I could take driver's ed.

And so she backed up and we were able to get through.

I'll see if I can pull that video for you.

But it's one of those things where you have to have the wherewithal to one, to know how to do that, to two, not panic and cut that truck early and run over that power pole.

So, you know, that's where going back to the slowest.

Smooth, and smooth is fast.

I was like, we gotta think about this.

All right?

Don't rush it.

All right?

Think about it.

And yes.

Could I have waived her to go?

Could have done that, perhaps.

I don't like to do that, because when you waive anybody to go now you're taking on some responsibility.

And so I use it as a learning lesson, a great teaching lesson for the student on what to do, as well as, hopefully I taught her a thing or two about how to drive, because clearly, maybe she didn't go through driver's ed or she maybe needs to take a refresher course.

Yeah.

Well, I think there should probably be an emphasis in driver's ed of how I remember points of it.

But even just the fact, like, semis do have the right of way in roundabouts, like, don't.

Just don't.

Don't try it.

It's not worth it.

Or behind a semi.

Don't get next to a semi in a roundabout.

No.

If bad things, bad things happen.

There's nowhere to go.

Bad things will happen.

There isn't.

There isn't.

It's gonna save you five seconds.

Just let them go.

But two things I want to call out.

One, on the notion of blind Spots and like, no rear view camera, no rear view mirror.

There could be scenarios where people go to a CDL school and they have those things.

They have the amenities, they've got the backing cameras, they've got automatic trucks.

They think, this is easy, I can see where I'm going.

But then you get hired and let's say you don't even have the automatic restriction.

Maybe you got it, you tested enough and you got it, but you got kind of comfortable and now you're stuck and you don't know.

You don't know what to do and you're not accustomed to it.

And the whole point of why the kind of philosophy of the way we approach things, what any school in any discipline should do, is you should prepare for when you are the least equipped.

Like, you should never plan for the amenities.

No.

I remember the bitterness of feeling like, oh, you won't always have a calculator on you.

You need to learn how to do it on paper in your head.

There's some truth to that across any sort of skill that you're trying to be able to develop proficiently.

You need to be able to do it in the hardest circumstances that you're going to face.

And then if you have the tools to make it easier, amazing.

But you can't be able to.

You have to be able to do it without it.

Absolutely.

So interesting story here.

This literally just talking to a driver's ed instructor handful of weeks back, and check this out.

So I went through driver's ed and spent a lot of time in her mom's car.

And she got her own car now, right?

And she said she was driving, they were doing.

She was doing a lane change and turn on her turn signal, checked the mirror and merged right into the person next to her.

And driver instructor asked, why, you know, why did that happen?

Now she's got a.

You know, at 16, they really throw the book at you when you get into an accident.

And she had asked her why, what.

What had happened there?

What, what happened?

And she's like, well, the light wasn't on the light.

While her old car that she got doesn't have the blind spot detector with the light.

The light wasn't on the mirror, the light wasn't on.

And so she never looked over her shoulder to check the car that was right there and merged right into that car.

And I'm like.

So going back to your point, it's like you don't know what technology you're going to have on these trucks.

Some of them are really updated have great.

Have that telematics and AI powered stuff.

Great.

A lot of them don't.

Right.

And this goes to personal vehicles as well.

But she was so used to driving the driver's ed car and her mom's car that had that blind spot detector with the little light.

Well, her old car that her parents bought for, or she bought, whatever it was, didn't have that light merged into another car because she didn't realize that she had to look over her shoulder to check her blind spot.

And so it's one of those things like, yeah, you gotta be able to do it kind of the analog way before you can do it the digital way.

Right.

Even if you have those sensors, I think, I mean, they can fail.

They can short out.

Absolutely.

So I think each driver really needs to aim to be the least fallible system in the vehicle.

Absolutely.

And that just comes from, you know, repetition.

It's not the sexiest, but.

No, no, but it's where safety comes from.

But like you said, it's like, you got to learn all of it.

You got to learn all of it and be proficient in all of it, because one, you don't know if those systems are always going to work, and two, you might not have those systems at all.

And so it's like the automatic parallel park.

And I've seen videos where people put it on and then it gets, like, jammed up and then they stop and they're like, ah.

And then they have to finish it and they don't know what to do.

And it's like, no, you got to know how to parallel park.

You got to.

And for the simple fact, maybe you never parallel park, because I've seen this before.

Well, I've never parallel park day in my life.

So.

You've never backed up before?

Yeah.

I don't know why people struggle with parallel.

Like, I'm like, yeah, it's like, you got to know how to back up.

Right?

You got to know.

And yeah, okay.

The parallel park.

Okay.

You know, but regardless, do you.

Do you disagree that you shouldn't know how to back up?

Is that because that's what it comes down to?

Yeah.

All right, all right.

I think any one of us can make a strong point that, yes, it's.

It's good that you know how to back up your vehicle.

That's not a bad thing.

That's not.

You should know how to back up safely.

So if you can back out of a parking space or back into a parking space, it's just that maneuver in one go, that's Pretty much it.

People that take 49 point turns to get into a parking space.

Exactly.

And then still don't leave the person in front of them or behind them room.

So it's funny because I'm just thinking about this, but the first day of truck driving school, everybody.

Everybody pulls.

Pulls right into the parking spot.

And I said, okay, from here on out, right?

If when you come to the school, you back up into your parking spot and guy, oh, I don't.

I don't want to back up.

I was like, you're learning how to drive truck.

You're going to back up every day.

All right.

How do you think you get to a dock?

You have to back up to every single dock.

And just backing up your personal vehicle helps.

And I was like, the rear view mirror, right?

Turn it up, you have a backup camera.

Tape it off.

Don't look at it.

Just use your left and right outside mirrors.

And so they all go to lunch, and they all come back, and there's always two or three vehicles, you know, out of 25 that pulled in.

And I said, hey, there's a Toyota Camry out there.

All right, either you go out there and back it up, otherwise I'm gonna tow the dang thing, all right?

And I'm joking, of course, but not really, you know?

And sure enough, that person goes out there, pulls that out, and backs into their parking spot.

But.

And it's one of those things.

And I said, from here on out, any place you go, you go to Walmart, you go to meijer, you go to menards, you go to Lowe's, you go to BUC EE's, whatever, I don't care.

You back up into your parking spot, because I want you to develop that muscle memory and those habits of putting the vehicle in reverse, looking at the left and right outside mirrors and knowing what you're looking at.

Because people don't use that stuff anymore.

And they need to.

Because a semi truck, both semi trucks and trailers don't have backup cameras.

They don't have rearview mirrors.

You have your left and right west coast mirrors, your flat mirrors.

You got to be able to utilize those to back up that truck and trailer safely.

Yeah, yeah.

Developing that awareness of don't, hey, don't run people over.

Be aware of what's moving around you.

Exactly.

It's huge.