Truck Training Continues

Driver training continues. Today we returned to a certain Jackson Rd. parking lot for more training in backing up the truck. Backing up a tiller truck is tricky, as the front end driver and the tillerman have to work together and communicate. Largely, the front end driver will just "follow" the tillerman as he or she steers the back wheels. But sometimes the front end driver needs to push the trailer a certain way to get the truck where it needs to be. I got to do both today. It had been a while since I'd done any tillering (I'd been focused on driving the front end and all that comes with that). I was able to pick it back up for the most part, but still have a lot of work to do. The key is, when driving either the back and the front, to try and keep your turns as a smooth arc, and not jack-knife the truck into a 90 degree angle. Sometimes you have to get the truck into that type of position, but you'll bring it back into an arc or straight almost immediately. It's hard to describe...it's something that must be "felt." I'm looking forward to "feeling" the truck a lot more as the shifts go on.

The below picture is our truck, stuck in the Snowpacalypse of 2010.