If you hate going really slowly up hills, then maybe you should have waited one more commercial break during that 3AM rerun of Knight Rider and called the number for The American Bartending Institute instead of jumping on the one for The US Trucking Academy. Seriously, right there on page one of the job description for "long-haul truck driver" it says "Must be able to spend long periods of time in a chair creeping slowly up hills."
There are plenty of lucrative career fields that do not involve spending long periods of time in a chair creeping slowly up hills: You could go to med school, learn to be a short order cook, get into the burgeoning day care field, or even run a meth lab in your kitchen, and none of these will involve staring at the ass end of another Peterbilt for 20 minutes at a stretch while ascending mountains at 49 miles an hour.
Should you find yourself ascending said mountain at 49 miles an hour, therefore, it shouldn't come as such a big shock that you have to suddenly swerve your truck into the left lane, which is full of cars doing 70+, in such a hurry that you can't even remember to use your turn signals.
If you can't stand going slowly up hills, maybe driving a truck just isn't for you? That'd be like getting a job as a paramedic if you can't stand the sight of blood. I'm just sayin'.
> Must be able to spend long periods of time in a chair creeping slowly up hills.
ReplyDeleteI think they cribbed that one from the job description of a small tech business owner in a down economy.
[ Zing! ]
In fairness, I wouldn't be surprised if that is there for good reason.
ReplyDeleteJim
w/v: rephyl. Considering how I slept last night, that is exactly what is going to happen to my coffee cup. ;-)
Where did you find hills in Indiana? (Kidding.)
ReplyDeleteGPS should have seen that comin'. Or was she scared you tell her to shut her whore mouth again?
ReplyDeleteLikewise, if you have problems remembering where your expressway exit is, and think you might have to come to a complete stop on an expressway in rush hour, and edge your way across four lanes of busy rush hour traffic in a tandem trailer, you might have been better qualified to be a riddler
ReplyDeleteAll you ever needed to know about trucks (lorries in Britain) but were too scarred to ask.....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDN6A_NttKo&feature=related
Be warned, the humor is very British.
Cheers- Rusty
Many trucks on the interstates are powered by the Rolls Canhardly engine.
ReplyDeleteRolls down one hill
Can hardly make up make up the next
Sorry, it was my grandfathers favorite joke on long car rides to Pittsburgh.
Gerry
Damn, spammed again
ReplyDeleteTruckers believe that they only get so many downshifts in their lifetime and if they exceed that number, they go to Hell.
ReplyDeleteThey actually are right but the number is 1.
So you got the Z3 up and running and went out for a test run, I assume? Don't worry, Winter's coming back in the next 48 hours, and you won't have to hit the road for awhile.
ReplyDelete"That'd be like getting a job as a paramedic if you can't stand the sight of blood. I'm just sayin'."
ReplyDeleteShit, now you tell me.
Yup, somebody got in front of the Zed again.
ReplyDeleteThey never learn.
LOL- and they DO pull out in front of you routinely... or at least they pull out in front of me a lot!
ReplyDeleteI hate it when truck drivers pull shit like that. I call those maneuvers "slow races."
ReplyDeleteAt best they only eek out a few mphs by passing the truck in front of them, and in the process they end up inconveniencing and sometimes endangering everyone behind them who actually has a power to weight ratio sufficient to make the ascent at full speed.
Couldn't pay me enough to be a tractor-trailer driver in hill country. Kinetic energy management just plain sucks going up or downhill, and there's those damned Beemer drivers gettin' up in your stuff and all that...
ReplyDeleteThen there's those runaway truck ramps to remind one that Physics is a mean mistress!
Then you might just get a rental truck that disconnects the gas pedal when the truck reaches 70mph. And you're in the left lane, passing a long line of folks doing 55,the 18-wheeler is coming down the hill at 80+, and your gas pedal just keeps dropping down to the floor.
ReplyDeleteOn a hill in Indiana. OldeForce
wv:brapp What his truck sounded like.
Something doesn't quite add up in your description. Usually, if a hill takes twenty minutes to climb I am down at least two gears and way below 49 mph, likely 30-35 mph. I am also in the rightmost of the two slow traffic lanes, and there is a fast lane for the four wheelers from which trucks are prohibited.
ReplyDeleteIf another truck was able to maintain 49 mph to pass me, he is probably empty. The whole not signalling thing is pretty serious. It's what we call driving like a four wheeler.
"The whole not signalling thing is pretty serious. It's what we call driving like a four wheeler."
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was a little surprised by that.
Truckers sometimes get caught up in the bubble like everybody else, but seeing one not signal is a rarity.
Unfortunately, this grade was only a two lane. It irked me because I was leaving a nice following distance behind the E-class Benz in front of me and certainly didn't expect it to get filled up with Kenworth all out of the blue like that. His move was unexpected enough that if he hadn't pulled it in front of an alert driver with good brakes, things might have turned out much worse...
(...and as far as time/speed/distance, I was just pulling numbers out of the air. We were still pretty low on the grade; I was running with the cruise set at eight over in a 70, and I'd estimate the rate of closure at ~20 mph...)
ReplyDeleteI gather that diesels have a wider powerband then they did 30-40 yrs ago, since they only have 9 gears now.
ReplyDeleteBack when big diesel trucks ran (5x4) duplex transmissions, if you bobbled a shift on a hill, you would have to drop several gears to get speed/gearing matched up. 19 forward gears when loaded meant you shifted a lot!
It still reminds me of a small, hopped up, two stroke bike.
I had a '83 Mazda diesel pickup, and coming up behind someone running just a few mph slower on a hill could cost me 20mph due to needing to downshift.
So, I understand why they want to pass each other. Still doesn't make me happy when they block me.
My co-workers think that I'm kinda hard on truckers when they don't signal. "Hey, that ticket's going to put points on his license. That's how he feeds his family."
ReplyDeleteYep. He's thus what we call a Professional Driver. If he can't move 80,000 lbs professionally, he gets a nice citation.