After having been awake since 4.30 in the morning with worry and anticipation it was time to head down the road from my Luton Travel Lodge to Wincanton’s depot. This is the setting for my driver training.
Wincanton have been very kind and offered to put me through their in-house driver training with Lead Driver Trainer Alan Cracknell (see pic below).
Straight from the start I had a good feeling – people were helpful, polite and most of all chatty (I find this calms the nerves slightly).
After trying my high viz vest for size and showing the appropriate documentation (eg. drivers licence, etc) we started off with the basic round vehicle check. This included everything from knowing where the dipstick is located to how to check your lights are working. Once in the truck, Alan ran me through the important controls, such as the parking brake (very important) and the Scania range-change gearbox.
The gearbox was in fact the main talking point of the morning – Alan could not stress enough that I have to familiarise myself with it. [For those of you who are not familiar with the gearbox, it has the usual H shape with gears 1, 2, 3 and 4 – and a switch which then converts the exact same H to gears 5, 6, 7 and 8.
Doesn’t sound too bad, but it is vital that you know what gear you are in and when to change range.
The first ten minutes were spent driving slowly around the yard. Then Alan asked me if I would like to do that some more or just head out on to the open road. The open road it was!
My first range change was greeted with an almighty crunch – then Alan told me to treat the gearbox like a woman (one that I like!) – gently. After that, things went pretty well and I was just familiarising myself with the gearbox. One tea break later and Alan was running me through approaching roundabouts – not as easy as it seems. Because of the size and weight of the vehicle it is not possible to just pull-up and see how it goes – you really need to plan ahead. Not just in terms of speed, but also positioning.
While I felt I was improving slightly, there was still the occasional curb being punished or the gearbox crunched.
After lunch came the toughest bit of the day. Town driving through Bedford! As well as thinking of the gears and positioning of the truck you also had to think of pedestrians and pi**ed of car drivers. After a few attempts I was starting to get the hang of it a bit more.
Alan gave me a debriefing just before we started our trip back to the depot. There he highlighted what my strengths and weaknesses were and what it was I needed to improve on.
The drive back was relaxed and very enjoyable, and included fewer mistakes than the previous section. Back at the depot, and after a brief reversing manoeuvre, Alan ran me through the plan for tomorrow. We’ll work on the approach to roundabouts and vehicle positioning. In the afternoon….we’ll see.
My general feeling for the day was that it went well. Alan is a good teacher and is easy going which puts you at ease.
Look out for tomorrow’s blog on Day 2.