Matt's a Truck Driver!

The great news of today is that Matt passed his Commercial Driver's License Exam!  Yup, he's a Real Big Rig Driver now. 

If you aren't familiar with the test- it's a LOT harder than the exam you took at 16 to get your license.  It starts with a complete safety inspection of the entire vehicle.  He let me help him study the  20-some pages from the text that cover this.  You check every vital inch of the truck for any signs of damage or wear.  And you must verbalize that you are "checking the pins are in place, the unit is not cracked or damaged and it is securely mounted" or whatever the details are for each component.  It really highlights how many different ways a truck can fail, when you think about it.  Matt did fine on this part, because he is actually paid to think about how trucks fail these days.  But to give you a sense of the scope, when he and I were doing this out of his book, it took about 45 minutes.  And we didn't have to walk around a truck.

Then you do the reverse testing.  Did parallel parking Mom's minivan make you nervous?  To get a CDL you have to back the truck into THREE different positions.  Directly behind you, 90 degree angle and a parallel park maneuver.  Did I mention that he had a 28-ft trailer in his test (they call it the short trailer.  Ha!)?  Matt actually spent the last week focused on this part- you loose points for every foot off the mark you are, and if you can imagine it's a little hard to know when to stop parking when the back of the truck is more than 30 feet behind you and your mirror.

If you haven't failed yet, they let you do the driving test.  It is mostly city driving, and it also took about 45 minutes.  You automatically fail if any of your 18 wheels hit a curb (or a person, or another vehicle), or you are out of gear for more than a couple seconds.  This is probably because once you miss a gear shift, it gets much harder to find the right gear to get into- there are 18 to choose from and the longer you wait, your engine changes speed and you should get a different gear.  Yikes!  Fortunately, Matt did none of these things.  He just drove the truck around town like he belonged there and a couple hours after the start, he passed.  Now he gets to go back to the Department of Licensing and get ANOTHER new drivers license.  This will be his third trip there since we moved, and I don't think he has learned to love the wait yet.  At least he has a reason to be happy in this photo.

What does this mean for Matt's professional life?  Um, nothing too wild.  It means that next time they ask him what he wants to do for professional development, he'll pick something else to work on.  Knowing a bit more about the main audience for their product seems pretty relevant for his work, and surprisingly, not many of the people he works with have their CDL.  And sometimes when they are putting miles on a truck he might be asked to drive one around a bit.  I'm hoping it also means he gets a radio call sign.

I am supposed to find a place with a beer and a burger for us to celebrate, so things are looking pretty good here.