This is our daily view. Not many complaints…sunshine and warmth all morning and in true Colorado fashion, clouds and rain sprinkles cooling the early afternoon, and then back to sunny skies. Lessons of the day…. Buttons & Boobs!
Why one should be conscientious of clothing choices when working outside of the truck. We started the day as we usually do taking turns performing a pre-trip inspection. Grant has chosen to wear a long sleeve button down shirt with his jeans. Me….short sleeve or no sleeve! Oh, but he is all about sun protection without the slime of sunscreen! I’ll take the slime over the heat any day! After today, he might rethink his approach. His is doing the pre-trip of the back of the truck and start of the trailer. The instructor was approving of everything. Now picture this… the instructor moved to behind the rear of the tractor, getting ready to inspect the connection of the trailer to the truck looking at the fifth wheel, king pin, and ensuring the locking jaw was correctly engaged. He was waiting for Grant to join him…no Grant. So he gently reminded him, ‘ok, back here…’ still no Grant and he had no clue why. However he sensed something was up when we, the observing students, started to giggle. Somehow Grant had managed to get stuck to the truck. He was now, literally ‘one with the truck’. He had a button on his sun protecting sleeve get stuck in the holes of the steps to the cat walk. Casualty…one shirt sleeve button. Lesson – be mindful of what you wear around big trucks. Truck – 1, Grant – 0
After lunch we learned a new maneuver. Remember back to the days of learning how to drive a car when you were 15 or 16. What was the scariest thing? How about parallel parking? Now envision increasing the length by 3 to 4 times and adding a pivot point. “One with vehicle” had no issues…sorta. He was able to successfully do it with both the Peterbuilt/short trailer and the Volvo/longer trailer. There were a couple of us who were struggling. So the instructor told Grant to climb in and show us how to set up and get it done. Grant had me stand at the front and walk following him back watching the attitude of the truck/trailer and when he turned the wheels and how far. The other students with the instructors intently watched from the back and side. He totally screwed it up! The trailer was all crooked in the box, in encroached on the rear, the truck didn’t even make it all the way in. The instructor was just shaking his head. So I walked to the back where they were and let them know…’It was all about boobs! He was focus and talking to me.’ Lesson for the men….Don’t get to staring at the boobs and miss the box!
Boobs – 1, Grant – 0
