“OK, kiddo. This is kindergarten.”
“Huh?”
“Time to put your learner’s permit to use.”
“Really? Now?”
“Good a time as any. Swap seats with me.”
Hugh moved out of his driver’s seat, and Jenny slid in. Her feet dangled off of the floor.
Hugh laughed. “You’re going to have to adjust the seat so you can operate the clutch, brake and accelerator pedals.”
Jenny spent a considerable amount of time with buttons and levers bringing the seat forward and down. She also adjusted the steering wheel for telescoping and tilt.
The truck had been idling with the tractor and trailer parking brakes set – yellow and red knobs pulled out.
“Comfortable?” Hugh asked.
Jenny nodded. “Just nervous.”
“You’ll get over that. Now, hold the clutch down with your left foot and press down on the brake pedal with your right foot,” Hugh told her.
“I’ve never driven a stick before,” Jenny said.
“That’s actually good,” Hugh replied. “You don’t have to unlearn anything then.”
Hugh told her to put the gear shift into third gear, and showed her how to push in the yellow and red tractor and trailer air brake knobs.
“OK. You’re ready to go now. You’ve seen me do this a million times, so relax and think through every step. We’re not going to take any corners, there’s no other traffic, and this road goes straight for miles.”
Jenny did what she had seen Hugh do. She took her foot off of the brake pedal and slowly released the clutch. The truck started to move forward, and she began putting pressure on the accelerator pedal. Because she had it in a low gear, the revs began climbing right away even though they weren’t going very fast.
“Put your hand lightly on the gear shift knob with slight pressure toward fourth, and when you feel it start to give, let up on the accelerator and slide it quickly into fourth.”
Jenny did as she was told. She waited for the sweet spot, and when she pushed the gear shift lever it seemed to slide into the next gear all by itself.
“Beautiful,” Hugh said. “Now, very slight pressure on the accelerator to keep it at this speed. Pay attention to where you’re driving. Don’t get too distracted by thinking about the gears.”
Jenny nodded.
“A little more pressure on the accelerator, get your revs up, put slight pressure on the knob down toward fifth. Don’t forget to watch the road.”
Jenny repeated what she had done before to put it into fourth gear, and nicely slid the truck into fifth gear.
“Excellent. Keep it at this speed for a moment. Watch the road. You’re wandering a bit.”
When Hugh saw Jenny had relaxed again, he explained to her about using the range selector switch to advance to sixth gear. That next gear was in the same location as first gear – all the way left and down.
“When your revs are right, you pop it out of fifth gear, flip the range selector switch, move the gear shift up a little bit, bring it all the way left and then drop it down into sixth.”
Jenny did as Hugh explained. When she had the revs high enough to feel the gear want to release, she pushed it out of fifth gear position, flipped the range selector switch, and began pulling the gear shift lever toward sixth gear, but she felt the gear shift lever shaking and heard a sound like a train wreck.
“What happened?” she asked. She instinctively knew to depress the clutch and push on the brake pedal to bring the truck to a safe stop.
“You took too long moving into sixth, honey. You lost your engine revolutions. You need to make all those extra movements in the same amount of time as you did with the other gears.”
“OK,” Jenny said.
“But you did great in stopping the truck before stalling it,” Hugh said. “Try again.”
Jenny started out again, running up through fifth gear. This time, she had the movements timed perfectly and slid the truck into sixth gear.
They were running out of road, with a dead end turnaround ahead, so Hugh told her to slow down to just above stall speed, depress the clutch, and use the brakes to bring the truck to a stop. She wasn’t ready for a downshifting lesson just yet.
He told her to put the gear shift lever in neutral, pull the yellow tractor air brake knob, release the clutch and take her foot off of the brake pedal.
“Wow! I’m sweating like I just ran a marathon,” Jenny said. “How did I do?”
“I’ve got to tell you, you’re a natural. You did better than I did the first time James sat me in the driver’s seat the second day I was on his truck.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I did the train wreck thing several times, and James was afraid I was going to break his truck.”
“Now what?” Jenny asked. Hugh thought she looked adorable sitting in the driver’s seat of his truck with a big, satisfied grin on her pretty face.
“You need many, many more miles behind the wheel before you’re ready for your CDL road test. But that’s enough for now.”
Hugh told Jenny to trade places with him.
“I’ll take over and drive us to the ranch. From now on, pay extra close attention to everything I do, and try to figure out why I do it that way. We still need to cover downshifting, which is not exactly like the opposite of upshifting. You’ll see why.”
Hugh drove them the rest of the way to the ranch, but stopped the truck just past the front gate.
“You want to do something fun?” he asked.
“Sure, what do you have in mind?”
“How about if you finish driving
