just finished my first week at truckin school (go me!) of three. the PTI is still a little difficult to wrap my head around but now that we have a piece of paper telling us what it is we need to check and it's way more condensed than in the state manual for CDL jazz, we're feeling way more confident in it than we were and have already memorized almost everything for the in-cab inspection and are getting ready to move onto the outside the truck inspection.

now here's the catch, the way I look at it there are 3 parts to driving a truck

1: The PTI and other generl inspections such as the ETI and the PostTI, both of which have what you check in them covered at least once in the PTI
2: The driving the truck bit
and 3: paperwork.

the PTI is just memorization but aside from that isn't nearly as hard as I thought it'd be (tysm for the lovely fellas on this subreddit who lent an ear to help me when I was worrying about that a few days back, yall are amazing). the paper work is just tedium and most of it is filled out by a computer or isn't that hard to wrap your head around because of google and just how long it takes to do. the bit I'm a tad worried for is the second part, driving the truck.

we did backing on my last day, it's the weekend now and thank goodness I'm home now, I missed my bed. putting how much I missed the stuff back at the house aside, I'm a tad worried now about the backing and just driving bit of things given how unfamiliar I am with it. we did backing and I probably gave it an attempt about 20 times, outta that I succeeded 7 or 8 times. and without the instructor telling me what to do I only got it right back 3 times. one part of my mind is telling "it's fine, you're unfamiliar, you'll get better in time." while the other part is telling me I'm going to fall behind or worse yet, pass the test and then hit something that isn't a cone during backing which is not exactly a pleasant thought to dwel on.

so, at's where yall come in. anyone else have a similar story to this? just to put these thoughts to bed seeing as I think my anxiety about this is having a hand in things and even if it aint would like to at least quiet it down before it eventually becomes a problem, I'll take whatever advice on getting better at this or otherwise just knowin I'm not the only fella who struggled this much with this sorta thing (my classmates did it correctly a good 3/4ths of the time each, and didn't have to have the instructor come over but maybe once, he came over 4 times for me)

hope wherever ya might be yer doing well, and hoping the best for ya