THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411210042
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 147 lines
The large yellow signs on the front and back of the 18-wheeler bouncing down Route 17 in Portsmouth seemed to capture the attention of passing motorists.
STUDENT DRIVER, said the signs in black block letters.
They didn't say, BEWARE! STUDENT DRIVER. They didn't have to. Passing motorists caught the drift, and most gave the student driver a wide berth. On a bridge, a string of approaching drivers pulled halfway onto the far shoulder, though the truck was on its side of the road.
Army chaplain's assistant Dean Wakefield, 48, was behind the giant steering wheel last week, commenting constantly on everything he saw, like a lost pilot to a control tower.
``Reduce-speed sign ahead,'' said Wakefield, who is on leave while learning a new trade as he prepares to retire from the Army in January. ``No traffic on the ramp. Traffic light is green up ahead. It's yellow . . . red.''
Hanging on Wakefield's every word was Jerry Ledbetter, 51, a truck-driving instructor at the Portsmouth Campus of Tidewater Community College.
``The student's commentary keeps the student calm,'' Ledbetter said. ``It keeps me from having a heart attack, because I know he's seeing the same things I am.''
Riding in the passenger seat, Ledbetter has no steering wheel or brake pedal. He's at the mercy of the student driver, as are passing drivers in their dinky vehicles.
``With an 80,000-pound load,'' Ledbetter said, ``you could hit a car on a turn and tear the front off it and never feel it.''
Wakefield's nerves were not steadied any by a news photographer who repeatedly leaned forward from the bunk bed in back to shoot flash pictures of his face.
But Wakefield's voice was steady as the commentary continued. ``Turn signal on, changing lanes, turn signal off.''
He shifted constantly, double-clutching up and down, calling out the number of each gear, as he kept the engine revving at 1,300 to 1,800 rpms, for optimum pulling power. He read gauges aloud, especially the one for air pressure. If it drops too low, the truck skids to a stop.
As taught, Wakefield studied the side mirrors at least once every 8 to 10 seconds. Truck drivers say they live in the side mirrors, without which they are blind except in front.
The trucks are behemoths lumbering along busy jungle paths, trying not to crush lesser creatures.
Wakefield is one of 20 students in the 96th truck-driving class at the Portsmouth TCC campus, which, oddly enough, is in Suffolk, though the mailing address is Portsmouth.
Incredibly, over almost 19 years of student drivers, the course has had only one reported accident and zero injuries. ``Knock on wood,'' said Ed Lowe, 58, a retired Army man who runs the driving program and has taught in it 17 years.
About eight years ago in a crowded Smithfield parking lot, a student pulled the trailer over a man's fender. ``I am really satisfied and amazed it's been as good as it has been,'' Lowe said of the safety record. ``There may have been a street sign we didn't know about.''
On turns, the trailers, 40 to 50 feet long, have minds of their own, and the truck drivers have to read those minds.
On a right turn, the cab has to swing wide to make room for the trailer, which will cut across. Woe be to the car driver who tries to sneak by the turning truck on the inside.
The students are never on public roads without an instructor, and they first drive on one-lane roads on a training range at the campus, just across the James River from Newport News Shipbuilding. Surely there is no more scenic truck driving range anywhere, though in winter a bone-chilling wind may blast across the James, and in summer there's not always a saving breeze to be had.
Rain, shine or whatever, the drivers practice. During backing exercises, the instructors walk by the cabs and shout instructions. ``Quarter right. Another quarter. All the right you've got. Now left to catch it.'' And so on.
At any one time, three trucks may be on the training road while five trucks practice parking maneuvers on the range. The course has three full-time and two part-time instructors.
``We can take the average person,'' Lowe said, ``and in six weeks turn him into a person who can go out and make his own living. In six weeks we make a productive taxpaying citizen out of him . . . and at a pretty decent wage.''
Tuition for the course is $860, and books cost about $40. Students who complete it receive 18 semester hours of credit.
In the early days, Lowe said, about one of three students would fail to complete the course. More recently, he said, only about one in four has dropped out.
Some people lack the motor skills; some the desire. Of several students interviewed, all praised the instructors but said the course was tougher than they expected.
``This is harder work than they ever visualized,'' Lowe said. ``It's concentration. You have so much to think about. That long trailer hangs out behind you. You have trouble if you don't concentrate.''
``It's exciting,'' said Wakefield, the chaplain's assistant. ``It's challenging. It just gives such a rush of excitement every time I get in a truck.''
Every year the community college offers six classes of 22 students each, and the classes all fill up. The classes meet 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week. The first week is in the classroom, the next two on the range, and the last three on the range and open road.
The average student is 37 1/2 years old and is looking for a new career. The oldest student so far was 62. Most are men.
About half are former military personnel. Of late, the students have come from good-paying jobs at companies that folded. Many of the laid-off students have their tuition paid under federal retraining programs. Some used to work at area shipyards.
Graduates who want to work can make $25,000 to $30,000 the first year out, said Lowe, if they are willing to travel.
Just now truck drivers are in the cat bird's seat, because there are not enough of them to go around.
``There is a bad drivers' shortage, no doubt,'' said Dale Bennett, executive vice president of the Virginia Trucking Association, a trade organization in Richmond. ``We've got people that have trucks sitting on their lots solely because they can't find drivers to put in them to drive them.''
The shortage, he said, is the worst he's seen in 10 years with the association, and it is nationwide.
``There was a period of time when, for a lot of reasons, drivers were kind of regarded as expendable,'' said Neil Darmstadter, senior safety engineer with the American Trucking Association in Alexandria, the national organization of trucking companies. ``Now,'' he said, ``there is more of a trend to keep the drivers satisfied.''
Companies that used to keep drivers on the road for weeks on end now are trying to get them home for weekends, Darmstadter said.
Some companies are advertising that a driver can make $50,000 a year.
Givens Trucking Co. Inc. in Chesapeake switched entirely to long-nosed cabs because drivers preferred them to tractors with cabs over the engines. The switch was made, said Roger Heart, safety director at the company, even though the long-nosed tractors cost more.
His company hires truckers from TCC. ``We have been happy with the people we get from there,'' Heart said.
If Linda Stiles, 43, of Hopewell, can complete the class, she'll have a dream job, traveling as a team driver with her husband, already a trucker. Their two children are grown. ``My husband and I are a good working team,'' she said, ``and we enjoy working together.''
Given that a single trucker might log 100,000 or more miles a year, the pair could travel millions of miles together, off into the sunset. ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photos by JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/
17-year teacher Ed Lowe motions as he talks to trucking students at
Tidewater Community College. ``We can take the average person and in
six weeks turn him into a person who can go out and make his own
living,'' says Lowe.
by CNB