I passed!

Whew, I'm glad that's over.

I passed all three portions of my commercial driver license testing today; backing, pre-trip inspection, and on-street driving. I didn't get "perfect" scores on any of the tests, though I did miss only 2 of the 105 pre-trip inspection items (one of which Lori didn't even know was on the test!).

We're still in Springfield until tomorrow afternoon as the testing took MUCH longer than we had anticipated.That meant I didn't have a chance to go to the Missouri DMV to get my new license or go through all of the Prime employee paperwork process. The main reason for the delay was the fact that more people than usual wanted to take the test today since entirely new testing procedures and standards go into effect tomorrow.

We also had appointments at 4:00 and 4:30 to go through the enrollment process for our Transportation Worker Identification Certification (TWIC). This card is being required by Homeland Security for persons wanting access to ports. Once we pass the background search, we'll each get a card that has "biometric information" (our fingerprint) encoded electronically on the card. Very high tech...

Though it's nice to be off the road, we're both chomping at the bit to get moving again. Now that I'm fully licensed, we'll be able to keep the truck moving 24 hours a day, if necessary to make the delivery appointments. That might take a little get to used to, at least for me since Lori already has some experience with that from her training time with Tamara.

It'll probably be longer than usual until we get home again (we shooting for the weekend before Thanksgiving) because we want to accumulate enough vacation days to spend a good 7-8 days at home over Christmas.

We'll try to post once we get going again. I hope the new driving schedule leaves enough time for regular posting.