That is it.
After about five hours of training on the counterbalance I was tested on it.
I passed.
I did it in 25 minutes with 13 points, the lowest number of points, again!
I picked up the points up because I kept touching the course, or I picked the pallet up incorrectly, i.e. at an angle, or not with the forks fully inserted.
I had thought I wouldn’t do that well on this test, as I wasn’t that confident with the steering.
The steering on the counterbalance is similar to a car, that you turn the wheel to the left, and you go left. With the counterbalance the steering wheels are at the back, so, you turn the wheel to the left, the wheels turn to the right, the back swings to the right, and you go left.
I had to think about it.
The other two passed the test as well.
On to what we practiced.
The truck wasn’t ready for us until about 9am-ish.
At first we just went around the same course that was set up the previous evening. That is four barriers set up in a line, and we had to weave in and out of them.
Forwards and backwards.
Then we had the chicane, this time it was the proper one!
The chicane was more of a zigzag shape. You drive forwards a little way, tun to the left and drive forwards, then turn to the right and drive forwards.
Easy you might say. Straight forward it was not.
The width of the gap between the pallets was about half the trucks length, and at the corners you had to tuck right up to the inside so as you can get far enough around it to swing the back out.
I managed it. In the test I didn’t hit any of the walls.
Then we had a practice at turning to face a row of pallets. Then once we had practiced that a couple of times we had to pick up and put down pallets on the stacks of pallets.
It was the same layout as for the reach truck, with two different heights of stacks of pallets, and a spot on the floor!
We also practiced the emergency stop. We had three pallets on the forks, and then drove forwards and then back. When we had to stop going forwards, the pallets started to slide off the forks.
The test for the counterbalance was much the same as for the reach truck. The only difference being that the chicane was a different layout, and it was right next to the stacks of pallets.
We all started at the start of the chicane.
So we had to drive up to the first corner in the chicane, pick up three pallets, and then drive the rest of the way through the chicane. Place them on a specified stack, and then stack and un-stack a couple more times.
Then we had to reverse through the chicane with three pallets on the front, and then back out again.
The we did some more stuff with stacking and un-stacking three pallets.
Then we had to reverse back through the chicane, dropping the load in the middle of it, then reverse to the start of the chicane.
That’s it.
The first person started their test at 2:15pm, and I finished my test at about 3:30pm. Then we had to demolish the course and stack the pallets up, and there was some paper work to do. I finished at 4pm.
I think I had either seven or eight cups of tea.
Luckily I have tomorrow off (Saturday)
And on Sunday me and dad go off to Brands Hatch.
Bye for now.