Thank you very much fellas! You're encouragement and kind words mean more to me than you know. I apologize for taking so long to reply. I been running hard since Sunday AM and couldn't get back on. There were no cameras, phones or any other electronic devices allowed for the duration of the contest. So no pics or vids from me. If I find some from the organizers, I will post a link. A little about the competition. First you have to qualify to compete. Immaculate driving record being the biggest standard to meet. Once you get there the actual competition is 3 fold. A written exam about everything pertaining to the transportation industry since its beginning. This includes legislative measures, first aid, hazardous material handling, state, national and international law and regulations and a whole host of other pertinent subjects. One question asked how many G's are generated by a truck entering a curve to fast at such and such speed, weight and center of gravity. The test is worth 80 points. Next is pretrip inspection. They sabotage a truck with a known quantity of defects and you have to find and identify them. That is worth 120 pnts. Last is the driving course. You have to negotiate a course in a truck you've never driven through 6 problems (obstacles). Everything has a point value. A clean pass on each problem is 50 points. Everything you do that is less than perfect costs you a deduction of points. For instance extra stops cost you five points, pulling up to readjust when backing costs ten points, touching a cone or obstacle costs 5 points. Moving them is ten points. And so on and so forth. The course is a possible 300 points. Ties are decided by time to complete the course. I crudely sketched out the course with some annotations. Unfortunately, I doubt that they are legible. The course looks easy on paper. Trust me, it wasn't. Thank you everyone! Oh, and Badger no doubles for my division thankfully! Clint, no points will be made from these trophies. They're some kind of acrylic or plastic, not glass. Josh
