Well, folks,
When the pastor of my church discovered I have a CDL with a passenger endorsement on it, he immediately recruited me to drive the church bus and the mini-bus.
My medical certificate had expired so before I could do it, I went to get my physical so the doctor could issue me a new medical certificate. I passed and got my D.O.T. medical card. So now I can legally drive commercial vehicles again.
When the church safety officer got my paperwork and looked at the photocopy of my Class A CDL (eighteen wheeler license) and saw those codes on the license, she freaked. She'd never seen anything except a Class B license with a passenger endorsement on it. I had a Class A license with a tanker truck, passenger, and doubles and triples endorsement. I had to calm her down and explain what each endorsement meant. When she looked at the photocopy of the back of my license and saw that 'P=Passenger' and I explained to her that a Class A license was one step above a Class B and that as long as I have a passenger endorsement that I am good to go. She was finally convinced. I guess a church safety officer isn't as experienced as a safety officer that works for a trucking or bus company.
Tonight, I met another one of their drivers at the church and we went out for a good, long spin on I-25. I've driven probably in excess of fifty buses in my driving experience (I've been driving buses since I was seventeen years old). They were all either traditional style school buses or the new transit style school buses (or the non-school equivalent of them). I had never driven an MCI type bus (somewhat like a Greyhound bus) until tonight.
It takes some getting used to but after driving eighteen wheelers for a year it wasn't so hard to handle. The other driver was impressed and said he would inform our safety officer that I was a good driver. So I'll be driving for some church trips again. He told me that if I wanted to take the bus out for some practice driving that I was welcome to do it a couple of times. I'll probably take him up on it.
I always enjoyed doing that when I was driving for my church in Maryland. You get to be popular quite rapidly that way. It wasn't long after I started driving for the church that everyone knew who I was. So I guess we're going to do this again.
Stay in touch,
Fred
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mishmash.net/pipermail/mishmash_mishmash.net/attachments/20090720/30dd534f/attachment.html>