Simulator Sitdown: AMTA Mobile Training and Beyond

Speaker A: Welcome to the Steering Change podcast, navigating through the commercial transportation industry in Alberta and beyond. Powered by the Alberta Motor Transport association, here's your host, Kelsey Hipkin.

Speaker B: Hello, friends, and welcome to Steering Change, where we are on location in our south simulator trailer. Today we're taking a closer look at how technology is helping drivers and potential drivers build confidence and sharpen their skills through AMTA's driving simulators. The association has two mobile simulators, one in the north and the one I'm in today here in the south, to ensure outreach to the entirety of Alberta. The simulators are designed to help commercial drivers build confidence, improve critical driving skills and prepare for real world conditions, all within a safe, controlled setting. With various scenario modules available, training can be tailored to each driver's needs, helping them develop skills, build confidence, and prepare for any challenges they may encounter on the road. But that is enough from me. Let's hear from the folks who know these simulators best. Along with our Steering Change producer, Robin Betts, we spent the day with Rob Destry, senior Instructor Driver Development, and Cliff Litke, Senior Advisor Member Services in the simulators themselves, learning their ins and outs and how they can benefit both our members and industry in general. Stay tuned to the end of this one as we'll also be chatting with Rob about AMTA's newly rolled out Professional Driver Improvement Course, or PDIC. Let's get to it. Rob Destry, tell us your title and what you do with us here at amta.

Speaker A: So, my name is Rob Destry. I'm senior Instructor for Driver Development at amta and I do quite a few things. Long combination vehicle program training, PDIC, um, and simulator work with Cliff.

Speaker B: Speaking of Clif, Mr. Litke, tell us your title and what you do with us here at amta.

Speaker C: Senior Advisor Member Services work with you, find people, um, on simulator, um, also support, uh, members and carriers with compliance, wcb, oh, and s, that kind of stuff.

Speaker B: And as mentioned in the intro, we are talking about our simulators today. We have a new trailer. We are coming at you live from inside our new trailer. As a matter of fact. Um, Cliff, tell us about the need for a new trailer and why we made this happen.

Speaker C: Well, the other simulator was based in the trailer already. And the second simulator we had was housed in cabinets. So we would have to take it to a carrier, set it up, find something to do with the cabinets. Um, and what was happening, it was just slowly getting damaged to the point where eventually it was just not going to be usable. So we, um, ended up building another trailer this um, one's about four feet longer I believe than the other one somehow. Don't know how that happened but uh, yeah. So now we got two simulators that are um, completely enclosed in uh, fifth wheel trailers and we can take it wherever we need to. Carriers um, can come and take it as well and um, if they don't need an instructor over um, to go along with it. And yeah, now we just got two.

Speaker B: And Rob, have we been seeing an increase that this is going to make our lives easier, that we have a dedicated north and south trailer to accommodate carriers needs?

Speaker A: I think it will because it's pretty steady down here in the south end with a couple of carriers, uh, Airdrie Brooks, that kind of thing. And then the other, the other carriers that we've rented to Grand Prairie, Peace River, Fort Mac, it's just going to save a lot of travel time and wear and tear on our existing trailer if this one's based closer.

Speaker C: And there were times when we've had to turn work down or turn rentals down. Pardon me, because the one in the south was already rented. So now we have the opportunity to have them both rented out at the same time in the trail.

Speaker B: So staying with you Rob, um, for our listeners who might not know why would I want to be renting the SIM as a carrier in the first place?

Speaker A: The simulator allows you to do things in a controlled environment that you can't normally do or that's unsafe to do in a real world scenario. We um, can do everything from basic shifting which the benefit to this is the feedback is instant. You know when you're doing something wrong. It's a little bit harder to drive this because it expects and demands perfection. And then when you get into a real truck there's a little more um, acceptance of lower tolerances shall we say. So we've done a lot of that where we've rented to people that are in the middle of their class one training. Um, but on the other end of the spectrum too we can do skid control which again is something you don't really want to do in a tractor trailer unit on a real highway. We can do it in here over and over and over again. So repeatability in a safe environment is the biggest advantage to sims. There's less pressure. People can focus on the task at hand and then when they get into their other vehicle or into the regular truck, they've already built up that, that habit or that schema that allows them to do things without conscious thought hopefully.

Speaker B: And Rob, you and I touched on this earlier, but I'm going to ask you again. And Cliff, feel free to jump in when needed. Um, you are taking this places sometimes you are teaching. Tell um, me a bit about like how long are people renting? Why are they renting? Are we still staying with them that whole time? Are they designating people to train their own people? Can you kind of delve into that?

Speaker A: The answer to that is yes. All of that is yes. So we will do anywhere from a two hour block with a novice, for example, who may just want that little extra bump in their class one training, um, all the way to like a half day thing where we, we've gone to a high school or we've gone to a trade show and we've put people through. We've had high school students come through, uh, in terms of, or at different events where they're trying to get drive interest in class one trucking. Because as we know we've seen a great drop in the whole, you know, driving thing. It's, you know, it's, it's not a career, it's a job and people have a, it's kind of falling out of favor as a career. So we're trying to help build that up and show them that there's a lot of cool things you can do with this. Um, all the way till we've had multiple week rentals, right? So city of Airdrie for example, they'll be having it in a couple of months. Here they'll be doing their snowplow training and their firefighter training with it. So they've got a trainer on staff who we've taught. So it, it may be me going with it, it may be Cliff going with it to do the one off one day events. It might be somebody coming into the building where we're doing just the shifting training, or again, we've dragged it out to Lloyd Minster and done a trade show or medicine hat or those kinds of places. Um, and then we've will man the booth, as it were, and put people through as a demonstration or we'll train people up. And if it's long term rentals, if the people are really interested in long term rentals, it's better if we train up one or two of their instructors because they'll know their roles and their jobs far better than we ever would. So we can show them how the simulator works, what scenarios we would advise, get them to build lesson plans for their people and then turn them loose. And they can either we can deliver the sim to their location and leave it. Or they can come pick it up and drag it all over the province if they want with the proper insurance. Um, but it's, I mean the, the Calgary based SIM has been to Fort Mac, Peace River, Grand Prairie, Lloydminster. If there's a point on a compass in this province, it's probably been there and it's even been out to Vancouver island for, for an event with a fuel hauling company. So Cliff, anything you want to add?

Speaker C: Uh, no, actually I just wanted you to touch on that, that we do train the trainers. So if it, I think that's the better opportunity for the larger carriers or anybody that's going to rent it for a longer period of time is to like Rob touched on, was to, you know, train one or two or even three of their instructors to operate the simulator. And um, we can give them some tips on, you know, how to operate it and um, talk to it and just like Rob said, let them loose.

Speaker B: And so I want to take a couple of things you said. Rob, you mentioned both kind of touched on the stigma of what it means to be a truck driver, what it means to have this career and that we do take, um, the simulators out to trade shows. Um, those might be high school or trade show events. Um, it might be other industry events. Like I know for example, we've been to an oil and gas event this past summer. So can you both kind of touch on the importance of people who might not be familiar with commercial driving getting to experience this through the simulator?

Speaker A: Cliff is a truck driver for a long, long time.

Speaker C: Long, long time. Uh, you know what, I like how Rob positioned it when he said that truck driving has kind of come out of favor. And one of the things that we're trying to do with the simulator is brilliant. Bring the professionalism back into the industry. That's one thing that, um, you ask anybody, uh, Joe Public about truck drivers, they're all going to say, or most of them are going to say that they're just not good drivers. Which is unfortunate because there are quite a lot of good drivers out there. It's just the, the ones that aren't very good just seem to get the limelight. Um, so it's really, it's something that we're trying to work on, um, as an association and as an industry to try to bring the professionalism back, bring the training back and hopefully try to weed out the uh, drivers that are improperly trained from being behind the whip.

Speaker B: For our drivers listening to this out there, we do see you be safe and we Appreciate the work that you do. Okay, now that we've covered a lot of that sort of thing, let's dive into more of what, what the SIM is capable of. Tell me about some of the different programs, what people can experience when they are training with us. Rob.

Speaker A: We have a variety of vehicles, which is the, one of the big things we can go, right from a pickup truck to a pickup truck with a trailer to a dump truck, dump truck with trailer, uh, into tractor trailer units. So we've got several. Well, we've got at least two van body, we have a flatbed, we've got fluid hauling so we can teach about surge and fluid motion under braking and acceleration. We've got heavy haul, we've got uh, the, the snow plow, tow plow, belly blade plow, we've got fire trucks. So we have a, a series of scenarios that go with each one of those as well. So for example, I mean like I said earlier, we can do just even basic shifting. We've got five different transmissions, but three of which are manual. We've got 10, 13 and 18 speed. So we can show people the basics on a 10 speed, show them what the difference is between 10 and 13 and then the advantage of going to an 18 speed. And then we can practice their shifting, double clutching, all that. Or if you know, if the person is having problems with backing, we put them into a truck and trailer, we get them to practice nothing but backing. And again, it's a safe environment. If they back into something like a barrel on this thing or a cone, it's not a big deal.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: We um, have scenarios, like I said, from basic shifting into right and left hand turns. So we can talk about trailer swing and off tracking. There's even one for going across a scale. We just got that one a little while ago. We haven't really played with it too much, but it's there. Uh, we've got another new one here that we've just started experimenting with it as well, which is a long, long downhill descent, right? So any truckers that are heading into the mountains and maybe, maybe they're flatlanders, they've spent all their time in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and parts of Alberta. But we've got a long multiple, what, 10 minutes at least, cliff downhill. And then there's another one that shows you the braking forces too, so how easy it is to overheat the brakes, for example on a long downhill. So we can get into the use of engine braking, we can talk about snub braking, uh, etc. So I, when I Do it. A lot of times we get people coming in. We've never driven in snow, so sometimes we'll throw them right into skid control and traction. Right. So how to break on snow, how to control a skid on the snow. We'll, uh, get into emergency situations. Uh, what happens if a tire fails? What happens if you drop your wheels onto the shoulder, head on? Collision avoidance. We have about five different scenarios for that one. So there's any, like I said, anywhere from the basics to backing to highway driving to snowplow, uh, operation into emergency situations.

Speaker B: So that is pretty extensive. Thank you. Rob, is the simulator for someone who is new to driving and looking to drive. Can I be a seasoned driver? And I'm just looking to freshen up on things. Can you kind of delve into that?

Speaker C: I can kind of touch a bit on that. Um, for seasoned drivers, uh, it would all depend on the driver you're going to get. Um, I can comment that, that um, there are carriers that if a driver does have an incident, or so we

Speaker A: say, some scrutiny, maybe they've had a couple of calls. We, we've had that where we've reviewed dash cam footage from aggressive drivers and they've been sent to us. Uh, we prefer to think of it not as punishment but as a chance to enhance and, and show them where things went wrong.

Speaker C: Right. And, and a lot of times those drivers, when they come to us, they're not very happy that the kids carriers sent them to us, but an hour and a half, two hours later, that they actually realized that they did learn something and that, that you know, that this is a, uh, tool for remedial training on, for not just the, uh, novice driver, but for anybody that's experienced

Speaker B: anything you'd both like to add.

Speaker C: Rob Destry is my hero.

Speaker A: Just. Thank you, Cliff. But just to go, to go into that further. Yeah. Like you, your question was, is it just inexperienced or is it experience? It's the entire spectrum. Um, as I mentioned, we've had people who are mid, um, class one training who really are struggling with their shifting because when they're in the vehicle, they're in traffic, they're approaching a hill or a set of lights, they start to panic about the shifting and, and then they forget about everything else going on around them. So we had, we've had a couple people come through who. One guy was, he was a swamper in oil and gas and wanted to become a driver. Um, so he rented this thing for hours until he got to the point where he was, you know, going up and down hills, in and out of gear beautifully.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Um, but we also had the, the one student who was like said middle class one came in. I did two two hour sessions with her. After the first session she went back to the vehicle and her instructor said, you have to slow down a bit because you're a bit too cocky now. Because she could focus on the driving portion because the shifting was just, she didn't have to think about it anymore, it started to become habitual. So with scenarios like the head on collision avoidance, the first time or two someone does it, there's always that moment of is what I'm seeing actually happening. So there is a bit of hesitation. And again, the benefit of this is we can go through it, show them what to look for, and then as they start to understand they can read what the traffic is doing, then they're better prepared. But yeah, there's always a little bit of a perception time where your brain goes, what do I see? And then what do I need to do? And then the reaction time adds into. So it's about 3/4 of a second to see it and understand it and then another three quarter of a second to do something about it. So that's why we nag people about looking farther ahead and reading what's going on. To give them that time and again, we can put them through over and over and over again until it becomes habit.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Like I used to teach this on an actual track with actual trucks and it's very, very similar. Like it's the same technique. You hit the brakes, you let the brakes go, you steer it to the bottom of the ditch, you hit, you straighten it out and then you stop. Nobody wants to go in the ditch. But if it's the alternative between that or hitting someone head on, take the ditch. Because roughly 19 to 20% of our fatal crashes in this province are head ons. Number one is leaving the roadway usually speak too fast for conditions about 38%. And number two is about half that which is hitting somebody head on.

Speaker B: So if I'm interested in booking North South Alberta either or how do I do that?

Speaker C: Uh, you can reach out, uh, you can email memberservices, MTA ca or you can just go to our website at AMTA CA and find the contact from there.

Speaker B: Lovely. Hello again. We are back in the studio and Rob has stayed with us. Rob, welcome back.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: Um, thank you for your time on the sim, yourself and Cliff. Now let's talk training of a different sort, um, in the form of PDIC or professional Driver improvement course. First of all, tell me what that is.

Speaker A: So the professional driver improvement course allows carriers to send, well drivers obviously to us who may have demerit points on their license. And by taking a course every two years you can remove up to three demerit points from a driver's license.

Speaker B: And from an AMTA perspective, do we have this course? Do we offer this course? Tell me more about that side of things.

Speaker A: We do. We're pretty excited now we've got our own PDIC course prior to a few months back, might even be a year ago now. We had one in our online store but we didn't own it. It was owned by Fleet Safety International and then for reasons I'm not quite clear about, it disappeared from the store. And we still have calls coming in like we need to take the course. We um, aside from the three demerit reduction long combination vehicle drivers also are required to take a PDIC course every four years or every 48 months. So we saw an opportunity, we said well you know what, let's make our own. So we engaged the services of some outside contractors and did a lot of our own internal work and we've got our own online PDIC course and is

Speaker B: there a timeline on when that will be accessible to everyone?

Speaker A: So goal we're shooting for the beginning of September uh right now. We got blessed a couple weeks ago from the province with the license so our license got updated for the online version. But with the online version there's some, some extra steps you need to take in terms of uh, when wherever you're hosting it there has to be security of x like 128bit encryption etc. Etc. So we're getting through those details right now, what the registration page looks like, what information we need to capture and ah, then the process on the back end once the driver has taken the course, um, the notification comes back to us so we can generate the certificate for them, uh, and how long that's going to take, et cetera.

Speaker B: Fantastic. And for our listeners who might be interested in this course, we'll make sure to have details in the show notes but keep an eye on our socials as well for the official launch. Um, Rob, anything to add on pdic?

Speaker A: No, we're just excited to have that one, the online version coming out and of course members do get a discount. We should probably mention that. I'm sure the member services team would like that little call out. Uh, and now we're starting the process of the in person one because we still have an in Person one, it just needs to be refreshed because it's eight years old. So it's time for a new one. So we're going to make a more better version of the PDIC course for the in person sides, which we still do. We'll do. We do in person. We have a second instructor now, uh, in Darm and we'll be able to do the in person side because we're getting carriers that want people in seats in front of an instructor too. So if the online works great and when we get the in person one, you know, we can go in and work with the drivers in, you know, um, it's easier to do the one on one or not. Sorry, let me rephrase that. It's not one on one but the in person side where it's the instructor can, can ask the questions and, and, or be asked questions as well to fill in the blanks that online doesn't always give you.

Speaker B: Okay, fantastic. Thank you Rob.

Speaker A: Thanks much.

Speaker B: Once, uh, again a huge thank you to Rob and Cliff for their time. If you are interested in either the north or south simulators and their availability, be sure to check out the show notes where we'll have more information for you. Let's close with some news. Our October 1st safety summit is taking place in White Court, Alberta. Make sure you get the details. Registration is still open for that one as well. October 15th, registration is live for our drawdown dinner taking place at the River Cree Event center in Enoch, Alberta. And lastly, mark Those calendars for April 7th and 8th, 2027, as that is the date for AMTA's annual conference, also taking place at the River Cree. Do you have any questions or comments about the Steering Change episodes? Please do reach out on Instagram at amtaca or LinkedIn and Facebook. Alberta Motor Transportation Association. Stay safe and um, see you next time.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to this episode of AMTA Steering Change Podcast. The views expressed by guests of the Steering Change Podcast are their own and may not reflect the views of amta, its hosts or sponsors. Did you have a question that you would like answered on an upcoming episode of the Steering Change Podcast? We want to hear from you. To submit a question to the Steering Change Mailbag, hit up our DMs on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag steeringchange and your question will be answered either live on the podcast or by one of our SMEs here at AMTA. We ask that you share this episode with those in your network that could benefit from what we discussed today and make sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform so you can be notified when future episodes are released. You can learn more about us and our mission by visiting www.amta.ca. now get out there and have a safe day.