Comments By BuckeyeCowboy

I will be getting my CDL soon and will be starting my career as a long haul trucker. I am so excited, but one of the hardest things I have been struggling with is my church. I have been a Christian for over 15 years and I love going to church every Sunday. How do truckers attend church on Sundays? I heard of truck stops having services? Any info you all could provide would be much appreciated. God speed.

I can assist with that because that has been my biggest thing too....Here are the companies to check out that will allow her to go from day 1 after you get out of training, get your cdl and then get your own truck:

Central Refrigerated

Swift

Crete Carriers (dry vans)/Shaffer refers

Boyd Brothers (flatbeds)

Werner

USA Truck

Navajo Express

TMC (after 90 days, but they try to get you home 46 of the 52 weekends)

There are others, but I am drawing a mind blank. I am going with the 3rd one, but Werner isn't a bad choice either. Hope this helps. Good luck.

Roehl is a great company. I was looking at them. Only reason I didn't go with them is I want to take my wife with me right out of training and they require a 90 waiting period. That is personal preference for me though, so don't let that sway your opinion. I do see a lot of their trucks on 71 and 75 when I have the occasion to travel those interstates.

Yeah you can call the JFS office. What I did, and how I found out about it is I found a local private company here and went to talk to them and they told me about the program and made sure that I had everything I needed to get set up. They even faxed any needed documents to me. So, that would be something to consider trying too. Good luck.

Jerry, I too reside in Ohio, but a bit further south than you in the Cincinnati area. I am the same as you. I have been married since 2009 and we are having the same financial issues as everyone else. I can tell you that from my personal experience, no matter how bad it gets, don't let them get the best of you and keep your head up.

As far as schools, you actually have a couple options. What I did, since I was considered low income is I went through the WIA program. Each county in Ohio has this. They will pay for everything including permits and schooling and gas to and from the school for any private institution you want to attend. You can't have made more than 33k between you and your wife last year. The advantage to this is that your school will more than likely have recruiters coming in from different companies to try and get you to work for them, so you can choose what company you want to go with. That is what I am doing.

Option B or 2 whatever you want to label it is the schooling that you were asking about. There is one here in Cincinnati, Millis Transfer, they have been around forever, they seem to have a good program. Werner will also have training in Springfield, Ohio and they are my backup company in case something goes wrong with the carrier that I have selected. Also, they get a bad wrap on other sites, which I would not listen too, but Swift has a good program as far as I can tell. I would start there. Good luck in your search. God speed.

Starcar that was really funny. My wife cracked up at it. My wife is going to go with me once I get out of training. She is going to be with me all the time, so it should be interesting. One thing that we thought might help, with us, is my wife is going to take online classes. So, that will give her something to do when we are on those long boring stretches of I-75 running the same states that we have already been in. She has been through more states than me, so she will have less to see, but we should still have fun none the less. God bless.

Rolling Thunder, great to hear that school is going well and that you like it. I have been there with the mistakes too my friend. All you can do is laugh and learn from it and take the ribbing and move on. I have forgotten to pop the breaks before trying to get out and forgot to take it out of gear and having it jump all over the place. Ah the rookie mistakes that we all make. I drove yesterday and was shaking so bad going on country back roads that had so many hills. I was so focused that I didn't realize I was shaking. You will get better at this. You have all our support. Good luck. God speed.

Wow. Sorry guys and gals, I know it has been a while and I am sorry. I am getting close to graduating. My graduation date is Monday, but since I have missed a few days of school for illness, I am required to make those days up. Which, to me, is not a big deal. I am scheduled to test on August 6th. My school still allows us to come and in practice up to the date of the test. Which I plan on taking full advantage of.

I have been on the road for a total of 5 hours. I went out with the same instructor twice. Once for an hour and a half and the other for time for 3 and a half hours. He told me that I need a bit more work, but it is just to put the finishing touches on. I still have a bit of trouble with turns and downshifting. I will get there though. It has been a long and arduous journey, but one I would not trade it for the world.

Oh and I got to drive some really cool trucks to. I think the neatest one has been an old 1995 Ford Aeromax. It isn't road worthy anymore, but she makes a great truck to straight line back in, and her transmission is in great shape too. It has the best shifting of all the trucks on the pad. I asked them the chances of getting that thing road worthy to take my test in, you know old trucker style, but they won't do it. Oh well, I guess I will just have to stick with the International daycab that they have designated as the state truck. God bless.

I could have misunderstood. Like I said when their recruiter came he talked about everuthing but the company. So, Friday was our last day in class. Today we started with oreintation on the range. We have a female instructor. She is very nice. She is leading us thru pretrip. One great thing about working with her is besides being an ex driver and company trainer she is a former cdl examiner for ohio. So she knows everything the state is looking for.

We saw Covenant Transportation. Good company, especially for teams. They claim to be christian based. Not looking for teams. They have solo operations but make on like .23 cpm and that won't work for me. Tomorrow U.S. Express is in for new class. I have already saw them. We also have ISupply in tomorrow. Dont know much about them. But we wilm see what they have tomorrow. Night and God bless.

Over the last couple of days we have been studying log booking and the Smith System. I got both of them down pretty well. We started pretrip today in preperation for going on range next week to get in the trucks. Tomorrow is final exam day and then we are going to learn about taxes and a few minor things.

Yesterday morning we were suprised with a local flatbed company, NLX. Seems alright but I dont want to do local. NTB was impressive but they only run 8 states. Schneider brought their A game but OTR is kept in Eastern half of US and that is not what I am looking for. Today was another local flatbed company. Dont remember their name. Tomorrow is Sewell and Prime. I like Prime but you have to team for 8 months or more and dont want to do that. Off to bed.

Wow. That was crazy. I took my pickup truck to one of these oil change in 20 minutes places. Keep in mind my truck at the time only had about 60k miles on it at the time and a full tank of gas. I take it, and I have been here before, so I trusted them. Hand them the keys. They put it up on the rack and do the oil change. I was kinda watching them, but kinda focused on the ballgame on the tv. I am the only vehicle getting worked on. They try to start my truck and it wont start. So, that got my attention right away.

I go out there and ask what the issue is. They said that they don't know that it won't start. I just look at them. I am highly upset because I have only had small minor issues with it not working (plug wire kept falling off). I told them to check that, they did. It was fine. The lights were working so wasn't the altenator or battery, they keep checking things and kept saying it is not getting any gas to it. So, they are wanting to tow it to a shop and have them fix it and not sure if they are going to pay for it or not because they claim that they didn't do it.

At this point I am flipping out. Come to find out they are not ASE certified. I was getting really hot and needed to cool down. I couldn't handle it, so I called my dad and he came up. They are wanting to tow it, but it is like 5 pm and all the shops were closed. Both my wife and I had to work the next day, so I needed my truck. They are not comitting to anything and are not working with us at all and are on the phone with the tow company to come to it, so we call the cops to come to prevent them from towing it. Officer shows up and tells them they are not towing it. As we are trying to figure a solution I calm down and remember my father-in-law is a mechanic. So, I call him up and he comes up and in 5 minutes he had it running. They hit the racks so hard and the bump was so severe that it tripped the fuel shut off switch which cuts fuel to the engine in case of an accident. He had to show them how he fixed it, in case of next time.

So, I feel your pain. I am sorry that you had that ordeal. I wouldn't go back to that place ever again. Hope things are getting better. God bless.