Comments By BugSmasherOne (Paul K.)

Sorry, to short, only 1.845 meters.

With the exception of my truck being cleaner, just copy the picture of Old School's and change the number to 522659.

Going down steep grades, I put mine in manual, then select the gear I want. I don't want the auto surprising me by shifting at the wrong time. I then have a selected, 1 through 3, that I use to very the amount of resistance to control the speed when the pitch of the hill varies to maintain speed.

Richard G., my suggestion would be to do a little research that may provide you with the answer to your question and help develop your plan to get into trucking. This will also provide information for your father and help him decide who to hire to drive his truck.

Have you father call his insurance agent and get three premium quotes.

First quote: a driver of your age and driving record, has a CDL without going to an accredited school or getting a certificate showing 160 hours of training, and has no OTR experience.

Second quote: again, a driver of your age and driving record that has a CDL, and has gone through an accredited school and has the 160 hour certificate, but still has no OTR experience.

Third quote: a driver, one year older than you are now, with CDL, documented training, and one year of OTR experience.

I think you will find that the best road may be to attend a company driver training. You can start with a company that will pay you while you are in training, charge you nothing (or small amount, $100-250) up front, then by driving for them for your first year, you will "pay-off" your training and gain that valuable one year experience.

Also, have your step-brother call his insurance agent and find out what the insurance cost would be for you to drive his truck while learning.

Hope this helps answer your question.

Buying our own truck is a whole different story and almost everyone (including myself) here will strongly discourage you.

To bad it's not a load of chicken, you could just leave the trailer at the truckstop.

I had to figure out some way to get to meet you and enjoy a cup of coffee. Since I was having a hard time catching you on the road, this seemed like the next logical step.

Welcome aboard!

If you want to drive steadily for 3 to 4 weeks at a time, you need to keep your 70 clock use at 8:45 per day. Then take off 15 minutes for pre-trip and 5 minutes for fueling, that leaves 8:25 for driving. My truck is governed at 63 and I pull a flatbed which requires several stops to check the load, so I average 57 mph during my driving time. So my average, max miles per day is 484. That gets you 3388 miles max in a week.

That's for a good day of driving only. The miles really drop when you have two stops and need to un-tarp and unstrap, then re-strap and re-tarp the load at each stop. I really enjoy days with no load, I need to get to the next load and have extra hours saved from slow days. I have managed 648 miles in a day.

In my first nine months I've gone from 28 to 40 CPM and my monthly miles have gone from 8500 to 11000 per month. Started in one of the oldest trucks in the fleet and in April, got the keys to a brand new truck.

Prove your worth to the company you are with and they will reward you. If not, get your year experience (which in itself is extremely valuable) and move on.

They're calling my program the "new driver 5-week crash course," at my terminal and this course does not happen at every terminal like the 12-week one does. We will also be DSRs when we're done.

-mountain girl

Probably not the greatest choice of names for a CDL training course. May want to skip the day of the "crash".

Mary, congratulations on moving forward on your dreams. Unfortunately, you ran smack into one of the major challenges of company CDL training. It's very fast paced and while they have some patience for students that need extra help, they always have a ng list of replacements waiting to get started.

I don't know what your situation at home is, but you do need to get things settled while driving so it does not become a distraction. Also, have you looked into paying for a CDL training program? Since these schools only make money by getting students to enroll, their selling points for their training should be; percent of students that complete the course, percent students that pass the CDL exam and placement of students in driving jobs. To meet these goals, they usually work with you to get the practice you need.

Good luck on whatever choice you make.