Profile For Ridge C.

Hey guys, I'm really enjoying the advice on this forum so I might as well post a question I have; now this is kind of a silly question but I'll post it anyway. I'm preparing for CDL school at the moment with a medium size company and about a year after driving with this company me and a close friend of mine are planning to take a roughly month long trip out west to explore national parks. I'm planning to save money for the trip throughout the year of driving with the company, but my question is would it be realistic for a dispatcher to give me a month off? I obviously have to prove myself as a safe, reliable driver, have a good relationship with him or her, and turn the truck into the terminal before they would even consider this, but I wanted to ask more the experienced drivers on this forum to see if it would be realistic to take that much time off and then return to work. Any feedback is appreciated.

Hey guys, unfortunately due to my low grades I had to take a break from full time college at the moment, so I've decided to prepare for a career in truck driving for a couple years at the very least could be longer but who knows where life will take me. Anyways I'm most likely going to be attending a company sponsored school and I've narrowed it down to prime and CR England. I have a few concerns however; I'm aware that CR England trains on only automatics and at the end of training you'll have an only automatic restriction on your license, would this help or hinder me in the short term? I know the industry as a whole is moving towards automatics but its always best to know the fundamentals of a manual. At the same time however I believe these are two really great options to get started in this industry I just don't know how I feel about being stuck with an automatic only restriction on license. Any help is appreciated

I was a high school honor student and a Lieutenant governor of an international.charity organization in 10th grade. i skipped college to "have a life" and totally regretted it. i then went back to college in my late 20s and it took 12 years of part time classes plus working 60 hours a week to get my degree. i graduated with honors but i never got the "real.college experience" i totally regret not going to college when i was young.

why not do both? get the degree and then use the motivation that afterward you could always go into trucking to get you through it. Perhaps you need to change majors, which is common.

all of the replies above show you that it is never too late to get into trucking. it can be too late to enjoy "college life" if you decide to go back.

things to consider about waiting for trucking: the more car drive time you have, the better judgment you have when driving a big rig. It is just an experience thing. You mentioned Alabama.... so have you ever driven a car in snow? i know quite a few new drivers who feel overwhelmed by northern winters because they were raised down south. that is when the years or decades of auto driving experience and judgement could come in. so entering trucking at a younger age could actually be much more stressful than at a later age.

You might not think that college degree is worth anything, but many employers see it as "not quitting". my friend had a BS im culinary arts but got hired as a buying manager at a big named store making huge money. it only mattered that she had a degree, they didnt care what the major.

Guess im going to play the motherly role here....(which is rare).... stay in school. go to parties, meet friends, go on spring break, enjoy your youth before you start getting into debt, buying houses, and having responsibities that will make you grow up too quickly. use the years in college to improve your car driving skills.

trucking is wondeful, but isnt going anywhere. and it is a very very serious and dangerous job. you can kill someone and yourself. or worse, kill someone and live to regret it. or wind up in jail for vehicular homicide. having relationships out here can be really difficult. meeting a new love can be almost impossible. dont waste that portion of your youth on the road either. many long time truckers have gone through several marriages for a reason.

you only live once...so do it all.

Thanks for the reply Rainy, some really great advice there that I'll consider! Even though I'm from Birmingham I was actually born in Cleveland and went to boarding school there for a couple years so I had the experience of making round trips from Alabama to Ohio during winter and summer months so I do have some experience in snow but not a ton (lol).

Thanks for all the replies everybody! It seems like the general consensus is trucking will always be there and college is something that will always be there but the older you get the more difficult it is to return to school for a lot of people. It'll be a tough decision, I'll let everyone know what I decide! Thanks, Ridge.

And now my $0.02. You are now an adult. You can vote, kill or die for this country, and at 21 you can drink and get your CDL. (Don't start drininking with a CDL.) With that said, it is your life to live. At 50, I started driving. If I had started at 21 I would be looking to retire soon. So, live your life, have your own successes and failures. Respect your parents. No matter what you do, they will love you. Lastly, why geography?

Haha, well geography seemed like the best choice for me at the time because I love learning about different cultures and regions of the world, but I also always enjoyed reading maps so it seemed like a logical choice.

Hi y'all, I just registered for this forum and was looking for some advice on what to do here. First a little background on me; I come from primarily a college educated white collar family, but trucking has been something that has peaked my interest in these past couple years. I'm currently a freshman at The University of Alabama studying geography and map designing, however I'm struggling currently in my classes and I'm really having a tough time deciding if this is even worth studying. My parents want me to finish school and personally I think it would scare the hell out of them if I told them I wanted to give trucking a shot. But I'll be turning 21 in a couple months and have until then to decide. I love to travel and always enjoy a good adventure so I think trucking would be good for me but I don't want to disappoint my family. Just wanted to get some opinions from current drivers or people that are in CDL school what they think about my situation. -Ridge