Location:
San Antonio, TX
Driving Status:
In CDL School
Social Link:
A CDL instructor gave me the 'Silver Fox' CB handle. Since I am having so much fun doing this truck driving adventure, I decided to go with it. I am a 61 year old grandma, and was admittedly secretly pleased by the compliment so 'Silver Fox' it is.
Posted: 5 years, 7 months ago
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Hello everyone! Thank you Brett for putting this website and forum together as it is very helpful to me. My name is Patti and to give a little background, I have worked selling life insurance pretty much all of my career. I did fine while in Dallas Texas but when I moved back to my hometown, San Antonio, TX, 5 years ago, I just couldn't quite make it here. I had a second job for 4 years and it was wearing me down. I am almost 62 years old and in great health but don't EVER want to fully retire. I heard an ad for driving a truck for Wal-Mart and that they made $86k first year and I thought, "Wow, I would love to do that" and started looking into it.
After some research, and to the chagrin of my siblings, I just quit my job and ran off to Ft. Worth for what they said was 3 week CDL training for PAM. The recruiter said 3 weeks but is not honest. The average at this school is 5-6 weeks. I passed the written test with flying colors and passed the pre-inspection (with the school) with flying colors, but when it came to backing the truck on the gravel, pot-riddled road, I couldn't do it. I was in backing for 7 days and didn't move on to learn offsets and parallel parking and OTR. The school dropped me after my 4th week.
I know other people moved on to offsets and parallel, and I was hard on myself for not being able to SLB into the box. I take responsibility for most of that but the school should have moved me to another instructor before dropping me, at the very least. So, I packed up my things and drove back to San Antonio... not defeated or deterred.
The school in Ft. Worth called to say I owe them $1,400 for my time there, and I told them I would pay them when I was working again.
When I got back home, I did more research and I signed up for school with Southern Careers Institute. I will be there until my test date of 9/12. I am passing backing and offsets with no problems and believe that parallel and OTR will be just fine too. I am excited about my new career and am looking forward to seeing not just the Texas Hill Country but all of the other beautiful States as well.
I have ph letters with Paschall and Covenant and applied online with a few more today. I am hoping to team drive as well but am seeing a few comments on here that maybe I might want to re-think that too. We'll see.
Again, thanks for all the comments as I am learning a lot here...Let me know your thoughts
Posted: 5 years, 7 months ago
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Determined in Texas
I was so excited yesterday. I drove the truck about 15 miles back to the yard. I thought I did great and it pumped up my confidence about 100%. Now I KNOW I can do this. No question. Thanks to my instructor Nate for the boost. SLB is so simple now, pretty much have offsets down and I have parallel parked (with much instruction) one time. Will be working on that this week as well as double-clutching. Thanks for the encouragement! Patti