Comments By GrayBeardinPA

Tax guide

This is Kiplinger's 50 state Tax guide for retirees, but still a good tool for all. Your tax burden will be a big factor where you look.

Congrats! On your CDL. Good Luck with TNT.

Once you have your CLP and medcard, recruiters are more responsive. They know that you have invested time and willing to commit to a trucking career.

Most programs require you to get your CLP in your home state. So for example. If you go train with Swift. You get your NJ CLP and med card. Attend training in Richmond, Va. you take the CDL exam in VA. Once you pass you are sent back home to convert your passed VA CDL results into a NJ CDL.

Truckin Along With Kearsey is a mod on here and a TNT reefer trainer. Hopefully she’ll reach out to you. If you google her she has a YouTube channel and you can msg her there also.

Maybe it would be a good idea to keep one diary thread instead of starting new topic? With new topic treads, you are pushing other people’s new or updated threads to the rear. Also, People like to follow progression, if you keep it neat and in one place, ppl would appreciate it more.

Just a thought

Sorry got back to the hotel last night and passed out. So got cleared yesterday, been at the pad going over pre trip. With the wind can get one done then go inside and once I can feel my fingers out again. Got a text from my trainer I am meeting him at 0530 in the cafe tomorrow and taking a load to Philly and back so will be at the hotel still. Everyone has been amazing from instructors to driver, giving words of encouragement and advice. If you are still on the fence about which company to choose I can’t recommend Prime enough. I already feel like this is my extended family. I hope I can post tomorrow night after my first run. I am nervous, terrified, and have a healthy respect to the 80k bull I’m about to climb on all at once.

Looking forward to reading your PSD experience in Pittston.

Congrats! I just saw the announcement on Wilson’s FB page!

Here’s a state by state guide for retirees, but still a good guide for tax friendly area to consider. Kiplinger’s Tax living State Guide.

the issue is on the Federal level. Your state might allow Cannabis use, but on the Federal level it's an issue and this is where the problem is,,,,

"DOT Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy and Compliance Notice

Recently, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued guidelines for Federal prosecutors in states that have enacted laws authorizing the use of “medical marijuana.” http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/medical-marijuana.pdf

We have had several inquiries about whether the DOJ advice to Federal prosecutors regarding pursuing criminal cases will have an impact upon the Department of Transportation’s longstanding regulation about the use of marijuana by safety‐sensitive transportation employees – pilots, school bus drivers, truck drivers, train engineers, subway operators, aircraft maintenance personnel, transit fire‐armed security personnel, ship captains, and pipeline emergency response personnel, among others.

We want to make it perfectly clear that the DOJ guidelines will have no bearing on the Department of Transportation’s regulated drug testing program. We will not change our regulated drug testing program based upon these guidelines to Federal prosecutors.

The Department of Transportation’s Drug and Alcohol Testing Regulation – 49 CFR Part 40, at 40.151(e) – does not authorize “medical marijuana” under a state law to be a valid medical explanation for a transportation employee’s positive drug test result.

That section states:

§ 40.151 What are MROs prohibited from doing as part of the verification process? As an MRO, you are prohibited from doing the following as part of the verification process: (e) You must not verify a test negative based on information that a physician recommended that the employee use a drug listed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. (e.g., under a state law that purports to authorize such recommendations, such as the “medical marijuana” laws that some states have adopted.)

Therefore, Medical Review Officers will not verify a drug test as negative based upon information that a physician recommended that the employee use “medical marijuana.” Please note that marijuana remains a drug listed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. It remains unacceptable for any safety‐sensitive employee subject to drug testing under the Department of Transportation’s drug testing regulations to use marijuana.

We want to assure the traveling public that our transportation system is the safest it can possibly be."

Unfortunately I have to agree with his other point. This is going to probably keep you out of the industry. You made a huge mistake by not giving yourself a minimum of six months clean without burning a joint before giving up a hair sample. That is going to make it next to impossible to move forward in a trucking career.

As someone who has had to completely change their medications due to quitting cannabis I would appreciate the “lighting up a joint” jokes to not be made. I am now on meds that do not work near as well for what I need them for, all to get “clean” to change my career. As someone who has found cannabis as the ONLY medicine that has been successful, I am rather sensitive on the subject. I do not joke about my cannabis use and would appreciate information without the jabs at my medicinal choices. And as we are in a country where nearly half our states have legal medical cannabis use, I would assume people would start to treat it as it is and not as it has been made out to be.