Beginning The Change Of A Lifetime!

First I want to say thank you for everyone for there support and advice. TT is by far the best learning tool I've been able to find by far. Between the people and the training I don't think I could be anymore prepared.

Now for to bring everyone up speed on my story. I'm 29 years old and I'm a father of two. For the last 5 years I've worked in the parts department of a car dealership and I'm going no where fast. I finally decided to enroll at a local school for the CDL program. That was about a month ago. After an agonizing wait I finally stay next week. I'm beyond excited as is my wife and the rest of my family. I feel like I'm following my dad's footsteps because he drove dumps and cement trucks for a long pay off his life.

I feel like I'm going to be starting this class w with a leg up though thanks to the High Road Training Program and the rest of the forum members. I've gone through the program one and reset and I'm going through again. I will continue to use it through out my training to. I week need all the help I can get because the course I'm taking is only part time so I only go weekends until January. This site will help keep me fresh during the week.

I don't know if this is normal practice but I've already begun throwing out my resume to possible future employers. Western Express, Schneider, and a few local companies. They have all told me to contact them as soon as I get my CDL to see about a job. It may not be firm offers but I want to have contacts when I'm ready to look. I know my school provides "job placement" but my previous college told me the same thing and guess what that was a complete waste of time and money. I don't want to make the same mistake again.

So when I do start next week I will be sure to keep this thread updated and wish me luck. Also if you have any further advice please feel free to post it here or PM me. I'll talk to you all soon!

Sounds great Heavy C! Looking forward to following along with ya!

Yeah, you can definitely begin contacting companies and applying if they'll let you. A lot of companies have a pre-hire system where they'll tell you whether or not you qualify to work there regardless of whether or not you've gone to Truck Driving School. Others will indeed tell you to contact them once you've completed your schooling. But certainly get feelers out there.

For those who are not familiar with how the pre-hire system works, here's a great article about Understanding The Pre-Hire System.

Finally I can report that I have officially started driving school! I can't believe I finally made it to this day. It seemed like a long time coming but now I can begin my journal and report how I'm doing.

So things began bright and early today at 6:45 which really isn't a change for me since I have a one year old who wakes up at 5 am everyday. I arrive at school and find that my class is only eight new guys and one carry over from a previous class. Not a bad ratio for when we get out to the yard I think. It will be like 3/1 student/teacher. So we sit down and begin signing all of the paperwork. Oh the paperwork! There was plenty of sign here, print here, initial here, etc. I'm sure glad that part only happens today. My teacher is a pretty nice guy. We got a lot of stories from him during the paperwork part about him on the road and about his new Harley. A pretty laid back kind of guy. First impressions were definitely positive.

Then even more fun, they do student orientation. No the lady that did it for us was pretty funny and didn't waste time on things that CDL program guys don't haver to worry about. Which was nice I thought. They had the career development guy come in and talk to us about what our goals were and how through the course they would work with us to prepare to meet them. He was also pretty pleasant to listen to, he never really rambled on much.

At the end of all this beginning stuff the videos begin. Oh hurray for boring videos. But whatever it's only this part right?!? We had videos on organ donation, the school, and some other random safety videos.

After that we break for lunch. I'm really the only person who is local to this school so I go home. The rest of the class is from much further away so they all have to go get fast food because it didn't look like any of them came prepared.

After the hour lunch we pick back up at 1:00. Now we begin the real truck stuff. Now before today I had a preconceived notion that we would be doing out D.O.T. stuff today. That's not what happened. We jumped right into H.O.S. and logs. Now this was the section that I was having a hard time here with in the High Road materials. But with some actual instruction and some visuals from the teacher I was able to get a grasp on it.(For the most part). I know there are a lot of exceptions to all the rules but just knowing the basics is nice. We were able to round out the day with that section.

All in all I feel pretty good about everything so far. Tomorrow they tell us we'll be doing the Air Brakes section and maybe taking a trip over to the yard to get a visual of what we cover in that. That I like because getting hands on with things like that is a major thing for me. So that's the update so far but there will be more to come!

That's great Heavy C. Glad to hear it got off on the right foot for you. Looking forward to reading how your class is going since I will be heading out in a few weeks to start. Nice to see what's going on. Different school but they probably have a similar setup.

Now this was the section that I was having a hard time here with in the High Road materials

Did you reset your scores or something? Because it shows you didn't do any of the Logbook section in the High Road Training Program.

Yes Brett I did reset with the intention of going through again and I haven't made it all the way through yet. Just take my word for it though, I got really confused with all the rules and exceptions. The teacher was really helpful in clearing things up.

Today marks the end of day two. We had out first official test today on air brakes. Aced it thanks to the training here. I feel like kind of an over achiever though because I was breezing through all of the quizzes and test with no trouble. We did all the air brake stuff during the morning and just after lunch.

After lunch we got a little surprise. Wet got to go over to the yard and get some hands on air brake experience. Little did we know that there would be an undisclosed test for us. It wasn't written or verbal either. When we arrived at the yard we were told to wait in the break room. That was at two o'clock. An hour later the teacher pokes his head in and counts how many people were there. We were actually short one guy and he was removed from class. No big loss there though he was very disruptive.

Anyway the teacher told us that it was the hurry up and wait test. All of our instructors are former military guys and like to see if anyone doesn't have the patients to just sit there. It was bizarre to say the least. After the wait time we got brought out to one of the trucks and the instructor did the pre trip brake test. It was awesome to see the procedure in action instead of just memorizing it for a test.

After day two I still feel great. I'm loving it so far, and especially just being inside that truck. Yea it wasn't in the driver's seat yet but it was awesome to get that feeling. Now the real problem I'm going to have is waiting five days before I go back to class because I'm only doing the part time class. I guess I'll hit the High Road Training Program and get ready for next week.

More to come!

Little did we know that there would be an undisclosed test for us

There's a lot of that during the various training phases in trucking. Trucking schools and companies are always trying to find ways of filtering out the undesirables, and they do a good job of it. That's why sites like TheTruckersReport are so crammed full of dropouts complaining about companies. A lot of em fail various tests like that and get tossed to the curb. They're frustrated and embarrassed by it so they blame the company naturally.

So day three is in the books. Today was actually a pretty relaxing, chill kind of day. For the most part we just read a couple chapters in the manual and watched some videos on defensive driving. We did however get our drug screens and DOT physicals. Let me tell you how that went.

So me and three other guys from class car pool over to the testing place. A nice little walk in clinic right down the road from school. We sign in and get called back one by one. I'm second in with my group and right away start out on the wrong foot. First thing the nurse does is blood pressure. Now when I had my regular physical in August it was well with-in normal range. Not this time! She hooks me up to the machine and it comes back 151/92. Definitely not where I usually am. I tell her this so she's like ok we'll check it manually and see if it's any different. Lucky for me she did. Her reading came back normal so she wrote that down and we moved on. She was really easy to deal with. Next was height and weight. Easy enough. Then the eye test. I stuck my head up to this little binocular contraption and did the side vision test and color chart. By problem with this was that i'm color deficient. So red's, oranges, greens look the same. Blues and purples look the same. I can see color I just have a hard time telling certain chades apart. I didn't think this would cause a major problem but when they tell you to say the number in those pictures with the colored dots I was only able to get like 2 out of 12. Not good. We move on to the regular vision test and I test great there with 20/20 in my right eye and 20/15 in my left. While I stood there we did the whisper test which was surprising because it certainly didn't sound like a whisper it was much louder than I thought it would be. Oh well. Then I got to pee in a cup and I got locked in a room after. The Dr came in and literally did a couple of real quick reflex and movement tests and that was it. No lifting like I was expecting or anything like that. Then came the "well I have to check the guidelines to see if your vision problem will pass". Oh come on! I get through all this and now you say I have to check. Lady I know what colors the traffic lights are and what color street signs are. Just let me go. Well not even two minutes later she said I was fine.

That was it. I was there less than an hour total and walked out with my DOT card. Pretty happy about that. The teacher cut us out early today and said to read a few more sections for tomorrow and that was that. I'm kind of want to just take some tests or go get my permit because I feel like I'm just waiting for the class to catch up since I've been doing the High Road. I'll just calm myself down though and review and stay with the class. I guess I'm just in a hurry to get into the truck.

More from day four tomorrow....

Heavy C, I've been following along here, just haven't commented yet. Sounds to me like your gonna be at the top of the class thanks tot the High Road Training Program. Don't fret they will get you in that truck soon enough, and when they do your gonna love it!

Heavy C if you took the same color test I did I was stumped on the last one. I told the guy I wasn't positive but I didn't see anything in that box. He started laughing and said you passed. Then he admitted the last one didn't have a number for whatever the reason. Gotta love em. Congrats on passing!!!!