Preparing For A Trucking Career With Roehl

Hey Cowboy how's your training going?

Wow, three weeks have gone by so damn fast. First of all, I apologize for the delay in posting. There's a couple of reasons: 1) the internet sucks here at the hotel except early in the mornings and I never have time in the mornings to get on. 2) this is a fun but intense program and the priorities in the evening are eat, shower, call home, study and then go to bed. There's not much time left for other things. I'm a 50 yr old veteran and this is the hardest thing I've done since basic training.

I'm starting week 4 tomorrow. I passed my CDL test (all four of us on my truck passed). I did a perfect pre-trip and in-cab inspection, perfect air brake test, took 4 out of 12 points on my backing (all on the 90 degree alley dock) and 9 out of 30 on my road test (31 pts is failing on the road). Our truck was the only one out of four trucks to test on week 3, day 5. The others are testing this Tue and Wed. Hope they all pass.

Out of 14 people who started, there are 13 of us left. 1 got fired in week 3 for just not being able to master the skills needed to drive the trucks and he had mentally given up.

Don't do this if you're in doubt that you can finish, or if you are a quitter when things get rough. This takes a high level of commitment, dedication and determination. You will screw up, you will have bad days, you will wonder if it was all worth it sometimes, but those moments are fleeting if you stay focused and press on.

Having said all that, this program is top-notch, the instructors are awesome, the equipment is top-of-the-line (remembering that training trucks are put through hell each week). Roehl just received 300 brand new 2020 Freightliners and Internationals. We've looked at and in both of them and they are NICE. It's very likely we will get one of them after phase 2. They are all automatics :(

By the end of the year, so we were told, Roehl will be training and testing on automatics only. We're the last generation of new drivers that will have an unrestricted CDL and it's industry-wide. I will likely never see a manual again in this or any other "big" company. Oh well.

As for week 4, for those of us who have already passed our CDL, we will do close-quarters backing more like real-world scenarios, and do longer drives out of town and on the major highways. We will stop and back into spots at truck stops and learn more about how operations work in Roehl. We will meet our Fleet Training Managers and be instructed about what to do while we're home getting ready for our Phase 2 Driver Trainer to pick us up or meet us. I'm excited and proud but I'm also exhausted and ready to get home to my wife and son for some down time.

One more thing: I've made life-long friends here that I will keep in touch with. I won't mention their names for privacy reasons, but they know who they are. I believe one of their wives follows this diary and I feel bad that I didn't get to post very much while here. My truck-mates and I all agree that we couldn't have done this without the love, support, confidence and cheerleading of our wives and families back home. This has been the closest thing I've found to the comradery and brotherhood I had in the military (three of the four on my truck and the instructor are all veterans). I really hope to run into these guys at a terminal or truck stop some time down the road.

Stay Safe

Congratulations on securing your CDL!

Great job!

That's awesome! Thanks for the update and congratulations on getting your CDL!

Great to hear from you Cowboy. Congrats on passing the CDL test as well. Awesome job!

Congrats!!!!!