A Person Online Recently Asked Me How To Tell If They Would Be A Good Fit For Trucking.

MY ANSWER, Part 1 Unfortunately, there’s only one way to test out the trucking lifestyle. Get your CDL (Commercial Drivers License) and try it. Nothing written here, or on YouTube will be sufficient to help you make the final decision. Try it out and you will quickly find out if trucking is right for you. A couple of years back, miserable in my career, I decided to try it out and here is a summary of my experience.

After spending most of my career in the corporate world, I was had finally attained a manager position…and absolutely HATED it. I drove trucks part-time when I was much younger, delivering bulk fertilizer to farmers, and I really enjoyed it. I had always been fascinated by trucking lifestyle and started to endlessly watch trucking videos on YouTube and read every book I could find about getting started as a truck driver. My wife was mildly concerned, but she knows me to be a rational human being and surely someone with a decent salary and a 9–5 job wouldn’t throw it all away to drive a truck, would they?

After just over a year of misery as a manager, I decided to pull the plug and quit. I was making decent money, but I had had enough and knew it was time for me to go. After all my study, I was ready to start my dream job as a trucker! On my last day in Corporate America, at age 57, I walked out with my cardboard box and immediately started on my next objective: getting my Commercial Driver’s License.

Task#1: Get your Class A CDL

I knew there are basically two options to get a CDL. The first (and seemingly the simplest) is to go with one of the large mega-carriers who will take you off the street and train you to drive their trucks with no $ down. Be careful of this and carefully consider the contract you will sign if you take their training. I talked to several of the big carriers with reputable training programs (Schneider National, JB Hunt, and Maverick). The programs and contract obligations are similar. The company will train you to obtain your CDL with them, pay you a low rate while you learn, and in exchange, you will agree to drive for them for the next year or two after you graduate from their program. If you leave them before your agreed-upon driving contract is fulfilled, you will pay a prorated amount owing for the training you received. In the most extreme cases, this could be as much as $8000 that would have to be repaid. It may be more now, but my recollections are from back in 2022.

I had almost agreed to join Maverick’s training program to get my CDL when I happened to talk to a professional truck driver. He warned me against signing the training contract and said I should check out the private training schools and Community Colleges. The private schools charged about $5–6K, but I struck gold when I checked with my local Community College. Virginia has a program called Workforce and if I completed my driver training at my local community college and successfully obtained my CDL, I would not only not pay anything, but would actually be paid a bonus of $750.00. This is due to several grant programs and if I recall correctly, I only paid about $500 out-of-pocket to register, and when everything was calculated at the end, I had made $750 for the 6–7 week program. Each state will be different but there is a great demand for truck drivers and I was fortunate to get my CDL training through the local Community College and was paid $750 to do so. That program is still in place, so if you are in Virginia, you can get your CDL for free! Well, actually, better than free. You get paid to get your CDL.

So, here I was, 6 weeks removed from my corporate job, with a fresh Class A CDL (tractor-trailer) and zero experience. The driving I had done previously was only in Class B trucks (similar to dump trucks), not tractor-trailers, and it had been decades since I drove those in a different country. (Canada) So, essentially, I was a brand-new rookie truck driver.

From my past research, I decided Maverick Transportation would be a good place to start. I have always been fascinated by flatbed trucking, and my favorite YouTube trucker (Trucker Josh) drove flatbed, so that’s what I decided on. I had spent months communicating with their recruiter and remember, I had seriously considered taking my training with them, so we were well acquainted. When I changed my mind and decided to go through my local Community College, my recruiter at Maverick told me to call as soon as I had my license in hand. As soon as I passed my driving test at the DMV , I called them and within the hour they had sent me a plane ticket to their training facility in St. Louis, MO, where my training would begin.