Totalnoob is respectfully here to learn :)

Hello everyone, i'm just making it really clear that I am not a trucker or even a trucking student at this point yet i'm hoping that will not count against me asking questions to learn. I'm a total noob, but I will try not to be foolish...

"So why are you here then?" Well I want to drive and learn how to do repairs on big trucks.

I'm just not sure whether or not I want to do so commercially due to all the 'horrors' I keep reading about (I went from originally planning to become a trucker, then after weeks of lurking and reading about everything from prick companies filing false reports to control your career to abusive police waking you up at 3am to harass you ruining your sleep schedule i'm now having serious doubts ) combined with finding out there is apparently no real way to "part time" this (originally I was hoping I could be an owner-operator maybe do some weekend runs while going to college) and I apparently can't even work seasonally or it ruins insurance rates without constant work, so it has now relegated the driving and such to more likely be personal use only, along with possible "fall back on if other things go to hell" type career planning. If I were going to do something it'd be to try and get oilfield work in north dakota since I grew up here and am familiar with the cold - but I don't see anyone likely to hire me unless I do the normal crap of being abused by Swift for 6 months hoping they don't file false reports on me to prevent me leaving gambling that i'll even be there long enough to pay back the training costs of something I can probably learn better myself... >_<

(If anyone has any helpful information that counters the above, by all means, please let me know.)

My interest stems from that I grew up around fire apparatus because my dad was a firefighter and was the fleet mechanic for the fire station where i'd hang out endlessly and ever since then have had an endless fascination with big trucks. Ie - even if I never hauled anything in the future my "hot rod" dreams would involve detroit diesels rather than corvettes and so i'd like to learn things..

Yet I actually am hoping to haul some things too, just more "for my own use" - hobby farm type work. In the future I will need to move things either too big, too heavy, needing air brakes, or too inefficient to stick onto a hotshot trailer with a dodge ram, and having seen old used semis at surprisingly low prices (a few thousand $$ ??) apparently in running road legal condition that seems a better way to solve the problem that would pay for itself after the first few loads provided there's no instantly catastrophic failures.

Since it's a given anything decades old is going to require work, and big truck mechanics is normally darn expensive being oriented around guys who have less time and need it fixed now i'm hoping to fix things that come up myself too. I mean if i've pulled an engine and put a clutch in on a car, except for scaling up in size is it really fundamentally different?


So that's me... hoping I wont be eaten alive.