Beginning the journey to TMC! Just out of CDL School!

Hey there everyone, my name is Jon. I am 23 and an Army Veteran. I was field artillery in the Army. Blowing stuff up was fun but I decided to leave the Military behind. November 2012 I got out and went to a few different jobs, unsure what I wanted to do. I attended college here in Indianapolis and completed my first semester there with good grades but I didn't enjoy it. I was going to go into Computer Science and become a programmer but it's not what I want to do right now in my life. After some more thinking, I finally decided that I wanted to go the route of becoming a truck driver. My dad has been a driver for around 30 years. I love to drive and ive always wanted to see more of the country. I know I won't be a tourist but this is what I want to do. So I went to Truck Drivers Institute in Indianapolis on July 14th. It was a quick 3 weeks and I actually failed the test twice. First for leaving out one word on the Brake check and the second for impeding traffic for waiting too long to turn left because there was a car coming and I wanted to make sure I'd clear it. I had a car behind me. Well, I took it the third time and passed easily on August 6th. I have been contemplating where I want to go work for a while and I finally decided on TMC. I like the Veteran OJT program, and just everything about TMC. So, I plan to start my orientation August 18th. It would have been tomorrow but I am a gamer and Gen Con, a gaming convention, is Aug 14th and 17th. So yeah, I will be starting then and I will probably post here about my experiences like Gunner has.

Thank you to gunner for your posts, they. helped me make up my mind on going to TMC.

 

I was a 13 Bravo myself which is Artillery Cannon Crewmember. Awesome seeing someone else from the FA!

Thanks everyone for the positive thoughts and I will definitely keep up with my time with TMC!

 

Will do! I don't expect it to be too bad. Arty shells are just about 100lbs and I could take those a good distance.

 

So my dad has drove trucks for many years. Never did the otr stuff ever because it was bacll k in the 70s and 80s. Well he drove a flatbed at some point and when we went out to breakfast he pretty much told me everything negative to make me want to not do flatbed. He said stuff like you're always stressed your load might fall and kept saying it's not worth the extra effort for some more money. He's got me second guessing myself now and so I'm trying to make a final decision between flatbed or just doing dry van. He thinks I should just worry about driving at first instead of adding load securement etc. as well. What do you guys think?