Private school or Company sponsored school?

It'll be interesting to see how your Cheetos and Kool-Aid in the AC theory holds up the first time you have to throw chains in a freaking blizzard or have to drive down a highway that's Heavy fog and snow pack and icy, or maybe a little bit of heavy traffic in Los Angeles or perhaps New York City.

I suggest you read a hell of a lot more before you commit to OTR.

 

Funny that you said that. I had my first bag of Cheetos in months last week.

As for sitting under an AC. Ask some of these guys here how long their trucks will run, once they’ve stopped for the night.

I’m in a company truck at the moment. It has a very strict idle setting. 10 minutes at first warm up, then 5 minutes tops. There are ways to cheat. But companies know when you do. It has a bunk heater that runs independent of the motor. But that’s no good at 117 degrees in the Southwest.

As far as busting ###. I just spent the last 2 days going 750 miles. Good weather, dry roads. I spent most of that time dealing with inner city traffic. Where you can burn up an entire 14 hour day. And only make $100.

Despite the talk and bravado. We’re not paid tourist.

I carry a professional camera rig, and it very rarely leaves its case. There’s not much point in photographing a lot full of piss bottles. But, I have my moments.

 

But I thought if I carried a GoPro while OTR I could be a YouTube star!?? ###### man!

 

Okay I'm not coming across like I want to. I would prefer to help. Not sound like some kind of a hard-### old school which which I'm not.

But over the road driving is exhausting dude, it'll try you in ways you never thought possible.

So one thing you want to really do is really learn route finding very well, route planning. And if you do go to a CDL school like I did which was a company-sponsored one they're going to spend one eight-hour day on map Reading and that's it. And that's not enough because we were slowed down because we had one guy in the class who had undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea so he wasn't getting any sleep at all and he held the entire we got maybe five hours of instruction out of what should have been an eight-hour day.

Anyway get yourself an atlas and learn to read it, learn everything about it. And here I mean literally cover to cover open every page should look through that page read it understand everything on that page and don't leave a single page out.

Pretend that you have to take a load from say Loveland Colorado to I don't know just pick a destination and don't don't pick like Cincinnati pick some small town in the middle of nowhere.

Okay and then take an address in there and then learn to use Google Maps with satellite view to zoom in on that find out how you're going to get a truck in and out of that place.

Cuz dude I'm serious man driving a 75-foot long semi tractor-trailer rig it's going to test you like you never thought possible.

And you have to plan where you going to park for your lunch break, you got a plan where you're going to park for your piss breaks for crying out loud.

And personally I was with a mentor driver a training driver for 5 weeks and he didn't teach me a ####### thing.

The first few weeks were a nightmare for me because I had to learn everything on my own. There's a lot to it and there's a lot of help available right here on these forums are some really wonderful people here that will definitely reach out and help you. I'll be glad to help with anything I've been driving for about a year-and-a-half and I tell you what man there's a lot to it it's not the glamorized romantic thing you start seeing the movies and s*** it's not like that at all.

I guarantee you in your first six weeks on the road you going to want to quit that job 37 times. It's very challenging.

 

I’m so #### tired of YouTube truckers. lol Everybody wants to work an angle, and monetize their channel. And live stream/chat cuz they so #### edgy and cool

Full disclosure. I do watch 2 guys. One I spend my time fast forwarding through. Because he can ramble about nothing for hours it seems.

The other guy, direct and to the point. Lots of good info, along with a few things I disagree with. But he puts out a quality video, without all the BS

 

Which ones are they? I’ve been watching some to try and learn a few things myself. I hate the ones that drone on for 30 minutes for one little tidbit at the very end about something I already knew. lol.
I’m by no means an expert, matter of fact just going to get my CDL soon. Only reason I chimed in is because I’ve been on the road in one form or another most of my life, mostly touring with bands, and the last few years OTR in a non CDL straight truck so I am familiar with most issues that arise. Aside from trying to find parking.

 

Trucking is pretty good if you ask some of us old timers. If it was so bad we wouldn't have made a career out of it. I'm a big fan of refrigerated trucking because love running at night and tight schedules. Some of us thrive on that.
Here's a woman driver YouTube of running through Las Vegas at night:
OGT- Las Vegas

 

...

 

It will bore the hell out of you. But check out 404trucker. He dealt with a lot of issues while trying to become an O/O. Now, he’s doing real estate and investing it seems lol. His older videos are still up though.

 

Is that a Blue Cornflower?