How much could I make?

If you search around you can find reasonably priced schools. I start school tomorrow and pre-paid it's $3300 for everything, including lodging.

What I found was that the small schools don't really advertise and have never heard of optimizing a site to be found in a search engine. They also seem to be far away from the bigger cities, and cater more toward training locals and farm workers instead of being a funnel into the mega carriers.

The biggest factor seems to be if you have to finance. The schools that finance add on $1000 or more to the price over paying cash, and then on top of that charge credit card levels of interest.

If there's been a silver lining to this covid crap it's that everything moves glacier-slow lately. I was so anxious to get going I was considering even going to a company school, but with time I was able to dig into Google and find a much better alternative. They are out there if you look.

To get started look for lists of approved schools that carriers will hire from, then go from there. I started with the Schneider list.

Find a truck driving school

 

I grossed $5,500 a month in my first OTR driving, only had a few years box truck experience 16 years earlier. I did 48 state and Canada, dry box and reefer, hardly specialized.

Yeah not quite $6K, but I could have done that if I never went home.

 

Only Roadmaster would cost that much , most cdl school s will be under 4k . Do what you want, my suggestion isn't going to a company for their training and be forced to stay for a minimum of a year being treated like trash

 

Yes, but shop around. The better schools have 320 hr programs that more companies will recognize.

My local community college charges $1800 last time looked. Start with those before going private. The CDL school I went was part of the public school system so was much cheaper. Even got college credits for the program.

Also check out your local unemployment office, with any luck they will have some kind of special Covid 19 retraining program you might qualify for.

 

Sounds like u had a good gig

 

Yup, I was very fortunate to get on with them with no recent experience. They did take new graduates, but my CDL was 20+ years old. I told them up front that I had not driven a class A since school and they still gave me a shot.

 

Company name?

 

Abilene Motor Express out of Richmond VA. I left for a local job end of '18. Company has since been sold to Knight, but drivers are still knocking out the big miles.

There is a very lengthy and informative thread in favorite company sub forum.

 

Just search every company you come across. Usually the best ones never advertise. You gotta know someone that knows someone. I'm a company driver and I'm averaging over 6k month with home cpl nights and every weekend.