Returning to the road

Hey everyone, so I came off the road after pulling reefer for many years about 3 and a half years ago. I actually thought I was not returning but the road, she is a mistress, and she is calling. I made the mistake of letting my physical slip which downgraded my cdl and because of the new training rule that came out like this past Tuesday I think I don’t simply retest I gotta actually go through cdl school all over again, ugh!! This is according to a conversation with the licensing office that pulled up my info and verified it. I finally found a school that will let me use a manual transmission truck, they ALL use automatic now and you get some automatic only restriction on your cdl. Crazy. But that’s a side note, my question is this and let me preface this with I do not use drugs lol! So I have been taking Wellbutrin to stop smoking and let me say it really worked. However, from what I just found out it can cause a false positive on drug tests for meth, yeah meth. So that’s awesome. I’m probably going to need to go to a company that does a variation of training for people that have been off the road for a while. I’m worried about doing a hair test and being accused of being a meth head and failing a drug test even though I clearly have all my teeth and don’t turn tricks for pipe cash. I’d like to stick with companies that only do urine tests. My record is flawless zero csa points no tickets or accidents no criminal record nothing I do not want to chance a false negative. If anyone can point me toward GOOD companies that do back to work training or whatever and do not do hair. I should also say that I have been effectively retired this whole time so no work history for all this time. I would really be thankful for any help. Appreciate it, stay safe .

 

8 years. Smooth bore bulk food grade tanker and reefer. Before that I was a construction project manager. I was at my desk one day and said to myself, I said self.. I’m done with this and got a cdl.

 

Thank you for your help, I will be paying for a school here in San Antonio myself. I do not care to enter into a contract with any company. Like I said I found one here that gives you a choice to use manual transmission, if you test on auto you get a restriction. Like every single other school I called only uses auto transmission. I hate autos, I don’t like the way they back up because I can’t feather the clutch and I always end up banging the #### dock. Plus I don’t trust them in the mountains although I realize that’s probably just paranoid thinking

 

I was looking at freymiller as well, they offer refresher training, but I’ve not done a lot of reading up on them yet. The western dairy transport you mentioned seems like drivers like them and I enjoyed yanking milk around although molasses sucks. The load and unload is WAY faster than reefer as well

 

Yeah, it’s that optimized idle that gets me, I had a truck that had it briefly and I hated it, truck keeps shutting down and kicking on by itself, freaks me out when I’m crashed out, but I love the reefer chugging away, go figure