New and from vegas

so a little about myself and what i'm shooting for:

i'm 21, single, and from las vegas. i was just accepted into United States Trucking School in denver, which i'm more or less "moving" to attend. i originally responded to an ad in the local paper for Werner after figuring, "i've been wanting to have a career involving lots of driving and i'm almost desperate to get out of the friggin' desert, my job pays well for my standards but bores the living hell out of me, and i've got my aunt of 20 years OTR experience to help me not screw this up."

so i called werner and had an interview set up, totally ready to jump right on in without thinking, and my aunt yanked me back and told me to hold on that. so i did. she suggested i try out Stevens, or CR England or Swift if i wanted to stay close to home...

for the record, time away from home does NOT bother me. i've already asked numerous recruiters if i honestly HAD to go home every 2-3 weeks...

i liked what stevens's website was selling, but i'd developed some sort of cautious knowledge from having my collar yanked back earlier, and started doing research. i've been lurking on these boards for the better part of 2 months--along with other, less trucking but more company-based sites--and had to convince my aunt that stevens might not be worth jumping into either. after her own exhaustive research, she agreed.

so in the end, i've decided to just do private schooling instead of company schooling. after reading so much, i guess being under contract with a trucking company isn't much better than with a cell phone company. i'll just get my CDL n hope the job-placement works out.

so that's my backstory, here's the part where ya'll can help me:

like i said, i've got a job already and make 600 per two weeks, after i pay my gas n ramen/lemonade bills. i'll be saving for one more month and intend to have 1800ish to set out to school and the rest of my life on. considering 700 will go to lodging, i'll need the typical winter clothes, the bus ticket, a physical and i guess a license state change, and food n drink both at school and in that time before my first paycheck, should 1800 be enough? i'm running the numbers right now, but i'd appreciate feedback.

i'll go into more things if anyone's interested. incase you were wondering about the retarded length of this post, i'm also sort of a writer...i'll be working on a couple books on my laptop whenever i park for the night. haha. thanks for the help n i'm looking forward to more conversations. =D

 

haha i plan to when i've grabbed some writing material on the road. one of the reasons i want to leave the desert and drive around the country is to take in the scenery for my stories. i hate the desert, i refuse to write about it. the tales from the road thread was one of the first places i went to when i found this site, very entertaining.

as for what i'm writing, 2 novels and a few short stories. i'm inactive on it right now because this computer sucks (part of that 1800 is going toward a 4-500 dollar computer, i reckon). hopefully my research on that will turn up something cheaper but with the specs i *need*. i think that's for another conversation though. haha

 

amazingly, i've managed to find absolutely zilch on the local colleges concerning CDL training. and the three companies headquartered here are swift, werner, and knight transport. the first two...only as a last resort, and knight i believe only does regional. oh yea, AIT is a local college that offers CDL training, but they're specifically tied to werner. o__O

i swear, the west is no place to get into the trucking business.

 

heh, maybe i'll keep an eye towards swift then. i suppose i only wrote them off because everywhere i see swift, i see werner. and werner's supposed to be my "last resort". my aunt just got back on the road working for Prime. i'll give her a month n see what she says then.

but yea, barring some catastrophe involving my credit application, i'm supposedly "99% certain" to be accepted to the school in denver and will know for sure on monday. that's when i plan to burn through these boards for everything i'll need to know.

but i do have a question: considering i'm pretty much against company schooling and the contract that follows (even if swift doesn't do the contract, i plan to already have my CDL before i talk to them), was i right going with a dedicated trucking school for my CDL compared to my local commy college? i may be wrong, but i'd imagine a dedicated school would be held in higher regards than a course from a commy. what comes to mind is, "you get what you pay for".

in the case of stevens, you get the best company training but pay with your soul.