How did you get started driving a truck?

I forgot Don Hummer Trucking in Oxford,IA
They also hire new cdl grads. Your classmates may be interested.

 

I had a brain fart and thought it was a good idea?
Mental disorder?

 

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Actually,it was a pretty good ride, good days and not so good ones.
But, overall, I enjoyed my time on the road. Sure I missed out on seeing a lot of my kids growing, but I always shared stories from my trips, things I'd seen, people I met, and, because of that, I'm pretty sure they have a better knowledge of our country than most. So, yeah, I think it probably was a pretty good idea.

 

Money period, don't get me wrong I love it.... but it was always about the cash

 

Grew up around them..dad worked in a limestone quarry when I was a kid. His shift ended after mom had to be at work, and dads boss was pretty cool, he'd let me and my brother hang out at the pit till dad was done (about 30 mins later). Seeing all the big trucks and tractors etc drew my interest. Ended up driving/operating most everything down there by the time I was 12. Fast forward many years and I had a job on a pig farm grinding feed into roll off bins, had to shunt the bins around the yard, that when I knew I had to drive....

Got my DZ all on my own, and found a job driving a roll off truck for an Industrial/Commercial Flat Roofing company. They hired me off the street with VERY little on road experience. Gave me a chance and I proved myself. That was 5 years ago. I did quit the first job after 3 years to haul feed (for 11months), because of the number of guys fighting for limited hrs. in the winter. But when the roofing company called to say they would guarantee me hrs all year round, I jumped on it.

 

For me it was that I just couldn't handle punching a clock day in day out, under the same fluorescent lights surrounded by walls and lazy people. I couldn't stick around in the same place but for a couple years then something would make me burst and I'd walk away.

So I decided I would go to college and get a BS degree in software engineering with a minor in business. The more classes I took the more I kept thinking that this is really is BS. I realized that this isn't about teaching you anything other than to think a certain way. I already could write code in 8 different languages. I started to feel like I was buying a piece of paper that says I was dedicated for eight years.

Then I had a professor that didn't care about his job and was lazy about giving out e exams and material and when things weren't turned on time by anyone we got the shaft. So I wrote him a letter that wasn't really nice but in jist stated that he was wasting my money outta my pocket. (I was paying my own way). He responded that I need to change my attitude and the way I deal with people or I would never get anywhere in life. I thought to myself "F you dude!" I'm 42, I own everything I have, I've never had a loan and always paid cash and I'm #### close to having a seven figure bank account.

That was my burst moment, so I dropped out with a 3.8 GPA, I dropped out of high school as well felt like "I can count money and I'm literate, you have nothing else for me here". I also had a full time job and school was just a nuisance to me.

I was determined to start my own business at that point. I just didn't know what, first idea was PC repair but after looking around they were everywhere. Then it clicked, my mom drove trucks for 21 years, I drove my first truck when I was 12ish I worked on them from the age 12 to 20 and periodically after that. So there brainstorm was over and I spent a couple months studying about what steps to take and boom my company was born.

So in the end my reason for getting into trucking boils down to freedom. I can go where I want, when I want, if I want. Now the only one controlling me is the government, which it's that way in any part of life. So it's normal to me, just do things by the their book, and the rest is my freedom of choice.

 

My first time behind the steering wheel of a truck was in 1958 because the company I was working for desperatley needed a piece of construction equipment hauled two hundred and sixty miles to a new construction site. The truck was there but no drivers. I was was 18, and had never been in a truck in my life, let alone drive one. I didn't even know how how to start it nor understand why that #### old Autocar had two gear shift levers (a 5 X 4).

In the end however, three hours late, I got the thing to the new construction site only to be reloaded for a return trip to the original site. (hell, I could almost shift without grinding every gear I tried) At that time you needed a chaufers licence to drive a truck. Hell, I had no idea what that even meant. Those old trannies had to be the toughest trannies ever made because for the first two hundred miles I ground every gear I tried to get into.

Fifty-four years later and six million miles in the rear view mirrors, I packed it in. And, I might add, I never got to drive a Volvo. Everything else that had eighteen wheels though.

 

they just invented the wheel.