Newbie here and need seasoned advice

I went to a nearly fly-by-night school in 1993, but I was highly motivated and was able to pass with their truck. I do not recommend this option.

Local community colleges with truck training seem to be very thorough, and from what I hear get visited by both national and local recruiters. Also if you go this route, you owe nothing to any company.

Training paid for by a trucking company has the lowest out of pocket cost initially, but results in indentured servitude. For example, Roehl will train you from the street and pay you $500 a week while training, but you won't get that until the third week, 19 days in a truck with a trainer, then you have to complete 125,000 solo miles (about 15 months) with Roehl before you're free and clear. And to anyone who wants to dispute this, just know that this is exactly what a Roehl recruiter told me last week. YMMV.

I've had my CDL since 1993, drove about 9 years, became a mechanic, and after 10 years of that I can't get a driving job because my experience isn't "current". So, stay current. Also, at 60 yoa I assume you already have a stable household, so that's not a concern.

So, good luck. You get out of it what you put into it, and if you can look past the lies, bs and frustration, it's really just about you, the truck, and the freight.

Also, the Interstates all look the same, except I-40 through the desert, and after the first mile on 40 you've pretty much seen it, IMO. It's still the best paying job I ever had.

 

I would also caution you to remove any rose-colored preconceptions you may have and not put all your eggs into one basket. This is not for everyone. Some don't like the solitude, some can't handle the equipment, some don't like the industry overall. Very few stay more than a few years.

Don't get me wrong, we'd be happy to have you out here with us. But don't do anything drastic about your house or car or relationships until you find out it will be a good fit.

 

You are not going to be going to a more professional industry in trucking. If you have stayed current in the credentials for Aviation, that is where you want to be. Trucking is a race to the bottom with hundreds if not thousands of newbies sent home for a stack of preventable accidents, common sense failures and the usual drinking, sexual crimes, financial crimes, theft of product etc etc etc including but not lastly, mental illness.

And you want to jump into Trucking Industry to try and escape what you think is a out of control industry where you are at? Ugh. The hookers will set you straight fast enough in Memphis should you run into one long enough to be charged 60 dollars to talk for 20 minutes. Hopefully you maintained your physical fitness so you can at least fight or get away from knifers, baseball batters etc.

You will be driving hundreds of miles per day, trying to listen to a radio filled with what I call filth. It is one thing to sit here and be civil online in this site and talk you and you and you nicely and ignore those who wish to make trouble. Quite another when you consider the bottom feeding that goes on out there on the interstate and in places that used to be a truckstop but no longer.

The Parasites and Predators will see you as fresh meat, a target for exploitation. If you went into say Bankhead Atlanta west Petro, there will be some on the ramp, more as you swing into the place and even more at the fuel line waiting to prey on you with a variety of tear jerking heart string pulling sob stories. Don't even entertain them for a moment. Tell them to go away, you have nothing at all for them. (And back it up with workplace violence applied just enough to stop the threat but not so much as to get yourself arrested for assault)

I hate to be so... raining on your parade here. I got into trucking the hard way because I literally did not know any better and doing trucking the way I was taught to do it was way, way better than what I was trying to do in a flip a burger joint filled with 20 teenagers not interested in the work. I managed to escape as they say.

Also.. it's a young man's game. At 60 I hope you are fit enough to complete by yourself say a LA to Jersey run in 6 days flat or faster. You will understand what fatique is after your second to third week OTR when you just drop into bed on a friday night leaving your payroll and stuff unprocessed because you are too tired right now to give a ####. You will get it monday sometime after you wake up.

These forums are filled.. no.. continuing to fill with the usual complaints from newbies who have discovered that the dispatchers love them a long time for about 90 days, then fire em. Wham bam thank you mam. Next!

 

Sheesh, that's a little extreme. The part that concerns me about the op is, you are talking about switching to a job for half the pay and twice the hours. Are you sure about that?

 

I'm on your side 100% on a career move. Phoenix is good and plenty of quality trucking companies hire from there. You need a 160 hr. cdl course because this gives you more options to choose from when deciding on a company.
Southwest Truck Driver Training in Phoenix has a good reputation. There's other choices, but they're ok to get the career started.
Many companies will reimburse the tuition directly to you in monthly installments.

 

I'm a driver. I try to look out for other drivers. My wife is a dispatcher. From aviation to trucking... post united - continental merger... she and I will both tell you the same thing. Stay in aviation if you can. Trucking is not for everyone and the ideas you have about getting rich won't pan out. You'll make a living, working 70 hours a week that is comparable to your 40 in aviation.

 

I'd trade you. I was trying to get into Tech, but money issues and other things made me fall back on my CDL. Also, I followed the hype for the Cyber Security field which was a dumb move for a newbie.

I have a 2 year degree in Cyber Security and 2 semesters in misc computer programming. If I wasn't working 70 hour weeks I'd have time to continue studying coding.

I don't have family at home, but I would like better hometime balance to. You'll have a hard time finding that unless you luck out and get a local gig.

Depending on how you are financially, I think you should research Van Expediting. I think that would be easier to adapt to, especially if you can handle some accounting to support it. I think you'd have both the solitude and some autonomy over how things are run. The big iffy part to research is how much freight there is for the vans.

 

Mountain Valley Express has a terminal in Phoenix and hires new cdl grads. The best driver job there is line haul. The less than desirable is probably local pickups and deliveries in the city.
Freymiller - one of the best refrigerated carriers around that hires new cdl grads. The website is a little confusing and some think you need 6 mos. experience to work there. In fact, you need to be a new cdl grad OR have 6 mos. experience.

• 4 to 8 week training for recent graduates

• Tuition reimbursement for recent CDL graduates

 

To heck with aviation. I recall a woman posting on here that's a regional pilot for passengers and she only makes about $17K per year. There was a time aviation was a coveted field to make a good living, but it's not that way today. The stress alone in aviation is enough to deter most people. There probably a couple dozen former pilots that post on here and there's reasons they quit and started trucking.