A CDL Certificate

Does he have a CDL-A license or a CDL-A Permit?
Where is his location; state & nearest city/town?
CDL-B is very limiting; CDL-A is the best way to go.
If he's in the right location, there's ways to complete the CDL-A through on-the-job training.

 

sounds like a permit.

If its a license, he can drive anything a class B can and more.

I guess Im not seeing the issue here?

 

He did it right. You can drive a B with a A. No biggie.

 

How would getting a class b first help him in this?

 

He probably has a straight truck he could test with.

 

I"m not seeing the idea behind getting a B first, either.

Millions go to school or whatever and go straight to A.

 

Sounds like he just got his permit and is not going to school, so has nothing to practice and test with to get his class A. I have known several people that got their b and drove for a while and the company they drove for helped them get their a later on.

 

Just go and test with a class b vehicle. The license will then be a class b. No biggie. Make sure a class B driver takes the vehicle to the test site.

 

thats what I was thinking. I see postings for class A drivers saying theyll take class B CDLs and train them.

 

It does not matter.

CDLA can and do drive Class B's which DOES come in handy when you are dealing wtih a sort of a restricted A situation in a paving dump and airbrake beaver trailer on pintle hook. That full CDLA erases alot of worries.

What it DOES matter is I had a incident with TBH Concrete in Westminster Maryland, I was interviewed there for work as a driver. The weather was flat rain all day. All of their trucks were parked there, in particular almost 20 low boys and mack tractor trailers around the office I was in. Those are full Class A vehicles. Mixer trucks were class B. But when you hold A you can run anything provided you have the endorsement for doubles etc.

The vice president (Such as he is...) said I was overqualified with my CDL A. The real meaning was I am deaf and they do not want to deal with it. Also ignored was a history of delivering bulk to their South Westminster Ready mix plant off state 27 in those days with a 18 wheeler without too much trouble.

I waved my hands out side three walls worth of his office windows all of them framed by low boy 18 wheelers needing CDL A to drive them and I said "Overqualified huh?" his eyes darted to the floor caught in a lie. The question was what will I do with that. Vs ACA lawsuit and so on.

In the end I walked away from it. If those Yankees choose to be picky picky picky they are more than welcome to whoever they can lowball pay to work there. Years after I left Maryland and emigrated to Arkansas I discovered a range of employers WITH heavy equiptment and read mix mills in some cases anxious to welcome me and put me to work doing whatever on my CDL A. I can and did anything from being a batch man building concrete loads to pour into mixers or front end loader operating rock and sand into the plant or running the mixer in my own time. In the south they are less discriminatory against people. and so I made a good home here.

My experiences is strictly my own. There was nothing in trucking I could not do within reason carefully chosen before I get into it. For example I was careful not to get doubles endorsement. That eliminated manual labor feeding large numbers of LTL trailers close to where I grew up. They eventually went out business too believe it or not. (CF Freightways comes to mind)

Eventually I specialized in one type of OTR trucking. And cannot be bothered to drag another bad load into a yet another worse grocery plant. Those days are gone.

And the ongoing evolution in communications, texts and what not really eliminated deaf as a excuse not to do anything. It is not a handicap anymore per-se.