Considering Trucking, looking for advice

If you want a local job starting out, you should look into the agriculture sector in your area. In California, it's off the hook right now. Anyone with a beating pulse can get hired to haul grapes or tomatoes, if they have a CDL. I got my start with a nice local company hauling grapes. I could barely drive at that time. I had a hella cool boss who gave me an automatic truck. Using the automatic truck, I learned the shift points on how to up shift and down shift, and exactly when to do so. After 6 months of driving that thing, I graduated to a manual transmission with no problems at all.

You put in 3-4 months of running as hard as you can with agriculture products, and most companies will recognize that as 1 year of experience.

If you want to go into trucking, you want to get an hourly job that pays overtime eventually. For that, I highly recommend hauling fuel. Gasoline delivery was my long-term goal going into this as someone who couldn't even shift the truck when I first started. Gasoline delivery requires all endorsements, and the routine you need to succeed in this line of work is rigid. This just means you're doing the same exact thing for loading and unloading, every single time, with no deviation from the procedure. It is the most rewarding trucking job I've ever had, but I'm kind of crazy and I hate change, so I really enjoy doing the same thing over and over. I think it's called autism, but it works to my advantage haha