Days or weeks away...?

There's companies you can be home every day. Road work, equipment movers, beer guys, coke, pepsi, most of the LTL stuff, propane, fuel trucks, trash trucks, all kinds of stuff.

 

Can't get much lower, lol. Not really depending on what you are doing. The trash company in Kansas City starts at $18.50 an hour I think. The road crew I was on payed up to $55 an hour depending on which contract we were working on.

 

Or the other way around. I started out standing in the road holding a stop sign. They had trucks and they ended up needing drivers so they payed for my testing and gave me a truck to use. The pay was good in the meantime.

 

Oh, ok...I was assuming you already had your CDL..

If you don't, then you will have to go to "school", through either one of the larger companies, with the agreement to work for that company for a set period of time after "school", training, etc.

OR, pay to go to an independent driving school,(there are several reputable ones, and the least expensive ones are usually through a community college)
get hired by a company, be with a "trainer" for that company for a set period of time (usually a couple of months).

Either way, you WILL be gone from home for a few months straight, before being set out solo.

Good luck to you!

Judi Kay

 

Or just read the book, it's not hard. Read over a section, go in and take the test for that section, repeat. If you're dead set on one of the big pound-you-in-the-### OTR (lol regional) companies, you might need the school route, but otherwise it's a bit of a waste. Most all of the information you need is contained in places like this. As far as practice and experience, you've got to be in a truck to get it anyway.

 

Nah, getting the CDL is just like any other test. The hard part of it is coming up with a truck to take the driving part of it. That's a separate test you schedule after you pass the writtens.

The written tests don't have to be written either. Find a test center that uses computers, it's all on touch screens. 10-25 questions per section and if you get stuck on a question you can hit a button that shuffles that question to the bottom. You only have to answer until you get enough to pass so you probably won't have to answer the ones on the bottom anyway.

You don't have to have a huge truck to take the test either. The book will specify what qualifies. In Missouri you can take it in a short daycab with a very small trailer, like a flatbed for hauling a steamroller or something, as long as the trailer is rated for over 10,000lbs. Some states will let you use a truck with an automatic in it so you don't get hung up on the fine points of shifting. Check that beforehand though as some states will restrict your license for it.

Oh yeah, you get a permit when you pass the written tests so you can use that to practice on.

What the schools don't want you to know is that anyone can walk into the same place you take the regular license and take the full CDL test. They charge for it, like $100, and I think a retest is free within a certain timeframe. So if you fail a section by a couple questions you can just go out to the car, bury your head in the book for an hour, and come back in to take that section again.