Driving experience needed before a CDL

I think you have a confusion.
The freedom you speak of is only for owner operators, majority of company drivers have no choice but to take the loads given to them.

as far as experience as @starmac said it might be a good thing you don’t have that much experience driving a car it might not.

only time will tell.


Just want to point out freedom example of a company driver.

he dropped off a trailer at a location 3 days ago. His dispatcher screwed up and told him it was 72 hour turn around, he won’t be getting his trailer back for another 3 days. So 6 days he has to sit there and wait.

this is witnessed today.

 

Well if a company screws up on a quick turn around and ends up sittin 6 days he will get lay overs..Not a fortune but still cover his meals..His log book resets and allows time for him to look for a better company..

Plus he said he has no kids..

 

That is a worst case scenario, and I would imagine even a dispatcher gets a warning over that bad of a screw up. The guy sounds like he may just have the right attitude and mindset to make it in this industry, where more doesn't than does, time will tell.
Truck driving otr is about as easy as a job as there is, but is hard on many people too, it all depends on the person. You may not be free, but when you wake up and hit the road, you are not looking at someone that can nitpick everything you do all day, if you run long runs you only have to deal with shippers and recievers every 2 or 3 days, and hopefully just for short times.
If one type of trucking doesn't suit a guy, there are different ways to go, myself I do not have the right attitude to deal with people on docks or in warehouses, so pulling any boxes is out, but any kind of open deck has been good to me.

 

Honestly, I think you not driving much would better nowadays people talk, text everything including watching porn while driving and wonder why they get into wrecks later in life thinking it can't catch up to you.

Personally, think their needs be a feature in all phones no use while driving would really enforce that garbage of drivers to actually do there driving less distracted. just had one recently had a bad wreck seen they pulled his phone records showed he was watching porn not so funny he gets to cut loose from company and looking at manslaughter.

Most of these bad habits they get when driving personal cars normally with friends not so much the porn but distracted driving. As for freedom depends on your definition of freedom I guess stuck to a cab space smaller then prison cells rolling down the street. Company drivers the lease it cut short compared to O/O but then theres a risk losing your home and your company if it doesn't work out or if some company driver hits your truck and out of client at a truck stop they will drop you for future load on stupid stuff out your hands and a company driver will wonder why your angry when they hit you.

 

Heh, another IT castaway! Welcome!!! @TravR1 It's almost like we should have a separate forum for IT > Trucking!

In case you're wondering if you're nuts for wanting to go from IT to trucking ( I know I did ), there's more of that around than you might initially think! For some reason the "IT guy" personality seems to transfer to trucking better than you'd suspect. For a little context here's a thread I started on Reddit a few months back when I was first considering going from IT to trucking. The responses were much more positive than I figured they would be:
Thinking about going from IT to Trucking??? : Truckers

As far as not having much overall driving experience, it may or may not be a disadvantage for you. I've been in CDL class for a few weeks now, the first half of the class id classroom work and then we'll start driving in the second half. Two things our instructor has been emphasizing to us is that a CMV will not start, accelerate or stop anything like a car or even a pickup truck. Also, for those of us who know how to drive a standard shift already, that shifting a 8 / 10 / 12 speed CMV is nothing like driving a 5 or 6 speed car. In fact she's even gone as far as to say that the people in our class that don't know how to drive a standard shift may have an advantage b/c they won't have to break any previous habits or unlearn things b/c it's all totally different.

So in this way your lack of experience in driving might actually be an advantage b/c you won't have to break a lot of preconceived notions about driving in general. The biggest thing will be to keep an open mind and be willing to learn and you just might pick it up faster than most people that are trying to merge this driving skill w/ an existing skill set.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

 

That's not something you need to concern yourself with.

Driving a Car and driving a Big Rig are two completely and absolutely different problems. Driving a car DOES NOT train you to be a trucker. Period. End. Dot. Over. Finis.

Driving a car is not trucking learning school.

 

IT was a great career back in the 90s. Im sure it still is the right folks that have a good balance of technical and people skills. I had too much of the former, not enough of the latter. Now there are nerds all over the place and they all want those flashy IT jobs working for gaming studios. Cant blame them. Its harder to claw your way to the top with so many experienced nerds out there.

Trucking I just showed up. Lol

I still havent decided what driving I want to specialize in. Probably I am going to just have to try some stuff.

Flatbed looks like fun. The hard work doesnt worry me. But they mostly drive during the day. I think I could learn a lot pulling flats. And you can work into oversized\overweight driving. It sounds like thats high calibur driving right there. You gotta be dedicated and be top of your game for that stuff.

Tanker. I like the sound of the work. But a huge tank full of sloshing liquids... Not sure.

Doubles I would probably be fine with. I have fixed a lot of my lane control issues I started out with. Not claiming perfection by any means but I have been practicing.

 

What freedom?

You are regulated.

But that said, I find with little or no driving experience may be the best.

You are open to learn how to actually drive right, not taking crap habits that most drivers bring with them - they thin the truck is the same as their car and drive it like it I said a car.

 

I think you would do just fine as far as learning to drive a truck... Lile many have said, you wont be trying to over come previously learned habits from driving a car that dont work in a truck.

Freedom: Yes... And No. It all depends on how you see things amd how the company you drive for operates. Yep, the boss is thousands of miles away... So you dont have to see his ugly face everyday when you come to work. Yeah a Rig on the open road can be very liberating, or it can be your own mobile prison cell.... You will experience both of these feelings sooner or later as a professional driver.

If you really have the desire to persue a career as a Class A CDL driver, then by all means do it. But do it right and be PROFESSIONAL about it. It seems that this is either a lost art, not taught, or overlooked by many drivers today.

 

Do you have any fear of driving on the freeway? If you were to drive a car right now just a couple miles and you had your choice of getting on the interstate with a convenient exit to your destination ,or just driving along the frontage road which one would you naturally prefer?