How long did it take you guys to get your CDL?

Myself, I went to a trucking company 13 years ago that trained me at no cost to me if I agreed to stay with em a year and a half, which I did, and then I moved on to greener pastures. These companies are everywhere like prime, Swift, Abelene, Knight, etc. Seems to me your making to big a deal out of it.

 

Oh gasp!

How can anyone learn driving the first day?!?


Op, relax, here is what happened to the school I went to.


The first day I was handed the keys to a fully loaded truck and told "you drive, I sleep" and that is how I learned.

All school is supposed to get your cdl and that's it, everything else is on you to learn.

 

That sounds like the ARRL’s school of hard knocks.

 

My second week in my trainer at lime kiln loaded us down to 80000 as usual with the day cab pete and 40 foot Heil tanker. Only this time she says drive. You know where we are going. Oh by the way we are loaded. Meh.

The entire plant was watching me try to pull off that scale loaded. I know we have to get our spurs one way or the other... Her training was memory that was still valid with a different bulk tanker roughly... 20 years later more or less. Hopped to it, filled the tank, unloaded product packed hoses off I went easy peasy.

What no one saw was my mental list. OMFG now what... what was this valve for again?

HIISISSSSSS! oh. Ok. I remember now...

 

I learned to drive truck by doing it... All I got was a few basic instructions on how to shift and such. Was then told by my father "You will either figure it out or crash... Dont crash my truck!" And was left to on my own to figure it out...

I was just a kid at the time. I had to look through the steering wheel to see out the windshield, had coats stuffed behind me to keep me slid forward on the seat, and wooden blocks wired to the pedals so I could reach them. Think I was about 8, maybe 9. Because of this experience I used to say "Driving a truck is easy... Even a child can do it." But the world has changed in such a way that the children of today are much different from those of my childhood.

Keep at what you are doing if you are progressing...


"You will either figure it out or crash... Don't crash!"