If you are in school right now, please tell us other wannabes what's happening!

I have a thread going in the trucking school section, DCCC Trucking Driving School. If you have a specific question I'll try to answer it for you.

 

Well, I've been pretty busy keeping up with all my classmates on the field as well as out on the road at the NC Truck Driver Training school here at Johnston Community.

This is the end of our third week and things are really heating up now. We've just started doing our log books today, we've got much, much harder exercises to begin practicing on Monday, we're reading tons of regulations out of our green books and our mechanic Perry is trying to stuff our heads full of the correct operating ranges for temperatures, pressures and voltage.

But the funny thing about all that stuff is, I'm having a blast!!! I look forward to coming to class every single day. I'm anxious to keep practicing my backing skills and my serpentine turns. I keep trying different places to begin my button hook turns and different speeds of turning the wheel while keeping an eye out for those boundary lines (which could be a brick wall someday in my near future) I look forward to spending more time driving those Volvos and the Kenworth and the Sterling. From what I can tell so far, it's the best decision I've made in a long time!!

 

We were supposed to test out on air brakes and pretrips at the DMV on Thursday, but there were so many people that only one guy in my class got to test out. Basically wasted ten hours at the DMV. Yesterday we started to learn alley docking. We had a pretty good time laughing at each other's first attempts.

 

The people you should be asking what's happening are the people that graduated 6 months to a year ago .

 

Being in Florida panhandle Im still looking. Grad back in 8-21-09 school job placement program was useless. I didn't know what I was doing posting internet apps.not calling until weeks later. Started calling to find not hiring in my area. Had one set to go o 10/25/09. But broke my wrist been in a cast 4 weeks. With all this down time I have one offer on the table with covenant. When the cast comes off ,hopefuly on 11/30/09. I'll be set to go to covenant with a full release from doc. to drive. Why so down. I read all the threads on covenant. Good news. I'll be able to start a new thread on covenant. Yea! In this economy and not able to move, It may be my only shot in. Don't give up.

 

I wish you were right. Unfortunately in this job market, with the driving schools pushing students through at a near record pace, people are getting desperate. Schools fool people with their "job placement statistics" but they are counting prehires. The don't track the students that never actually make it. That's many many more than make it from what I have seen.

With all these things going on folks are taking jobs with companies that they know are bad just because they NEED to work. Anywhere. That's why Werner, Swift, Covenant and others have trucks moving. No matter how many people quit they always have a stream of fresh ##### to fill the seats.

That is just the beginning of the pitfalls. This is a complex business and a new driver many times doesn't know anything about it. Lease deals will be made to look lucrative to you by many. Others show you how much you will make but don't tell you about all the unattainable bonuses you would have to hit to get there. They talk about hometime but dispatch makes very little effort to get you there. Then, you fall for it all, make one simple mistake, and they move on to the next unsuspecting victim with a CDL in-hand and send you home with a bad mark on your DAC.

Be careful and don't settle if you don't have to. This can be a good business and coming up on the end of my first year in it I feel I made the right decisions so far. I had Trans-Am try HARD to get me in a lease truck and I left. I even got them to put NOTHING on my DAC. Attorney's aren't all bad you know. I searched and found a better company. It took time but in the end I didn't have to go broke and lose my ### to get my start. I hope to hear in a year that you were just as lucky.

 

Jeepskate99,

If only they would all read your post !!!! But, everyone thinks they'll be different !! Thanks for telling it like it is....................Later.