Kicked out of trucking school?

Back in the JBH days- like 13 or 14 people show up for orientation. They flew people in back then.

1700 hours - Dude says "Tomorrow you will take your drug screen. If you cannot pass your drug screen, please do not show up, no hard feelings. If you fail your drug screen, you have basically crippled your driving career."

The next morning the class had 8 people.

 

Not a chance. It’d be like Rodney Dangerfield in the cinema classic “Back to School”.

 

Sally struthers offers a great trucking course through the mail. I took it and received a thigh master upon completion.

 

Oh no.

Anything but that.

There goes the neighborhood.

 

when i went there, another student from my school did as well....."Mel" was his first name.

he had just gotten married the weekend before we left.

he was constantly calling his new bride, at every stop we made, for a "bathroom break", as there were NO cell phones back then.

at one stop, the driver started taking off with out him.....the bus driver was laughing, as so were the rest of us..

this was a NAVL driver, driving a "blue bird" bus, with the most uncomfortable seats known to mankind..

he stopped, let Mel back on the bus.

fast forward to classes..

"where is Mel," the instructor asked....

he knew we were both from the same school, but i was NO ONE's KEEPER....

someone else said..."he's on the phone"

so Mel comes back to class and we are testing..

he asked me to help him, i said..."bug off"......but i did NOT use the worrd "bug"

the instructoor had his eyes on Mel, saw him leaning over to me during the test...and well...Mel was no more....he was basically caught "cheating" in class...

i felt no emotions or sympathy for Mel.....

I was there for a job........

whatever happened to Mel..??

whe he went back to the school (they had already been informed he was kicked out for cheating), they read him the riot act, and denied him, anymore "lifetime job placement assitance....

i was told that by the job counselor when i went for a visit.......parking my company truck on the property, for the other students to see.....

 

Many don't make it through training and many more don't make it through the 1st year.

Some just decide it's not what they want to do. In a lot of those cases they didn't do their homework before signing up and it's not what they expected.

Many more screw up one too many times and get fired. In other words they weren't cut out for it.

Driving truck isn't that difficult and there's no single part of it the average person can't learn but you have to want to learn and you have to be able to makes smart choices under pressure.

There are countless threads about a driver who gets fired for one too many incidents/accidents and in almost every case it's because they made bad choices under pressure. They didn't GOAL. They missed a turn, got impatient trying to correct the situation and then made a bigger mistake. They got impatient in traffic and road raged their way into a crash. Basically they try to rush things that shouldn't be rushed.

So unless you're one of the few who simply can't learn the job, if you take it seriously there's no reason to fail.

 

There are local jobs, finding them can be hard theres dedicated runs have you out 2-3 nights a week sometimes you don't have to be OTR theres a lot drivers who are not considered OTR some even get paid stay in hotel instead of the truck. Being in a major city chances of finding one rather easy just comes more to what your wanting for pay. Some take a pay cut to just be home every night theres nothing wrong with that if you can stay within your means. I hope you locate the company that fit your needs.

 

While not necessarily dealing with sales, driving a truck is definitely goals and numbers based. While I don't have anywhere near the experience of everyone on this forum, I have driven local and regional in non-CDL CMV's. Especially when dealing with import/export type stuff (Pac-Sun, China Air Shipping, etc). The goal part is get it from point A to point B in the allotted amount of time. The numbers part is when your told a load is X pounds, and you see a previous weight sticker from, maybe the original shipper or the air cargo company that says XX pounds on the pallet. Then add multiple pallets with weights that were incorrectly reported to you or you company, then you have to start adding that up to make sure you're legal. A good example is when I dispatched for a load of expensive marble tile from Italy going from the tile warehouse in Commerce, CA to a home in Beverly Hills, CA. The BOL said 3 pallets, 1,500lb each. Total is 4,500lb, just under the CCC of the Hino I was driving. When I got to the warehouse, the pallets were clearly marked with shipping weight from the Italian manufacturer of 1,500 KILOGRAMS!!! Clearly over twice the weight reported to my company. Had I not known 1 kilogram weighs 2.2 pounds, I might have taken the load (and no... I've never shipped coke). I'm still working on my plan to get my CDL-A, and have considered the megas. But in lurking on this forum, and doing a "cost/benefits" analysis, I've come to the conclusion that most megas, if you can't cut it, will send you away in the first week, maybe the beginning of the second. Reason is, their 3-4 week driver course is designed to graduate drivers and get them on the road to make THEM money, your money is just the result of their profit. And while I haven't eliminated Mega's from my plan, I'm also working on getting funds from the state for job retraining to pay for a private school. Currently under federal reporting, trucking is a growth job, and the Fed gives states money for people to train in growth jobs. What every you decide, best of luck.

 

Oh, and depending on where you're located, maybe look for a local non-CDL driving job to see if you like it. The reason I've decided to go for a CDL is I do like the driving I was doing, especially on the longer regional runs. Will I like it in a tractor pulling a 53' trailer, I don't know, but I'll find out.