Local Driving Opportunities

Check with your local construction (underground utilities and site/road construction) companies once you get your CDL. With your degree in Civil Engineering, you'd be in a perfect position to not only get time in with a tractor/trailer, you'd be on the working end of your degree.

Get lucky enough to work for the right company, you'd even be able to jump out of your truck if they were short handed and help top for the pipe crew or even make some good contacts with the engineering firms on the jobs you would be working.

Good luck, you won't be trucking long. Unless you want to.

 

When I was first starting out, back in the early '90s, I did some time at the wheel of a harvest truck. It didn't count as OTR experience, but it was a paycheck until something better came along.
After dropping out of DAC-reportable driving for a few years, I've hired on with a construction company to drive one of their trucks... again, until something better comes along or I just buy myself a truck.

If it's what you really want to do, go for it. If you wait for the "perfect" time to try something, you may be in for a long wait.