My second chance at trucking

Hello. New poster here. I'm currently on summer vacation from driving schoolbus.

In 2003, September, I spent my own money to go through the ATDS truck driving school, a PTDI certified school near Waco, TX. I then went with US Xpress and drove with a trainer for 4 weeks. We got along great. Javier, sure hope I can meet up with you again some day. Javier told me he had no problems with any of my driving. In all of our 4 weeks, we never drove hazmat. Came time for me to test out. The tester told me that I must pretend that I had a hazmat cargo. I'm thinking, must have a RR crossing coming up on my road test and I try to think back to school and remember what was required. Well, got to the crossing and I failed to turn on the hazards and failed to lock the autotranny in low gear and failed to shut down all noise. The tester failed me on the crossing and said I needed to spend another two weeks with a trainer.

I called home and told the wifey I needed to stay out another 2 weeks before home time. She went into a fit, said our two high-school age kids were out of control and that she needed me at home to keep them in line. So, I resigned from the USX training and headed home. That was my entire truck driving experience. I went home and started driving a schoolbus for a measley 12k/yr.

The kids are now grown and out of college. Nothing now to keep me tied to the house. I want to drive truck again. I loved it the short while I had.

I notice an ad in the classifieds for Werner hiring new drivers. I contacted the ad and after the application a recruiter called me and said that I'd need to start again from the beginning; to enroll in trucking school just like a complete newbie. (I still have me CDL and all the endorsements and a fresh 1yr medical card.) Come to find out, it wasn't Werner that was in the ad; it was a trucking school recruiter and he was going to charge me $5k. I told him that I'd rather review some other options.

I contacted my old ATDS and asked them about my options. The school gave me a list of 4 companies to call. My first contact was from KLLM who said that if everything I said was true then 40hrs of refresher training would suffice and I could then start into their new driver training.

ATDS offered me 40 hrs for $1k. I will be starting my refresher schooling tomorrow morn then I'm off to KLLM. Wish me success. I know I can be a good and safe driver. Four years of schoolbus accident and violation free.