New Driver Training back in the day, now vs then.

No training.
1987 . Walked into trucking company my brother worked for. When I entered the owner spotted me said "oh, you must be the new guy" he threw me a set of keys .Told me to hop into #16 and get on my way.
So I did.

 

I got trained kind of gradually in the 80s by a friend leased to DART when I lived in Fargo.
Back then they were building a coal gasification plant Beulah ND which required lots of insulation so he would pick me up in Fargo and have me drive out and back to Fargo.
Truck was a 79 white road commode coe 290 Cummins and a 10 speed , rode like a lumber wagon .
This went on for a couple years and included a couple of 2 or 3 week stints OTR .
How he slept with me driving I'll never know !
I slept across the doghouse when the truck was parked overnight...I think he even paid me like 8 cpm lol.
Dart did not know about that .

 

was Quality Control manager of a factory that had 6 wheelers used to fill for extra money.

they went out of business and a friend asked me to help him deliver machines at his place,(6 wheelers). in '84 they asked if I wanted to drive a tractor trailer.

I said sure. Ok go to Salem Leasing,(where we got our trucks), and they will let you play with one.

drove it a few times on weekends and then was told my tractor will be in in a few wks.didn't know one was coming in.lol.

passed the tests and took off 2 weeks later on my new NC to Canada run. thank god it was summer so I could learn to drive it before the snow came!!

 

Spend enough time at the lunch counter and u will hear a driver say he came out of the womb with a cdl, never hauled freight for less than 12 dollars a mile !!

 

By the way, this was in 1981. I had been around trucks since I was a kid and had been trained by a couple of my uncles that had been driving OTR since the 1940’s. So yes, it was old school training and advice that I still use today.
And in a lot of instances it is even more applicable today!!

 

My dad spent a couple weekends teaching me to shift and how to get around town. Then he drove us up a tine road to top if a mtn and turned around in a wide spot. We switched places and he said if you can drive this truck on this road you can drive anything. If not were dead. Got my class a that week and went to work.

 

Where was there any truck driving schools in the 60's, for that matter even the 70's I don't remember even hearing of one.
Back then it was a little different, hard to explain, but no trucker or company was just going to stick any Tom, Dick or Harry in a truck, they had to see some potential in a person at the very least.