Newbie Team Driver Wannabees - Can We Do This?

Were you a private pilot with your own plane? Or did you fly charter? My husband flew charter for awhile to get his hours in to go to a larger company, then flew commercial for 25 yrs. If we win the lottery ... lol ... we can buy a small plane and we'll all go flying!

 

Hi Kat!
I read your post on the other thread and it was quite entertaining, thanks for sharing! I can totally imagine me "slamming that Velcro curtain really hard" at some point while traveling with my husband. It's going to happen, just know it. And I laughed about not being able to just get out of the truck and start hoofing it down 90 if you get mad at one another. I will be spending time in the back, behind that curtain, I'm sure. Thanks for sharing your "day in the life". I really cannot wait to be able to share "a day in the life" of our own adventure, when we finally get into this. I expect it's going to be a lot of work and a huge adjustment to get used to living in a small truck, but a lot of fun too!

 

You're so right about the outlook in the airline industry, you were wise to stay away. We are a perfect example. My husband's company owner used to brag that he had first officers on food stamps and yet he could keep the company running because they all loved to fly. You are much better off where you are.

 

Hi Lenrod! I just accepted your friend request. I'm new to this forum too, so not comfortable getting around in here yet. Sometimes I cannot even find this thread that I started, but found the friend notification. Hey, you're my first friend.

Are you and your significant other also considering going to CDL school? Or are you already in school? It's good to have others to connect with who are new to this.

I will try to post everything we learn as we go through this in the hope that it helps someone else. Just our way to "give back" to the forum in exchange for all the help we've gotten so far from all these nice people.

 

Thanks for the advice, JMac. We actually did that yesterday, looked into the WIA program. I will write a post about yesterday's experiences and tell you all about it. Good luck to you, it's good to hear that you are employed now in a good industry... and is that your little girl in the photo?... she's so darn cute! Absolutely worth all you went through to be able to support your family and take care of her.... look at those smiles on both of you!

 

OK, so yesterday morning I called KCTCS after seeing their website and reading about their CDL training. http://elizabethtown.kctcs.edu/en/workforce_solutions/cdl_training.aspx

I talked to a really nice woman named Cindi who spent a long time with me on the phone, answering all my questions; and I had a lot of them! I told her our circumstances so she understood why we were considering CDL training. She was very helpful. Basically, she said they had 11 schools and there was one less than an hour from our home and recommended that one for us. 4 weeks, Monday - Thursday, cost is 4 grand each, at the end of classes the KY State Police administer the driving test. The school is affiliated with 28 trucking companies. Actually, I don't know if the word 'affiliated' is the proper one to use ... what I mean to say is that they can help you to get work with 28 companies. During our conversation she mentioned that "they" (I assume she meant she and her husband) used to own a trucking company, so she knew a lot about the industry first hand. Said they used to deal with Castellini, run produce for them. That company is just a couple miles away from our house so when I mentioned the city we live in, she said, "OH, over by Castellini", which is how we got on that subject. She said they are a good company to work for and I told her we were interested in driving team OTR after CDL training and told her the companies we are interested in working for and she said they have grads who went to work for those companies.

After hearing that my husband will be unemployed in a few weeks, she suggested that we go to the employment office and talk to a case manager about applying for WIA assistance, which she said would pay our entire tuition. We were planning on using money from my husband's retirement fund after it becomes available to us once the company is shut down completely, but if we could get some grant money, it would sure help us out. She said to let her know how it all goes and to call her back with any more questions and she'd help us to get enrolled and get started. I wasn't sure we'd qualify for WIA, to be honest with you all. So I asked her how they expected payment for the school tuition; all up front, a down payment to enroll, then paid in full by a certain date, or how it would go. She said that in our case, we could enroll with a down payment and when we got our money from the 401K, then pay in full before the end of the 4 week course. We probably would just find a way to pay it all up front, for our own convenience, but it's nice to know we have options. But first we had to look into the WIA program. So we drove to the employment office.

I had never been to an employment office, so didn't know what to expect. I had seen pictures of them, with lines of people all packed into a small room, all waiting for their turn at the window with paperwork in their hands. Kind of like what we see on that tv show on cable about the pawn shop in Detroit, American Jewelry and Loan is it? (I love that show!) ... all those people waiting in the lines at the pawn shop, that was my vision of the employment office.

Well, it wasn't like that at all. The room was large, there was a reception desk right inside the door and a lot of signs in our faces, right as we entered the doorway... saying to turn off cell phone sound, have your photo ID handy, speak in low voices, do not draw attention to yourself, do not bring your weapons inside and please check in here, thank you. OK, got it. We silently read the signs and without speaking we both immediately took out our cell phones and swiped them to silent. Speaking in a low tone, so as not to draw attention to myself, I joked with my husband that it was a good thing we left our sawed off shotgun back at home and said, if he was packin' his "Leatherman, Titanium, jam-packed TTi multitool", maybe it would be best to take that back out to the truck. He looked at me and said ... "Honeeeeey", and shook his head. Well, I thought it was funny ... sometimes he's just way too serious.

So we walked up to the woman at the reception desk, were handed a short form to fill out and given a number (we were #72), and told to go have a seat at one of the tables and someone would be with us soon.

The place was about the temperature of a meat locker, it was cold in there! The walls were painted a cold whitish gray, the industial carpet was the same color, the desk was the same color, the table tops were the same color, the plastic chairs were the same color, the cubicles were the same color; it was a monochromatic color scheme at it's finest and I thought that it must be the same way a morgue is decorated, because the dead people don't really care if there is color and the cold actually helps ... ok, back to the employment office. The only color in the room came from the posters hanging on the bulletin boards that shouted, in huge bright red letters ... UNEMPLOYED? WE CAN HELP YOU MAKE YOUR HOUSE PAYMENT! ... With a phone number to call and a nice stock photo of a couple in their mid-30s sitting on a sofa and leaning over a pile of papers on the coffee table in front of them (apparently all their bills) while holding their heads as if they had a headache or were going to pass out any second. Nice color on that photo and the huge red letters above the photo really added a touch of warmth to the room.

There were a few people sitting here and there, trying not to look at each other, taking a peek at whomever just walked by or came into the room and then lowering their eyes again. There was a huge flat screen tv on the wall near the exit door and it was playing a slide show over and over again of all the posters in the room, the signs in the doorway, and the rules/regs of applying for and receiving unemployment checks and such. Scanning the room, I saw security cameras at the corners of the room, pointed at the tables where we waited our turn and at the cubicles where the case workers desks were located. I felt sorry for the poor guy who elected to sit right underneath the tv, he looked uncomfortable sitting there while I stared at the tv above his head, he probably thought I was staring at him, he kept fidgeting. So I quit looking at the tv to make him feel more comfortable.

At the far end of the room were 4 rows of computers with a large hand-made sign taped to the side of the first computer desk, written in magic marker on a white board was the warning NO CHILDREN BEYOND THIS POINT! A woman wearing shorts and a t-shirt was seated at computer #6, row #2, reading something on the monitor and holding her arms tight to her chest because it was obvious that she was cold sitting there looking for a job on that computer. Another woman was seated at a computer along the wall, talking to someone on her cell phone, obviously about a job she saw on her computer. She must not have read that sign in the doorway about speaking in a low voice and not drawing attention to herself because I heard her entire conversation from 10 ft across the room and learned that they had filled the position, sorry. Then she got up and walked out of the room after turning in some paperwork, probably proving that she did try to get a job this week, failed and therefore qualifies for her unemployment check.

About 15 minutes after we arrived our number was called and it was our turn to speak to a case worker. We talked to a nice man who looked up my husband on his computer and pulled up all his work info in about 3 seconds! He knew everything about him, where he worked, everything! I didn't know anyone could access all that about a person, I guess we are all in some huge computer somewhere, all our employment info and such and I was a bit stunned. Anyway, we asked about WIA and guess what? The state of KY is out of money for that program! It's all gone! Oh well. Back to plan A ... use money from our 401K.

After learning about unemployment and how that all works, we most likely won't even apply for it. We plan on just getting out there and finding work on our own and toughing it out as best we can. We'll see what actually happens though, as we continue on with this.

More to come ... this is a long story, but so is life in general. It's an adventure.