Not sure the best way to get rolling, no pun intended.

Why are you quitting HVAC? Im looking at quitting trucking to do HVAC or plumbing

 

As for the employment history, I started when I was around 23 and gave them the number to a restaurant that was closed and also used my aunts number saying I worked for her business. They never called or questioned anything. You can put “unemployed” on the application too.

 

Not trying to be a Richard, but I'd stick with the HVAC for now.

To put this in perspective, I'm 42, never went to college, and have been driving truck since I was 18. And while I can't say it's been a bad thing financially speaking, I know I could have done better.

My younger brother, who is 29, went to tech school for commercial HVAC, and was almost immediately making similar money as I was. He's since moved into commercial refrigeration, works for Walmart, is one of their top techs in the northeast, and is making close to $250k a year.

So, of the two of us, I'd have to say, he was a lot smarter ....

 

There's a buncha threads on here started by fresh CDL grads who can't get hired.

16 hours of HVAC time beats ZERO hours of trucking time.

I'd stay with the HVAC, at least until the license suspension cools off a little.

I drive a gas tanker, and this time of year we're painful slow.....I haven't broken 40 hours in a week since the week before Thanksgiving.

Come April, it'll be 60 hour weeks. There's ups and downs in every line of work these days.

Trucking will still be here when you're ready, but "now" is not the time.

 

Any time someone asks a question such as yours, you're gonna get a bunch of totally different answers. Some will ALWAYS say don't become a truck driver, it's not a good time, it's no fun, low pay, yadda yadda... But yet they're still driving for whatever reason

Others will say otherwise. But it really is what YOU wanna make of it.
There's a bunch of different segments you could go. Over the road, regional, local. Dry van, reefer, tanker, flatbed, dumps, car hauling.

While it probably isn't the best time to be considering driving truck, given the economy issues, it will eventually turn around. And if you jump in now, keep your record clean, once things turn for the better, you'll be able to go pretty much wherever you want.

I guess ultimately my advice would be go do it while you still can. At 42 years old there's things I wish I would have done when I was younger and now I sit here knowing I will never get to do those things. .
As a final note, when I was 27 and married with children, that's when I decided to go over the road driving and it almost cost me my marriage. Just food for thought

 

I wouldnt switch from hvac to trucking , you will regret big time

 

If it were me, I'd go ahead and scratch the itch. This might or might not be the right time for you, but at some point you should give it a go. And I don't mean trying to time the job market - that's not really possible, and anyway you don't need 40,000 open driving jobs, you need one. I mean in terms of where you are in your own life. Maybe that time is now, maybe it's in a couple decades. Depends on you.

The recent license suspension and crash that's less than three years old aren't great. Your chances would be better if you could let these age a bit.

My main piece of advice is always to leave on good terms. Whether you leave your current job for trucking, or anything else, those connections may come in handy down the road. You never know. You might drive for a while, then decide it's time to come off the road and settle down. If your old coworkers and supervisors are glad to hear from you, they might be in a position to offer you something good. If you can go through a paid program without seriously stressing your finances, it might be worth it. A CDL won't go stale. Whether you start driving immediately, or sometime in the future, you'd be starting as an inexperienced driver. How long you had the CDL won't make much difference, except that some companies will reimburse your tuition if your CDL is less than (in my case it was) 18 months old.

You don't need points with us - we're just a bunch of strangers on the internet. The people whose opinion counts are the insurers writing policies for trucking companies. They go by a strict formula - x number of months experience, y moving violations, z reportable collisions, etc., equals a thumbs up or a thumbs down.