Starting A New Life-

Began the CDL school today at Heavy Metal here in Minnesota. Perfect schedule for me driving a school bus Monday through Friday (although the coming week is off with spring break) and having this class for 8 hours a day Saturday and Sunday. First day is, well, sort of boring in a way.

I've done a ton of reading and, as an earlier post indicated, I recently studied for and received the CDL permit with Haz, Tanker, Dbl endorsements. So the first day in this class was somewhat repetitive. We watched 3 videos covering safety, brake systems, and coupling. Then went through 3 chapters of the text (which I had read). All in all it was 8 hours of sitting in a room. I'm very anxious to get outside and start getting my hands on a rig. That begins tomorrow.


There are 13 people in the class. All younger than I. There's another school bus driver, a banker from Wells Fargo, a cook, a baker and 7 Somali immigrants. One drove up in his taxi cab. Interesting note about this group. When it came time for the lunch break I went to my car to read the Wall Street Journal and eat a couple apples I brought along. Another guy went to his car to spend the hour. The Somalis all piled into one car and drove way. Now think about this. What do we, as rookies, know about this business if we've done any investigation: you spend a lot of time alone. This is frankly one of the attractions for me. These other guys get a chance to take a break and they all pile into one (small) car and drive off. Wonder how they'll do when they're on the road for weeks at a time alone?

There is also one woman in the group. She's probably about 30 years old, currently working as a baker. I love seeing a woman getting into this. I know there's another also taking classes during the week at this school (known here on the forum as Lady Driver). I admire anyone who will dive into a challenge and be somewhat all alone out there and not afraid. Go girls!

So one day down and about a dozen left. One day at a time I'll learn more about this industry, this life, this challenge. For now, I hang out at home, rest and look forward to another day tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

 

Day two in the CDL school is done as is the week. I'm doing this on weekends which will complete in mid-May. Our 2nd day was half class-half outside looking at tractors and trailers. We didn't do a pre-trip per se but did identify all the parts involved in the pre-trip along with the instructor guiding us on what the testers at the DPS (DMV) are wanting to see/hear.

I mentioned the class makeup in an earlier post and realized today one of my classmates wears an ankle bracelet. I'm not talking about those sexy little chains I've admired on a few girlfriends (past, of course). No, this is the kind you earn by being a bad boy and there's not enough room in the jail. Now I wonder, you're filling out your job app and talking to a recruiter and here's this strap around your ankle with a big black plastic doo-hickey attached to it. What do you say? "....Uh, well sir, I uh, sort of got in this jam and uh, you know what I'm saying, it's uh...but it's only for a little while, and I didn't really know it was...uh...you know, I didn't think it was against the law to...."

Maybe my prospects in this industry are better than I realize!