Starting A New Life-

I've started some conversations with another student at the CDL school (she's in a different class and they are more advanced). Since I have this week off from my part-time school bus driving gig I decided to drop in to hear a recruiter. Well, this other student is a bit of a go-getter so she talks to the school owner and convinces him it would be a good idea for her and me to team up and go through some pre-trip inspection work.

So I go in a bit early today to work on pre-trip stuff with her. Turns out they were scheduled to start work on 90-degree (alley park) backups. I really enjoyed watching them work with their instructor since my class has not yet even started a truck let alone done any backing. This female student gets some coaching and slam dunks the exercise. The other two guys also do pretty well. Then the instructor looks at me and says "your turn". Huh?! Me? Uh, OK.

I hop into the cab and figure out where the gears must be (reminder: my class has not yet set foot in a truck). With the turn-by-turn help of the instructor (who is very, very good at this by the way) I drop it between the cones. Then he says "now you do it". Yeah, right! If you ever need your ego cut off at the knees go to truck driving school and attempt an alley park for your very first maneuver. I failed at 2 (or maybe it was 3) attempts. But let me tell you something: I loved it!

I am very excited to get back to my class this weekend and start moving the rig around. However,I think it would be best to successfully straight line backup first. I don't know if my ego could survive two consecutive massive failures

 

Having the weekend off from my regular part-time school bus driving gig I took advantage of some recruiter visits to the CDL school which is only 10 miles from home. I'm attending there on weekends but feel very welcome dropping in during the week. Recruiters from Stevens and Schneider were doing presentations this week. As you would expect both put very positive spins on the opportunities for student drivers. This is a good offset from some of the negative stuff readily available on forums such as this.


Here's my take on these and other trucking companies. First, they are to be thanked for presenting opportunities for students. Second, it might be that any of these firms could be a good fit depending on the candidate and their attitude toward the work. Third, there are drivers that join and stay with these companies for a long time which tells me the responsibility may fall more on the student/driver to make a job a good one. I've worked for mom and pop companies and large corporations. I have found that my attitude, more than anything, determined my success at either.


As far as this weeks visits by the recruiters I think I would give higher marks to Schneider and the potential for new drivers. One thing about such a large company, it may be easier to handle crises on the road due to an abundant network of support.


I'm still weeks away from having to make a commitment so we'll see what the future brings. My first challenge is not finding a company nor is it studying the written material or reading more books written by truckers (I've read about ten). My first challenge at the CDL school is learning to drive a truck!

 

As a former runner my i.d. tag was similar to the one pictured above...however it fit on my shoe laces. The item I referred to was about half the size of a front brake chamber. Certainly no small i.d. bracelet.
:smt040