Starting Late in Life

Am I correct in assuming the truck I will be in with a trainer is his personal/assigned truck and I should respect it as I would going into someones house?

 

Update:

I leave this Sunday for TMC in Columbia, SC. Packing list and required documents are complete. My neighbors are on line to collect my mail and cut my grass.

I opted to provide my own transportation vs carpooling in a rental. Is there any reason why I should not taking my Harley instead of my car?

I am pretty excited to start this new adventure.

 

Hahahaha. I was thinking it would save me some gas money and I would not only enjoy the ride there, but would have the ride home after training to look forward to.

I am waiting until after training to bust out my new sleeveless denim shirt, mirrored sunglasses, and cowboy hat. Should I start growing a handle bar mustache now or wait until after my OTR training?

 

Ahhh, sunscreen. Not on the prescribed list but makes perfect sense. Will add it to my packing list. I should probably start on the handlebar, should probably also add my Army 201 file 'love me' stickers to the back of my bike. lol

 

Update 28 June 2026 - Arrived last Sunday, training began on Monday. Today is Day 6. The academy and main terminal in Columbia, SC are an impressive facility. Square miles of immaculate concrete. The training fleet consists of about a dozen newer Peterbuilts that look better than most trucks that I see on the road. The cadre and staff are very professional. We had to be in class by 0545 most days this week, and the instructors were at the hotel at 0515 with shuttles to pick up students that do not have their own transportation. Early days for everyone, and they seem to genuinely care about our training and our careers once we are on our own. Lots of mentoring happening. As expected, this week has been jammed with various tests. My group began with six students and so far we have not lost anyone. At 60 I am the oldest in the group, youngest is 23. Of the six, three of us are vets. Seems to be a large percentage of vets amongst the students and cadre.

We spent today rigging loads and will be doing more rigging tomorrow. Monday we begin driving outside of the TMC yard. The group behind us reports that they each drive about 150 miles a day, two students and one instructor per truck. Route seems to be a diverse mix of interstate, local highway, urban, downtown Columbia, some even went into the project areas. So far the only actual driving my group has done consists of 'straigh lining' and 'Offsets'. The offset seems to be half of the parallel parking maneuver. I can straight-line and do the offset maneuver ok but nowhere near as graceful as the instructors.

I have a rigging test tomorrow afternoon and have to test on in-cab pre trip on Monday.

I am having a really good time and am looking forward to meeting my fleet manager and over the road trainer. All in all I think I made a good decision by signing with TMC.

 

Will add that trip planning was an eye opener. Like most outside of the industry, I had no idea. This job is a hustle. Plain and simple. Time management and planning are critical to getting paid (and not getting tickets for hour of service violations).