Toledo, Ohio newbie's experiences and knowledge to date

Hey Layne, thanks for the update. I've still got a few months before I start driving school (the community college route) but it's good to hear from other wannabes. Maybe some of your experiences and those of others who post here can save the rest of us some anguish and maybe help us stay focused in the right direction. One thing I've noticed here in the forum is that there are several companies that have a fairly vocal following. Prime comes to mind as does Watkins Shepard. I lurk around their threads and posts pretty regularly. I know for certain there are several newbies here that are quite pleased with their experiences with these two companies. I sure wouldn't want to be accused of offering advice because I'm in the beginning stages of this stuff myself. But I will offer this.....keep your options open for as long as you can, dig some more if you have time, start some new threads to get your questions answered, make this search a selfish search. Right now, it IS all about you. And I mean that in a good way!!! Oldnew....

 

Prime has an excellent training program. If you stay 6 months, half of the tuition is forgiven. When you stay one year, it all is forgiven. No interest and it is under 4K.
Check out the Prime posts. I have been communicating with several of their drivers.

 

Selfishness when it comes to employment is foremost to me. Long term plan for me is to find something that can support my wife and I enough to get her through school so that we can start being a bit more selfless and helping others with her medical degree and hopefully, my psychology degree, which I've more than halfway completed already. However, that's secondary to this...

Jim, you stated that Prime forgives tuition... they're not alone. Roehl does the same. No weekly deductions from your paychecks, and no contract either. You simply have to get 120,000 solo miles in order to consider your tuition paid in full. That blew my mind earlier today. One years' work, give or take, and you're good to go. I'm sold. Their cpm isn't bad either, starting at .33 if you go flatbed, which is what I'd prefer.


Now this is unrelated for schooling and I'm thinking about starting a thread on this, but I need some suggestions. A friend of mine, married and with twin 3-year-old daughters, was barely scraping by. His wife had a seizure at work a few months ago, but the docs said it wasn't a seizure and she was fine. She had another one driving home Saturday night on the highway which wrecked the Jeep she was in and put her in critical condition. She was declared brain dead this morning and they harvested her organs earlier this evening. I'm essentially broke, only having the money to support myself through CDL schooling... but I desperately want to help him. Any suggestions as to what I could do? I'm very handy at practically anything; electrical, plumbing, drywalling, babysitting... whatever. I plan to offer my services for as long as I can before I ship out but I feel that my poor contributions will be inadequate. Any input anyone can offer would be most appreciated. I feel horrible for him and don't think I could ever describe my sorrow at his loss, and I know that even feeling that I can't even get close to how he must feel right now. I'm entirely at a loss...