Hello, My name is Desiree and let me first say its an honor to be asked to contribute to this site. Entering the trucking industry as a single woman with no background in trucking or prior knowledge of the industry made for many unfortunate missteps. Being a person who has always utilized the internet to learn new things and gather information, I was fortunate to find Allen and Donnas site http://www.truthabouttrucking.com However, I found it AFTER the $4000.00 was paid to a CDL Mill. At that point though I knew it would be up to me alone to question everything on the surface that was being presented to me to make trucking seem like the deperate need for more drivers was partly a scam being perpetuated to get paying students. True, there are plenty of jobs and this is really what I wanted to do so pushing all fluff aside the recruiter tried to feed me, I simply said to myself, “Self, do you really want to be a trucker?” and the answer was “YES!” I was willing to take whatever lies they told me to learn this profession and have a chance at a new life. I looked at it as if I was joining the Army and there was no turning back, NO QUITTING! With the tuition already paid and non-refundable I was going to get every last cent of my moneys worth and learn a new job. Tuition reimbursement is part of the 1st selling point when they get you to hand over the cash. My girlfriend paid in full upfront but many of the students took loans and paid part in cash, many were workforce/unemployment referrals. Clearly there was a difference in motivation level between those who paid for school themselves and those who were being paid for by the system. The promised tuition reimbursement that the company who recruits you pays is UP TO a certain amount and is paid over a longer period of time than anyone tells you. For instance, the company I went with pays $125.00 a month over a period of 2 years! No on tells you that to get all of your tuition reimbursed you may be committed to a crappy company for a very longtime.
Continuing on Tuition Reimbursement …. be aware if you got the loan to pay for school your payments will start coming due immediately during your training so any hiccups in the schedule and you are behind and getting collection calls when you are trying to learn. Its very distracting. Allens suggestion to use a Vo-tech or community college program is really good advice. I wish I had known before. True, it may take longer but you won’t be thrown out on the road in 2 or 3 weeks with barely enough skill to hold the vehicle between the white lines! .. Let me say that I am writing this from my little Palm PDA so only a certain amount of text will be in a comment so for now they may need to overlap into two for me to complete a thought. Also, I am solo now FINALLY!!! so I am writing this during my breaks, bear with me as I try to get get you up to speed on some of the Do’s and Dont’s I learned on the road so far.
I love it out on the road!!! Everyday is beautiful scenery and colorful people. But you need to be ADAPTABLE! some people simply are not good travelers. I traveled a lot for pleasure and moving cross country and I often told friends who were starting new relationships, if you wanna get to know someones true nature drive accross country with them. A persons true charcter is quickly revealed when you take them out of their comfort zone. When you start out with your trainer or have a team required phase to complete your student phase you will quickly see that patience truly is a virtue. Being organized will help you be able to live on the road and beable to conduct some semblence of your homelife. I plan to go more in depth in the coming days on this but in short, happiness on the road has some factors. Do you have someone waiting for you at home? Small Children? Parents you are close to? Being away from home when someone is ringing you on the phone on a late winter night and they say they are enjoying a backyard barbeque or worse you have a disagreement with a spouse, child gets hurt whatever this stuff eats at you unless you have strong support at home to manage things. Emotional head games while you are far from home are tortuous. I am single, my kids are grown and I don’t maintain a residence. I did end a longterm relationship which was difficult to do when I needed someone to talk to during my rough spots in the student phase. I’ve seen many men have to go home from training because either their wives couldn’t handle it, kids were crying for daddy to come home, babies being born and heartstrings pulled. Yet, I’ve met many couples like me who are empty nesters and loving it. Being single has made me a target for predators not so much on the road because I keep a low profile but in our own terminals where I falsely believed everyone was a professional. You need to examine what your “must-haves” are then figure out how to adapt it to the road. Eating, bathroom, showers… and do the best job possible also.
My CDL Mill – As I mentioned once I discovered I’d been duped to signing up to a CDL mill I pressed myself to take higher initiative to get what I came for. My first day there were 30 students. Each day there were noticeably less. The first 3 days when crammed for our permits by taking practice tests over and over. The same questions but put in different order. I was the only girl in this class and sat alone and quietly answered the questions and took each set up for corrections to the instructor. Quickly impatience grew from the menfolk who I discovered many had difficulties either reading or language barriers the prevented them from comprehending the test. Let me offer anyone this piece of advice. Just because this job is Truck Driving does not mean that is all you are expected to do. You have to read road signs, maps., LOGS!! You need to be able to function when something unexpected happens like some teenager whips in front of you loses control of their vehicle flips and takes out 2 other cars. Maintain your composure and not freak out. This job is a huge responsibility and gratifying. Do not try to rush either through your test or your destination because rushing makes you forget details which make you make simple stupid avoidable mistakes. Overlooking one simple re-wording of a question and get something wrong that you really do know the answer to. Every tool you use on the ground utilize behind the wheel. The repitition of taking the test repeatedly was a way to help the brain memorize the questions. Changing the order, slipping in a different word occasionally pushes you to zero in on what precise questions you need to work on. Don’t be impatient! 30 students quickly dropped to 15 just in the first few days not because the test is hard but because they didn’t anticipate more than driving a truck would be required. Within the first week the herd thinned and a few guys who saw I was getting each test better scores they started asking for help. Still, by week 2 only 7 remained to go to the driving course.
1st time behind the wheel - After complteting the test, skimming through logs, a day of map reading and routing I was feeling very confident. The guys all werr having trouble with the paperwork aspect that would be required of us as Truckers. I read maps well and have a very good sense of direction. This is a timesaver so if you are considering this line of work start now by understanding the legends on a map, road types, mile markers, how to tell north,south,east and west. The sun rises is the east and sets in the west. its simple to tell what approximate time it is from the sun with a straight stick in the ground using its shadow. sound stupid? If you just woke up an your co driver has you so lost in the boondocks that you don’t know which way you should be traveling, knowing where that shadow is cast will quickly tell you which way is north. Then refer to your maps for the proper roads to get back on track. I will touch more on this later. BUT moving on to our first time behind the wheel… some of the guys never drove a stick, I never heard of double-clutching and none of us knew the answer to this question… How many spark plugs does a diesel engine have? The answer, NONE ! a diesel engine dosent have spark plugs. Now you might think everyone knows that. it was a real confidence booster for me that these guys didn’t know diddly so the playing field was level, which meant I was gonna smoke these dudes. The trucks were old and rickety but we were so happy to get behind the wheel. We saw little of any instructor from that point on. Its was kinda like this “Okay there’s the trucks, go practice.” We basically all took turns and coached each other. My friend who never drove a stick still calls me every few days to catch up with me and says ” Can you believe, I couldn’t drive a stick and now I’m out here solo and loving it!” We just made lemonade from lthe $4000.00 lemons we got from our CDL mill and we just kept adding sugar … that was 12 months ago and its getting sweeter every day.
The Driving Course - Well like I mentioned before we were set free on the driving course to basically teach ourselves. We took turns doing our inspections and quickly implemented a system among us of teamwork. One person named the parts to be inspected from memory as required while the other walk alongside checking them off. Then we switched, kind like a relay team. Now of course there’s always one in every class, the loudmouthed know-it-all, I called him JabberJaw, so I will refer to him as JJ. While the majority was trying to create a system we could all learn what we came here for he was forever trying to throw a monkey wrench into the process. People, a bad attitude is contagious! Consider the source before you jump on the band wagon with someone who is always critiquing something they know nothing about. The best advice I’ve heard about Trucking is from longtime experienced drivers who say “… as soon as you feel you know everything about trucking, you should quit!” meaning you are doing the rest of us a diservice because as many experienced drivers will tell you that they learn something new everyday. Once our inspections were complete we took turn hooking/unhooking to trailers and then doing our backing straight line, alley dock and paralell. Because the nature of the CDL mill is to continually have a new class each week there is some overlapping. Some students from the previous week are testing out when the next class arrives at the course, perhaps even a few from a class before that who failed and had to stay over a week. This gave us the opportunity to ask them questions, such as, “Is this for real?” This was my first chance to meet 2 other women who were preparing to test out. 1 lady had been a rider with her boyfriend for 3 years and was finally getting her CDL. The boyfriend was clearly disappointed with the lack of instruction she was being given so he patiently sat on the course and offered her guidance. We easedropped and like hungry dogs jotted notes and resumed our practice.
Be a Sponge – Absorb information BUT consider the source! JJ had an authoritive answer for everything but he was the kind of person who just likes to hear his own voice, a Bully. Our School did have a few silver linings, as a graduate we would be permitted to park our trucks in their secured yard on our hometime. In S. Florida that’s big. Also, it meant sometimes 5 or 10 trucks of former grads were coming in/out and we quickly took to swooping in on them to pump them for information. There are only a handful of companies that will take a student driver just out of school due to insurance reasons. That means you have limited companies that will hire you but those few training companies are eager to recruit you. Everyone is getting paid here, and frankly I don’t care as long as I get what I came for, a new career and the experience I need to take it to the next level. I am of the understanding that the government pays subsidies for each student trained. As a student starting out you should be prepared to be paid very little. I had already downsized in my life so I was able to survive whereas some people with no backup plan who were already behind in mortgage /car payments and believed recruiters selling the best case scenarios. One friend from CDL school, Anthony who is single has no car payment, stays with his Mom for hometime has saved over $7000 in less than a year, while another person I know ended up losing his house in the first few months because as students we simply do not make enough and won’t until we get some experience. so its a two-way street, yes these companies are making money off your cheap labor BUT you are getting experience so be prepared to be frugal in the beginning. Also, this was the first chance I had to ask about trainers. I was told to REQUEST a a female because I am female. Not to long ago this could have meant a delay as long as 18 months to fill such a need but there are starting to be more available. I took my tidbits of info to Google and began reading up on training companies.
Truck Driving seemed perfect for me because I get into my work and I don’t stop. I rarely even got up to use the bathroom from my desk. I was totally sick of all the office politics and gossip though. Ladies and Gentlemen, trucking can be as petty as junior high school. Worse than an office I’ve worked in with a bunch of hormonal chicks! I don’t want to jump ahead to much but my next piece of advice is this be careful who you mouth off to because you might run into them again down the road! In my life sometimes a former nemises reaapears and I am their boss but in the case of JJ, we ended up going to the same training company and although 5 people specifically requested to go to a different orientation than him hoping against hope to never see him again, it was inevitable that eventually we would cross paths.
via A Day in the Life of a Lady Trucker | AskTheTrucker.com.
The above article was republished with full permission from TruckerDesiree
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