A Real Conversation About What You Are Getting Into.

Question: Before someone even thinks about CDL school what do they need to ask themselves?

The first thing you need to do is ask yourself is this a career or a job. Because if it is just a job you will be treated as such.

You see all these advertisements. Make $75,000 to $100,000 a year as a truck driver. What they do not say in those ads is that you will not make that the first year. Or the second. You also need to ask yourself do you want long haul, regional, or local. These are totally different conversations but in the beginning they are all the same road.

Do you have a family? Do you have children? Do you want to be there for every school play, every ball game, every birthday? Because folks if that last part is you this is probably not the job or career for you. The first few years you will miss everything. Or close to everything.

I am not trying to tell you not to do this. I am simply making sure you come into this with your eyes wide open. If you are single with no ties pulling you home then maybe this works. But decide right now. Is this a job or a career? Because what comes next depends entirely on your answer.

This is not a job for the faint of heart. The regulations will grind you down if you do not know them and trucking is statistically one of the most dangerous occupations in the country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics truck drivers experience one of the highest rates of fatal occupational injuries of any profession. This is not my opinion. This is fact. All of it.

Question: CDL school. Private versus company sponsored. What is the real difference and which do you recommend?

Sit down, shut up, and listen close. Because this part is very very very important. It is the difference between being an indentured servant and being a new driver with options.

A lot has changed just in the last few months on this subject. The FMCSA closed a lot of schools because they were CDL mills. Taking your money and kicking you out with no idea what you were doing.

You will see ads saying we the trucking company will train you to get your CDL. Be careful. That is indentured servitude. You will have to sign a two to three year contract and they can pay you whatever they want. They will train you in their facility, get you your CDL, and put you out on the road with a trainer. You will make enough to feed yourself but that will be about all. You might be able to send a little money home but you will be working for next to nothing and you are locked in no matter what. If you decide six months in that this is not for you or you want to change companies they will bill you the full cost of that training, anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000, and tie it to your credit. That is not free training. That is a financial trap with a steering wheel attached to it.

Now if you go to school yourself through a reputable CDL school or junior college you can get grants and student loans that are actually manageable to pay back. Here is the bonus. When you graduate you have choices. You can interview any company that accepts new drivers and make the right decision for you and your family.

RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH. I cannot stress this enough. I recommend doing it yourself through a college or trade school only. Do not take my word for it. Go out and do your RESEARCH.

Question: You call the first year indentured servitude. What does it actually look like and why do so many quit?

Your first year as a truck driver. No matter which route you took to get your CDL you have to get trained. There is no way around this. Period.

But you can make it more bearable if you ask the right questions before you sign anything.

Ask your potential employer how long your training is and whether you have any choice in your trainer. If you are a female driver ask specifically whether they have female trainers. If they do not run away. This is about your safety. I know I should not have to say this but I am going to say it anyway. Better to be safe than not.

Ask what happens if you do not get along with your trainer. This is a big one. Two people trapped in a truck for weeks at a time can get pretty heated. And what happens if that trainer puts you in the seat and then disappears into the sleeper to watch TV the whole time? You are not learning a thing. When you are driving that trainer needs to plant themselves in the passenger seat and teach you. Not sit there watching their phone.

Ask how long your trainer has been driving. If they say two years run fast and run far. They are still in training themselves and they are only doing this for the slight pay bump. You want someone with at least five years behind the wheel. More is better. Ask them how much winter driving they have done. If they tell you they ask to be put in the south every winter run again. You have to learn winter driving. If you do not my family and every other family on that road is less safe because of it.

How long should you train? The regulations set the minimum but you will see companies advertise getting you out on your own in three months. Run. You need at least a year on the road including winter in the north before you have enough experience to be out there alone. You are going to make mistakes. You are going to take thirty minutes to back into a dock while other drivers sit on their horns and make fun of you. So what. The more you do it the better you get.

My advice. When you are in school spend every available minute learning to back up. Put that truck in every difficult situation you can find. What you learn there is less you have to learn during training. And make sure your school is training you on a real truck. A full size sleeper and a 53 foot trailer. If they are teaching you in a single axle truck with a 28 foot pup trailer walk away. That is not the real world.

Most new drivers do not last. Know that going in. They get mad. They get tired of not making the $75,000 to $100,000 a year right out of the gate. You are not going to make that. Not for a while. Plan on $400 to $600 a week with a decent company in your first year. And if you carry your feelings on your sleeve out here you are going to wake up mad and go to bed mad every single day. This industry will not apologize for that.

Question: The second job. Why does it matter and what should a driver look for when making that move?

Once you have that first year under your belt some things change. You are probably still not making $75,000 to $100,000 a year. Maybe $35,000 to $45,000. But you have options now.

If you kept your nose clean and did not do stupid things like take out a fire hydrant on a city street you were not supposed to be on, or run over a car in a parking lot trying to make a U-turn, or back into a car at a light in Denver and find out the person you hit was the number one prosecuting attorney in Denver County. Not that I would know anything about any of that personally.

If you have some miles under you and some winter driving experience you can go look for a better paying job. You will still be working for the bigger carriers most likely and yes you will still go through a short training period with a trainer at the new company. Do not be mad about it. Just do it. Maybe that trainer can help you work through something you have been doing wrong for a year without knowing it. Learn from everyone who has more experience than you. Be a sponge. Soak up every piece of knowledge you can find because something that sounds dumb or irrelevant today will save you from a situation six months from now. I promise you that.

Question: How does a driver know if trucking is actually a career and not just something they are doing until something better comes along?

Here it is. This is where you have to decide.

If it is just a job understand it is not nine to five. Period. End of discussion. Even local work with a set route will run you twelve to sixteen hours a day and sometimes through the night if something breaks. You will sit on the shoulder of a highway waiting on a service truck for hours at some point. That is not if. That is when.

Regional work means driving in a set area. Maybe you work out of Dallas and cover Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Kansas. You are not home every night. Maybe every few nights for your ten hour break or thirty four hour restart. You might work Monday through Friday but understand that breakdowns and shipper delays do not care what day it is. That birthday party for your daughter will happen without you. That anniversary dinner will get cancelled. The special weekend you promised will get rescheduled.

If it is a career you know all of this going in and you still decide it is the best option for you and your family. You sit down with your wife or husband and your kids and you tell them the whole story. Every ugly detail. Because they need to know you will miss things. And then when you actually make it home for something special it is a bonus. Not an expectation.

Question: What is the one thing you wish somebody had told you before you started?

I wish someone had sat me down and explained this industry in detail before I walked into it.

When I started I had two previous jobs. I was a farmer’s son from age eight to seventeen. Then I joined the Army. Let me just say my childhood was a cake walk compared to that. When I got out I was lost and a friend said hey try trucking until you figure out what you want to do. That was thirty years ago. I am still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. But I will decide one day. I promise.

The biggest lesson is knowing what you do not know. You will never be an expert. There are drivers out here with forty plus years behind the wheel who will tell you straight that they do not know it all. You cannot. There is no way. Because this job does not change weekly or daily or even hourly. It changes second by second. Something breaks. Someone delays you. Someone cuts you off. A DOT officer decides today is your day and costs you an hour or more on the side of the road.

And everyone I mean everyone will try to get into the wallet you went out and earned. DOT. Truck stops. Customers. Receivers. Your own company. They all want a piece of what you earned out there.

I wrote all of this to help you. If you read it and decide I am full of it well then there is your answer. You are just like I was in the beginning. Just like pretty much every truck driver ever born. But if you listen to the ones who have been out here a while we will help you get around some of the pitfalls.

Believe me or do not. Your choice. But if you decide I am full of it and ignore me I promise you will find out sooner rather than later that maybe you should have listened to the tired old trucker.

That is all I have for now. But I promise a Part 3 covering owner operator life and lease purchases. And some ways to save money as a company driver and owner operator. I am here to help not tell you what to do.

Thanks for reading. I hope you learned something.