Starting On My Path To A Career In Trucking!

As someone who also has experience (though not as much as yours) in fire/EMS (4 years with countless MVSs, tons of med calls, and 23 working structure fires (two of them commercial buildings), you will do fine. Not sure if you went through the EMT course but that test was a heck of a lot more stressful to me than my CDL test. I took it yesterday and did pretty well. I opted for Wilson Logistics and have loved my choice. That being said, your company was also on my short list. I very interested in seeing how it goes for you. Everyone on here will tell you the same thing. Take your time, relax, enjoy it, and listen to the trainers. You're going to do fine brother. Also, don't break the #1 rule of trucking, "Don't hit s***." Unless your one of the trainers i had who (jokingly of course) said, "Just back up till it sounds expensive." Lol stay safe brother.

Well the time has come. After working 40 hours in the past 3 days I'm in the middle of my last shift at 911.

I spoke with my recruiter Josi today to go over travel arrangements and check in time for my hotel.

Some last minute things to finish up around the house and then I'll be heading North to Gary on Sunday!

Starting to get exciting now!

The Gary terminal is the best one for food and the maintenance repairs, IMHO. Only terminal where there's a diner-type place where you can order food cooked on site.

That’s awesome Brandon. Good luck!

11/24/2019 Day Before Orientation

I arrived in Hammond Indiana at the Best Western to check-in today around 1700hrs. Once I got up to my room, I met my roommate who is in his final week of the Roehl GYCDL program. He takes his CDL test on Tuesday and if he passes will have securement training the rest of the week. I would of thought that they would room people from the same class together, but that apparently isn't the case.

The hotel is fairly nice. It has a gym and bar/diner where breakfast will be served every morning. In the evening you can eat there on your own dime. I'm currently showered and relaxing in my room until I crash for the night. Have to be in the lobby ready to go by 0630hrs to head to the terminal. They provide a shuttle the first day, but after that you are on your own to get back and forth. This is not a problem for me as I drove my own vehicle here.

I plan to give a day to day run down of this process. Thanks for reading along.

Good luck starting off tomorrow, Brandon!

Being in Landscaping and construction my entire adult life, I am interested in the flatbed part of this industry and Roehl looks like a great program. Plus they have a drop terminal about an hour from me in Bethlehem, PA which would make home time much easier If I get in with them. I will be following along your journey, thank you for posting.

Good Luck!!!

11/25/2019 Roehl GYCDL Day 1

The day started for me at 0500. Got up and got ready and headed for breakfast.

Here at the Best Western there are drivers from several trucking companies in various stages of their careers. So it is nice to sit around and talk to them while waiting for shuttles for each individual company.

After catching the shuttle over to the terminal , the first thing I see is a couple rigs at the terminal fuel islands preparing to start there day.

We get sent upstairs to where the educational development rooms are as well as the diner. Once in the room we meet our instructors and are given a stack of paperwork that will be filled out through the day. You also select what you are going to eat every day for lunch for the week. Pictures were taken for our ID's and we all took our Isokinetic Tests. Back to the room for paperwork. You then get 30 minutes for lunch.

After lunch we finish up paperwork and go through a series of PowerPoint presentations. We end the day learning how to use the paper logs. We are informed we will be filling out individual logs for every day of training. Then at 5pm it's time to hop the shuttle back to the hotel.

After arriving at the hotel, I decided to go to a local work and boot store to pick up a pair of insulated work boots. When doing maneuvers in the lot we will be standing outside when not driving. The only time the group is in the truck together is during street driving.

Now it's time for some rest as we have to be at the terminal by 0630 in the morning.

Time to get day 2 started! When you walk in from the parking lot to the terminal you have to go pass the fuel islands. Here was a few drivers getting ready to head out.

11/26/19 ROEHL GYCDL DAY 2

Started the day at 0500hrs. In order to shower and get ready. Then downstairs to grab some breakfast before heading to the terminal.

We arrive at the terminal and are in our classroom ready to go at 0630. At that time our instructor informs us that we will be attending a safety class with some other new hires. However it wont start until 0730. So we had time to roam around until then.

At 0730 we attended THE ROEHL WAY, which is the companies safety briefing for all new drivers. In this class you are taught the methods the company teaches its drivers which has lead them to win numerous national and world safety awards.

After the meeting we had time to study our pretrip until lunch time.

After lunch we broke into what would become our driver groups for the remainder of the program. My group started out in the simulator learning shift patterns and double clutching. Afterwards we went out and saw the tractor we would be using for the remainder of our training. Our instructor then led us on a pretrip inspection.

We then finally got to get in the rig and each take a turn driving laps around the yard. During our laps our instructor is telling us to shift up or down at random to get us use to going through the gears. Everyone did fairly well considering none of us had driven a rig before.

We spent the last few minutes of class meeting some of the other company instructors and talking about driving.

From this point forward we will meet at the truck in the morning and spend all day learning to drive.