Swift Debt Pay Off

Case in point, in military basic training and tech school; no matter how tough or rough the Drill instructors were we all remained motivated and morale increased. It was a 100% positive and motivating experience. Unfortunately, with this particular school every student in my class has stated their only motivation is to finish up and get their CDL so they never have to deal with a (insert cuss word) school like this one ever again. I do not think its a bad school, its a "ok" school, maybe even good, but I do not think it sets any standards at all.

So are you saying your morale stayed high during basic training in the military when they were cussin' you like a dog and slamming your face in the mud and making you run until you puked, but Swift's CDL school has beaten you down and broken your spirit?

Man, now that's what I call a tough school!

You know what this sounds like to me? A group pity party. This is the perfect example of how a few Negative Nellys can spread their negative energy like a virus. Of course the opposite is true, also. A few highly motivated and positive attitudes can lead others to higher levels.

A lot of it is who you choose to spend your time with and what you choose to believe. We have a number of people in this forum who have been happily employed with Swift and making great money for a number of years now. Funny thing is, they went through the same schooling as you're going through now.

I just opened up the forum for the express purpose of checking in on this thread. I was already thinking the same thoughts that Brett expressed. It is so common how we see these new people trying to enter this industry and they let their association with their fellow students completely corrupt their thoughts and their way of thinking. I've got to tell you that this career really calls for individuals who can formulate their own thoughts and convictions. If I would have began my career under the influence of the individuals who I attended school with, I would not be driving a truck and enjoying life the way I am today. You see, I was the only one of my class who ever made it into the industry. One of the students that I tried repeatedly to help still contacts me today and often tells me that he still wishes that he would have listened to my advice. He realized too late that I was on the right track, and that all the foolish lies he was believing about this industry from our fellow students were just that - absolute lies!

A person who can make their own way upstream against the current of whatever falsehoods happen to be trending at the time can forge their own path in this career. I have drivers who work with me on this same account who can never seem to make any money because they have let their mindset affect the way the handle their business. They are convinced that the deck is already stacked against them - they have let other people who don't have a dollar's worth of good advice or experience influence their perceptions and their whole way of thinking. I can't count how many times we have counseled new students in truck driving school to stay away from the crowd who seems to know more about it than the instructors. Vin is proving to be a classic example of someone who let the self-proclaimed experts determine how he would mess up his entry into this very rewarding career. You can't expect to make it to the finish line if you don't even make a decent start.

I was hoping we would have heard from Vin by now, because I know we could help him turn this thing around. Once again it seems those pesky unrealistic expectations have won the battle.

I have to say, this is all completely foreign to me. The whole crybaby thing has always baffled me.

Man, when I was in truck driving school I was so damn excited about driving a truck I don't think I slept for days at a time. Those of you that have been around here for a while have heard me talk about this before.

The school I went to was 7 weeks long, 50 hours per week, and it was August in Georgia and we were in a gigantic gravel parking lot using super old black Mack trucks without air conditioning. It had to have been 120 in those trucks and the dust was so thick you could hardly see 100 feet.

I loved every second of it!!

Every night after school I would go back to the hotel, take a shower, eat at Wendy's, and then grab my Walkman (this was 1993 mind you) and go listen to Bob Seger tunes sitting next to the Interstate so I could watch the trucks roll on by and dream about my chance, which was coming very soon.

I seriously must have played "Roll Me Away" about 1,000 times during those seven weeks - over and over and over again. To this day I listen to that tune all the time and I've even learned to hack out a recognizable version of it on the piano. I can still see that Interstate and feel the grass hill I was sitting on next to the Interstate like it was yesterday.

I'm tellin ya - I was dying to get my shot at the real thing. It literally made my chest hurt I wanted to be out there so bad. I used to wonder where everyone was going, what the inside of their trucks looked like, and what they were saying on the CB. Having to sit there and watch while I was waiting to complete the schooling was killin me! I was tempted to put out my thumb and hitchhike just to see what it felt like to be in the real thing for even a few miles.

To this day I can remember the schooling and those first two weeks on the road in training like it was yesterday. I remember certain conversations word for word. I can remember most of the instructors, what they looked like, and even some of the specific lessons each of them taught us in great detail. I can still see those cracked and dusty dashboards, the black and gold trucks, the wobbly shifters in those worn out transmissions.

I just thought getting to drive a big rig was one of the coolest thing in the world you could ever do. Maybe that was just part of growing up for my generation and many of those that came before us. Driving a rig was like riding an adult amusement park ride in an amusement park that went from coast to coast. It was absolutely one of the coolest things I have ever done without a doubt.

I'm always baffled by the negativity that people show up with at these Paid CDL Training Programs. They use the words "slave" and "misery" and talk about their spirits being broken and the sheets on their bed not being changed often enough and I'm tellin ya, I couldn't be more dumbfounded by the whole thing.

Now I did a podcast called The Bootcamp Approach To Trucking and I talked about how you should go into your CDL training with the same long term goals and the same mental toughness you would have if you were entering the military. But I certainly never implied for a moment that I thought the schooling was even 1% as difficult as being in a real bootcamp!! Geez!

I don't know. I just don't get it. To me, American Big Rigs are one of the coolest things on this planet. I thought it was an incredible privilege to spend all those years cruising around the country in brand new $110,000 rigs and making great money doing it at the same time!

I mean, it's trucking. If you don't think trucking would be a cool thing to do, why would you do it?

Is it even possible to think driving a big rig isn't cool?

Strange how the OP’s often disappear when the responses don’t feed their narrative

Strange how the OP’s often disappear when the responses don’t feed their narrative

I know it. That's why when I first answered him I stressed that we would help him work through this. I figured as soon as we told him to stay the course he'd immediately disappear.

Unfortunately people feel like you're insulting them when they express their opinion and you counter it with a different view. A lot of people aren't really trying to learn or to better understand their circumstances. They're looking for you to validate their opinion. When you won't, they move on to someone who will.

I was just talking about this with someone yesterday and I said,

"For a lot of people it's more important to feel right than to actually be right."

People are insecure. They're not giving their opinion hoping to learn something new or work through a new thought process. They're giving their opinion so you can tell them how smart they are.

The OP didn't come here for our guidance. His mind was already made up. He came here to tell us how smart he was for figuring out the situation and to start a "pile on Swift" campaign and add new members to his pity party.

Fortunately a lot of people will understand what we were trying to explain and it will make perfect sense to them. We can't help everyone, but we can help most of them.