Tuesday I Will Start On A New Path

I definitely feel your pain on being bigger than the average, being 6'5 myself 350+lbs, that is one of my concerns as well. I still in the considering phase but more than likely going to apply to a few companies, Prime being one, the LW truck was a concern especially after reading Daniel B.'s post on the LWs and the measurements.

After reading through some of the posts and blogs on TT, it seems that the decision to go company or lease really depends on the person.

I would kindly like to counter this point a bit. I personally would never recommend that anyone lease a truck regardless of experience. It simply isn't a sound business proposition for anyone other than the company leasing the truck to the driver. From the driver's standpoint it's a poor business to be in.

But as far as brand new drivers are concerned you should never, ever, ever consider leasing during your rookie year. You have way too much to learn about handling that rig, handling life on the road, and making your way in the trucking industry. People who think leasing straight out of school is a good idea fall under the category of "ignorance is bliss". They simply have no idea what they're getting themselves into. They've underestimated the difficulty of surviving your first year on the road and way underestimated how difficult it is to succeed in the trucking industry as a business owner. It's foolish and naive quite frankly.

Also, anyone who has had any sort of success in life doing difficult, complex, and risky things will tell you that one of the golden rules for success is to never, ever underestimate the challenges you face or overestimate your own abilities. To think you can learn to drive a rig, learn to handle life on the road, and learn to run a business in one of the most competitive and cutthroat industries on the planet all at the same time is ridiculous. That isn't the approach to take.

Stick to being a company driver, at least for your first year or two. Then if you want to roll the dice on your financial future at least you'll have a knowledge base to work from.

Thanks for the feedback on the leasing idea it goes with the way I was thinking as well, be a company driver first and foremost and if I feel I can take the responsibility then move on to the lease end. To save time I am not going to quote everyone as the post would be absurdly large and for me that is just annoying to read LOL. As to the Pre-Hire letters I believe I need those for the Mi Works office to approve funding but I am not sure, this is why first I am going there to find out what they need as the information on their programs is not easy to get without being there in person. Once I know what I need I will be sending out for those asap, I know I will need them before I finish with schooling so I will try and knock them out before I even start as to hopefully get my foot in the door as it were. As to the gigantism I doubt I have that as I have mostly stopped growing, and to be honest when I was in high school I was more of the average height of the class (I had one guy who was 7'2 and made me feel short LOL.).

I would kindly like to counter this point a bit.

Counter away! Better to do that than not :) Thank you for not totally bashing my thoughts. It was a risk for me to respond to this one but... :)

Oh the joys of talking to state employees, but I digress and I want to stay positive. So today was the day I had been waiting for and I finally got up the nerve to go to ThumbWorks, it is sort of an employment help center run by the state though it doesn't deal with unemployment issues. I of course had to sign in to let them know I was there and do the fun waiting game, only to be told that I would have to make account with them so I am in "in the system". I got done but realized that I linked it to the email that I can only access from my phone, that one is one me. So we were talking about possible places I could go in order to get my training without mention of how much they will cover, but after some pushing I was told that they will cover $2500 of the cost for me to go to trucking school of my choice (they can not tell me where to go apparently). So after all this I have to go back Monday at 9:30am with drivers license, birth cert., and social security card as well as my health insurance card, I had all but the birth cert. on me today but she wouldn't take it from me.

So all in all not a terrible day really it would have been better had they had the information on their website so I could have had it all ready to go today, but their site is more of a glorified indeed or monster job search site than anything else.