My Journey: Getting Ready For School

So, this might be a bit premature but, I figured I'd start a series of topics that people can find and follow as I take my steps into trucking. This first one is going to be preparing for school.

A little about me:

I am a 24 year old woman who currently works as a security guard. I've been working at the same place for over 3.5 years. I currently make $343/week before taxes and work 32 hours a week. I live in Eugene, Oregon. I am not married. I have no children. There isn't anything I'd consider going back to regular school for at this point. I live paycheck to paycheck, have terrible credit, a clean MVR , and no criminal history.

Why I want to be a trucker:

I prefer jobs where I don't have someone constantly standing over my shoulder in a literal sense (your boss is right next to you or right down the hall), a sense of freedom, I want to see America, I want the sense of accomplishment that comes with completing hard challenges, I want to be able to help support my mother and younger brother, the opportunities for advancement in security are slim and I don't have enough marketable skills to get a decent job some other place, and the paychecks will sometimes be better than what I'm currently making now, better benefits than what I currently get (the only benefit from my current job is 40 hours of vacation time and nothing else), and a chance to save towards the future.

My plans:

I have chosen to go through training with Prime Inc. for a couple of reasons. I want the longer training time Prime provides, I will unfortunately need to accept the $200 advances offered during training, Prime offers nice pay for new drivers and I have no problem driving the lightweight trucks, Prime has a food grade tanker division that I might be interested in in the future, Prime has a reefer division that I'd like to start with. After I have some experience, I will probably choose to become a trainer when I qualify. I am not searching for a local or regional job.

If Prime doesn't accept me for some reason, I will look into Knight.

Today my boss requested my final date and resignation letter for that date. The last day I will be at my current job is August 29th, 2015. I will be taking my five days of vacation for the remaining time before I leave as suggested by my boss.

Prime currently requires that your application be within 30 days of your orientation date. I want a date in September so that I can be with a trainer in the winter since I've never driven on snow or ice. I will most likely submit my application on August 10th, 2015 so that they have some leeway on getting me in.

How I'm Preparing:

I'm currently in the process of completing the High Road Training Program. I've read 'Becoming a Truck Driver: The Raw Truth About Trucking' by Brett Aquila (online or Amazon purchase) I've been watching random trucking Youtube videos and reading tons of topics on this forum. I've contacted a Prime recruiter. I am moving items to storage out of my current room that I rent and preparing to move in with my mother, who lives two hours away, after my job ends. I will be leaving my car with my mother. The only things I will be taking with me are my laptop, clothes and other personal items, Bodylastics resistance bands, and an external hard drive that has all my DVDs on it. All my belongings fit in a duffle bag, I will be getting my Oregon CDL A permit before I leave as suggested by my recruiter and transferring it to Missouri where I'm told I'll be going to school, I even cut my long hair very short because taking an hour long shower multiple times a week isn't going to always be realistic :D.

I went to the IRS website and printed out all my tax statements since I began working and went to my bank website and got all my account statements since I've had the account so that I can cross reference withdrawal amounts with addresses and deposit amounts with jobs. This has given me a fairly accurate list of dates for the application. Prime is requesting 5 years of job history (I am told only 3 years will be verified) and 3 years of address history.

I'm a logical and realistic person so, I believe I've got a firm grasp on what to expect and what not to expect from being a truck driver. I learned to drive a car in six hours, hopefully I can learn to drive a truck well enough in three weeks to pass the tests!

Thank yous go especially to Brett and Daniel B. Other thanks for all the other experienced drivers that have posted.

I will update this topic when things change. I'll make a new topic when I start school. Thanks for reading and being here!

I'm currently in the process of completing the High Road Training Program. I've read 'Becoming a Truck Driver: The Raw Truth About Trucking' by Brett Aquila (online or Amazon purchase) I've been watching random trucking Youtube videos and reading tons of topics on this forum

Hey, don't forget our Truck Driver's Career Guide if you haven't gone through that. It's a biggie!

I'm a logical and realistic person so, I believe I've got a firm grasp on what to expect and what not to expect from being a truck driver.

The problem is that so much of how things are done in trucking isn't necessarily logical. You're going to find that a lot of company policies, Federal Laws, driving tactics of those around you, policies and scheduling systems of the customers you're serving, and the training methods of the various instructors you'll come across are not very logical.

If you could interview all of the people that failed to get their trucking career off to a good start I'd bet the biggest problem 90% of them ran into was that their expectations of what life will be like out there and how things should be done seemed perfectly logical to them at the time but turned out to be so far from the reality that they didn't handle it well. People tend to believe they can probably figure out how training should be handled. When they see it's far from what they expected they figure the schools and the instructors must be incompetent, disorganized, or dishonest. Their attitude turns sour as they become more disillusioned with the process. They begin becoming confrontational with the instructors and office staff, they quit putting out their best effort, and before you know it they're on the bus back home.

Go into this expecting a lot of things to seem illogical. Many of your expectations will be wrong or you'll come across things you never expected in the first place. In fact, often times instructors will purposely say or do things just to test you. They'll purposely change your schedule around or yell at you for a very small mistake just to see how you'll react. We have a natural tendency to try to figure out everything. Why is he yelling at me for such little things? Why did they change the schedule three different times this week? In the end you won't always understand why things are being done a certain way because there's a hidden logic or hidden agenda that you weren't aware of.

So just go into it like you would the Army. Do everything that's asked of you, assuming it's safe and legal of course. Roll with everything from moment to moment and keep your eye focused on the goal of successfully completing the training and going solo. Don't sweat it if you come across instructors you don't like. Don't worry if things seem disorganized or illogical. Consider everything to be part of some sort of a test whether you realize it or not.

And most of all, expect there to be a lot of ups and downs. Hopefully you'll have a lot of fun during the training process but it certainly won't be easy and things won't always go smoothly. Expect it and roll with it. You have to stay the course and fight through the tough times to survive out there.

Did read through the career guide too! Figures I'd forget something.

And what I mean by logical and realistic is, I'm not going into this expecting daisies to grow out of diesel fuel. My logical side just lets me work through tough situations. But, I don't expect this to be easy and I've got a ton of patience when I'm on the road. I'm pretty sure I've read almost every post and blog entry for the last year. I'm ready to jump hurdles!

Good stuff Realist!

I was chuckling while reading this and saying to myself "Sis?!?" With the exception of being 48, male, married, with two kids and I work in a warehouse, this reads so much like what I'm going thru now.

Best of luck with Prime, and I look forward to reading more. Your forum name is very apropos.

My logical side just lets me work through tough situations.

The logical mindset does not mean everything has to be one step then the next. But logical minded people can take rules, instructions, etc., and make it work, sometimes without any reasoning behind it. Sorta like trucking business is.

Figured I'd give a brief update since this is a topic about just getting ready for school.

I printed myself out a fancy resignation and turned it in. One of the scariest things for me has been to actually finalize quitting and getting ready to move back in with my mom, something I've avidly avoided since I moved out at 18. Switching from my comfy position to the unknowns (will I be accepted? will I pass my drive tests?) is somewhat scary. But, each day I'm getting more and more antsy to just get 'er done! I'm super excited. And, I keep dreaming vividly about truck stuff. If I didn't have ducks to get in a row and if I didn't want that winter driving experience, I'd probably just up and go for it now. But we wait. And we are patient.

One thing I'm getting ready with is, I am overweight. I'm pre-assuming I'll end up being selected for a sleep study. So, for now, I'm just keeping up on working out with my resistance bands, trying to up my lift weight, and eating healthy (whole30 style if anyone's curious, Google it.) So, at least if I show up overweight, I'll still be prepared to work hard and work it off! I also got off the medication that was making me overweight in September of last year and it's been much better.

Some people talk about entertainment on the road and family as well so, here are two things I'm doing for both.

I have a ten year old brother with special needs who is home schooled and right now he's really into GPS, latitudes, longitudes, and phone number area codes. He's also somewhat interested in languages, we tried Spanish but it was too frustrating for him. When he was much younger we all spoke "baby" sign language (simple sign language). He started speaking on his own and we didn't keep up the practice. So, once I know I've been accepted and officially get going on a truck with my license, I want to send him a little kit with a large map, pins, and some string. When I have time I can send him video updates about where I am with my GPS coordinates and also give the information in sign language so we can learn together again. Then, with his home school he can send me back videos of what he learned about the area I was in and he can add the pins and string to his map. Plus, I can send him a nice post card every once in a while.

I have a small DVD collection (maybe less than 100 movies?), my roommate has a few hundred, a friend has a few hundred. I have a couple terrabyte hard drive that is going to be pulled from a computer so, I'm in the process of putting all my DVDs onto my laptop and then moving them to the hard drive which I'll get an external storage case for. Boom. DVD library, no internet required. I hope to run hard but, down time is going to be inevitable so, it'll be nice to have a little device to just run on my laptop.

I also really love Daniel B.'s bike strapped to the truck and will eventually be wanting to get a bike as well.

That's all for now!

Get 'em sister! Keep it real, like everyone's saying. I like your daisy analogy :) Wouldn't it be nice if that's how it worked? Keep us posted and enjoy the ride...or drive! :)

Not much to update but I'll add some stuff anyways. Maybe people can relate to a few things.

I am antsy. I want to go and get it done and boom bang! But, I still have to wait and pack and get my permit and a million other things done before I leave. A month and twelve days before I reapply. So close. Meanwhile, I'm melting in our near hundred degree heat wave with a bedroom at the same temperature. I think I'm going to start sleeping on the bathtub. I'm also having really vivid trucking dreams. I keep hitting a german shepherd on a simulator in the dream. I think this is from a video on YouTube.

How did I accumulate so much stuff to move!? I swear little elves just put more stuff in my car, storage, and room when I'm asleep. I'm ready to just drop it all off at Good Will and say fuhget about it.

Besides all that, I'm sticking to my getting healthier stuff (usually.) Including the working out and healthy eating. I plan to continue with it for life. I'm not on a diet, I'm changing my lifestyle :)

A week ago I emailed the recruiter I originally spoke to and haven't heard back yet. Maybe someone here that drives for Prime can answer for me. I really just wanted to make sure I wasn't forgotten with the recruiter but, I understand I might be a low priority since I'm not actively joined up just yet.

Email follows:

Hello,

I wanted to keep in contact and let you know that I will be reapplying to Prime on August 12, 2015 so that I can hopefully get an orientation date in September.

I did have a question as well. What is Prime's policy on trainers for women? Does Prime require that women train with women? What is the average wait time for a trainee to get started with their PSD phase? If a trainee isn't picked up at the end of orientation, what happens regarding lodging, food, and transportation to the terminal?

Thank you for your time and answers and have a good day.

-(Real name removed because I'm the only one of me in the world.)

Enough of my rambling. Have a good day!