I was thinking about getting my CDL about 10 years ago. Rode along with a friend of mine for about 4 months until I got back to work. Not a bad gig. I can see where there"s a lot of hair pulling & a lot of enjoyment. Plenty of countryside to see & neat towns along the way. You meet quite a few nice people, too. The diversity of jobs/hauls always keeps things interesting, even if you have the same routes. There"s always construction & closures to foul things up & those non-truck routes you have to tiptoe around (or through, shhhhh!). Another doldrum-breaker is the supposed no-touch load that get"s delivered to Ma 'n' Pa Kettle's carpet store in the middle of BFN, Mn., for example. No forklift, no dock, no help. Dispatch told us if we didn"t have a dock, we didn"t have to drop. My friend told disp. we were two able bodied men who would have no qualms about unloading the trailer for them. That & our next pickup was in Eau Claire, late the next morning. I should have re-read the manifest. They had the whole rotten trailer load of carpet insulation. He & his BIG mouth! On the other hand, I wasn't going to leave Ma 'n' Pa high & dry. We spent 3 hrs. of our "off" time unloading that trailer. Yeesh! That"s ok, though, karma works wonders! The next day was my first trip to Nestles in Franklin Park, Il. They heard I was a newbie & made sure I left with a grocery bag FULL of candy after a tour. My sweet tooth still hurts thinking about it. I guess to sum it up with out more blabbering, it's about a diverse a job as you can get, chock full of responsibility. For your first job, I'd reccomend staying intra' instead of interstate, at least for the winter. You may even want to start with a straight truck with air or a quad axle dump or a milk route. Shoot, a job plowing snow for Colombia Co. wouldn't be bad & it would keep you in a familiar area, too. As for companies, I rode along in Kreilkamp trucks & liked them (Kreilkamp) quite a bit. Good family atmosphere. N-M was a good company at the time, too. Stay away from JB Hunt. They hire anyone & it shows. Schnider, IIRC, leaves you at the bottom of the pay scale for a good while & you'd better go to church if you work for English's. Oh, one more thing, four-wheeler takes on a whole new definition, with a lot of cussin' in that definition. I'm a firm believer in letting people ride in 18 wheelers before they get their license. Maybe they'd be a little more mindful of Li'l Brother Trucker & stay out of your brother truckin' way! Well, that's my $.02. Best of luck & don't be discouraged, it's a great job I wish I had followed up on. Couln't pass a physical, anymore, no matter how much I study. - Mike
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