Early Days

Yesterday (Tuesday) was my first day of CDL training.  The morning was a lot of welcoming and paperwork.  There are a dozen people in my class and I am the only female.  I am the only female student in the entire school.

By the second day, most of the class was relaxed enough to joke and tease each other (nothing inappropriate).  The instructor is really great.  He's clearly very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. He engages everyone in class and he's always willing to review anything you didn't understand or try to explain it more clearly if you are having trouble.  All you have to do is ask.

I've gotten some weird looks from the guys in the other classes, but everyone at the school has been very respectful.  On the first day, I was sitting in the reception area waiting to ask my recruiter about something, and the guy next to me asked me if I was a recruiter for one of the trucking companies.  I told him that I was a student at the school.  His response?  "What does your husband think of you driving a truck?"  He didn't say it rudely and I think it was an honest question.  He seemed surprised to learn that I wasn't married.  And that pretty much sums up the conversation. 

For the record, I am single.  I've never been married.  I don't have children.

That give me a lot of freedom of choice when it comes to trucking jobs (no family means that "home time" is not really a very high priority) in that I don't really have other opinions to take into account.  I have six pre-hire offers so far and I'm really weighing my options.  I'm reading as much as I can about each company and reading through online trucker forums in search of firsthand reviews from people who have worked for them.  Knowledge is power.

I printed out the 2012 CDL file from the website for the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles.  I glanced through it over the weekend, but didn't get a chance to read much of it in-depth until Monday night.  Today, we received a binder containing the pertinent parts of the CDL manual (not all sections apply to tractor-trailers, some are for buses, etc.) and I was surprised that it was the Tennessee CDL manual from 2006.  Most of the information is the same, but a few bits of information was different.  The headquarters for this family of trucking schools is in Tennessee, but why have a manual that is 6 years out of date?  The .pdf for the current Indiana CDL manual is online, free and available to anyone.

We are scheduled to take our CDL permit test on Thursday afternoon.  I think I'm ready.  We played a trivia review game in class today and I beat everyone else by quite a margin.  Sometimes being a nerd and bookworm really comes in handy.  I wanted to make it clear that I am serious about becoming a trucker and being the best student I can be is my way of showing my dedication.  I was aware going in that some of the guys probably wouldn't want me there and I think I am just trying to prove that I deserve, as much as anyone, to be sitting in that classroom.  Also, I just plain like to win!

Here is what the schedule for the few days of class looks like:

Day One 
Welcome, lots of paperwork, filling out applications and starting on CDL knowledge for permit test.

Day Two
CDL handbook and test prep.  Information about air brakes.  "Fieldtrip" out to a truck in the training yard to see brakes in action.

Day Three
Morning - CDL review. Afternoon, all students to license branch to take CDL permit test. 

The rest of the first week (and the following weeks) of school is driving practice on the test range, highway and in the city.  We will be doing the driving test toward the end of the third week of class.