My wife and I were ready and willing to go trucking. The pay looked good, and, having that totally useless degree in accounting, after running the numbers several times, I was looking for somebody to sign on with.
The problem is, to drive a 70' long vehicle, you have to have training (expensive), and a special license...Class A CDL (which requires you show up with a truck for testing).
After a lot of research, about 6 months, we decided to go with Schneider National Carriers out of Green Bay, Wisconsin. They offered free truck driver training, and, if you graduated, a job. They also had a good safety record and attitude, and this was of paramount importance to us.
We met with a recruiter and joked with him about his last name, "Swift". Swift is a major competitor of Schneider's. We also received some informational materials from Green Bay, including a short video. As it happened, we later met many of the people in the video and even got to work directly with them, but that comes later.
Finally, we passed all the intial tests, including taking a written test in our home state of Texas so that we qualified for a training permit. We also had to qualify on a HazMat test before things were a go.
After a little back and forth, we were notified that we were accepted for training. One drawback was that the training was going to be in Green Bay. Since we lived in Texas, and were going to have to quit our jobs to even give this a shot we began to have cold feet. We were not even sure how we were going to get to Green Bay and survive the two weeks of unpaid training.
However, Schneider informed us that transportation would be provided from Dallas to Green Bay and all lodging would be provided as well. With all that resolved, we took our minimal savings, paid off the monthly bills, left our girls in charge of the house...and the dog...and set off from Austin to Dallas to catch the bus...yep, bus...to Green Bay with enough cash in our pockets to allow us to live on less than $10 a day each for the next three weeks...we thought. More on that later.
Next episode: The longest bus ride of our lives!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment