Trucing School

February, 1993

In 1992 I was flopping around looking for work when I came up with the idea of driving a truck.  I had driven trucks before.  I had a Commercial license.  My idea was to drive a straight truck, maybe a five ton or so, for some delivery company maybe.  But the state of Texas had instituted the CDL license by then, making my old commercial license obsolete.  I was going to have to get one of those fancy CDLs.  That meant I had to go to trucking school.

With the help of the local Texas employment office I managed to sign up for truck driver training at the North East Texas Community College trucking school in a job re-training program.  I headed off from Maydelle to Daingerfield, Texas in February, 1993.

Early in the morning of February 15 I headed off to school.  I was driving my old 1980s Chevy truck pulling a trailer.  An hour out from the house I was driving down a farm road when a herd of deer decided to cross in front of my truck.  I hit at least two of them.  They all leaped up and ran off but my poor truck was a bit screwed up.  I considered going back home but decided to patch the thing up and go on to school.

I remember when I first drove up to the trucking school, looking at the big trucks and thinking, “oh shit, I did not think about driving a tractor-trailer.”  Several ragged-looking trucks sat at the school, each one a different type from different companies.

The school was housed in an old warehouse originally used by Lone Star Steel.  There were about thirty students, people of all sizes and shapes.  Some were just hoping for work, like me.  One older guy was going so he could ride team with his son.  A few people were already working for trucking companies.  There was one woman whose husband drove for a tanker outfit.  She was barely five-foot tall and rather tubby.  It was hard not to pick on her for the way she had to shimmy up into the trucks. It was altogether a rough and tumble group of blue collar folks.

The trailer I’d been pulling was an old camper.  I had been able to swing the cost of the school but not the cost of a room.  Instead I would stay at a state park for the month the school lasted.  This old camper was a pop-up that I’d redesigned with plywood walls.  It was cramped and limited in space but it would do.  I set up housekeeping after my first day of school.

Right after school started the Branch Davidian siege in Waco started up so this was our primary subject of conversation.  Otherwise we talked about what it was like being a truck driver.  In the beginning I just wondered how I’d do in one of those big trucks.

School almost ended for me three days after I arrived.  My wife worked in Jacksonville and sometimes stayed in Lufkin, though we still had the house in Maydelle.  One morning she was driving up from Lufkin to  her Burger King Management job when she encountered a hail storm.  She lost control and the car went down the bank beside the road and slid some thirty feet, stopping just short of a big tree.  The school let me go check on her.  I drove home.  She was ok, if a bit shaken up.  I went back to school.

When I first crawled into one of the trucks I remember thinking, “Yeah, I can do this.”  School was split between classroom, learning all the rules and regulations of trucking, and driving.  The school mostly gave us a few pointers and sent us out to make whatever kind of mess we could.  It was fun.  Every day we made the loop of several dirt roads out from the school.

Eventually we had the chance to try on our own.  I remember backing the truck around the shop and into a fake dock on the far side very neatly.  I was proud of myself.  But then came the day we were heading out on real highways.  That would be different.

About four or five students and an instructor went out and drove all around northeast Texas.  One student would drive while the rest piled into the sleeper berth.  We went south to Longview and Martial, up to Texarkana, over to Mt. Pleasant, and through every little town in between.  Everything went pretty well.  One student took down a stop sign.  That was the only mishap.  We dropped into a dozen truck stops and had some very fine meals—something impossible to find these days.

Eventually we got down to the wire.  We had to go pass the driving test.  Some students took the test in Jefferson.  Others took it in Mt. Pleasant.  They took me to Mt. Pleasant.

To say I was nervous when that DPS officer climbed into the cab beside me would make a tremendous understatement.  Suddenly I forgot everything I’d learned.  I shakily pulled out and headed down the street.  The first turn was to the right, onto a feeder of I35.  The road had a slope downwards.  I lost my gear and never got it back.  I wound up having to stop the truck before getting it into gear.  I knew I had totally fucked up.  I said, “I guess I failed this test, huh?”

The officer said, “yes, let’s just get back to the office.”  She instructed me to take a right, make a few blocks and get back to the office.  I was so mad at myself I drove rather recklessly.  Humiliation was me when I stepped out of that truck.  I felt so stupid.  I figured my trucking career was over before it began.  My instructor didn’t see it that way.

“We all fuck up,” my instructor said.  He then put me in the driver’s seat and had me drive us back to the yard. I spent the night either beating myself in the head or chewing on my lip hoping I’d make it through.  The next morning we headed right back up to Mt. Pleasant. 

The second time the state examiner settled into the seat beside me I was in more of a “fuck it” mood.  We went down the same street for the same right turn.  This time, though, I stayed the hell off the shift until I was at the bottom of the hill.  The rest of the test was uneventful.  In the end I scored one hundred percent.  I was one of the very few to do so.

With driving tests out of the way all we had to do was kick around for a few days and take the final exam.  It was all that stood between me and my new truck driving career.  I was not nervous about the test.  My score was 98 or thereabouts.  Again, one of the highest the school had ever seen.  I was proud of myself.  It was all over and I was no a freshly minted CDL toting truck driver.  I said my goodbyes and headed home.  I’d packed up the trailer earlier and so it was off to Maydelle for me. 

Lots of different trucking company recruiters visited the school.  I had the option of going with several carriers.  I chose to sign up with a Lufkin company that promised more home time: Oakridge Transportation.  A few days at home after the school ended and I was off to start my driving career.  I had no idea what was ahead of me with Oakridge.  Had I known I would sure have gone with someone else.  I didn’t.  Instead I started up with Oakridge and it’s junk fleet and an instructor named Max who introduced me to the Goddamn School of Truck Driving.  And that’s another story entirely.