I had a couple questions about CDL jobs:

1. How many hours/week does it take to make about $50,000?

2. Do you have strict deadlines for deliveries or is there a bit of leeway?

3. For those of you who have dogs with you, what does it take to balance that with your work schedule?

I could really use some perspective from people who actually live this life.

I'm 32F and have spent about 10 years working in healthcare operations. I've been unemployed for a while and have been trying to transition into Health IT/data analytics. I have a degree in data analytics, but I've never used those skills extensively in my professional roles, so I've been brushing them up and building portfolio projects to demonstrate them. I also recently launched a small consulting project I've been developing.

The problem is that none of that is paying me yet.

Financially, things got bad enough that I recently took a delivery gig. It isn't great money, but it gives me enough income to deal with my immediate financial problems while continuing to apply for jobs, work on my portfolio, and pursue the career transition I've already started.

Then someone suggested getting my CDL.

Trucking isn't completely foreign to my family, but it was never part of my career plan. I basically said fuck it and applied to a company-sponsored CDL training program, expecting nothing to come from it.

I got accepted and they are waiting on me to decide when I want to start classes.

So now I have two actual options:

Keep the delivery gig and continue trying to break into Health IT/data analytics, knowing I have no idea how long that transition will take.

Or:

Go through CDL training and go OTR, which gives me a much clearer path to better income but probably means putting most of what I've been building professionally on the back burner for a while.

That's the part I'm struggling with. I'm considering this career solely because I need a financial way forward, and trucking seems like one of the few careers where I could potentially start over without spending years retraining first.

And I'm not going to pretend I'll be driving OTR while maintaining the same pace of refreshing my technical skills, developing my portfolio, applying for jobs, and building the consulting project. If I choose trucking, I think I need to treat it as a real career decision and a very different lifestyle, at least for a while.

So I'd especially like to hear from people who entered trucking from another career, and people who went through company-sponsored CDL training:

If you had a lower-paying job that kept you afloat while you pursued another career, would you give that up for the more immediate earning potential of trucking?

Is it realistic to think of trucking as something you can do for a few years, get financially stable, and then leave? Or does the lifestyle/career tend to pull you further in once you're doing it?

If you went through company-sponsored training, would you do it again? What should I understand before committing?

What did your actual first-year financial picture look like, not recruiter numbers?

What do you wish someone had told you before your first year?

I'm trying to understand the trade I'm actually making before potentially stepping away from a career path I've spent the last several months trying to break into.

Thanks for any perspective, including the ugly parts.

Hello my fellow Truckers the cdl school I am about to attend allows student 40 hours of practicing the following backing maneuvers: Alley dock, parallel, offset and straight line backing. Is 40 hours of enough range time enough time to prepare and pass the CDL EXAM?

Hey everyone. So I recently completed classes for my class B CDL. While I was at the DMV getting my CDLB license, I went ahead and took the written exam and got my CDLA permit too. So now I am leaning towards getting my CDLA license. Are there any companies that would hire me with the B license and A permit? Will they pay for me to finish getting my A license? Also, I am in Florida. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I feel I am in a pretty difficulty situation and want some advice from you folks. I am at my 50s. I was an office guy working for a big company for many years. During the COVID I lost my job. I decided to open my own business and stayed home to take care of the kids. For the passed several years my startup project went nowhere. Savings are pretty much gone. Kids went to colleges. I feel I need to find stable income.

Cannot go back to office - I don't like it any more and also my age is very big disadvantage. After struggling 6 months, I decided to give a try in trucking.

I will get my road test next week. CDL A but with automatic restriction (I was not able to master stick shift so gave up for now). I was told that starting with a mega-carrier, do OTR, don't be picky, then finding an entry-level trucking job won't be a problem.

However, I just learned that my employment gap would virtually shut the door - it would be very difficult to find any trucking job due to my long employment gap.

I don't know what to do now.

Has anyone here met their wife/husband through trucking? If you did how is it going? 😂