Started PTEC!
#1
Started PTEC!
Hi everybody! Just wanted to give a quick report, hubby and I started cdl school this week at PTEC - Pinellas Technical Education Center in St Petersburg. It's a 9 week course, there are 6 of us total and 3 instructors. Laura Kingsland, she drove for a steel company here in Florida for 17 years (18 years ago lol, she is a true woman pioneer in the industry!) she only does classroom instruction. Al Ferguson, he is our main driving teacher, and then there is Steve (forgot his last name) he was an o/o for something around 34 years, now he is the part time driving teacher. Anyway, learning tons of new stuff, it all seems very overwhelming at times, but I'm keeping a positive attitude and getting excited about my new career!!
#2
Senior Board Member
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Somewhere between Rochester NY and Gaults' Gulch
Posts: 2,698
Hi everybody! Just wanted to give a quick report, hubby and I started cdl school this week at PTEC - Pinellas Technical Education Center in St Petersburg. It's a 9 week course, there are 6 of us total and 3 instructors. Laura Kingsland, she drove for a steel company here in Florida for 17 years (18 years ago lol, she is a true woman pioneer in the industry!) she only does classroom instruction. Al Ferguson, he is our main driving teacher, and then there is Steve (forgot his last name) he was an o/o for something around 34 years, now he is the part time driving teacher. Anyway, learning tons of new stuff, it all seems very overwhelming at times, but I'm keeping a positive attitude and getting excited about my new career!!
#3
We've already got pre-hires for Werner and US Xpress! And we could go with Swift IF we moved 3 hours north in Tampa. We have a few things against us that prevents us from having a flood of available companies, one is our location (Fort Myers, FL) and the other is that we don't have a consistent work history, companies want different things, for example Conway said they want to see 12 months in the last 3 years. Now there's a reason why we don't have that work history. In rearly 2009 we went to Panama with our dump trucks. In October, 2010, we came back to the US with one of those dump trucks, but didn't start making money with it unitl this year, 2011. So we can't file taxes yet. SO... no work history! Sucky. Werner and US Xpress seemed to be ok with it, I just had to fax some documents proving we did work this year, contracts with brokers and stuff. Of course everything is conditional upon graduating the school and then going to the orientation and passing THEIR driving tests and DOT physicals and stuff
Our first choice is US Xpress, teams get .48 cents split right out of training, and teams get all the brand spanking new trucks woot! They also will install an invertor for us. Werner is 2nd choice only because I have always only heard bad things about them. But if we have to use them to get our foot in the door then so be it. |
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