Once I succeeded in unionizing the bottling plant I still felt the burning desire to better myself. Regardless of the pay rate increase I knew I didn't want to be a lifer in the bottling plant. I had been working on the loading dock loading tractor trailers both by hand and with pallet jacks and forklifts. It wasn't the physical labor I didn't like, it was the containment within that building and I felt my growth was thwarted.
While loading the big trucks I marveled at them. As I loaded the trucks I talked to many of the drivers. I was amazed at the pay they got for driving those big machines, about four times what I was making. What if I could make that kind of money, I thought. I yearned for getting out on the road, delivering the loads, making four times as much money. Yes, that's what I want to do, I said!
I asked several drivers how someone like me could get to be a tractor trailer driver. I was really let down when most of them laughed and said "you have to go to tractor trailer training school to study and then take a very difficult battery of tests and finally, a road test". I was told that the schooling alone was thousands of dollars. So that almost killed my dream right there. By this time I was 23 years old with a wife and a child, making barely enough money to pay rent and put food on the table. Coming up with even $1,000.00 was an impossible dream for me.
But I didn't give up the dream. One day during my lunch break I opened the phone book and called the only tractor trailer training school in my area. I asked the associate on the line how much the tuition is for learning to drive a tractor trailer. She said that they offered several courses but if I had no experience, the full course would be $2,500.00. I was really disappointed. She told me that they offered a "refresher course" for people who have had some experience and who may just need an abbreviated course to get familiar with the big machines again and the cost of that course is $500.00. But I had no experience. I didn't even know how to start one of those big trucks up.
So for the next few days I was thinking of ways I could raise the money I needed to enroll in that school. My parents and my in-laws didn't have that kind of money either. I may be able to beg, borrow or steal a few hundred dollars, but a few thousand? Never. So then I though t of what the lady at the school told me. A refresher course for $500.00. All I needed was to get my feet wet, I told myself. I thought since the trucks are right here where I work, and I talk to the drivers all day, maybe I could learn some things from them!
The drivers weren't very encouraging. None of them wanted to share much information with me. But there was one who did. He really liked me Tom Woods was his name. He answered any question I poised to him. He even let me jump up inside of his truck and he showed me all of the gear levers and the brake buttons and the air valves. One day he invited me to take a ride to Pennsylvania with him on a Saturday. That was my biggest break.
Tom really wanted to help me. He told me that even if I was able to go to school and take my tests and get my license, It would be very hard for me to find a job as a driver because I would have no actual driving experience. That was another major disappointment for me. So we finished that trip and I went home. Could it be that no matter how hard I tried I'd still be working in that bottling plant for life?
So one day I was reading the Union requirements for job openings in the plant. Promotions were awarded to an employee based on job seniority provided that person was qualified for the job. The only time the job would go to person hired from the outside is if there was no one in the existing employee pool who was qualified to do the job. This got me thinking. Whenever there was an opening for a tractor trailer job, the company always hired from the outside because none of the inside employees were qualified to drive the big trucks. However, If I were to get my Class A Commercial Drivers License (CDL), that would qualify me. There was no mention in the contract language of required "experience" to any new job opening. The applicant must only be "qualified".
So that got me back in the thinking mode of how I could get qualified. I had learned a lot on my trip to Pennsylvania with Tom. He showed me how to start the big truck, how to release and apply the air brakes, how to shift the mammoth 13 speed transmission and how to read the gages. But the biggest learning curve was the maneuvering of the big machine. How could I learn that without actually getting behind the wheel and doing it?
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