While his peers were poring through history and math textbooks, just a stone’s throw away, Olive-Harvey College student Edward Gates, 31, was learning how to shift and synchronize the gears on an 18-wheeler.
Under the watchful eye of instructor Bob Carreras, Gates navigated the International tractor-trailer through a back parking lot at the South Side college.
The pressure was on for Gates, who in a few days would be tested for a commercial driver’s license by an Illinois Secretary of State examiner.
“We’ve got some work to do over the next few nights,” said Carreras, a former trucker who has been teaching for 15 years.
Gates is one of several dozen or so students who have learned truck driving at Olive-Harvey College. This spring, Olive-Harvey became the second college in the Chicago area to offer truck-driving instruction with hands-on training (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). (Several colleges offer classroom-only instruction.)
“What we do, I would say, is not only unique but is a great benefit to the community,” Carreras said. “People learn and then they go to work.”
The 16-week class, which costs $2,400, is open to students 21 and older who have a current Illinois driver’s license. It meets three times a week and has an enrollment of 10.
Offered through the school’s Continuing Education department, the goal of the course is to help students obtain a Class A license so they can become commercial truck drivers.
“There’s a tremendous shortage of truck drivers nationwide and there’s some good-paying jobs out there,” Carreras said. “I raised 11 kids on my truck driving job.”
“We became aware of this great need and we knew we could address it,” said Dr. Lawrence Cox, the president of Olive-Harvey College, located just off the Bishop Ford Freeway at 103rd Street. “Plus, we’re in a good place physically to do this,” added Cox. “We’re right off the expressway and near a lot of truck driving companies.”
The course evolved from a classroom-only course taught at the college since 1991. “The students came to us and said they wanted more,” said Shirley Chappell, dean of Continuing Education of Olive-Harvey. “That’s when we decided to go to a full-fledged course.”
Commercial truck-driving schools offer hands-on experience, Chappell said. “But by coming here, they know they will receive quality instruction, and they know that their instruction will be recognized by potential employers.”
“Some truck driving schools don’t carry good reputations,” added Carreras. “It lends more authenticity to say `I took a course at Olive-Harvey College.'”
The first complete truck driving course was offered in the spring. Two sessions ran over the summer, and classes were scheduled to begin at the end of October and in February.
The course runs in four phases:
Theory, in which students spend some 80 hours in the classroom. “Here we learn the basics,” Carreras said. “We learn all the rules and regulations that you need to know in order to hold a commercial truck driving license.”
Skill practicum, in which students spend 60 hours behind the wheel of the tractor pulling a 48-foot trailer in the school’s parking lot. Cones are set up and students practice skills such as turns, stopping and backing up to an imaginary loading dock.
This is where the students find out how much driving a large commercial truck differs from a passenger vehicle. Carreras offers these examples:
In turning, mirrors are important. “You need mirrors to turn a corner otherwise you’ll go up on the sidewalk or hit a pole.” With a right turn, the truck must enter the intersection into the oncoming traffic lane before beginning a turn to clear the corner.
Mirrors also are the key to backing up. “You must take your brain and teach it to do the opposite of what you do with an auto when you’re backing up,” Carreras said. “In a car when you want to turn left, you turn the wheel left. With a truck, when you want to turn left you go right.”
When backing in a straight line, you line up the mirrors with something parallel–a curb or an asphalt mark, he added.
And being able to drive an auto with a manual transmission won’t help with a big rig, which average eight to 10 gears but can have as many as 20. “Manuals on cars are synchronized. With a truck, the driver must be the synchronizer,” Carreras said. So the driver must pay attention to road speed, the tachometer and the gear he’s shifting into.
Take going from fourth to fifth. In fourth the truck is going 20 m.p.h., and the engine is running at 1,800 r.p.m. The driver depresses the clutch and simultaneously moves the gearshift from fourth to neutral, releases clutch and allows the r.p.m. to drop to 1,400. Then the driver depresses the clutch, moves from neutral into fifth and accelerates to 30 m.p.h and 1,800 r.p.m.
Road driving, in which students spend 62 hours taking the tractor-trailer out on nearby streets and highways. “We go out and deal with traffic and get real experience both on city streets and on the interstate,” Carreras said. “For example, at 115th and Cottage Grove, these guys learn how not to hit an awning on a corner building when they turn at the intersection.”
The CDL road test, in which the students are tested by evaluators from the Illinois Secretary of State’s office.
To get a Class A CDL, which entitles the holder to drive anything except a bus, there is a written test covering core knowledge, air brakes and tractor-trailer, and a road test.
The road test consists of a pretest or truck inspection; a skills test, which includes a 100-foot backup and right turn in which the rear axle has to come within 3 feet of a cone and a 45-degree backup into a dock; and the road portion, where the driver heads out onto a highway to demonstrate upshifting and downshifting, merging and lane changing.
The school also helps with resume-writing and lines up students with truck driving firms.
“We have excellent contacts with trucking firms all over the city and as far away as Arkansas,” said Reuben Hadnot, an employment specialist with Olive-Harvey’s Department of Continuing Education.
“And when employers hear that these students have 200-plus hours of experience thanks to the course, they want to get their hands” on them, he said. “There’s a lot of opportunity out there right now and this class is a great springboard.”
“We’ve been extremely pleased with the program,” Cox said. Of the 33 students who had completed the course by the end of summer, 26 have jobs, five more are being trained for jobs and the other two are awaiting retesting for their commercial driver’s license. “And we have 18 people on a waiting list for a class of 10,” he said.
The program also received a boost from the Illinois Department of Transportation.
“They became very interested in hiring students who would come out of the program, and they’re now one of our partners,” Cox said. “They also provided us with the truck and the trailer.”
“The Federal Highway Administration has set a goal for transportation organizations to form partnerships with colleges that work with people of color,” said Nell Clay of the IDOT Civil Rights Office in Springfield. “We looked for institutions where we could benefit each other. “We benefit because we will get qualified, pretrained drivers for our highway maintenance trucks,” added Clay, whose agency has hired an Olive-Harvey graduate. “And, of course, the students benefit in the sense of jobs.”
Hadnot pointed out the government studies also show that there will be a growing need for qualified truck drivers as a strong economy creates a bigger need for shipping goods via truck.
“That means students will not only have jobs, but well-paying jobs with good benefits,” he said.
Cox said Olive-Harvey has helped graduates land jobs by working with Chicago’s work force development initiative, through which unemployed people receive state vouchers for job training at community colleges.
“We’re helping people of the community to provide for their families,” said Cox, who cited that graduates can make $25,000 to $65,000 annually depending on the job.
“Four of my five sons are over-the-road truckers, and they’ve been finding a lot of offers out there,” Carreras said. “And they’ve been going with the people who pay the best benefits. So have our grads.”
Spring session graduate Victor Garcia, 46, was offered three truck driving positions after graduation. “I took the one with the best wages,” said Garcia, a former construction foreman who lives on Chicago’s East Side.
In addition to the solid employment offers, the “romance” of trucking and the open road are luring students.
“You can be a modern-day cowboy,” said student Gates. “There’s something different every day with a truck driving job. It’s an exciting way to earn a living. You’re definitely not stuck somewhere for the whole day.”
