Meet Jackson Brosmore, 18, recent high-school graduate and attendee of Bloomington Career Academy’s CDL class. With the expansion of this Illinois high school program’s collaboration with Nussbaum Transportation‘s Trucking Academy, conducted with Heartland Community College, students from 17 area high schools now can enter trucking with quality driving education and career training, reserved for students 18 and older. Nussbaum Transportation got its start more than 75 years ago -- the CDL training program with Heartland started up just in the Spring of 2021.
Jackson Brosmore
After hearing about the high school classes, I got a chance to sit down with Brosmore, one of this year’s graduating students. He’s now the proud owner of a CDL with intrastate driving privileges. We met at the Pilot in Bloomington after he got off work at a job site nearby in Lincoln. There, he’s been employed by a construction company as a finisher.
The young man was unique in ways I’ve not often observed. He’s got ambition and a real passion for work, for one -- money management, too, believe it or not. And he’s developed several skills outside the typical classroom setting that, with the CDL, should set him up well for the future.
‘I’m not a classroom kind of student.’
The young man’s teachers could see the truth of that statement, which he used to describe himself, though he excelled in classes related to the subject of financial management and investing. Generally, though, finding ways to avoid sitting in a classroom seemed to take precedent over what teachers expected. There was a time when he missed attending his home school as many as 30 days in a year. Yet teachers and guidance counselors effectively recognized that something different would help this student find his way. There were some new options he didn’t know about at the start of this year.
“I was called down to the counseling office” early in the year, he said, “and they’re like, ‘Hey, we have a couple spots open in the CDL class. Interested?’”
I think these teachers and counselors should be commended for delivering outside-the-box educational options. Nussbaum Transportation instructors and administrators with decades of real on-the-job experience trucking and teaching brought their skills to the program. As Brosmore prepped to start it, one of the first tasks was making an appointment for his DOT physical. This was basically the only personal cost for Jackson, less than $200 out of pocket. The additional cost was paid for through available grant programs -- more or less like scholarships available to college students covering tuition. The value? About $5,000 for the course, he estimated. The school took care of the fee.
[Related: Covering personal risks is a cost of doing business]
What was the experience like all told? Brosmore put it this way:
"I started classes on February 17 and got done April 12. It wasn't quite as long as some people might be thinking about -- eight weeks, with two weeks in the classroom, then six weeks sharing time behind the wheel. Monday through Friday, 5 to 9 every night. Riding and observing three other drivers driving and being watched and instructed the whole time. And it wasn’t just high school students. Adults also attended the community college course. We all shared the classroom, personal stories and driving time.
"Even with two different instructors there was a lot of consistency, and safety was stressed constantly in class. While we were driving, the instructors were very observant, and spoke up to help us avoid getting into an unsafe situation.
"The equipment was all manual transmissions, and there were some pretty clear rules we were expected to comply with."
Students were told they had to double-clutch shifting up and down.
“Do not get caught floating gears, and two hands on the wheel!” Brosmore said. “We are all watching each other, helping each other learn and talking about what we’re doing. With some of us that grew up on farms that started driving equipment and trucks in the fields, the driving may have seemed a little easier, but there’s really a lot more to all of this.”
What was the CDL skills test like?
“Everyone was watching when I went to the DMV to take the test, and after all this time I didn’t want to mess up,” he said. He’d had opportunity in the Nussbaum company yard to practice the skills “we had to perform on the appointed day. Not only driving forward but with the turning and back into the boxes, placing the trailer bumper within the designated box. Only using our mirrors. Don’t dare stick your head out the window or open the door to look -- that’s an automatic failure.”
Everyone in his class passed the test, he said, and the Nussbaum staff were supportive, and thorough. No shortcuts in his education, as he saw it.
[Related: Time to go after the 'CDL mills' that cause accidents: Truck Safety Coalition]
Yet “driving a truck isn’t my only goal,” as he put it. As soon as he was old enough, he got work with his dad’s company, performing a variety of tasks -- working around the company’s shop turning wrenches, helping with repairs and maintenance, moving the trucks and equipment around on-site. “I always told Dad back in the day I wanted to get my CDL, and Dad was always like, ‘You do that and the companies would throw you in a truck and you won't be able to get out of it. Is that the future you want?’”
Heeding his father’s advice, the young man got his “hands in to my Local 18 Finishers Union out of Peoria, Illinois,” he said. Today, he’s working as a finisher, principally, but also helps “a farm family when needed, and will be able to haul grain from the fields to the local elevators.”
He told his boss he’d gotten his CDL, yet emphasized he wanted to be kept on as a finisher. “But throw me in the truck when needed once in a while for now,” he said.
He well knows it’s important to keep his skills sharp. And as before he got that CDL, he’ll continue to move trucks around the yard and the shop, but now with an added value on the road. In other words, having the intrastate Class A license won’t immediately have a huge impact on the driving or work he’ll have the opportunity to do. He knows it takes a lot of time to fully develop new skills, and Brosmore’s strong desire is to be good at well more than just one thing.
[Related: 19-year-old Jordan Foreman on his past, present, future trucking]
He knows, too, that makes him much more valuable long-term in a variety of contexts, greatly reducing the risk of future unemployment.
Now on the job with the CDL, I asked him, what’s changed with work, or his family/personal life?
“Not much,” he said. “I’m still living at home. I just graduated in early June and am enjoying work, and it's about all I do. And saving my pay. Up early, working till sundown.”
His dad and older brother both are “at the same job together right now” with him, he said, able to continue to serve their mentors’ role, which has got to be a good feeling for the young man. His compensation, he added, is “based on the union contract I work under. $40 per hour.”
For some 18-year-old men still living at home, I’d wager, that must seem like a fortune. I asked him about money management, how he was working to control spending. Was he thinking about starting to really invest in the future?
“My plan is pretty simple,” he said. “Every week I only deposit $100 in my personal checking. Everything else goes into my savings accounts. I’m very lucky, and I know it.”
I could sense this young man has a unique work ethic, and an appreciation for the opportunity adding the CDL allows his future. It goes to show there are people who will surprise us -- never judge another because of their age or appearance, I thought, watching him drive away in a well-used sedan. Yes, he’s saving to potentially purchase a well-deserved newer pickup.
But only when he's saved enough to pay cash.
[Related: What it takes to be your own boss: The truck owner-operator's playbook for success]
