We sit down with Anna Long, a pickup and delivery driver for a national LTL carrier, to talk about choosing trucking as a career and what the path really looks like from the first day of CDL school to working the dock, running linehaul, and building a stable life behind the wheel.

Anna shares a background that is anything but typical. She grew up in a large blended family, went to an arts based alternative school, started college on an anthropology track, then took a hard turn into hands on work through farming, homesteading, and festival operations. After Covid disrupted everything, she moved back to North Carolina, realized she needed a fast and reliable career path, and committed to earning her CDL.

In this conversation, Anna breaks down the different ways to get licensed, what surprised her most about learning to shift a manual truck, and how she landed an LTL job even though most companies want experience. She also explains why pickup and delivery is the right fit for her, the variety of stops she sees every day, and how trucking has helped her build financial stability quickly. Anna discusses:

-Her path from alternative education and college to farming, homesteading, and event work, and why hands on work always felt like the right direction

-Getting her CDL through a community college program, choosing to avoid an automatic restriction, and what the school structure was really like across classroom, range work, and road time

-How she broke into LTL without experience by working the dock and using forklift skills to get her foot in the door, then learning logistics from the inside out

-What makes pickup and delivery rewarding, from the day to day variety of customers and locations to the challenge of backing in tight places, and how trucking improved her finances and long term stability

What’s next?

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