Last December, Shawn Gresham stood at a crossroads that tested everything he believed in.
An investor had just offered him $100,000 to open the truck-driving school he had dreamed of for years.
The catch: The school was to run as a CDL mill—a high-turnover operation designed to push students through the system as fast as possible, bypassing the kind of rigorous, hands-on, real-world training and education Gresham knew they needed.
For Gresham, a certified driver trainer and 17-year Class A CDL holder with a spotless, violation-free record, the choice was easy but "heart-breaking," he said. He walked away from the money, even if that meant walking away from his dream, too.
"I couldn’t be part of that," he said. "I’ve always wanted to help people enter this industry the right way, build successful careers, and return home safely to their families."
What happened next in the small town of Dalton, Georgia, is a testament to what blue-collar workers can accomplish when they are united by a common frustration and a shared hope.
Four months after turning down six figures, Gresham took a leap of faith. He had no funding, but he had a loyal following on a YouTube channel he started four years ago to help drivers succeed.
The pieces started falling into place almost miraculously.
A Dalton landowner who believed in Gresham’s vision offered him a five-acre lot for just $300 a month. Soon after, a fellow truck driver stepped up to pay the lease for an entire year and asked for nothing in return.
Finally, equipment started rolling in.
A man from Florida, whom Gresham had trained years prior, had a 2014 Freightliner delivered to the lot. A week later, a local business, Brown's Diesel Repair & Towing, handed Gresham the title to a 2012 International ProStar day cab. The following week, Leasing Services in Dalton arrived with a trailer and signed the title over on the spot.
These weren't wealthy philanthropists looking for a tax write-off or good PR. They were working truck drivers and local business owners tired of watching an industry in decline. Frustrated with sharing the highways with new CDL graduates who were never properly taught how to back up a trailer or operate a big rig, they decided to take matters into their own hands.
Over three months, more than 50 truckers from New York to Texas chipped in what they could afford—$50, $100, or $300 at a time. Drivers from across the country shipped traffic cones and chains. A local meat market stepped up to help feed incoming students.
By August 1, exactly three months after Gresham signed his lease, the school was fully funded.
Today, the Trucking Life Academy boasts a five-acre training lot and a seven-office facility. As word of the grassroots school spread, Amazon packages began piling up on their doorstep. Strangers and community members sent printers, paper, pens, and even toilet paper to ensure the academy had everything it needed to operate.
While Gresham happily admits the perks of an automatic rig, and enjoys driving them himself, all instruction at the academy will be done on manual transmissions. He insists that mastering a stick shift forces rookies to respect the sheer size and power of a commercial truck, keeping them from treating it like an oversized passenger car.
More than 3,000 providers have been removed from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Training Provider Registry for not meeting federal standards, and numerous others have been flagged for more minor clerical violations. But Shawn says he is ready for the scrutiny.
Gresham isn't asking for any more money, and he isn't selling anything. The first class, set to begin October 18 pending Georgia licensing, is already completely full. He proudly offers on-site tours and donor records to anyone who wants to verify the seemingly impossible story of how the academy came to be.
“Everything about this school is proof that what is impossible with man is possible with God,” Gresham said. “It wasn’t built by one wealthy investor. It was built through faith, sacrifice, working truck drivers, local businesses, and an entire community of people who believed this industry could do better.”
Contents of this video
00:00 10-44 intro; Overhauling the Standard for Truck Driver Education
00:34 A CDL School Built and Funded by Truck Drivers
00:53 Walking Away from a $100K Investment
03:54 Partnering with Rosedale Group in Dalton, GA
04:26 How Donated Trucks, Gear & Supplies Poured In
06:12 Small Classes & Training Until Mastery (No Extra Fees)
09:14 FMCSA Scrutiny, Compliance & Wrap-Up
Speaker 1:
How a community of truckers built a CDL school to save their industry. Hey everybody. Welcome back. I'm Jason Cannon and my co-host is Matt Cope. As authorities actively shut down subpar CDL mills, Shawn Gresham is on a mission to completely overhaul the standard for truck driver education. Backed by a coalition of 50 plus drivers and local merchants demanding higher safety standards, this 17 year trucking veteran is launching a Dalton Georgia based CDL academy funded entirely through grassroots donations.
Speaker 2:
It's crazy because it was built by drivers. I didn't fund the school and corporate didn't fund the school. A business bank didn't fund it. Drivers across the nation funded it, which is a miracle. I don't know if you're a spiritual man, but I believe in God and it's amazing. If you read all the comments and read all the stuff, it's just amazing how this happened.
Speaker 3:
The foundation of this unique school was laid late last year when Gresham walked away from a life changing investment. Though the cash would've fast tracked his dream, he refused to partner with a backer who viewed the academy as a high turnover assembly line for new drivers.
Speaker 2:
I started driving 17 years ago and as soon as I came out of school, I realized that you didn't learn everything in school. You didn't learn half of what you needed. And I'm not blaming my school. I mean, I had a decent school, but I still didn't know everything. I didn't know everything that needed. And I came in and I started driving and I realized that quick that CDL schools teach you how to get licensed. They don't teach you how to actual drive and how to live out here. Then I eventually become a trainer at the company I was working for. And then I realized even more that it wasn't just me. I'm bringing in drivers that I'm training and they don't know how to back. They don't know how to trip plan. They don't know how to deal with certain things. And I seen that and that was like, wow.
Then I started the YouTube and TikTok and I started trucking channels, trucking live for Shawn on YouTube and TikTok and Facebook. We've got over 450,000 combined people that watch the channel, so it's pretty big. I noticed that drivers started calling me and one particular called me one day, and I remember this years ago, he said, "I'm going over a mountain, Shawn, and I don't know what gear I need to be in." I sai, "Well, where's your trainer?" He goes, asleep. I said, "Are you serious? He's asleep." And that wasn't just one call, man. That was like a lot of calls started coming in. And I started training people who have trainers. And I realized it was not just the schools, it was the companies too. And I'm not naming no names. There's good companies and there's bad companies out there. And it's kind of something that we just got into a routine of where a trainer comes out of school and now their trainer is trying to make money like the mills.
And they run them. And you know they run them day and night, day and night, day and night. They're not getting any sleep. They're not getting in training. They don't care because guess what? School's got 50 more people coming right in the door and they just rushing through the company. So it's not just the schools, it's the companies, it's the industry as a whole. And I said, we got to figure out a way to change this. So I left the company I was working for and I went to Hartland. I went to few other people. I didn't train in Heartland. They were a good company. I worked there, worked for a few other companies. And I came back to where I work at now which is Rosedale Transport after I figured out, hey, done been everywhere else. They always hit the grass is greener. I come back here and started training.
Well, then they made me a trainer of the trainers. So I went to NATMI and I become a certified driver trainer and I realized that we got to do something about our program. So they allowed me to change that program here at this company I work for and where drivers, trainers go to sleep, don't go to sleep. They sit at their front, they get paid a little more, but turnover rate all of a sudden, guess what? It started dropping. We didn't have that high turnover rate no more. Drivers were actually staying. Less money was going out for advertising, but it took that initial thing as, okay look, you're not going to run 5,000 miles this week, but look at the cost of what it costs to bring a driver in. From this side, I got to see that part. And so I said, okay, I got to do something.
I want to open school because the only way I can fix this. I can do it at one place, but I can't fix it by just a YouTube channel and just working in one company. So I want to go open a school. Well, I had an investor that was going to do $100,000 investment with me, real story. And he wanted to run it the same way. So I backed out. My heart was broken. I though, man, God, I really want to open school, but I don't have money to open school.
Speaker 1:
Shawn initially approached his current employer, Rosedale Group, to rent a five acre parcel at market rate. The Ontario Canada-based firm has operated a terminal in Dalton, Georgia since 1985. But when Gresham's $100,000 investment deal fell apart, the company offered him the land in an office facility at a steeply discounted rate for the first year just to get the academy off the ground.
Speaker 2:
He said, listen, I'll give you this lot for 300 a month as long as you make drivers successful. So I signed the lease for 300 a month with no trucks, no trailer, no nothing. I said, well, 300 a month, I don't know, we'll figure out something.
Speaker 3:
And then the truck showed up and the trailers and the office equipment and everything else.
Speaker 2:
The next week a driver called me from Florida when I trained years ago and said, look, John, I got a 2014 Freightliner. He brought me a truck, man, and put it on my lot and that right there sparked it that there is a chance. Well, then the following week, Browns Diesel, Tony Repair heard the story. He come to me with a day cab at 2012 International and said, look, here's the title, man. He said, train a couple of my drivers here. I got three mechanics. H said, we'll work it out when school starts. Well, I ain't got money for insurance or bonds. I got other things I got to get done. We started this thing called the Founder's Wall on YouTube and it's where anybody that pitched in for the school, it wasn't donation because I'm not a terrible donation, but if they helped out with any money, their name got on the wall and on my internet site and I didn't know what it was going to do, but three months exactly that morning at 5:30 AM, the last money came in that covered the insurance.
We have the insurance, the bond, we have the facility paid for. We have the signs, we have everything. We have shirts and it was so amazing to see these drivers and they drive by here from all Tennessee, New York, come by here and say, we're behind you, Shawn, we're behind you. And I'm like, wow. It's really touching. And then the Amazon packages started coming in and we've got printers. I don't need no money. I'm not coming on here to ask for money or anything. The school's funded, but we have printers, we have pens, we have people sent toilet paper. Some people send $5, garbage bags, the last bit of money, all with the understanding let's change the industry. And I'm like, who am I to do this? But I'm going to do it. We're going to do the best we can. And it happened, man.
And we have a terminal here with seven offices, not a school bus that we can train people. Talk about they trade up in school buses. I got seven offices over here and my rent's a dollar a month with power. Another former company owner gave us that. So it's like we have the overhead low enough that I actually can do what I want to do.
Speaker 1:
The cost of Shawn's course is just under $4,000 for eight weeks. Class size is limited to six students with classes held only on weekends. He says the focus isn't on the length of the coursework rather than the mastering of the skills needed to be a safe and successful driver. If a driver needs more time, they're automatically enrolled in the next class at no additional cost for further training rather than being marched to the DOT to see how well they may or may not fare on the road test. Then there's the life skills, the things that you never see in a DOT manual that you need to be able to handle for life over the road.
Speaker 2:
Drivers can come in here and it's a policy here because of the overhead, because how it's built. If a driver comes in and trains and they're not FMCSA says they got to master the skill. If they don't master that skill, they go to the next class and I don't charge them again. We're going to keep doing. That's the way the drivers want it. They want good drivers and that's the way we're going to do it. Now I have to pay the test fee of course, whatever, $150. But other than that, they pay, they stay till they master the skill or they give up, one or the other. There is no three weeks and you're gone. We're not doing it that way. So we're doing it a lot different. I've got Rosedale Transport across the street that's going to allow me to go over there and use their docks.
So we have my lots across the street, but the transport company over across the street, they don't make no money off the school, but they're on Saturdays and Sundays, they're not open. We're going to master the docks. We're going to actually go into real docks. I have all kinds of different things like we can haul, we can actually put in the truck. I can't actually do snow because we're in Georgia, so there's not a lot of snow driving. I love to put them on an ice skating rate. We can't do that. But we're going to teach all different things. I offer another classes through the week. On the evenings, it's optional. It's not mandatory. I got a finance class that I'm teaching. It's biblical. And because it's biblical, it's not mandatory they go. We do have Bible clubs on Wednesday too. My mama died when I was over the road.
My mother died of an overdose when I was driving and it was accidentally overdosed and that about destroyed me and I didn't have anywhere to learn from that. I was married 25 years. I got divorced over the road. I had to deal with that trauma and figure out how to deal with it. And I figured I've seen there's a lot of drivers that are hurting. It's more than just driving. It's how to deal with dispatchers. It's how to deal with traffic. It's how to deal with being away from a family and your kids and missing their birthday and missing these certain things. There's a whole rhythm to that. And that's when I came off the road and started coming in here to start teaching, my orientation class looks a lot different here as far as Rosedale. I come in and I teach them things, but we talk about things that actually makes drivers quit, things like that.
So that's something else different that we're going to be offering. We train our trucks in manuals. We don't do automatics. So a lot of people charge more for manuals. The manual, I believe if you train in a manual, you don't get in there driving like a car. So if you learn an automatic, you're automatically thinking it's a car, it's a different beast. And nothing gets automatic. I drove it automatic, but I learned in a manual and I think everybody should learn in a manual. So I brag, am I really good at helping drivers and getting them where they are to be, but I just don't feel like we should run them through if they're not ready. But out of eight weekends, they should be ready. 160 hours you should be ready. Everybody that gets enrolled also gets pre - CDL school. So they go through all that.
It doesn't count, but it goes through all that. So when they do come here, they already know kind of what we're talking about. And that helps speed up the process too a little bit as far as that so when you focus on driving. We should have to do the LDT, but you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3:
More than 3,000 providers have been removed from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's training provider registry for not meeting federal standards and numerous others have been flagged for more minor clerical violations. But Shawn says he is ready for the scrutiny.
Speaker 2:
We have all our paper, all our curriculum is done. We do have an English proficiency paper they're going to sign and they're going to make sure that we're done with that. The hours they come in here, everything's going to be logged, their attendance, everything they do is going to be logged on paper. We got a whole program built and with AI, it's a lot easier to actually build these programs and to keep up with them versus writing them all down on a piece of paper. So I've got a software system that we built that we're going to keep up with everything they do every time they come in, when they leave, their grades daily. We have a whole different set of program other than what Georgia wants us to have. And that's the curriculum we send in to Georgia. So we send it all in to them and we're pending paperwork, so I want to make sure you understand that.
As I said, we're pending Georgia, but it should be any day now.
Speaker 1:
That's it for this week's 1044. You can read more on ccjdigital.com. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter and stay up to date on the latest in trucking industry news and trends. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know in the comments below. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications so you can catch us again next week.
