FRESNO, Calif. (KMJ/KFSN) — Darrell Moton meticulously works down a list of safety checks.
With an instructor over his shoulder, he’s practicing what it will feel like when he goes to test at the DMV.
He was a truck driver in the past, but left the industry to work at a warehouse.
“It’s been a long time since I drove, and so I always wanted to get back in the class but being that the schools are so expensive to get in,” Moton said. “That’s the main thing that holds most people back.”
As a husband and father of six, it wasn’t the right time to make a career shift until he heard about the truck driving program through the State Center Community College District’s Training Institute.
“We developed this program to get people their commercial driver’s license and get them on the road, contributing to the local economy and changing people’s lives by getting them a new career,” Senior Program Specialist Daniel Griffith said.
Griffith says this was made possible thanks to a partnership with Fresno County’s Economic Development Corporation and OK Produce.
The EDC received a grant through the “Good Jobs Challenge.”
It makes participation completely free for students like Moton.
OK Produce allows students to use their trucks for training on safety checks and skills testing, such as backing up.
In as little as eight weeks, the program can put people on a path to a new career.
“Some people don’t have the time or whatever to go get their two-year degree or transfer to a university, so we offer options for people like that that are really just trying to get their foot in the door with a new job somewhere,” Griffith said.
For people like Moton, it’s giving him the opportunity to get back into a career he enjoys.
“I know I’ll make more money than being in the warehouse and then — then I’m doing what I love to do, so it makes it easier to do something that you want to do than to do something that you have to do,” Moton said.
The Training Institute is accepting applications for the next cohort.
It begins in December.
