Pedro Garcia, 52, of Waterbury turned the steering wheel of an 18-wheeler tractor trailer in a large parking lot in Seymour Friday morning and talked about the future.
Garcia was laid off earlier this year from a job as a school bus driver.
He’s now training for a career as a truck driver at the Allstate Commercial Driver Training school, which is under construction on Pearl Street in Seymour.
“I can make starting pay of $40,000, $42,000,” Garcia said of truck driving.
The school is relocating from its current location in Shelton and recently broke ground on a new building on Pearl Street in Seymour.
The steel frame of the one-story building has been erected. Workers have started pouring concrete.
While the school building is built, students train in a parking lot at the site. Classroom work will be added when the building is complete, according to Chris Maiorano, co-owner of the school.
“We should be fully operational in the spring,” Maiorano said.
Until then, classroom work continues at the Shelton location.
On a recent Friday morning, Garcia and Richard Matt, 54, of Naugatuck, were learning to drive tractor trailers.
Both men said they took up the study of truck driving after being laid off from jobs. Each is looking for a second career.
“I see opportunities for truck drivers with two to three months experience,” said Matt, who is confident he will find a job.
He said he has also noticed that truck driving jobs have decent pay and good benefits.
“You get insurance, dental, vision, 401(k), the whole boat,” said Matt, who was laid off from a marketing job earlier this year.
Garcia and Matt were receiving one-on-one training.
The school offers one-on-one instruction in various types of trucks, Maiorano said. He said there are jobs available nationwide for truck drivers, particularly long-distance truck drivers.
It has been more than four years since the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission rejected the school’s application for a special use permit in the industrial zone on Pearl Street.
Allstate appealed the rejection, and was successful in court.
There had been neighborhood opposition partly because of the fear there would be trucks on the residential street. Maiorano said his trucks will not exit or enter from Pearl Street, but on Day Street, through a driveway arrangement with Kerite, the steel cable company adjoining the school property.
Also, the trucks will not be visible to people on Pearl Street because the school building will block the view of the back lot, he said.
“Even going in and out, residents won’t see us,” Maiorano said. “We have always maintained that once we’re in there people will see it’s not such a catastrophe.”
For more information about the school, call (203) 922‑8252.
