Jerry Bock:
CLASS OF 1984
Lutheran North High SchoolClass of 1984
Macomb township, MI
Macomb Community CollegeClass of 2003
Warren, MI
Jerry's Story
Life
I got a job right out of high school working in a small machine shop. Basically, it was on the job training.
I moved out of my parentÂs house in 1989 and bought a house in northern Warren, MI. I still live there as of this writing (10-01-2005).
Around 1991, I became the shop foreman for the machine shop where I had now been employed for 7 years.
I got married in 1992 to a woman 3 years older than me named Laura that I met in The North Metro Lutheran Single Adults group. This group is no longer in existence because just about everyone in it either moved away or got married to someone else in the group! I guess it served its purpose.
Laura and I had a son, Alexander, in 1997. He has been a source of learning to lean on my faith in God because he is mentally challenged.
Around 2002, the business that I had been working at since July 6th, 1984, started struggling financially, and even though I had been working towards an Associate Degree in Manufacturing at Macomb Community College since 1997, I started thinking I needed to make a career change.
I earned my Associate Degree in 2003 and celebrated that by applying for an electrician apprenticeship with the IBEW local 58. After I applied, I was called in for aptitude testing and an interview. I was then put on a 2-year waiting list to be enrolled in the program. That is as far as I got with the IBEW.
Mean while, the little machine shop where I was STILL employed was in the worst financial shape I had ever seen it in. I also started developing leg problems from standing all day. I decided it was time to try to find a sit down job. I watched truck drivers deliver pop and beer all day long to the party store next door to the machine shop and decided to look into truck driving.
During the summer of 2004, I looked into truck driving schools and signed up for a month long program with a local school. I gave notice to the shop in August 2004 and by October 1st I had a class A CDL license an...Expand for more
d a job offer with an "Over The Road" company called Stevens Transport of Dallas, Texas.
I traveled down to Dallas in the third week of October for Steven's weeklong orientation for new drivers. After that I was sent on the road with a driver trainer for 5 weeks. I was everywhere from New York City, to Yuma, AZ, to Portland, OR. After that ordeal I went home for a week with my family and then back to Dallas for more training. At the end of January 2005, I was finally assigned my own truck and took a truckload from Texas to Northern Indiana and then home for more family time. After that, I was required to be on the road for 3 to 5 weeks at a time and earned 1 day off for every week out. It was quite difficult to spend that much time away from home, but at the same time it was a good experience for me. Rather than list all the states I was in, let me just say I was in every state (of the 48) except Montana, North and South Dakota, Maine, Vermont, Florida, Rhode Island, Delaware and Washington (although I did drive through the Columbia River valley on the Oregon side, which borders Washington state...EXTREMELY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY!). No offense to any Texans who might read this, but I hate Texas! The traffic is terrible, it is almost always hot there and bad things always happened to me when I was there!
I endured 8 months with Stevens Transport and then God opened the door for me to get a local job that has me home with my family every night. This job takes me in and out of Canada almost every day, so if someone asks me what I do for a living, I tell them I am an International Freight Relocation Specialist. Just a fancy name for a truck driver that goes over the Ambassador Bridge everyday.
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about my hobby of collecting and restoring old traffic and pedestrian signals. trafficsignalmuseum dot com is my website. You'll have to visit the site to learn about that because classmates dot com says I don't have room to write anymore!
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