This month, he’ll begin hauling loads of freight across the country for a Tunnel Hill, Ga.-based trucking company called US Xpress. Oglesby, like most of his dozen or so classmates, secured the job offer before he even finished the program, contingent on successful completion of the program.

“One of the placement people at one of the trucking companies we work with kind of got a kick out of us sending her a graduate who had a Ph.D.,” said Van Bridges, director of the SAGE program at Isothermal. “I guess she doesn’t see that every day, but it really shows the diversity of the people who come through this program.”

Oglesby, a Georgia native, joined the Navy in 1964. During the next 17 years, he spent three tours of duty in Vietnam and countless hours in the classrooms of George Washington University and the University of Georgia. By the time he retired from military service, he had a doctoral degree in management and was running the Navy’s Hospital Corps School in Great Lakes, Ill.

In 1981, he made the transition to non-military higher education, working his way through the academic business departments of several colleges from Georgia to California before becoming an administrator.

Oglesby became president of Tri-County Community College in 1996. The college serves North Carolina’s three westernmost counties - Cherokee, Clay and Graham.

Through all of those years, though, he always felt the call of the open road.

“For a long time, I’ve had a screensaver of a big Peterbilt truck on my computer,” he said. “Now, I have the freedom to be able to do this for real. It’s like someone opened the door on a birdcage. I can’t wait to get out on the road to drive, travel and meet new people. It’s going to be good to get out there and sweat a little.”

Oglesby was impressed with the rigor in the SAGE program at Isothermal.

“It has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be,” he said. “On the other hand, it has been a lot more interesting. I guess the two best words to describe the experience are challenging and profound.

“This is really about freedom to me. It will allow me to do what I’ve always wanted to do; it will allow me to be an entrepreneur.”

Oglesby said he was attracted to the training program at Isothermal because of its individual attention to students.

“You get one-on-one time with the instructors,” he said. “It’s just you, the instructor, the truck and the road. They’ve got great patience. They had to have great patience to get me through that first pre-trip checklist. There were 108 items on that list.”

Oglesby said he was also drawn to the fact that the SAGE program was not affiliated with any one trucking company.

“A lot of the schools are owned by private trucking companies and I just don’t think they objectively teach their students what they need to know,” Oglesby said. “I feel like I’ve learned so much in this past week or two. I’m just itching to get out there and hit the road.”

The SAGE basic program is based on federal standards for driver training and exceeds the standards set forth by the Professional Truck Driver Institute.