Pineland, Texas, has a huge lumber mill but not enough drivers to supply it. To fill that need, a free Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) course is hitching workers to opportunity.

In 2023, Georgia Pacific, the community’s largest employer. invested $240 million into the Pineland Lumber mill to improve operating efficiency. The expansion created a large number of open driving jobs—but Sabine County didn’t have a training pipeline to fill those jobs.

To start a CDL program in Pineland, a $99,000 USDA Rural Business Development Grant and $51,000 from nonprofit Communities Unlimited and the T.L.L. Temple Foundation helped purchase a trailer and a truck with a custom-ordered crew cab for student observers.

But CDL programs in Texas typically cost a student about $5,000. Most people in Pineland can’t afford tuition. Unemployment rates in Sabine County are among the highest in Texas. The county is classified as a persistent high-poverty area by the USDA, and about one in four residents currently experience poverty. 

Tuition was free for the first cohort of Pineland CDL students, thanks to a state grant. “When I saw the students sign up, I could see hope,”  said Dr. Carnelius Gilder, superintendent of West Sabine County Independent School District. “It’s hope for stability. What I saw in their faces, it’s, ‘Wow.’ I have this opportunity now that I don’t have to continually hunt and peck and piecemeal my life together.”

Without grant support, the program can’t sustain itself with tuition-paying students, so Dr. Ben Stafford of Lamar State College-Port Arthur is seeking additional funding for tuition assistance in Pineland. “My job is to get Texans the highest-paying job in the shortest amount of time,” he said.

With a CDL in hand, a driver can access good-paying jobs close to home and work their way into lucrative regional and over-the-road driving. A good local driver might start with an annual salary in the $40,000s and cap out around $60,000. Regional driving pays in the range of $50,000 to $80,000 annually, and increased experience can earn an “over-the-road” driver six figures.

Drivers who own and operate their own truck can make $200,000 annually, though they also have to subtract business expenses and manage risk. With hundreds of drivers who own and operate their own trucks in support of the mill, “Pineland is unique,” Stafford said,

In a low-population rural area like Sabine County, changing even a few lives can significantly move the statistical needle. “Companies need 80 drivers,” Stafford said. “If you change 80 citizens from unemployed or underemployed into the $80,000s, you will see an actual percentage change in the gross revenue for the entire county.”

The CDL program’s first cohort included a wide range of ages. Some are older workers who want to work closer to home. “Then you have some younger people who are going to want to hit the highway and be all over the country and chase that money,” Gilder said. “I’m honored that we’re able to create this ecosystem for those choices and options.”

While students currently use a school parking lot, Pineland will soon be home to a permanent training facility. The USDA Community Facilities Program will contribute about $1.1 million toward the project, which will be completed with an additional $370,508 from the T.L.L. Temple Foundation.

Pineland is already ready. Science classes and community club members pitched in to help complete a required archaeological survey on the site of the future driving pad, which once housed a gas station.

For Gilder, the CDL program is part of a multifaceted “grassroots revival” in Pineland, a town of less than 900 people. “Pineland is poised to be the next great rural place,” he said.

Nearby Toledo Bend Reservoir is the largest lake in the South, and visitors rave about the tranquility and outdoor recreation potential in rural Sabine County. “We live in the forest,” Gilder said. 

Then he turns his phone camera around to show the seemingly endless rows of trees rolling by his window on either side of the highway. “These are the pines,” he said.

In Pineland, the name says it all.