My wife and I are looking to start our trucking career and need CDL schooling. We have not had any luck with a couple of company's due to our apparent home base state of Connecticut or not currently hiring any new teams. Any advice on where to look for new teams starting out? Thanks for the great site and any advice in advance.

Take Care,

Welcome to the forum. I'm sure that you will get some responses here that will be helpful. There are many great people here willing to lend a hand. Glad you found us.

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Hey, there is a company called P.D.S. Dedicated Services, they are a division of P.A.M. I'm not sure what the hiring area is, but I do know they only hire teams. May be worth looking at. They also are partnered with Driver Solutions so they would pay for your CDL training. Just a thought.

Hey guys, are you still looking for info?

I believe the first step is finding an accredited school to get training. I would focus on a CT based school so you will not need to transfer your license to another state and then back again after you graduate. It is far better to go thru a private accredited school so you have no "contract" to fulfill. You will have many choices once you both have your cdl. Following is a list of some companies that have team operations that may take recent grads;
Crete
Schneider
Arrow Trucking
Central Refrigerated Service
FFe
Gordon trucking
US Xpress
Interstate
CRST
Covenant
CR England
KLLM
May Trucking
Prime
Star
Trans Am
Transport America
There may be others but this should give you a good place to start looking.

Thanks for the great advice guys! We have looked into going to school here in CT but the options are fairly limited. The one school we checked would run about $7k each which I personally think is too high to pay for a CDL. and does not have the best reputation. Several company's have offered a partial tuition reimbursement after graduating and signing on for the standard set amount of time. One other problem is several company's are not hiring drivers out of our state for their training programs but "may" if you go to school on your own and get hired. It looks like the search will continue until we find a solid opportunity. I may just go out on my own and then try to get my wife trained someday so we can team together.

Be safe out there!!!

We went to schneider, they train you from scratch, and you have to stay on with them for a year and you won't owe them anything for the training. Schneider will keep you moving and getting paid. Their terminals are all over the place, and most do the training. Here is what you have to know: We started the class with about 80 other people on a monday, it's kind of a trial by fire, tuesday with one day of bobtailing around their massive greenbay training yard, you are out with 30 other trucks jamming up greenbay roads with a 40 foot trailer, an instructor and two other trainees. the first week is just insane with slow manuevering, backing, classroom time, and the daily runs through the greenbay area. Yes they'll get you there or reimburse you and put you in a very nice hotel, the hotel has comp. breakfast every day and lunch is served at the school. That first week is when they're going to see who can drive and who can't so don't be overwhelmed. The instructors are all experienced road drivers who will patiently teach you how to operate within the schneider program. At the end we road with a road trainer for two weeks and he slept in a hotel while we stayed in the truck and we all combined did single driver miles so he could correct or give advise before we were let loose on our own. the whole program takes about 2 months. Every monday 60 to 100 people show up to start the program, and in our class of 80 about 15 graduated to continue into their own truck. Now the bad news: Just kidding, Schneider is a whopper of a company, so they have immense support, maintenance, freight, and vehicles, all of those people have jobs that are funded through your pushing freight down the road, so the pay is barely what I would call typical, and they use that damn movers guide for mileage pay, What that means is that your paid miles are going to be about 10% shy of your odometer. But as you look around and see the price of schools, you kind of have to see the big picture as they are giving you about 10,000 dollars of training for a year enlistment. The wife and I left after about 6 months and we had to pay them about 2700 to get out of her repayment thing, they were understanding about it, we took care of their equipment and customers and were always polite. Alot of people will bash schneider, but their training and support are outstanding. And 63 mph keeps you out of trouble. After a year there you can go anywhere, as a team you'll go across the country and back every week.

Thanks for the insider view of Schneider for trainee teams. We did apply with them and received a call back yesterday that they do not hire teams out of our great state of Connecticut. They also mentioned that they are not hiring any additional teams at the current time? I will probably try to start my career as a solo company driver elsewhere to get some experience and then try to get some training for my wife in the future. I used to drive many years ago in another life but let my Class 1 license lapse, LOL now you must know how old I must be if I had a class 1!!! pre 1983 CDL regulation. Thanks for the advice and stay safe out there!

Take Care,

Have you tried Interstate? They train husband and wife teams together. So does Covenant.

SassyTrucker,

I did try Interstate with an application for myself to run solo and talked to Steve in recruiting about a position. He stated that they did not offer schooling for CT residents but would reimburse any private school tuition to the tune of $4k. Thats okay but our local school charges $7k and its not the best place for training according to some folks that I have spoken with recently. Interstate was my first choice of company's to apply with but it seems to not be in the cards. Covenant does not get very high marks from many people on most of the trucking boards these days. I have been accepted by a couple company's currently to attend their schools and run solo until I get some experience (Roehl, Millis etc...). The research continues!

Stay Safe!