Follow me through Central Refrigerated training

I am really considering Central so I would like to hear from people who have been through the training & gone solo for 6 months to a year. I have read horror stories of people making 300 dollars a week after going solo, are this an isolated incidents, from people who don't work hard & complain about any & everything? After going through training I need to be able to consistently clear 650 a week (after deductions) to pay my basic bills, is this too much to expect? I have no interest what so ever in leasing especially after driving for only 3 months. Do they treat you different if you refuse to lease? Give you crap loads, very little miles, etc?

 

I've been with central since 23APR. I have just over 6 months solo. Income after training varies widely. There are a lot of things that can affect this. Excessive home time, delivering a load late (better have a stellar excuse), and being incompetent with your logs. These things are under your control, but their are other things as well. Sometimes the planners forget about you, or give you several bad loads in a row. When this happens you have to do something about it. It's nice to be friendly with your dm, but if you're not making money it's not a good time to mince words. A few weeks after upgrade I ended up going over my dm's head to fix my situation. It's vital that you are ready to be the squeaky wheel, because your dm has 30-100 other drivers to worry about.

I leased after 2 months (I don't recommend this to drivers unless they have run a successful business before) so I can't comment directly on how they treat you if you don't lease, but a friend of mine who upgraded the same time as me is still a company driver, and he's doing pretty good. Once he made it clear he wasn't leasing they gave him a brand new Volvo. Some weeks he makes more money than I do.

As a final note, your income goal is a bit ambitious to start with. If you can make it to 6 months you can get on a dedicated fleet and do that without too much trouble. My friend is on farmland dedicated and his weekly guaranteed minimum is 874 gross. You need to be ready to have 2 months where you are grossing 450-700/wk, otherwise you won't make it to the better times.

Hope this helps

 

Hello and good job finding Central. I went through the school and followed the "Careere Path" school-->Company-->Lease-->Trainer
I have been with them about a year and a half. Your first 2-3 months after being on your own you can look forward to $300-500/week checks. During this time your driver manager (DM) is feeling you out to make sure you can do the job. He won't give you a load unless he knows you can make it. As time goes on you will get more miles with less time to run them. When running solo I would regulary get 2800-3200 miles ($784-896/wk) I do not know what your deductions might be but those are doable pre tax numbers.

My checks vary, my lowest -$896 (yes that was negative) and my largest was about $4200. The trick to making it is to have a cushion, and if you don't make one, and to budget. If I looked at my first $3000 check and said "Wow I make $150k a year" and spent like that I would be broke now. Plan on making $28000-32000 your first year. If you can get on a dedicated fleet you will do a lot better, but I was running those numbers on general freight so it is not the only way to make money.


As far as how they treat you if you do not lease, while the leasing department is not part of your trucking career they do have a little power over you. I had told them I was thinking about leasing and they changed my availability and routed me to SLC to try to talk me into signing a lease. If you make it clear you have no interest they will leave you alone (you will still get their "SPAM" on the qualcomm but nothing else). Of my students who told them they were considering a lease all 3 got crappy trucks, of the 3 whom said no way in hell 2 got brand new Cascadias and one a 2010 Prostar (but he was a huge slob and that is probably why he got a not so nice truck).

So there is money to be made out there. I do not know your situation, but might suggest moving to an area with a lower cost of living and no income tax, you won't really be living there any way, why pay for it? Make clear you do not want to lease from the get go and they will only bug you a bit. You can't blame them too much they are just a step above a car salesperson and you are a lead they have been given to work. Once they see you as a dead lead they won't waste any more time on you.

 

Petes, internationals, cascadias and Volos. Mostly 3 years or newer. 2 bunks for most trucks I believe. Lease ops can get an inverter installed but you have to pay someone to do it right and it voids the warranty on your battery (what I was told). We have e-logs. The older qualcomms are clunky but the new one with the NAV system is pretty handy and the gps is fair. APU is also on you if you are leasing, otherwise blankets and the bunk heater are your best friends. I have heard of drivers stamping their feet for an APU to be written into the deal but I didn't get that lucky. My heater, surprisingly keeps me warm most of the night even at 18 degrees actual temp. As far as the pay goes, it varies. You are going to start off slow as the DM feels out your ability to handle loads and will not give you more than they believe you can handle. To the prospect that cannot survive with less than 650/wk for bills, I have similar expenses/lifestyle costs and I almost didn't make it. My advice is save up the money you are going to need to live for a few months or cut some expenses. By my 8th week I was make 500-600 pretty constant but I was playing catch up on everything. I ended up three months behind and I was scared I wouldn't make it. Then I got lucky and landed a regional run where I made good money for a month and a half. after that I got ran into th lease, not going to spend too much time on that I've vented on it already elsewhere. In the end you get out of this what you put in. I am doing well with the lease and I have ran three different businesses on my own before. Also having a few years in management and an Associate's with an emphasis in business, I'm able to stay on top of things the way I should. I don't make much more than I did running regional though. It is nice to say, no thank you when they give you a crazy run. Hope this helps and good luck to all. Tis a hard life but I for one still love it. In my 6th month and still running!

 

Call me crazy, but I am leaving everything in my room-- I have too much stuff with me to take out to my car every morning. Yes, I am nervous about stuff-- there are maids in the room every day-- also the first night the guy seemed kind of shady and both the first two mornings the roommate was in the room after i left-- this morning and tomorrow morning (same roommate) he leaves at the same time I do-- I've got some valuable stuff with me-- a laptop and some other stuff-- I have a sleeping bag I use and cover everything in the corner with it so I would hope the maids dont see what I have.

 

I would take a laptop or other valuable or personal documents with you everyday. Your cloths and toothbrush are not too high on the criminals list of things to take.

 

Yeah, its certainly something I've considered Moose, and probably will be what I end up doing--

Day 3

Our 13 students are now 10. We lost three people today from our class. Two people did not show up this morning-- apparently one of them did not have a bunch of medical papers and just decided to forget it-- the other guy apparently was keeping a few other options open and decided to take up something else. The third one, who was not in the class the day before because he was sick, got pulled out at the end of the day and was told he failed the drug test.

We showed up early and spent a lot of time going over our answer sheets for the DMV tests-- a few of us did not bother studying, myself included, as we were pretty much as prepared as we can be. They played one movie for us to watch, which I cannot remember what the subject was anyway. At 830 we headed out for the DMV. I volunteered to drive three other people-- which informed me that one of them forgot their appointment paper almost 75% of the way there. So we had to double back and get it. Three of our people already had class As and just had to have their physical cards stamped, two more of our people did not have the money today and did not take the test (one of them is the drug test person)-- The other six of us all passed our tests. I got through the test quickly but had to wait at the DMV a long time to get my test graded and then had to wait for the third person from my vehicle as he got tied up due to some silly mistakes not of his doing.

We got back to the school at noon, where they had videos playing about some safety stuff. After those videos we started in on paper logs. That took the rest of the day-- we did 8 days worth of basic logs, which were almost all duplicates of each other. After we finished that there was an assignment of a two day trip, filling out a paper log. Everyone was scratching their heads working on it-- even the actual drivers. From what the instructor said when I handed in my multi-corrected version I think I may have done it semi-well... Tomorrow we work on paper logs some more and I believe we have to plan out a whole route using an atlas...

Tonight is my first night actually having the same roommate twice in a row. He just got his trainer assignment, apparently his trainer runs dedicated so thats a really lucky assignment. It'd be nice if I were to be so lucky but I doubt it. So that means tomorrow night I'll have ANOTHER new roommate...

 

i plan to take a tablet the rest of them are just clothes. so ill take my bag suitcase/laptop bag with me to orientation. im not doing the school btw i got my cdl

 

Day 4

I guess I jumped the gun as one of the people I was told quit was actually there with his permit today. Our other guy who still had to take the CDL test went to the DMV and passed as well-- s we've got 11 people with tickets to the yard tomorrow.

We started out the day by working on the same faux trip that we had done the day before. A two day trip from Seattle to San Francisco, this time working in groups After we completing that project-- we had to do it again... After we did it twice we were broken into groups of 2-3 and were given essentially a paragraph about a planned trip. It started in Albany NY, and had stops in Ft Wayne OH, Springfield IL, Sioux City IN, Salt Lake City UT, and San Diego CA. And we were required to plan out our route to each destinate, plot out each of the weigh stations, figure out where we'd be getting gas, fill out a paper log which showed when we were driving and stopping, and then we were supposed to get the total distance, time, etc-- Only one group finished(one guy who was one of the best two at the log sheets, myself being the other and a guy who had done some truck driving and was great with an atlas) with the other three groups coming up short. I think my group got the second furthest-- we got our route, Weigh Stations, and Gas Stops all figured out-- and got 4 days worth of paper logs done, which got us as far as Green River WY-- if My phone had not have died, I probably would have had time to get the fifth day finished which would have gotten us through SLC and heading on the I-15 which would have lead into our sixth day requiring a 34hr restart.

Tomorrow our group heads to the yard for the first time-- we got some heavy rain today and I think most of our first time truck drivers are a bit anxious for what they're going to be getting into tomorrow.

Got another new roommate today-- making my fourth in five nights.

 

Day 5

Oh man-- what a day-- all 11 of our people showed up in the yard on time. We got to meet Ramon, then were introduced to Bob, Roz, Rick, and Juan-- Kelly was off. Juan explained to us that each day we'd be be doing our log sheets as we went along. As if there wasnt enough stuff to worry about learning, we have to make sure to keep those in the mix as we go along. One important thing to remember is that everything will be done in Mountain time-- but Juan will refer to everything in Pacific time-- so its important to always add one hour to every time he gives you.

Juan took us out and walked us through the walk around pretrip. There are a lot of things to learn and it gets overhelming quick. We start by indentifying a few parts with the hood closed-- mainly just the lights on the front and making sure nothing is under neither-- once the hood is up is when the real work begins. You start on the right side identifying parts, moving back to the stacks as a continuation of the exhaust. The first real difficult part is when you first move to the left side of the engine. There you will begin identifying parts of the suspension and confirming youd check them for damage, it is very important that you correctly list each part as you are essentially encouraged to say you'd check each axle the same as the first one-- each time you ask to check one the same as the front one, any points lost on that first one are multiplied. You move back to the mirror and battery area and then to the fifth wheel area. You must list some differences with other wheels with each set you get to but you are able to just say youd check it the same as the previous-- From there you move to the landing gear, then back to the tandems. Again you can say that youd like to inspect the tandems the same as the previous wheels, listing just a few differences. Then you move to the back of the trailer and around to the other side. When you get to the right side-- you may say that you'd inspect this side the same as the other-- but remember-- if you made mistakes on the other side, those losses are doubled. So if you forgot to list the brake shoes or something on the first wheel-- and then go and say with each one that youd inspect them the same, if you dont at some point add that back in, you'll have 10 points lost just from that 1 mistake. You can only miss a total of 22 points.

A little roach coach showed up-- it was over priced and did not have much food-- it was all packaged stuff and drinks on ice-- there were a few items on paper plates in saran wrap on the back, but I didnt dare go near those. For a SoBe and a smashed pack of grandma soft cookies, I spent $3.50... I probably could have gotten those for $2.25 from a store. I'm going to make sure to take some snack food with me tomorrow. We went back to the trucks and were split into two groups and put inside the trucks. In our truck, Juan showed us what will be required for the Air Brake test. If your head was not hurting before, it will be after this. There are five parts to the Air Brake Pretest... the first four are pass/fail. If you fail any of those four, youve blown one of your three attempts at the pretrip test. We were interrupted after a while by Juan again and he climbed in to show us the incab pretrip inspection. There are 11 parts to it and it really is the easy part of the pretrip. Mistakes from it count in the 22 points you can lose, but really no one should lose any points in the incab portion. We spent the last couple hours just working on Air Brake practice.

At the end of the day we watched Rick unhook the tractors from the trailers and were shuttled back to the hotel. The yard day only lasts to 3:30 so it was a little nice to get back to the hotel a little earlier than previously. I was informed that I had a new roommate-- naturally-- making this my fifth in six nights-- It was one of the people who was out at the yard and is supposed to take their test tomorrow. I went to the store to buy some supplies to eat for lunches-- when I got back-- my roommate was taking his stuff out of my room and a new roommate was being moved into my room-- this made my sixth in six days and my second of the night...