Team Driver

Got into Dallas. It's slick out there, had trainer on the edge of her seat ... now I know why she stays south of the 40 lol. Hopeing to pass Upgrade tomorrow. Still no word on team mate and all departments tell me to "Wait till I upgrade and talk to FM" for everything ... team mate, home time, dedicated possibilities?!?. Not getting a warm fuzzy about that answer.

Anyone in Dallas? I'll be the schmuck in the green freightliner hat looking lost as heck, I'd be happy to get any insight or tips you got to share.

 

The training department's only function is to get you trained and upgraded. The rest falls under Operations, which can't deal with you until you are actually upgraded.

 

Try to upgrade then everything else will fall into place. This is a big company, things can move slow.

 

That was a huge problem for me too. Youre not going to know wtf is going on until after you get a truck. Just make sure youre talking to the right department.

 

Brandson, how's things going for you ?

 

I had another team mate lined up. He got hit by a pickup in Denver a few days before we were supposed to meet up... Since then, I've just been solo. Not very happy. 24CPM is crap. I have a buddy that left his first company and wants to team, so that may work out well. I'm fitting into the company better, understanding how things work. Just don't like the crap solo pay, especially when I'm staying out weeks at a time for it.

 

Hit by a pickup ? Lol.

Rookie pay sucks. It goes up after your 8 weeks is over. We were making 32 CPM our 8 weeks & dam did it suck !

Other than that, I'm happy things are working out for you !

 

Yeah, the solo pay goes up a wopping 2 CPM. For those wondering, I don't really take the sliding pay scale into consideration. If you're OTR, most of the time you're making the bottom rate, so I consider myself as making 24 CPM, 26 in a few weeks.

My buddy just sent in his app today I guess, hopefully he'll be in orientation next week. He has 4 months experience, that should get him out of the 150 hours training. Does that put him at a reduced training time, or straight into a truck?

And yeah, he got hit by a pickup while he was outside chaining up his truck. I don't know the whole story, but it seems dumb to me. Chaining by itself, I don't plan to do, and second was doing it on the side of the road. I don't know details, just that he's out of the game for 6 months or so. Seemed like a nice enough guy, had some experience, so I was hoping to pick things up from him (I do ok, but my trainers were CRAP) and he had a GPS (just got my own the other night finally) and he wanted to run, bummed out that it's not gonna happen. Hopefully things work out smoothly with my friend coming over and teaming. I can't believe how close the team split is to the solo pay scale here. My partner would only have to drive around 500 miles a week to make my teaming miles pay more than if I had done them solo. Oh well, I just wanna get teaming already, I didn't sign up for staying out 3 weeks at a time to barely make more than the training wage...

 

It should put him in a truck.

This is more of a team company. I wouldnt recommend this company to solo drivers.

 

Ex military (discharged within the past 3 years) should be 44cpm split (48 with hazmat) with 11cpm bonus per driver for all miles the truck runs. You would have to average 4500 miles/week to get the miles you need for the bonus, which should be no problem for a team. .22x4500=$990/wk plus .11x18000= $1980/month bonus is not bad.