Graduating out of GA

There's a couple good jobs fueling locomotives, but need to drive stick shift and have endorsements.
Pay about $80G+ per year.

 

Darling Ingredients: We Create Solutions That Sustain Life
Georgia

• Calhoun
• East Dublin
• Ellenwood
• Smyrna
• Thomasville

 

Swift Refrigerated CDL Truck Driving School
Terminal in Atlanta.
EARN YOUR CDL IN AS LITTLE AS THREE WEEKS!
Make sure you tell the recruiter you want refrigerated division. You'll make more money and never be laid off during a recession because you'll be hauling food and medicine.
*You already have a cdl, so good to go. Ask about dedicated accounts so you can be home more often.

 

I will admit that I didn’t read all of your post, but it’s not that hard. I found a local job straight out of CDL school. I love it.

Step 1: Get your endorsements. It’ll be easy now while everything is fresh in your mind. For your hazmat, you’ll need to take a cheap $50-100 hazmat ELDT online course. It should only take you maybe 3-5 hours to do. You can’t take your hazmat test until you do this and get your TSA background check.

Step 2: Now with your endorsements, download the Indeed app, put CDL in the search box, and look for anything within 50 miles of your zip code. Once you do your first initial search, go back everyday at the same time and set it to “within the last 24 hours”. Apply to EVERYTHING that you’re interested in whether or not you meet their criteria. Just make sure you write out a decent resume.

That’s it. I did that and found a great local job that usually requires 1 or more years of experience. They trained me. They’ve been great to me. On pace to make 90k or more in 2023. 5 days on. 2 days off. Home everyday for at least 12 hours. It’s possible.

 

Careers | Howard Sheppard

 

Forget about Florida Rock & Tank Lines--NOOOOTTT a good starter company....

Another commercial carrier that you should at least be aware of...they have a dropyard/terminal in Jackson, GA...& also near Dothan, AL:

Contact Us - Alabama Motor Express

Recently...they started their own driving academy--so they obviously take new drivers.

In my area, I see their rigs A LOT. They are obviously doing well.

Their equipment looks good. Driver satisfaction there seems higher than average.

If you drove with them--expect to be home about every week.

I first drove for Schneider, out of Atlanta. Most recently--hazmat tanker, hauling fuel...& home daily.

The above post...about getting those endorsements, etc...is extremely good advice.

--Lual

 

https://www.wbtus.com/employment

 

If your city is big enough you can start with home-daily job delivering frozen food to restaurants and institutions with companies like Sysco, Performance Food Group (PFG), Quikway, etc. Also, beverage/beer delivery is home daily. Both of these are physical work where you put every box on a hand truck and then move it into the store/restaurant, etc. If you can do it, you can make a lot more than any 1st year OTR company. Avoid CR England no matter what you think they are "promising. IMO< they are the worst company in the industry for a newbie.

Also, almost every place has dump truck work and garbage/waste jobs that isn't just home pickup stuff, but also there are companies that pickup and deliver trailer loads of waste to landfills or recycling. Almost all of those companies are always hiring drivers and pay at least average or above.

A year or two of OTR, in most cases, qualifies you for almost any other type of trucking work. I would recommend you try to get into tanker work ASAP since the customers treat you better than the average customer for dry van and especially refrigerated "reefer" work where you are barely treated like a human, just another walking inconvenience to the chatting women in the shipping/receiving office who are mad you showed up and interrupted their 5 hour conversation about someone at home or on TV. Being female if you decide to do OTR as a first job you will have to decide can you accept training with a male trainer or will you wait however long it takes until you can train with a female trainer. You won't be paid while you sit and wait maybe weeks and weeks to train with one of the VERY few female trainers. Most companies have hired enough women and give you a no questions asked option to get a new trainer if you ask for one. Most male trainers are as worried this new woman student is going to falsely accuse him of bad behavior as the student is worried about bad behavior by a trainer. 2 adults of all 98 genders/sexes, etc is a difficult thing inside one truck. The truth is one of you will be driving and one will be sleeping almost every hour of the day, so you will have close contact. It's more like being having a long chain between your foot and their foot and not like having a Siamese twin, If you are young and fit, then food service companies and beverage delivery are your best option for starting local and making good money. If you are not fit it will be hard to keep up the work schedule. Those jobs are like workout where you take a break to drive, than OTR where you drive and drive and drive, with breaks to sleep, shower, deal with customers spread thoughout your day. Whatever job you consider and take, there are thousands of other drivers that are doing it, so you can learn to to it also. EVERY newbie seems to worry about shifting gears in a truck, but now most trucking companies are using automatic trucks. Also newbies worry about not being able to back the truck and trailer. You will be shown how to do it and if you later choose to avoid doing it you will always be terrible at backing. TONS of newbies avoid backing and their inability to back plays some part in them leaving the industry before they complete 1 year of work. Avoiding backing, which is your choice, will always mean you are going to have more difficulties in trucking than if you just spend the first few months/year backing until you are competent.

 

Waste Management sometimes hires a new cdl school grad and trains for the trucks they use. Pay & benefits are good.

 

GFL Environmental
Will train.