New Husband/Wife Team needs help with questions....please?

buckeye bandt · Jun 24, 2012

so i guess the best thing to do is not only watch out for swift and cr england and stevens now add schnieder to that list --- who else am i missing

.5 Past Twelve · Jun 25, 2012

Werner has trainers with only three months experience.

ShootThis · Jun 25, 2012

buckeye bandt said: ↑

so i guess the best thing to do is not only watch out for swift and cr england and stevens now add schnieder to that list --- who else am i missing
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Every trucking company,newbies or not.They all have good and bad drivers,whether 2 weeks or 20 years driving experience.

YOUNGUN1978 · Nov 19, 2015

Gearjammers2121 said: ↑

First off, we totally understand that us wanting to remain together throughout training poses some issues, which is why we posted on this forum in the first place.
While most of you make very valid and reasonable points about our wanting to stay together, we put "personal reasons" in our original post because there are reasons we don't wish to discuss with everybody on the forum. So that being said we aren't going to sit here and argue and try to defend ourselves over it.
At this point, if we make it through school okay, we should be able to hire on with Watkins and Shepard, if not, Schneider, Covenant and CRE, are next on our lists. If none of those three will hire us, we will be forced to re-examine our situation and see if we can deal with the potential separation.
We appreciate everyone's responses and wish good luck to all of you!
Keep on truckin'
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Well said!

Picture.Taker · Nov 20, 2015

My experience with Covenant about 10 years ago. I left JB to go there with a newbie friend so she wouldn't have to start her career at 24 cents a mile. They started her in the mid 30's and me at 49. She got sent to the sand box with the guard and I got a couple of new team drivers. One was experienced and we did as well as we were allowed to, which wasn't much. They had a bad habit of running us from Dalton, GA to Seattle, WA then have us sit for 36 hours before reloading to return. We always had hours, never late, usually early, but could only beg about 3500 miles a week on average. He left because of the poor miles. My next "partner" was a student they put in the truck and didn't tell me. When I quit and cleaned my stuff out of the truck after a couple years he got in trouble with Cov. for driving to the terminal by himself because he wasn't "qualified". We were laid over in NJ at an Oasis in the summer and was told by dispatch to go sit in the building in the A/C for 24 hours and not to idle the truck. We idled. When they charged us for the fuel, I quit. If they could have kept the truck moving there wouldn't have been any idle time to speak of. They didn't allow inverters then, don't know about now. Pets were okay, we had 2 cats. I was put in a Columbia with 360k miles on it... and was still in it when I quit a couple years later with around 500k. I'd recommend Schneider from your list of choices.... thinking about moving there myself.

wrench&ride · Nov 20, 2015

Gearjammers2121 said: ↑

Hopefully we don't get thrown under the bus for this thread.

BUT, we haven't really seen a post that answers concerns that are specific to our situation (and we have sifted through ALOT of posts on here, so we aren't just lazy).

So, first off, we are totally newbies. We are planning on attending Katlaw trucking school in Austell, Georgia in March, and being ready to sign on with a company the beginning of April. We have heard tons of good things about Katlaw, and so far it seems to be our best option.

There are a couple of concerns we have about companies though. We have gone through Katlaw's list of companies, and only four of them seem like companies that fit our needs. We would really like to be able to apply to as many companies as possible so that we (pending us both completing our CDLs, of course) are guaranteed a job with someone, somewhere.

Our concerns/what we need in a company:

1) Obviously, we need a company that takes on team drivers fresh out of school.
2) We also are both 21, so we can't go with a company like WEL, McElroy, or TMC (according to their websites).
3) Our main concern is that we are able to stay in the same truck throughout the companies extra training. We are NOT up for being separated and OTR with different trainers, in different trucks. Don't judge, it just doesn't sit well with us for personal reasons.
4) This is not really important to our choosing a company, but those that allow small pets would be nice. That way mom-in-law doesn't have to keep the little guy for us.

Companies we are considering:
1) Watkins & Shephard- they seem to be perfect for us, but we are very skeptical about perfection, we know it doesn't exist. (Do they pay you for the 10 day orientation?)
2) Schneider-they seem to have more negativity surrounding them than W/S but overall they seem to be a decent company to work for.
3)CRST-We're told they do team driving but I haven't read much about them, any comments?
4)Swift-We hear alot of crap about swift, but if it comes down to it, they are on the list.
5) CR England- By far the company we have read/heard the most negative comments about. But most of them seem to be from solo drivers, do they treat teams any differently?
6) Covenant Transport- We thought this was the "it" company for us at first, but now we aren't so sure. We've heard they are unsafe. Can someone with work experience from this company chime in on the conversation?

If you can think of any other companies that meet our needs, we would seriously appreciate the feedback.

IF we have missed an answer to our questions somewhere else, we will be happy to delete this thread and we apologize for wasting your forum space. So please, be nice to the n00bs.
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wrench&ride · Nov 20, 2015

W went though cr englands school 1 year ago we trained together overall it was good the only problem we had with england was there pay was low now we work for conway and life is good

Jubal3 · Nov 21, 2015

Well, good luck finding someone to train two of you on the same truck. I wouldn't agree to do it if I were a trainer.

Chinatown · Nov 21, 2015

I wonder how they're doing now. Their post is 4 years old.
They haven't posted since December 2012.

mountaingote · Nov 21, 2015

Chinatown said: ↑

I wonder how they're doing now. Their post is 4 years old.
They haven't posted since December 2012.
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Takes a while for some to catch up, I guess

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