New To The Industry

You will feel like you are trying to drive a house for a while. Eventually you will settle in adjusting to the house on wheels.

That's not too difficult. The rest of it will have to wait until you have had a chance to search this site and read what others have posted about each of the other concerns you wrote about.

 

CRST run teams.

 

I don't know anyone that would even recommend crst to their enemy. Lol

 

Just letting him know since he said he wasn’t sure about team driving. A concern I totally understand.

 

Congratulations on the new career! Plenty to choose from besides those five. You would also team with CRST; not just Covenant.
Here's some that will probably hire you and they all hire new cdl grads even if the website has otherwise. You probably won't hear about any of these from the job placement people at AIT.They really want you to go with Werner, since Werner owns the school.:
Britton Transport - relatively smaller company and has already hired some Phoenix drivers.
Butler Transport - refrigerated trucking.
McLane Foodservice - potential $70K after all training is complete with your trainer there.
ABF and YRC - two different companies and you'll start out working the dock & driving; both haveTeamsters Union benefits.
XPO Logistics - local work $21.50 an hour.
Freymiller - www.drive4freymiller.com - cdl school students apply for "Restore Program" on the website. This is one of the best refrigerated companies and runs coast to coast.
Navajo Express - coast to coast refrigerated trucking.
Titan Transfer - teams run coast to coast and solo drivers run the Western half of USA.Dry van.
East-West Inc. - www.goeastwestinc.com - teams run coast to coast & solo drivers run Western half of USA. Dry van.
Mountain Valley Express - linehaul & runs AZ,CA,NV.
Contract Freighters - www.cfidrive.com - dry van coast to coast. Solo drivers run all 48 states.
Halvor Lines - 48 states & pulls dry van, refrigerated, flatbed.
FFE (Frozen Food Express) - 48 state refrigerated trucking.
Paul Transportation- 48 state flatbed.
Melton Truck Lines - 48 state flatbed.
Pride Transport - refrigerated & flatbed. 48 states.
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Apply right now to as many companies as you like. The more the better. Do the online applications. This way you have plenty of time to look over the job offers and choose one so you can start work the day you graduate. Job offers you receive will be contingent on successfully completing cdl school and having any required endorsements. Best to get all the endorsements.

 

Would you team with a stranger that didnt have anymore experience than you in addition to having most likely (98% chance) been trained be someone with that same lack of experience?
Welcome to CRST, LOL.

 

Britton Transport^^^~~~~~~~~~~~~~Navajo Express^^^~~~~~~~~~


Freymiller^^^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~McLane Foodservice^^^~~~~~~~~


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Mountain Valley Express~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Team driving is a rather special situation. Hence Teams are very valuable in this industry. I think when we hauled for McKesson as a husband wife team in our time, we were getting cash offers of 5000 to 7000 dollars bonus each first year should we decide to quit our current employer and transfer to the new one by going to orientation etc the following week. We stayed right where we were. Plenty of nuts to catch for us two squirrels who were in the money. No need to grab that 5 to 7K times two pay out. It's not hard to say no when our payroll is sufficient fat. (A tip to you stingy miserly penny pinching theiving, lying companies still paying schmucks .30 a mile... when earning 3.00 to the truck...)

I think of about 4 to 6 people who proved themselves a quality team partner and thought of me enough to have me take the truck across mountains in 3 feet of powder into a storm at night for a few hundred miles while they slept in the bunk.

There is a very special thought when you are not only driving a 18 wheeler, you also have potentially a relative stranger's life and all that of his family's love riding with him in the back there. It would be up to you to keep it safe where possible.

Most people would generally rather not go team, that's ok. Teams are not like most people. It's really hard actually to form one that will get up and run 1500 miles every 30 hours or less.