New driver wanting advice

Get an LTL job. Best combination of pay, bennies, and hometime you will find driving a truck. Even the worst LTL is about 10x better than most road jobs.

 

Get a local job ANY 'local job. Then go to hvac or electrical school at night. (Your future you will thank me)

 

I wish I could have done that, but when I looked into the electrician apprenticeship program it paid way too little for a married guy with a kid ($9/hr for two years back in '03, dunno what it pays now). A young, single person with no kids would be doing the right thing going that route. Electricians with CDLs are in very high demand.

 

LTL is the way to go for local trucking. Outside of LTL, food service ... but you'll definitely be earning that paycheck .

 

Being a road driver/linehaul is not easy either. Gotta align that dolly then crank the landing gear on both pups. Phew I'm already exhausted just by thinking about it.

 

Start with having an exit plan from trucking when needed

 

Not me. I like being a linehaul driver.

 

There are two LTL's that are more likely to hire a new driver there, both pay less than the top ones. YRC has been looking to fill slots for a while, but the road driver for Less Than One Year is a team run so like OTR, and they don't say that in their ad. The other company, with generally filthy terminals and old trucks), is RAC, when they are looking. It'll be 14/hr or somewhere in there.

Or try for Dock or Combined at UPSF, ODFL, Estes, ABF, etc. The ABQ ABF terminal doesn't have a hog board, which is good for a newer driver.

None of the fuel companies in ABQ say they will hire new, Coastal only will if you went to a school they accept and the list is short, see it on their website. You can try Groendyke, if they need bodies they might train, but don't bother with the terminal there, go through recruiting.

And keep in mind that if you apply through Intelliapp, they (Tenstreet) will share your app and data with every other company they have a relationship with. They sell it to other recruiters. Might seem positive at first, but the worst companies will be the most persistent and bothersome about contacting you because they're the most desperate. Companies like CRST and CR England, who either hide their names in craigslist ads or pretend to care a lot about veterans. Do you want them to have your info?