Still debating who to drive for

If someone said "I was looking for a good restaurant for lunch, but then I started thinking why not just buy a restaurant?" Would you think they were being reasonable?

DO NOT BUY/LEASE, LEASE-PURCHASE, OR ANY OTHER "BE YOUR OWN BOSS" THING UNTIL YOU HAVE WORKED *AT LEAST* 1 YEAR AS A COMPANY DRIVER.

You know what's worse than really needing a job, going bankrupt. If you sign up for some activity where you OWE a few thousand dollars per month, you just started the clock on whether you will learn the business before you go broke. Don't do that. Assuming you get the training, and you can train a goldfish to drive a truck, you need to do this job before you "bet it all on red." The majority of new CDL holders leave the industry within 1 year.

Be a company driver. Let the company assume the risk of buying and maintaining a truck, finding the customers, getting vehicle/cargo/health insurance, meet payroll. Stay away from CRST. Go read the CRST forum. There is a world of difference between working for a company that expects you to be gone in 3 months and one that is trying to keep you around for years. Check your local area for trucking companies. You will probably be treated better and get home more often if you work for a company near you. They have to bring the trucks home for maintenance anyway, you get more time at home.

If trucking would be a better job, or you are not working now you probably can get the state to pay for your CDL school through the WOIA/WIA grants administered through your state's unemployment office. Their job is finding unemployed/uder-employed people and companies needing employees. EVERY CDL school will find someone to loan you money for CDL school. Half of trucking companies have Tuition Reimbursement (TR). They will pay you for your work and pay extra per month to help pay your CDL school tuition. If you took out aa school loan you must repay the loan by whatever terms are called for. The trucking company TR may be in some fixed amount or upto a certain maximum. The TR payment the trucking company will pay does not necessarily become your school loan payment, but it's money on your bank account from which you can repay your loan.

EVERY trucking company is looking for drivers. Many hire newbies. Your job is to find the company you want to work at, not "look for the ugly girl that never says no."

 

He can't repair the International Space Station AND post daily on TTR.

 

It's tough to decide but I get the feeling you, like many newbies, are unnecessairly limiting your options to the biggest mega carrier because from outside of the industry those are the carriers that show up on internet searches.

This is not criticism. I know the feeling when you are broke and need a job today. That's how I got into the industry, but I had family in the business and one of them had been looking and working for various great companies long before I got into it. All I had to do was live on my brother's couch, bum a ride to school daily for 3 weeks, and buy some food during the 3 weeks CDL school would take. I already had a driving job waiting on me with a great regional OTR company.

The difference between the big companies that hire hundreds of drivers per month (and lose an equal amount) and the ones that may be local, but not all over Google search results, can be vast. I would suggest your best chance at getting the most out of trucking is find a trucking company near you (craigslist and indeed.com are decent places to look) that has a good safety score (CSA Score) and have that company put you in contact with some of their drivers. Primarily what you want to know from them is:
are you generally happy with how things are run?
How long have you worked here?
How often do you get home?
What do think I can make weekly as a 1st year driver?
Whatever else you think is important.

If you are just getting by right now, pick up a (another) part time job, even McDs while you search for a good match. Signing up to a company that is already seeing you as disposable can make this job seem lie a prison sentence. Obviously it's easier to say these things than DO these things. I'm sorry I don't remember the whole story, if you told us, of how much research you have already done.

There are, I don't know, 5,000 trucking companies or more? It seems EVERY newbie only considers Prime, Swift/Knight, CRST, Western Express and just walks to their doom while acknowledging their pick is not a great place to start. Why are the big companies not able to keep drivers? Trucking isn't an easy job to start, and OTR has a lot more "culture shock" than other areas of trucking. There will be days, even at a good company, where you really wonder why you ever wanted to do this kind of work. I've done this for maybe 25 years and I still have some days like that, but I know the difference between a bad day, and volunteering for a daily punishment at a company that expects me to leave any day now.

Good luck. We'll all try to help you.