Deployed to Iraq looking at Trucking as a Career. Help Please!

i know out here our DFAC was shut down for a lil over a week while they did the change over from KBR to DynCorp.. by day four we were out of MRE's and they had to start flying mermites of hot chow and MRE's out to us from KAF.. that was just another bullet that went of my list of reasons to not to reenlist.

 

That would be 12/23....Very bad thing that happened to all those drivers.

 

What you talking about? Those MRE;s are great. About once a month. We had to eat em' for 2 1/2 days. Talk about getting "locked up". Worked out good though. I got put in charge of all refrigeration for DFAC. could go in and get whatever I wanted. Used to go p/u bunch of t-bones for Marines and Army who wanted to have their own BBQ . And of course they would give me stuff like camo netting for shade over hootch and other vital areas. Just like my Dad had told me about WWII. You figure out how to make life easier on your own or be a sheep. Had a lot of fun swapping and wheeling and dealing over there in Iraq. Polish soldiers would trade anything. Used to let us go fire their weapons . Hell of a deal. Free ammo. From what I have heard DynCorp is a lot better than KBR. Still got a couple of friends over there. One is w/KBR. Says they have not gotten any better and maybe worse. Hire mainly TCN's to pay them less.

 

Jumbalya is the best mre out there!!Kbr is hiring a TON of tcns..The only things they are not doing is recovery,bobtail,or cc/cc driver,as far as off base stuff goes......Yeah they are kinda goin down...They are still paying people,and they still have alot of major contracts there....But they just want to hire alot of stinky Bosnians and Croations,on top of people from India and the Phillipenes...All the bosnians are capable of doing is smokin cigs for 5 minutes,working for 6,then repeating the cycle lol...

 

If you have your mind set on driving then take a look at Roehl Transportation. I am also a vet and they let me go through there CDL School for free (minus the lodging and licensing fees $450.) Also there is no commitment afterwards. You can go there do the training, get your CDL, and leave with no hard feelings from Roehl. Just make sure its what you want to do before you jump.. Happy Holidays!!

 

Soldier, First off thank you for your service.

I will tell you this, you can not go wrong having a CDL because you can always find work, now the quality of that work is not always going to be the best, but if you have a CDL you will atleast be able to get by as long as you dont over extend yourself.

To tell you the truth, there isnt a lot of money to be made out there right now. If the economy takes a hard upturn there will be, but right now no.

Quite frankly if you want to be a driver when you get back, id find a company that runs flat beds, Id run thier truck, live out of it, save every penny you can, buy your own truck. Right now you can buy a good KW W900L for like 20-30 grand, If you are tight with your money, you could buy a truck, get the motor overhauled, and get some good tires on it before you even try making a dime with it.

Owning your truck outright means security, it means if you have a bad month that you dont lose the source of your income. You can rent a trailer anywhere you go. But there are plenty of comapnies that will screw you if you buy a truck through them. They will let you run it for 8-12 months, then they will cut your loads, reposess the truck, and you will wind up in debt to them, not a good situation.

Also, there will be plenty of people who will use the fact that you are a vet to try and lure you in, they will tell you that they have a vet friendly business, and they will screw you over so fast it is not even funny. I know this because I am a 70% disabled vet, I served from 99-03 in the Navy. (I will point out too that I was injured stateside in an accident, I dont want to take away anything from those who have served in combat)

Thus my number 1 rule for surviing in the truckning business is:

DO NOT DO ANY KIND OF BUSINESS OTHER THAN MOVING FREIGHT FOR THE COMPANY YOU ARE WORKING FOR!

Keep it strinctly to the busienss at hand, dont muddy it up with deals, if you have the ability to walk away at any given moment, you will be the better for it. Expecially if you have your own truck.

Just remember this, trucking companies have been around for a while, they have plenty of tricks and schenanegans to pull at any given moment. The more you are tied to the outfit you are working for, the more they can get away with.

When it comes to getting your CDL, dont use up your GI benifits, Get a student loan and go to a community college if you have to. It is worth not being tied to a company.

If you are looking for a starting point, Id sugjest that you Check out TMC. They do have some good frieght, and they are a pretty big outfit, I mean I do have some not so nice things to say about them because I was leased to Yellowstone Trucking, was pretty happy, making good money and TMC bought them out, ran the place right into the ground, and started putting the best paying freight on thier trucks and all of us who were leased to them got stuck with the garbage they didnt want to haul. But I do think that TMC would be a good place to get some solid flat bed experince, and they do have a flat bed training course.

I will extend an offer to you though, when you get back, if you want to talk trucking, drag yourself on down to Corpus and I will be more than happy to spend a few days telling you everything I know about the business.

 

If your due for re-up soon, you can see if there is a Heavy haul, or look for a heavy equipment maintenance MOS. Reason for this, as I did long ago.. is that it will teach you a great deal about your truck. I happen to have 21E (heavy equipment Operator), and 88M (Heavy Haul, 916 driver), and a heavy equipment Maintenance/recovery MOS. I have found these very handy in helping to maintain my own truck. You can save yourself, a lot of your $ by knowing what to do on your own, instead of paying a dealer $80 an hour to rebuild your king-pins and bearings. I don't recommend this but some states will issue a CDL based on your Military Lic. But you have to have a 916 license on it. There guys are right. DO NOT do a lease program. You WILL get screwed. Don't waste your time over there playing checkers. Get a state manual and study up for the CDL test, and while your at it. Study for the Hazmat also. Even though you don't yet have your license. When you get it, if you can test at the same time for Hazmat, and it will make you more marketable. There are even companies that sell DVD's on how to do a walk around. This will just give you a leg up when you go to school. And if your unit will let you, and if they have it over there, spend some time in the maintenance shop, and learn something usefull, instead of playing on your Xbox.

 

P.S. I forgot, if you in the guard, or getting out of active duty, and go into the guard, most states have a program called "Warriors to Workers". Kentucky has a program that is part of that which pays for your CDL school, and it does not use your GI Bill. I had several guys use this program and their driving now.

 

The bad news is, there isnt a lot of good freight that comes out of SLC unless it is military loads, and as a beginner you will never see those. When the economy was good id haul a lot of equipment out of there, but right now, its going to be pretty dead.

I grew up in Livingston Montana, that is where I started trucking out of.

There arent any large flat bed carriers out of the area. Mostly just small companies, this doesnt mean you cant get a job with an outfit that is based out of another area, I mean when I was still living in Montana I was leased to an outfit out of indiana.

So it doesnt matter so much were you live, it matters where they have loads out of. Also keep in mind, your first couple of years, dont plan on being home much.