Pick an employer CAREFULLY so you will be happy trucking.

Who you choose to work for is one of the most important choices you will make in your trucking career. Most newbies are not taking this choice seriously enough, in my opinion. In my few years on this message board the newbies, either pre-CDL school or after CDL school, are focusing 100% of their attention on which CDL school to go to or how to get a trucking company to give them "free" training in exchange for an employment contract. Going to CDL school is a very small, and often very brief, part of your time in trucking What would you think if a friend said "I need to be married by the end of the month" and then focused only on the details of the wedding ceremony? What if he waited until the day before the wedding to consider which person he should marry? What if he told you he might want to marry Allison because her dad is a preacher and can supply the church for free? But he might marry Jennifer because her family can cater the wedding for free? Is getting a free location and preacher or free catering the key to being happy after the wedding ceremony? Or is "getting married" to the right person the most important detail that goes a long way to deciding if the :marriage" will work?

Trucking companies have their ways of doing business, their rules for how driving must be done, and schedules or patterns on how their drivers work. You choose how you will work and how much time you get at home, and how often, plus the money you will make, benefits you and your family get when you choose what company to work for. Some of the larger companies may have several divisions that work according to other schedules, rates of pay, home time, etc. So it is POSSIBLE you can ignore all of those details until AFTER you get hired. If that produces good results for you it is only a matter of luck. If you want certain types of schedules, or need certain amounts of pay, or want to avoid certain parts of the city, state, country you have to know what working at Company ABC means for you. NOBODY getting hired by ABC Company is going to dictate to the company what the pay will be and where you will drive, or what time of day or year you will drive, etc.

If you enter the industry and don't care where you work, what they pay, how they treat you, you will be guaranteed to get a job. You will also be guaranteed that company will have no reason to ever improve working conditions at that company. The way you determine, as best you can, how you will be treated is to pick carefully a company that has what you need in the way of schedule, pay, benefits, area of operation, type of freight, etc. The CDL school has no interest in matching you to a trucking company where you will be happy or satisfied. Their interest ends with getting ANY TRUCKING COMPANY to hire you. As long as they can claim "all of our students get hired", they have done their job. Whether you stay in the industry 30 days or 30 years is mostly a matter of how much research and info you can get about trucking companies BEFORE you hire on to them.

The vast majority of brand new CDL holders will change employers after they have worked in the industry, usually their first year. Some things about working as a CDL truck driver can only be known after you experience them. So, the employer you work for after your first employer may be the most important decision you make. If you fail to do the research and find out working conditions before you get hired, you will likely generate a work record that locks you into only ever working for middle-quality or lower-quality trucking companies. When picking an employer imagine working there for 5 years or more. Can you accept their working conditions, etc for the next 5 years? Employers are not usually good employers or bad employers. What makes them good or bad is how well their conditions/pay match what you need or want. If someone gave you expensive shoes that were too large or too small for your feet they would not be the shoes for you.What matters is how does an employer match you, An employer that matches you is better than another employer that matches other drivers.
ALL TRUCKING COMPANIES ARE NOT ALIKE.

 

That is exactly what 95% of newbies do. Then they blame the industry when it puts them at a company that won't let them go home, pays them $400 in a week, and they never learned how to back a trailer. A career is not a spectator sport. The results depend on the effort you put into it.

 

Nope, one company has a much worse turnover rate for new drivers than another similar company. One company fits certain drivers and doesn't fit another driver. The results depend on the newbie honestly knowing his needs and honestly evaluating trucking companies. Just flipping a coin and working where you can get hired is a pretty good way to make it much more difficult or impossible to get experience and a better job later. Flip a coin and the newbie will quit the industry soon like 80-90% of last year's newbies. Don't be a newbie, doing things the newbie way or you get newbie results. Find the company that fits you and then go to the CDL school that company hires from.

 

Exactly. The fit between company and newbie is the only thing that counts. The newbie need to honestly evaluate their needs and find out honest information about the trucking company. Nobody is the average newbie and no truckign company is the average trucking company. Each one is different. Choose wisely.