Are you struggling because of too many financial obligations or because of the cost of living in your area? The only way I see trucking helping you, especially in the beginning, is if it's the latter. Even then, you'll still have to move to see those benefits.
I remember the TMC recruiter came to our school and admitted that there is a joke in the industry about TMC drivers: something to the effect that they don't know how to back up because they never have to. All of their drops and hooks are pretty much straight pull-ups.
When I was in school back in January The Werner recruiter told us drivers take their truck home. That sounds pretty cool. So do you just finish dropping off your trailer at the terminal or customer, and then drive miles home with on duty time but unpaid? Does your reset start when you start driving home? Respectively when your reset is up, do you just flip to on duty/driving until you get to the terminal/pickup?
I posted something on that a few months ago from the FMCSA website (not going to look for it right now) but essentially what it said is if you go home from the terminal (in the truck we are talking now) it is ON DUTY time so your reset would start when you switch the logs to off duty. HOWEVER, if you bob tail home from a customers site, you can do that on PC time (assuming your COMPANY allows it). My e log (I know from experience) doesnt count the PC time as part of the reset when I do this, yours MAY be different. Going the other way (again, by the FMCSA website) is the same. If you go to the terminal first, its on duty. If you go to a shipper its PC (again, only if your COMPANY allows it). I have no idea the logic behind this, so Im not going to try to explain it (it makes no sense to me that it would be different). But THOSE are the rules according to the federal DOT.
It looks like I'm going to end up at Werner. I have 7 months experience local only. Certainly nervous about making the change as winter comes. Things have been a whirlwind as I went from applying two weeks ago, interview last week, to "we want you to start orientation". There have been some questions I forgot to ask and need to fix that. They actually didn't even want to give me enough time to put my two weeks in with my current employer.
When I was there last year, I never got much further west than I35. I don't know anything about Team OTR at Werner, but the really long loads seemed to mostly get split. I got the impression they were more concerned with picking freight up and getting it into their system than delivering quickly.
That's what I tell new drivers on here, but many don't pay attention. Solo drivers on the Eastern half of the USA will rarely, if ever, go West of I-35. I remember on driver on here that also wouldn't pay attention. He wanted regular home time and a dedicated run. Schneider gave him that and the most he was making was $700 weekly. He was in bad shape with a family to take care of, plus rent.
I remember they do have a reefer division but almost every time I see a Werner truck, it's a van. Reefer generally advertises longer average length of hauls but not sure if that's the case at Werner?
