Career choice, get my CDL at 20?

The truck stops are jam packed at night and very difficult to find parking for sleeping.
With reefers you can plan to drive at night and make deliveries or pickups in the wee hours of the morning.
Later, during the daytime, it's easier to find decent parking because other truckers are leaving the truckstops just when you're pulling in for a sleep break, shower, meals.

 

I drove 23 years. Don't have to work now unless I want to and I don't want to....lol

 

Get involved in some type of retirement plan and stick to it, even when you change companies. If you do this, you can retire early and can enjoy retirement with plenty of money to travel or whatever you want.
I saw so many drivers build up a nice retirement account, then withdraw some for a new pickup truck or an expensive annual vacation or jewelry and other impulse buys. They start getting the gray hair and wrinkles and it sinks in that they can't afford to ever retire in comfort.

 

This is a typical reefer fleet job ad you'll find for the time being -- an ok fleet to run for, but notice they want at least 6 months prior experience (they've stopped hiring students, rookies...or those with low experience):

Coldliner Express -- Myrtle Bch, SC -- regional & OTR routes available

If you finish at a CDL school within the next 6+ months -- it's likely that your best hope for a starter job is with one of the so-called "mega-carrier" fleets: Swift, Werner, Knight, Roehl, etc....where you can also actually "sample" other types of freight besides just reefer (if you find/decide later that you don't like reefer duty) -- without the hassle of changing carriers.

-- L

 

Keep in mind, we're in a recession that may get much worse.
Even so, people have to eat and have medical attention. Refrigerated trucking hauls food and medicine and also blood plasma.
Reefer drivers will stay busy even during recessions.

 

I'm retired from trucking since 2021. I did about 21 years in dry van (18 of which were home daily), then I did 3 years HazMat tanker dedicated OTR (loved it), and then 2 year in the Northwest running mixed dry van and reefer loads. IMO, reefer is horrible. I wouldn't do it again. But I was getting random junk loads from a load board and dispatched by a very small owner-operator trucking company. I may have been seeing the very worst customers of the most troublesome type of freight during the COVID era. I loved being out West, I mostly loved the dry van loads, found reefer to be almost universally too much trouble and lots of wasted time. It was routine on the reefer loads I got to have one or both customers (shipper and receiver) spend 4 plus hours each loading/unloading. On the trips where both customers didn't delay me, say the shipper gave me a pre-loaded trailer the receiver would probably make me wait 3-8 hours to get unloaded and leave. That could mostly be an issue with the Albertson/Safeway/Unfi grocery warehouses I visited in Portland area, Seattle area, Phoenix area, San Fransicko. Many of my reefer loads had multiple stops and the 1st stop would delay me so much I would be late for every other stop and get no detention pay for any waiting time except maybe 25% of the waiting time at the first customer.

Detention pay where I worked (you never heard of them) required I be on-time, give 2 hours free, submit the request, only get paid if the contract with the customer agreed to pay, which many big customers exclude from their contract. Some dedicated, single stop, coast to coast reefer may be great. I had some of that and those trips are good. But I mostly remember having 5 stops in Phoenix, Seattle, Portland, SF and all customers taking 4 hours or more to unload 3-6 pallets, and I get to pay the shipper/receiver lumpers to do their job, which wastes 30 minutes to 3 hours depending on how many crack heads are working and if they remember where they put the paperwork.

 

When I pulled flatbed, some American companies were suffering, but overseas companies were buying construction equipment because their economies were booming. I hauled lots of bulldozers, road graders, etc. from factories in NC to California to be shipped to China and other Asian countries. Hauled the same plus commercial air conditioners to New Orleans to be shipped to Saudi Arabia and other Middle East and European countries.
From my personal experience I found reefers and flatbeds were good for steady paychecks and more money weekly/annually.

 

When I pulled dry van versus reefer I felt like I was free to listen to podcasts and not dread the argument I was going to probably have when I showed up at the customer or be asked to pay $200 to have it loaded/unloaded by some meth addict. While the trucking company would pay the lumper fee, not my cash, paying introduced AT least two additional waiting periods to any delay just getting unloaded. Waiting to be told how much to pay, paying, waiting for the customer or meth addict to say they were paid and I could get my paperwork and leave.

Tanker is the way to go. Nobody makes you pay them to load/unload you. The customers prefer you park on their property, if possible, and everyone you deal with has been doing their job for years. They treat you like a fellow human being, not a wandering skunk with an itchy trigger finger. Only some tanker companies hire newbies. Most want 1-2 years of experience. Tankers are a LOT easier to park than a dry van because of their shorter length (mostly 45-48 ft versus 53 ft) and good visibility to the rear of the trailer, and no tail swing. The rear wheels are at the rear of the trailer, not 3-12 feet from the rear bumper. Tanker is just more professional. It's not very forgiving of mistakes.

 

I didn't have those problems pulling reefers. I know some of those fly-by-night 1099 outfits have serious problems and even smaller W-2 outfits do. That's why I focus on medium to large companies.