I don’t think I can do this anymore.

I’ve been driving a little over 3 years now.
I’m 28 years old. I live in central Florida.
I got into this industry because I was struggling and I was told I could build a decent career and make good money.

I saved up and dropped 7 grand to go and get my CDL. It was a little over a month of juggling my job + school and it wasn’t easy, however I did get it done.
During the whole process I expressed to pretty much anyone that I could that I had absolutely no interest in going over the road and was told repeatedly I wouldn’t have to, that I could find a local job no problem .

After I got my CDL and started searching for a job I quickly realized how big of a lie this was. Literally no local company would touch me with zero experience. Almost instantly the concern and frustration started kicking in. I considered giving up before I even began. Long story short, searched for 2 whole months before I ended up having to go with SWIFT transportation…

I won’t go too much into detail about my experience with them, but it was by far the worst job i’ve ever had. My “mentor” basically used me as a logbook and threw me to the wolves. Had me driving while he slept the second day. He was an angry and bitter old guy and overall a nightmare to be around. But I got through it. My driver leader/dispatch was making me run recaps pretty much constantly, I was working/driving 55+ hours a week for 1.5 years, miserable in crappy trucks that always had something wrong with them. I was sent through snow, got caught in a hurricane without power for 4 days. Missing home constantly. Speaking of which they would repeatedly lie and keep me out for days and days beyond my scheduled home time. my job was always at jeopardy here. Every minor incident was met with threats of being taken off the road. And I was putting up with all of this for about maybe 700 a week take home on average. I was questioning what I was even there for. I was doing worse than I was at my previous job… I wasn’t making money, in fact almost every month paying my bills put me in the hole. I was driving myself insane.

Now you might ask, why didn’t you just leave? Well, I tried. As I said, I NEVER had intentions of being OTR… so I wasn’t about to jump #### to another OTR job… I started searching for local jobs in my home county at about 6 months into my 17 month stretch with swift. Every company either ignored me, or told me I needed more experience. Coke, pepsi, keurig dr pepper, saddle creek, sherwin williams, gordon food services, every one of them. For a year.

Until, I FINALLY heard back from a company called Sygma, which is owned by Sysco… in Orlando. I’d always heard they make great money and I knew they were local so I was excited. I applied for a “Class A Driver Job” as it was listed. And was contacted by an HR rep a few days later, to keep it short I was told this was a delivery driver job and that it was scheduled for about 10-12 hours a day. I figured no big deal sounds great to me. They interviewed me over video and decided they wanted to send me a job offer and schedule orientation.

Me being eager to leave Swift I put in my two weeks almost immediately. The only problem was, two days later I had not gotten a job offer… and I could not get a hole of the HR rep or actually ANYONE from HR at the Orlando office. A week later she sends up emailing me saying she was sorry she forgot to send it and went on vacation… and that unfortunately although she would send it now… this delay put my orientation off another month. So I sat unemployed for almost an entire month due to this mistake.

I figured oh well, I finally got there and things would get better right? Wrong. It was only then I began learning the truth of this job I accepted. It was not a delivery job as I was told, it was a shuttle position. The hours were also inaccurate as well. I was told it was scheduled for 10-12 hours a day max, in reality it was set for 14 hours a day 5 days a week. And paid about 1400 gross each week. No safety bonuses (since I wasn’t a delivery driver) This is absolutely criminal. I was on the verge of having a breakdown. I’d been lied to and lured here to be suckered into a job that I simply couldn’t feasibly perform. 14 hours a day is simply too much and for the money? Even worse.

I started frantically looking for anything else in the area that could offer me a way out. I figured I was screwed, I had dug myself a hole I wouldn’t get out of. But by pure luck I managed to make a friend, and older driver who said he could help me get on to a local company that was actually in my hometown, and only a few minutes from where I live. I won’t name the company but it’s where i’ve been working for the past 16 months. I explained my situation to the people at Sygma and we parted ways amicably.

I deliver medical supplies off the back of trailers to different places around the area with a pallet jack and a hand truck. At first it was all good. I had a job that was doable, wasn’t killing me on hours and had management that treated me good. The issues didn’t start piling up until a few months in. When the initial happiness of finding a job wore off and I realized this simply was not going to cut it forever.

My life has gotten pretty difficult this past year, rent has gone up significantly, the cost of everything has really. I had a recent very expensive medical issue, and I am now having to take care of my dying grandfather. For me to make 1000 take home on a paycheck at my job I have to work 50 hours. And let me be clear I absolutely do not get these hours every week. They keep is at around 46 a piece as often as they can. We get no stock, no bonuses, no pension. Nothing. My rent alone is nearly two weeks pay. I’m basically living month to month. And technically speaking any money I do save is just going towards replenishing what I lost working for SWIFT. In addition this company is soon to add in can cameras, and they are using that as an excuse to skip over everyones raise this year. So that’s great.

All in all almost 3 years later I am pretty much right where I started, barely making it past ends meet and struggling.

For the past 8 months or so I have been searching for jobs and applying to any I see that are decent. I even went out of my way to get all my endorsements hoping it would help my chances.

Airgas - Had an interview scheduled, was ghosted by the recruiter. Never heard from them again.

Ace Hardware - applied two separate times, both times received an email saying they chose “someone more closely matching their needs”

Keurig Dr. pepper - I have applied 3 times over the past months, all 3 times got asked to do a video interview, all 3 times I was “not selected”

Carvana - Applied never heard anything, job got delisted.

Circle K - Applied never heard anything job got delisted.

7-11/Speedway - Actually got a referral for this one, was told they were unwilling to hire me due to commute time being too high.

Gordon Food Service, Golden State Foods and US Foods - All 3 didn’t even notice my application it seems and the jobs got delisted.

My most recent one was for Sysco. I actually have a friend at my current job who worked for sysco for 16 years and he put me in touch with one of the lead drivers the my local terminal, he put in a word for me, I put his name in my application, I even handed in a printed out Resume in person and I still got rejected…

Most of these places rarely have positions open and when they do they go fast… and everything else pays too similar to what I make now for it to be worth a transition to a totally new job.

I just don’t know what to do. I know it makes me sound entitled, but I feel as if I work too hard and have sacrificed too much to feel this way. I am tired of feeling like I am invisible to every company I reach out to. And as if my hard work has been for nothing. It’s really begun to affect my mental state.

So my question is, has anyone been here before? What do I? How do I get out? I truly don’t know how much longer I can keep standing around just hoping to get lucky before I drive myself insane.

 

Unfortunately I can’t control where I live. Even I was comfortable uprooting my whole life and moving somewhere else, I couldn’t afford it and I have people here that rely on me.

 

fedex pays like crap down here. UPS only hires from the warehouse and Amazon is basically slavery.

 

I live in Polk county. Around Lakeland/Winter Haven