Student Accepted with two companies

What ever you do i hope it works out. When i went to a c/c i got a gov. grant that paid $2200 for 6 weeks training it was PTDI certified. good luck in your career.

 

Prime......NOOOOOO! Run as fast as you can from them. My CDL school out of pocket here in michigan was $5000. If your going to goto a company for sponsor training, stay away from the Big companies. there is a reason they are that big and they do it. food for thought ok. If you goto say prime, the govt is going to give them $5000 just for taking you. Now they train you and make you go thru their really long program and run ya as a team on student pay, why, they are banking that you quit, why, you now owe them $1000's of dollars and they still get to keep the $5000 uncle sam gave them. Look at the smaller companies for sponsor training. If relocating is a option, there are many that will do it if you get out of the NE area. I almost made the mistake your about to because I wanted it so bad and refused to listen to those that had the experiance. I in the end used my tax refund and paid for my schooling, glad I did because I look at it diffrently and have more pride behind it. Also, most states thru unemployement, have a retraining program. They will pay 100% of the trucking school fees, you just have to do the 2 week class and sign up for it. DON'T DO COMPANY SPONSORED TRAINING!!!!!!!!!! also, if you do your homework, PRIME is #1 on DOT and OOIDA's worst company lists. I have friends that did go thru Stevens, they are a student company and low drop rate. I have good friend that went there with no choice and almost 2 1/5 yrs later is still there. Keep this in mind also. any company that throws you in a truck with a trainer and after the first or second week or right off the bat runs ya as a team, is bad news. How can anyone be trained if the trainer is in the bunk sleeping? No student should be behind the wheel alone and the trainer in the bunk. all that is, is a set up for a future disaster at your expence and god forbid,someone elses. Times are tough and hard, trucking industry is no better then any other right now. keep this in mind as well. If a company sponsors your training, 3 mnths into it, you crash, or 2 mnths into it you go, this is not for me, they are now going to bill ya for a huge amount including hidden fee's, they are going to put it on your credit report, and they are going to send it to collections, so now you also have the annoying phone calls as well as every name you listed for refrence and your credit ruinned. Before you make the jump, read posts reguarding the life out here as a truck driver. this isnt a home everynight job, or home every 3rd day with 2 off. you will stay out for 3-4 wks at a time or longer, as the longer you stay out the more money you will make every week. I wish you luck. i pray that you heed what us expieranced drivers are telling ya. and for gods sake, Stay away from Prime, SWIFT, CR England, Werner, CRST and Central, you will regret it if you don't. if by some reason you keep leaning to one of them, ask yourself this, are you ready to owe them for life? thats not a joke or a bs question, just fact because you will. also, say you go to thier school, you get your permit, come back a few weeks later, fail the road test, your done and owe them the money at full rate, or fail the written test for your permit after 3 tries, same thing. If they are looking for every way they can to take money from us drivers they can, wha makes you think they are not from potential drivers like you. Good luck too ya.

 

Well; if you are going to dump that much money in a school; which I feel is foolish; why in the world would you then go with werner???? That is like getting a doctorate and then working in harlem passing out band-aids to junkies...

 

The one thing no school can give you is experience and without it few companies will hire you. Werner will give me that experience.

Face it, if Werner was a bad as some people say they'd be out of business. If the company sucks, fine, I'll find out first hand. I have however read lots of posts and talked to REAL people who had good experiences with them and tend to go with them. That is my choice.

I'm not going to let a bunch of anonymous, faceless people on some website tell me who I should or shouldn't work for. If even half of the stories were true, lawyers would have a field day with lawsuits. I'm not saying all the stories about Werner, Swift, and the other big companies are bogus. I just wonder how many of the snakes would crawl back under their rocks if the companies were to tell their side of the story.

 

Then why bother asking for info? If you are going to werner a $9000 school or a $1500 is still going to land you at werner. Do you think they give a rip how much you paid and do you think it will have an outcome on how much you make?

 

I wasn't asking for info. I simply responded to somebody who was.

As for the school, It probably doesn't matter if I spent only $1 on a school and went to Werner or Joe's Trucking. The question is how well I'm trained going in.

Trucking isn't for everyone, but I feel that the school I'm attending is giving me the best chance to make it. If that means spending more, then I'm happy with that and that is what matters.

And if Werner is as screwed up as some say, in six months to a year I'll have the experience to possibly move on to bigger and better things. Until then....

 

Newbies will never learn. They all seem to think that the trucking industry is no diffrent then the rest of the industries out there. Its not till they get rolling and see for them selves that its a total diffrent world and game. all you can saddly do is let them fall like the rest. like the rest, you will see them on here crying about it. They all come into it thinking its the old days and that they gonna make big money, buy a house, a bike, a fancy trk, put the kids thru college, only to find out that right now, 80% of the companies out here you make less then a kid flipping burgers at McDonalds. They read a story in the sunday paper on a interview by the loacal driving school about how theres this need for drivers and theres all this money to be made and its a great job. what they dont print, is the 75,000 drivers that are unemployed and lost there job last year and still looking, or the 100's of companies that went belly up over the last 3 yrs, or that wages for drivers went down, way down. for example, a driver with 3yrs exp was starting out at .36cpm avg, now, lucky if you can get .30cpm starting wage. students were getting .32- .34cpm starting, now .21 - .28 cpm industry avg. so think about it, at .21cpm x 2000 miles for a week since avg right now is about that, equals out to $420 for the week, now take taxes out and any other fee's like cash advances or insurance, after all is said, you might have a $200 pay check. Now, keep this in mind, the bigger the company, the more drivers you will compete with. how you say, well, if I have 5000 trks on the road, thats 5000 loads I need to keep them moving, but, im not going to have that many loads everyday because of compition. so your going to sit, sometimes as much as 3 days. also, if you work for a east of the mississippi only company, getting miles gets really hard. factors to look at. 1. high population, that means more cities, more traffic, that means your slowed down. 2. last I saw its like 77% of the companies in the country service only the east coast area, so its a constant battle for loads. 3. highest percentage of CVM involved accidents happen where, yep, east of the mississippi and mostly on the east coast. Why, read #1 again. Frieght is also the cheapest on the east coast vs west coast, thus wages for drivers are lower, I know, I drove east coast companies then went and drove for west coast. Now heres something else to look at, Werner for example. if they are such a good campany, then why did he park 70% of his fleet? why did he reduce driver pay so low? Not only that, most companies that are on e logs, theres a reason. They were forced to to keep their authority. only problem with it is that they are allowed to edit the elogs and push the driver to drive now when they dont legally have the hrs. Leonsls, your right, lawyers would have a field day, except one thing, go talk to a lawyer and ask them if they know much on trucking and laws that govern it. they don't, all they know is if your in a accident involving a CVM, how to sue to get the millions for you, but not how to protect you. These companies have deep pockets and spend tons on capitol hill to allow them to keep operating the way they do. Orginizations like ATA and PATT and so on, are all on the big companies payroll. Now OOIDA, hated by almost every trucking company out there, Why? Because they stand up and fight to protect us drivers thats why. look, it dont take brains to figure any of this out or to read between the lines, and you can get any of this info just by checking with the feds and using the net to research companies yourself. be smart newbies, were not here to discurage you, were not here to tell you were you should or shouldnt work, were just trying to inform you and educate you. trucking companie recruiters are no diffrent then millitary ones, they are all paid to tell you what you wanna hear so you sign the dotted line, plain and simple. here's some food for thought real fast. Why bust your butt all week and do double the work for .28cpm when you can get paid .32cpm and work less? there are a lot of companies out there that will hire you out of school and remburse you for it, thats the way to go, not jump on board and sign a 1yr or 2 yr contract with them. But your right, it is your life, your choice, were just trying to help. take care and good luck.

 

Just to give you a word of encouragement... I graduated from SAGE last July, started with a mid to small sized company Sept 1st, completed training (including 6 weeks on the road) November 1st and started as an O/O on the road December 1st (all last year). I'm doing well after 80K miles of safe driving (no tickets or accidents or cargo claims) If I can do it, you can too.. no matter who you start out with.

 

jester 1962,,,,i would listen to these guys telling you to stay away from the big companys,just some insite,last yr i signed on with crst flatbed,as a o/o now i ran my butt off for 3 mths till i got pissed cause ,1) in the beginning they had loads,but it would take you to a area like baltimoor where i sat in line at a t/a with 25 other drivers waiting for a load,but i had something some of these guys didnt ,i had two differnt load boards on my lap top,,,,if i hadent i would have sat there for a week,no money ,but yet crst would have still wanted there cut,finnal get a load going to chicago,off the load board,going to houston ,coudnt get a load out of houston to save my butt,at that time last yr, three mths of running like the devil,and when all was said in done the money i had made went back into the fuel tanks for deadheads,27,000 miles in three mths,and came home with a grand in the bank,,,,dont forget out of this money you need to eat,minmum of 10 bucks a day,shower 10 bucks, laundry once a week,10 bucks,,brother those truck stops arent your dollar store,and them trucks to due the up keep aint cheap even if they own the truck,,id find a small out fit and learn from there those big companys are bottom feeders looking for desperate people like you,,,,,,remember they aint doing you any favors,,,,,, if you know how to read a book ,go to dmv and get the drivers book,if you have no trucking exsperince,and no knowlage about trucks find a friend have him teach you,,save your money cause you can go to your local collage and do the pretrip and roadtest for like 3-5oo bucks,instead of 6,000 but its your money,and remember there are alot of self made men out there that didnt go to school and learned the hard way but then again its your money and your choice

 

On the other hand, working for a bad company right out of school may NOT be such a bad idea. If you can stick it out there for a year or so, it sort of gives you a "baseline" to go by in judging other companies.

After all, if you haven't experienced the bad, how the hell are you supposed to know when you have it good?

Just something to think about.