Watkins and Shepard

They do a lot of Missoula driving at first, but we also went on a couple trips to Seattle and LA with our trainers. You get the required amount of behind the wheel time in the class- I'm not sure what that is now, but it was something like 168 hours or somewhere around there. We would also practice on our own after school.

The first day of training is pretty much the day for paper work, introductions, and room assignments. They covered a few things, but yeah, we didn't get into a truck until the next day.

 

It was a little low, and thus the reason most people won't go with them, but truthfully, I would rather take a bit lower pay to work for a decent company. And they are paying for your school as long as your there, so I didn't complain.

We were driving to West to East quite often in flatbed and weren't gone too much. It wasn't too bad for us, I suppose it all depends on the dispatcher and such.

 

When we were there, flatbed paid the same mile rate, but you got additional pay for tarping, untarping, etc. It came out to pay more than van for us.

 

I can't say what they pay now, but about 4 years ago they started newbie drivers at 29 cpm. Of coarse, you got more doe. Sorry, I don't know what pay is for teams- I was solo. I do know that they hire teams though. There is drop and hook pay, load and unload pay. If you actually help unload the truck you get additional pay. Nice and easy when you have a Staples load.

 

Sorry, I don't live in the east, so I can't tell you what it's like. There is a lot of freight there, so I would assume that you would be loaded regularly.

I never saw the New Jersey terminal, but I have an address and phone number... I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post that kind of information on this forum though. *shrugs*