Saia Local driver

Just hire people who have gone to driving school, because obviously they WANT to drive for a living, and train them to drive and work how you want them to for crying out loud! I don't understand why it has to be drive and never see your family or starve your family by working for peanuts for years before you can get a good job in the trucking industy?

 

That's how most local/LTL companies are.

Well that's the trucking business,gott'a start with a crappy company AKA Starter company and get your 6-12 months OTR experience,and hope that you can move on to a much better company.

 

once you obtain your cdl,you have to go to the driver mills,Swift,Hunt,ect. to gain the required exp. Sad but true in most cases.

 

no offense T but think about it.Would you be safe P&D in any city without practical exp. on backing and overall handling the equipmnt ???

 

Everyone has to start from scratch driving and maneuvering large vehicles - be it driving farm equipment while growing up, military vehicles in the service, passenger buses, tractor-trailer rigs at a driving school, etc. Some people take to this sort of thing better than others do. I think someone without OTR experience could handle local work right out of the gate or at least within a very short time, if they were generally capable and unfazed by maneuvering large vehicles in traffic.

 

Man I can't do otr (family's sake) so I have no other choice but take a chance, apply with an ltl and hope for the best. Some of these other guys I've talked with that drive for Fedex or Reddaway etc. say you don't need the otr experience just driving school to get hired on. So thats what I'll pray for anyways.

 

Desert T, Conway, Fedex, maybe UPS, have apprentice programs. They will train you to drive the way they want you to. It might be something for you to look into.

 

The guy that trained me in at Saia had started with a small local ltl company, he went from yard jockey/dock worker to driver (at the small company), to driver at saia, buy the time he went to saia he already had years of local driving exp., but he never did OTR...

You need a year experience for Saia. I live in the Twin Cities, I dont know what city you live in, but I would suggest a local company that does some crossdocking. Or, I believe yellow/roadway, may allow you to work on the dock and be a fill in driver until you gain enough experience to be a full time driver...

You can make serious money at a company like Saia, depends on how much you're willing to work! Time and a half after 47.5 (thats 45 + 2.5 for lunch breaks that you won't take). You'll probably work at least 55 hours a week, and your start time varies from day to day. You don't know what your start time will be tommorow until the end of the day. They should call the position "hand-unloader" 'cause you do way more of that, than you do driving.

I didn't like it much, but I did like the money!

 

They do but they don't always offer it.Its almost like a cat and mouse game you gott'a catch it and then apply and hope you get the call.