ISO New Career

Hi all. Long post, you can jump to the tl;dr at the end if you like.

I had a year of grad school in Geographic Information Sciences under my belt in 2007-2008, but Sallie Mae decided to only give half of the student loan money to the school that had been promised, and I had to either repay half of it right away or not be able to enroll in my final semester of classes. The job market for GIS in the area evaporated and I opted to join my father in law in insurance as an independent agent. My B.A. is in Applied Anthropology and I call myself a "very applied anthropologist" as I work in the senior health insurance market. But most of the sales take place during a 7 or 8 week period every year and much of the rest of my time has been unproductive. I've thought about trying to get a securities license or go the P&C route, but I'm already sick of the financial world and I definitely don't want to get into it deeper. I enjoy the mental challenge, I enjoy helping rescue people on fixed incomes and find solutions to keep them somewhat financially stable as their health deteriorates, but I haven't found a way to make the industry palatable to me.

I've decided to try my hand at being a truck driver. It's something that has crossed my mind before, but this sort of thing isn't exactly in my family's DNA. However, my parents retired to Michigan's UP and I LOVE driving the 16 hours to get up there, and the 16 hours to get back. This last time I got home, about 4 weeks ago, I got up the next day and I found myself thinking "Man I wish I could do that again, that was so much fun." Three days later I was in a training class for one of the senior health care companies I work with and found another agent there holds a CDL with HME and is also an ASE certified mechanic... he's an O/O, he fixes his own truck, and he sells senior health insurance as well as other incidental health and life products as opportunities to help others arise. I really liked that idea.

I've been reading this forum for a couple weeks now. I've got the money for a CDL school in Indy, and I talked with Schneider and they tell me they would be happy to have me on board once I graduate from a school on their recommended list. I chose Schneider partly based on what I read in these forums. I worked for several years in quality control supervision at an auto parts assembly plant and I know how to devise plans that adhere to specific standards, regulations and policies and my graduate work focused a lot on network theory and logistics/routing. I figure it's time to find a way to apply it in the practical world. I can stand anything for at least six months, and if after my required time as an OTR driver I decide it's not for me but I like the industry I can shoot for other positions either with Schneider or with other companies.

As more manufacturing moves back to the US in the next several years, I'm expecting there to be some expansion in the trucking industry even if other areas of the economy continue to hurt. But those areas won't continue hurting. My time in the assembly plant taught me first hand the importance of logistics and trucking to the process-- modern lean manufacturing and JIT standards rely heavily on timely delivery. My impression of trucking has morphed from Jack Burton lumbering about cluelessly in Big Trouble in Little China to a professional and highly skilled trade that, like many others, is going to face a critical labor shortage in a few years due to demographics and the lack of a clear path for prospective future drivers in our educational system. Just like with plumbing or carpentry, they don't seem to talk about this stuff in high school. But a CDL seems far more practical than a BA in many degrees.

I'd like to thank the folks who participate heavily in this forum, including the posters who have detailed their ongoing experiences as new drivers. I will strive to do the same as I progress so that I can share my own experiences with prospective new drivers. I think that forums like this can be a tremendous boon to any industry, as much as specific bad actors within that industry may act vindictively against participants. It exposes the bad and eventually they will find it harder and harder to compete for labor, and the better companies will be able to expand at their expense.

tl;dr: Hi, newbie here, I wanna be a driver when I grow up!

 

Thank you for your feedback. The lady at SAGE told me that I might be a good fit for other companies as well. However she also declined to identify them for me. I went to SAGE for information because the Schneider recruiter highly recommended them. SAGE contracts with Ivy Tech Community College for CDL training but they currently use the space that Schneider used a couple years ago for their own in house CDL training. I'm definitely not adverse to considering other options, but I want to be done with CDL training by early January. She said if I have my application, permit and tuition check into her by 4pm on Friday December 9th she could have me in class the following Monday. 2 weeks in the classroom, a week of driving (one student and one trainer to a truck) and I could be done by the end of the first week in January. She said there are several companies who send recruiters to each class, but she claims she has contacts with many others who don't send reps to classes with only 8-10 students. I'm always skeptical of such claims of job placement prowess.

I'll keep my eyes peeled for other opportunities but I wasn't going to jump into a career change without knowing that at least one decent company would be willing to look at me. After being in insurance, I know there is a HUGE difference between getting a professional license and actually being able to use it and I want to make sure I wind up with a company that can train me properly. I keep hearing that Schneider really emphasizes compliance and safety in their operations, which tells me that a lot of others don't. I want to make sure I pick up good habits that will help keep me trucking for as long as I choose to do so even if I choose to switch employers later on.

Do you have any specific recommendations for a future grad?

 

Thanks for the tips, I've hit their websites and I'm doing a resume tricked out for each one. A couple of them are O/O only and one offers an L/P program.

I'm not in any shape at the moment to do independent financing of a truck and I have read a lot of warnings about L/P. Do those L/P warnings hold true for companies that are only O/O? I'd send you a PM about this but I realized I can't yet, gotta run up the post count first. I appreciate your input on this. Most of the L/P problems seem to come from companies that also have company drivers that they feed loads to first. It does concern me when I see 500K+ miles on a L/P though. Schneider (for comparison's sake) says that they try to keep their fleet (which they themselves lease) for 3-4 years, and at 2500 mile/week (what the recruiter claimed, at least) that is 130K miles a year. A company wouldn't be likely to turn over vehicles unless there is a reason to do so, I would suspect upkeep/maintenance costs start eating into the profits at that point. 3-4 years at that rate would mean 390K-520K miles.

I'm going to delve into the O/O and sales part of the forum to look at what more people have to say, but thank you for your time in pointing out more and perhaps better options.