US Xpress...my experience so far

Quick background...I quit my job several months ago with plans to stay in the same line of work (auto sales), but my friend convinced me to go to CDL school with him and try out a new career. Well, we took a 320-hour school based in central Florida (Flagler Tech Institute) and I can't say enough good things about the school. There were only 5 students in our class and we had 3 instructors most of the time. Needless to say, we all got a ton of seat time and practice during the school. During the class we applied to US Xpress and Schneider for a job as team OTR drivers. Schneider turned us down because of where we live but USX gave us a pre-hire. We attended orientation at Tunnel Hill and after 3 days we both got hired on for training.

I competed my 120 hours BTW training in 4 weeks (would have been 3-1/2 but our truck broke down once) and my friend/co-driver finished one day before me, so we met back up in Tunnel Hill to do our upgrade test which we both passed (they make that part fairly easy, they want you to pass). After one day in the hotel waiting on a truck they assigned us a brand new 2013 International Prostar+ with 10-speed standard transmission (both of our trainers had automatics which we didn't like so we were happy to see a stick in there). After a few hours getting it prepped we took our first assignment and were up and running.

As a ready-made team, we definitely feel like they are catering to us quite well, we have been on the road for exactly 32 days and have logged 25,817 miles so far, with one week being 7,192 miles in itself. We have never waited longer that a couple hours for a load assignment, and we take everything that they send us, even re-powers and tractor recoveries. We took a load to Laredo on a Friday night and when we arrived there were a dozen drivers there waiting on a load, but we got assigned a load to New Jersey within 15 minutes of dropping there. All of our expenses have been reimbursed and they are paying us back for the school (it was only $2,800) at $150/month PLUS we qualified for the $5,000 team sign-on bonus which will come in 3 installments Plus Hazmat reimbursement plus $.48/mile after our first 8 weeks at $.32/mile.

The only complaint I have so far is that it is sometimes difficult to get a hold of a FM, I hate waiting for an answer when I need to get rolling right away, but I understand that they are busy and sometimes I am going to have to wait. There's a lot more to my story so feel free to ask any questions you have and I'll get to them as soon as I can, I just got a laptop and internet in the truck after not having it for 8 weeks so I'll try to get on here when I can.

Be safe out there...

 

Thanks for the advice, we already got the Coleman cooler and we're just waiting to get back to a terminal to have our inverter installed so we can get a cooker/microwave of some sort.

 

Tunnel Hill is in North Georgia, about 30 miles south of Chattanooga. They provide you with a bus ticket to orientation or you can drive/fly if you like and they'll reimburse you up to the price of the ticket.
As far as the solo pay, they have a "sliding pay scale" which means the shorter the run, the more CPM you get, and the longer runs pay less CPM. If I remember correctly the lowest is $.26/mile which in my opinion isn't very good. Teams is the way to go with USX at least. The week we did 7,192 miles would have been $1726.08 each before taxes....