New student driver

It seems like a lot of people think graduating from truck driving school is a golden ticket to 1000 bucks a week. A lot of companies in my area refuse to hire anyone who went through a truck driving school because of the piss poor quality of the majority of them. I did not go to school to get a cdl and I have five years of experience and barely make 1000 a week. 500 clams is pretty good for a rookie.

 

Maybe he should go to an arm wrestling competition.

 

Get your hazmat/tanker, TWIC, passport & 12 months from now you can "take home" $1000.00 per week & within 24-36 months can make around $65K or more annually. Stay witn Central Refrigerated for now, it's a good company & while there be making your plans and researching tanker/hazmat companies & you will do fine. Just a few to look at & there are more:
Quality Distribution
Superior Carriers
A&R Transport

 

I would not do flatbed as a rookie, especially with winter coming.

I think flatbed is a bit more work to learn, and I haven't learned flatbed yet, but there are a lot of tricks to learning how to strap, tarp, chain things down. etc. And I think right now as a rookie driver, you should concentrate on learning how to drive as a professional driver needs to drive to be safe and efficient, and also learn the ropes as far as backing, truckstops, learning the nature of the job in general.

Just plug along, and the better you get at your job, and working with your dispatcher, you will be trusted (hopefully) with better loads. That is what happened with me. After 2-3 months on the job, my dispatcher was impressed with my work ethic and how I was over the phone, and she gave me what I had been waiting for - a load to Arizona. I was ecstatic. I also got a load to Los Angeles, which I thanked her for, and respectfully asked her to not send me there again .

One thing that I have been thinking about, is recently I have gotten it into my head that maybe not all new drivers are actually gung-ho and trying to be a good employee like I was. I really wonder how many new drivers are just a major pain in the rear to deal with over the phone? I wish there was a forum for dispatchers to talk about their job - but in reality, probably 99% of dispatchers have no time for forums like this, when their company is making them take on 40-50 trucks. Talk about babysitting!!! I always try to be pleasant to my dispatcher over the phone. Always say thank you, don't get into pointless conversations with them, they don't have the time, maybe a funny comment here and there, and do NOT bugger them with complaints that they can do nothing about. DON'T COMPLAIN unless it's something you really need to have taken care of, and even then, don't complain, just bring the issue up politely, quickly and professionally. Be someone that your dispatcher can work with and trust. THAT IS THE KEY - TRUST - and then you will get better and better loads - not all the time, but more likely than not, you will get back what you put in. The drivers that complain all the time are the ones getting 1500 miles a week, and then they REALLY have things to complain about!

But yeah, I wouldn't go into flatbed right now. AND DON'T CHANGE COMPANIES when you just started with one. I took a look at an application sent to me by an applicant, for my boss a couple of months ago to fill one of his empty trucks, as he isn't all that good with English language, and the driver had 7 different jobs in the last 3 years, and had never been at one trucking company more than 3-4 months at a time. And a couple of those jobs in between were NOT driving jobs. DON'T BE THAT GUY, he was obviously not hired.

Anyways, time for bed, hope you can make use of my advice.

 

13 years ago when I was fresh out of truck driving school the economy was booming and it WAS a ticket to $1,000+ paychecks right out of school to the newbies that got it and caught on quickly how to truck. The past 4 or 5 years since the housing/banking crash of '08 even senior experienced drivers at the top of the payscale are lucky if they GROSS a $1,000 a week and that is before taxes come out. Trucking used to be a decent, easy profession for any company driver to clear a grand a week if they worked hard. It hasn't been that way now for many years.

 

Maverick is a good company.

 

If you are thinking of going flatbed I feel that Maverick is a good company. Better chance of making more flatbed when new. But as stated, flatbed + new + winter = hours of learning in the cold. You don't know cold until you spend an hour folding frozen tarps and rolling (or should say folding) frozen straps. Big warm gloves and flatbed tasks don't go well together.