female needing advice on where to start

Go to Stevens Transport out of Dallas. They have good equipment and about the best driver training program out there. They'll put you through school and training, but you sign a 2 year contract with them. If you quit them before your 2 years is up, they'll hit you up for $8,000. I know it's steep, but their training is worth it. A lot of these companies will put you through school, throw you with a trainer (that just finished school themselves) for 2 weeks, and then send you on your own. Stevens puts you through 3 weeks of school, then another 5 weeks with a same sex trainer, and then 3 weeks as a trainee team. After that, they will put you in the graduation fleet for 3 months to ease you into being on your own.

Just to be clear: I don't drive for Stevens, and I don't like them as a company, but I did go through their training, and it has helped me to get to better places.

 

Contact Con-way Truckload. They have the best overall company paid training scenario. Might want to PM Roadrealtor. He went thru their program and is currently a trainer for them. Last I checked, you scrounge up about $2,200 and everything else is wiped clean after you deliver your first load solo. Their pay scale is MUCH higher that most OTR training companies. Roehl runs a not too far off 2nd.

 

Interesting post there because, according to Conway's website, it is less than half the length of Stevens training (80hrs+160hrs for all training at Conway whereas Stevens is 145hrs classroom time alone,) and you have to work on their loading dock to get paid while in training. I will give you that starting pay is better than some, but not MUCH higher than most. For example: Crete offers $500/wk while in training and $.34-$.35/mile after that.

I'm not trying to start a "who has the best driving school" debate, but there are a few companies out there who do it right (Roehl being one of them,) and plenty who just want to put warm bodies in the seat.

 

Don't feel bad... it took me from a year ago July...when the WIA lady said oh, we have no more money so you don't need to stay in the program....
to this June, when I finally got funding for cdl school.
Seems the WIA lady is who is no longer there took me off the program, which I'd already been on for over a year... (jobs are pretty scarce in these parts). I had to start over with a different WIA lady ( who's pretty good, knows what she's doing) and do the job searches and stuff... I so know how it totally sucks chicken's teeth.

But I got a call Wed from the school director to call Marten Transport. Ended up getting hired and the trainer will pick me up Mon. Ok, that'll work. Seems like a decent company, the complaints I've been reading are mostly just the usual..." I can't get home every weekend" and my "dispatcher is mean to me". Doh, it's trucking!
Guess those guys never taught school where the parents think their children do no wrong, but the teacher is always wrong, and the principal sticks up for the parents.... cause the teachers are supposed to know better.... kinda like trucking....

On Oct 1, I would have been out of work for 2 years. I start Sept 30. Off to another adventure.
Mary

 

Good Morning from Oregon,
I'm going to keep this short, and if you have any questions, you can PM me. My bride and I are just retired (3 days ago!) out of trucking. We were rock-solid professionals who, like you, trucking was a 'life option' and not the end of the line in employment choices. Most of what I say is a WARNING, as you will find out after about 3 days of this OTR stuff, you too will be asking yourself "What the heck did I ever want to do this for???"
We started out with Interstate Dist Co (Drive4us.com) out of Tacoma WA 14 years ago (after a 2 month JC College truck driver course). 5 years of teaming as company drivers and we hit the national rate for burn-out, physically and mentally. The last 4 years, we were driving 24k miles and more every 28 days, making a ton of money but existing in such a state of fatigue that we don't remember any of it now. (2 driving incomes into 1 bank account made it seem to us worth it at the time...) We have the old log-books and tax returns to prove everything I say... After 5 years, we bought our own (used) truck, and after that we bought 2 brand-new Volvo trucks, deluxe to the max.
After that 5 yrs, we ended up getting our government secret clearances (already had our haz-mat) and hauling explosives for the military. $40,000 months were realized, but on average we made about $6,000 ~$7,000 a week for the past 9 years, hence our early retirement at not quite 60yrs old. Point being? It CAN be done, but its rare if you don't follow a routine of severe discipline and have a time table, or rather a 'vision' of where you want to be in X amount of time...
It starts with financial discipline, and ends with financial discipline. 99.999% of truck drivers are broke. The same percentage are treated poorly by every company out there. A driver, unless you work for a small, independent company that knows the names of your kids and where they live and asks if you want to see them on this particular run is going to treat you like cannon fodder. At your 5 year mark when you would usually get higher pay, better benefits, etc, they find ways to get rid of you because you are hurting their bottom line. As good as Interstate Dist Co was, this is exactly what happened to us. And we were their top team, making them more than anyone else in the company, but the industry is a pretty sucky business and is what I call a Bubba Industry. Ask any driver out there and they will agree that their 'Managers' seem to be VERY out of touch with the life of a driver.
We were quite happy with Interstate, because we never expected anything from them. We simply did our job and never complained. We were asked many times, like your own line of questions, is Interstate the best company out there? It was the wrong question. The question is, was Interstate as bad as all the others? No. Interstate, as good as it was back then, was better than all the rest, yes, but only because it didn't suck as bad as the rest of them all! You'll see this as you get experience. They ALL suck... It is what the trucking industry is all about, though there are a few, but very few exceptions...
In short, choose as good as you can, but don't keep 'jumping', an industry term for quitting time and time again while looking for the pie-in-the-sky great company. They don't exist. And jumping is both very bad financially, and bad for your chances to get hired at all after too many times. (We knew a team that quit 7 companies in 1 year before they settled in with Interstate, and I think they were still there when we left.) At least they were smart enough to quit the really bad ones, though NOT smart enough to investigate and research those same companies before signing on. There is a HUGE lesson in what I just said...

Not to be bummed. The answer lies in getting your 1 year OTR experience and then buying your own brand new truck, meaning, use that 1st (or more likely 2 or 3) year to save a healthy down payment, even if it means living out of your truck and making some pretty extreme personal sacrifices. The bigger your down, the less the monthly, and the less the truck's monthly payment, the more likely you are to survive the slow times, as they ALWAYS come, every year... Secondly, when you buy a new truck, with a healthy down like we did, your CPA will show you that the federal self-employed 'Quarterlies' will just about equal the write off for the truck, so in essence, you make your truck payments with what you USE to pay to the feds in taxes. Its a wash that way... Almost sounds like I know what I am talking about, eh? (-:
You have to team to haul classified (guarded 24/7 by one of you), but you can haul 'commercial' explosives and RAM (radio active material) as a solo. The mining industry uses tons of explosives everyday, as well as the munitions manufacturers. There is god work in that arena. It still beats the heck out of general freight, by far. But beware: There are good and there are bad explosive and RAM companies out there also. We drove for R+R out of Duenweg (Joplin) MO, even though we live in Oregon. They are good paying, professionally run, and above all for us at the time, family orientated good folks at the helm. When the grand kids came along, they bent over backwards to make sure we had schedules and time off to enjoy Life, just the opposite of being treated like 99.999% driver cannon fodder.
If I was advising you, which I am not, I would say "Stay Away From Trucking." Its not EVEN what you think it is. I like to say it this way: Experience is the best teacher, only it doesn't have to be YOUR experience. Wisdom will dictate the rest of your actions in the matter...
We are by far not disgruntled ex-truck drivers, but rather see the past 14 years as a way we made a ton of money, again, it being 2 driver incomes (ie: team) into 1 bank account. Solo's can make good money, in the $50k a year, but it takes the perfect company and the 'D' word, discipline...
We started out living in a single-wide mobile home in a park and having to borrow the money to go out over the road before we got our first check. The word 'Poor' to us would have been a step up in life! We now live on our very own, 100% debt free 10 acre ranch with a 2 acre pond full of bass and 20lb channel cats, brand new tractor and paid for cars, and so on. It was bare dirt, not even a water well when we bought it, and we were able to develop it the way we liked. As they say, we went from 'trailer trash to trucker trash' and we are doing great! (-: But it was NOT easy, and I would advise doing a different, though longer route to improving your lot than driving a truck. (At, say, 36 cents a mile average, it works out to about $20 an hour, but then you are at the mercy of restaurants, as most the big companies won't let you set yourself up to cook (real food) in your truck, and the occasional lay-over that rips your budget all to pieces, long story short. In other words, we know a LOT of perpetually broke truck drivers, company and O/O's, because, and again, it takes a LOT of discipline and per-employment planning to keep the money in YOUR pocket.
So, there ya have it. I get a lot of 'likes' in what I write, but when I present the actual "how you do it" in my PM's, they all fall by the way-side. I jokingly say that I would write a book on all of this to try and help the driver community, but only truck drivers would buy it and they don't know how to read! ha* I jest, but you get my point. It seems that NO ONE wants to exercise discipline, much less sacrifice a year or 3 to attain the real goals that are possible in the trucking industry.
Lastly, if you do go with a 'Training Company', never paint yourself into a corner. Your driver trainer will set the stage for your future. Most driver trainers are in it for the extra money per mile and the extra miles they can run, because after you get the hang of it, they can run you as a team now. On the other hand, we spent every night of the 3 weeks in training in a motel room, and home every weekend. Our trainer had the heart of a teacher and we learned a LOT, and were well prepared for the Big Road when once we were turned lose with our own 70mph walk-in closet on wheels. Ah! The good ol' days...
On the other hand? Being a girl we have heard the stories about the driver trainer bringing beer into the cab (a BIG legal no-no!) and 'hitting on' the trainee so bad that they had to get out of the truck right there. Problem? Yeah... The company will usually elave you to your own ways to get back home, or in other words, you will be stranded and the driver trainer doesn't even get a slap on the hand because its your word, who is worth nothing to the company at this point, against his.
Lesson? Get a solid Female trainer who isn't on a ton of mood altering drugs and a boat load of personal problems that are going to interfere with your training. Get a Professional to train you and settle for nothing less, OR? You will live to regret it...
Let me know if you have questions.

 

Jeez, I would hate to see what LONG looks like!

 

SMC, I am finishing CDL school next week and then I have settled on Crete because they have a terminal that does orientation in the Dallas area. First, about school...you can't find good ones that don't charge $6000 and will finance the amount for a reasonable fee. I am going to Continental Truck School in DeSoto TX and it is $3200, $525 down and then 6 monthly payments. I decided to do it this way instead of signing with a company until I had a chance to talk to the recruiters that visit the school, doing my own research online on sites like this and talking to current drivers in the area. I am very glad I did it this way and later I can apply for reimbursement from my company if I decide to. The school has a van to take you back and forth from the hotel and to Walmart for supplies.

I decided on Crete Carrier for several reasons, I talked to their drivers at the terminal and they were all satisfied, not that life was perfect, that is trucking. Their orientation is 3 days and then I can get on the road with a trainer, first for four weeks with the trainer basically in charge and then for four additional weeks with the trainer being there basically for advice in situations I haven't seen. The pay while training is $500 a week which isn't bad and then when out of training you start at 34 cents a mile. They also own Shaeffer which is refrigerated and Hunt Transportation (not JBHunt) which is flatbed, which means I can switch to either down the road relatively easily if I decide to go flatbedding. Also, they will NOT put you with a male to train...if you don't get along with your trainer they will switch you no questions asked.

Hope all this helps, if you decide to come to TX for school let me know and I will get you in touch with the right people (I don't get anything out of it, promise)

Regards,