From Seattle with some newbie questions

DTS is good. Trans-system website; those 3 companies listed hire from DTS. Can run OTR or regional with those. There's also good infor on DTS on that website.

 

3) Per Diem - I used to get paid this, as a portion of the mileage rate. It's untaxed income, but you have to report it as such at the end of the year. I never really understood it well, and never liked it.

If you get your own license by paying for your own school, you'll get lots of companies trying to snatch you up. It will be time to put your BS deflectors on!

 

Hi, JD. Here's my 'standard' advice to newbies.

Be careful of folks here who tout this company or that. For any company you want to consider, you'll probably find a thread in the 'Bad' and the 'Favorite' and the 'DAC'. By all means read all of them and don't fall into the, 'How bad can it really be?' syndrome. Do your own research.

Just because you see trucks going down the road every day does not a happy trucking industry make. Best go out and 'meet and greet' the companies in your area in person armed with the idea that trucking recruiters make military recruiters look like boy scouts or saints. (In-house mis-representatives. IMO.)

If you Google 'Washington trucking companies', you'll come up with lists of most every trucking company in your area. See, for example:http://www.fleetdirectory.com/bylocation/Washington.htm, http://www.quicktransportsolutions....n/washington-state-trucking-usdot-1997279.php

If you're not already familiar with the CSA, start looking up the scores of the companies you're interested in. Study them. You can see ALL the tickets a company got for the last two years for Driver Safety, HOS (Hours of Service), Vehicle Maintenance and more. Valuable comparative info. You want to protect your CDL. See: http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/SMS/Data/Search.

Be especially careful of anyone who PMs you at this point. The megas around here look for newbies like sailing ship goons roaming ports to drag the unwary off to sea. Look at the parking lots of companies you're interested in. Do the cars/pickups look fresh and new like their owners are in good fiscal shape or do they look like they're about to fall apart?

There are 15 million of us truckers and the turnover rate in OTR is over 100%. Less than 10% in LTL. One reason is that drivers leave jobs that don't pay well. Or companies that treated them poorly. There are other options after CDL school other than the gauntlet of mega 'starter' carriers.

And you will probably make more $$, get home every night and avoid truck stop food and levels of cancerous, diesel-polluted air. (Documented. See 'Worksite-Induced Morbidities Among Truck Drivers in the United States'--you can find it at: http://www.uncg.edu/phe/faculty/apostolopoulos/AAOHNJ.pdf)

I hang out at Surfer Joe's thread: OTR Pay Poverty Wages

And at my own: The Gordon Culture--One Driver's Experience with Gordon Trucking

 

Get your CDL, that's the biggest hurdle to cross. If it was easy to get, there wouldn't be so many trainees out of their training companies programs.

Get on with a OTR company that will hire newly licensed CDL holders that is west of the Mississippi this way you have a decent chance of getting home. If your near a truck stop, go pickup some of the job booklets that I call Crap Slingers and look at the ads, most will show you a map of their hiring area and reach out to these companies.

Get yourself 6 months to a year of solid experience then look for a regional company that can get you miles and home on a consistent basis or a good local company that pays an hourly wage and your home daily, like Federal Express.

 

I live in Louisiana, which is very near Texas. Oil field jobs are not as secure there now because most of the Barnett Shale companies are pulling out of Texas.

 

JD Seattle...Call US Xpress in Chattanooga, TN and see what they can offer. I heard they are a good company

 

Lots of free bad advice...

 

And what do you suggest Victor? Where is your advice going to be any better? I think this is a valid question minus any disrespect? Let me add this, you seem to push Gordon a lot? Why