Talk to me about why...

Best of luck to you.

 

I currently drive for them. I like it here, they treat me respectfully, and they take safety serious. Their bennies are good and reasonable. Most of their equipment is decent, although the green horns get the oldest trucks at first. My big complaint is the ambient temp sensor, the trucks won't idle more than 3 minutes between +20F & +80F. This is their way to save fuel. No APU, but All trucks have a bunk heater and some have bunk a/c too. Runs on batteries. We all use the Qualcomm MCP 200 w/ elogs. Your allowed up to a 180 watt inverter, although many drs use 300. Freightliner trucks are most of the fleet. Hope this info helps,

 

Here is an excellent account of someone driving for Schneider as a company driver.
I have no personal info on Schneider but this drivers story seems to be honest and filled with his take on things good and bad-he now is in their lease program.
My take on his story is that they treated him alright but he didnt make a ton of money -you be the judge.
[h=1]Day by day adventures of a new solo OTR driver[/h]

 

I started driving for the Great Pumpkin Jan2013 in a 2004 Century that had close to 800,000 rookie miles on it, and it looked like it too, but it could still pass DOT inspection, might have been they were afraid to get to close for fear of pieces falling off though. Never seen a truck with so many sheet metal screws holding it together

 

Some drivers get into decent Cascadias right from the start, others get a total beater. The fleet is almost entirely Freightliner Cascadias, a few internationals and KW's mixed in but 95% chance you'll get a Freightliner. Some new drivers go through several beaters in the first few months because they're just flat worn out. Mine had 800k of new driver abuse on it and somehow it lasted me a full 6 months. I never complained or said a word about it and put up with some finicky issues that it had and at the end of 6 months they put me into a really nice, super clean Cascadia. If you can put up with it for 3-6 months, by the time you've shown them you treat equipment well they'll put you in a nice truck.

Downsides to the trucks are the ambient temperature sensor, no APU and they don't allow large inverters (no microwave, etc.) Max pedal on the floor speed is 63-64 MPH but the Qualcomm will beep at you and they do track overspeed and will come down on you if you run over 60MPH too much. Max cruise speed is 60-61. So pretty much the only time you are gonna run faster is when (trying) to pass someone.

You get used to it after a while. I hated it as a company driver but now I have an ungoverned truck I can absolutely haul *** in, but I still drive 60MPH. I got passed by 2 company drivers today.

I think you should definitely give SNI some consideration. Most western drivers seem to do pretty darn well, good miles make up for a little lower CPM than some other companies, and chances are they won't send you straight to the Northeast every time you come away from home, unlike the east coast drivers.

They are extreme sticklers when it comes to safety. This is nice at some times and a pain at others. No ramp parking, no u-turns, no tolerance for high-hooking trailers, etc. All in all I think they are a very good company for a new driver to start out with, and you have options which are really nice. If you end up not liking OTR stick it out for 6 months or so and then you could look at a dedicated account that would get you more regular miles, routes, and hometime.