Can You Please Recommend a "GOOD" Company for a CDL-A Grad.

To get your start, out of your area, I would say Millis or Crete. I know for a fact that Crete has an excellent training program (I went through it) and I'm pretty sure Millis has well above par training program as well. Crete requires 3 years of experience to be a trainer, so you won't get "trained" by a 6-month rookie. They also strictly forbid 24-hour team driving in the training period. For the first at least 4 weeks, the trainer will be in the seat next to you the whole time you're driving. After that, there is the option to run "super solo" in which the truck can run 19 hours per 24 hours. My trainer didn't do much of that. Only a couple loads that were real tight.

 

I didn't mention Millis because it sounds like he recently graduated CDL school and if I recall Millis makes you go through their school only and not a different one.

 

crete will test you for sleep apnea... just sayin'

 

Which means you'll get better quality sleep and feel more rested afterwards if you get it treated... just sayin'

 

TMC runs regional and will get you home every weekend, down side is parking the truck in Chicago sucks and can be expensive. One thing you might want to look into is Schneider's intermodal out of Chicago. They call it regional but it's basically a 350 mile radius around the city, from what I understand a lot of those guys are home 3 or 4 nights a week because I believe you really only pick up in the rail yards in the city. Not positive on all the details but the pay seems pretty comparable to first year OTR and regional pay. I believe they have a training center in the city now for that particular job also.

 

If your BMI is higher than they want to see.

 

I bet you could get a dedicated gig with Roehl in your area. They're pretty decent; probably better than most of the larger companies.