Team Driving Questions

In Chicago the CDL schools cost around $2,000 and you can be done within a month. The school my wife and I went to had lots of people from different states because it was cheaper than the schools in their home state. The turnover at trucking companies is 100%+ so if the company you choose isn't a good fit for you then this way you have the freedom of switching unlike going with a company sponsored CDL school. If your not happy at that company then life will be miserable till you pay them back.

 

No resume needed. All trucking companies will do a background check. Verify employment for the last 10 years. List all places you worked. Do not leave any job out. They will find out if you did.

If at all possible pay for your own schooling. No commitment to one company. Takes about 4 weeks.

Chinatown will be here soon with some great advice.

 

Prime is OK, but about the hardest company to be hired by plus from what's been posted recently there's a long waiting list for female trainers.

The easiest to be hired by is Earl Henderson Trucking; they cut through the BS and get right down to business. This company will provide transportation to their school in Troy, IL plus hotel room and 3 meals a day. Three weeks of local driving/classroom work, then hit the interstate running coast-to-coast.

After Earl Henderson would be Celadon or KLLM; these companies provide the same deal as Earl Henderson.

All trucking company schools will require "original birth certificate" & "original social security card" not laminated.

 

Here is my opinion if you do this for 10 years and live on one check while investing in the other you will have a really nice nest egg. If you are not burn’t out after this time you can buy your own truck pay cash for it and run when and where you want or even start some kind of business that interest you. All this is based on the assumption that one of you does not kill the other.

 

Generally the contact information for the business is all they need. Recruiting will ask for tax records to verify employment at a shuttered business, self-employment, etc., or when a business is unresponsive to their requests for information.

I'm assuming you wish to run on the company side, and I'd recommend this for a couple of years minimum before even thinking about the possibility of leasing a truck. It's been a number of years since I ran company, but at the time drivers received regular pay raises every 125,000 miles. That was certainly the case for solo drivers, but I can't be totally sure of this in the case of a team.

This is a link to the last discussion I saw that included base team rates on the company side. Mileage based raises would be added to the 42-cpm split that was mentioned in this post...

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...-about-prime-inc-post3261080.html#post3261080

(Go back one page to pg 353, and you'll see the discussion. For some reason the link above leads you to the next page in the thread.)​

During the busy portion of the year, you could certainly expect an average of something like 5,000 to 6,000 miles per week as a team. After the holidays, until spring produce starts coming in during March, that average would drop to 4,000 to 6,000 miles per week.

Per diem is how the IRS accounts for travel expneses instead of having to deal with a couple of tons of receipts every year. Basically they allow a deduction based on $59.00 per day for each day that you are away from your tax home. One can deduct 80% of the total figure from your gross income when calculating your AGI. Many carriers (including Prime) have an IRS approved per diem plan that allows the carrier to provide part of your income tax-free as per diem payments against the total deduction mentioned above. Prime provides an 8-cpm shield on each company driver's pay against that total. For example if in your part of the team split you received a total of 21-cpm (half of 42-cpm) then 8-cpm (of that total of 21-cpm) would be shielded from taxation as a per diem payment, and the balance (13-cpm) would have the normal payroll tax applied to it. There are plenty of discussions about the pros and cons of this on the forum. Prime does not however take a cut of your per-diem payment for administrative purposes as many carriers do... this is a good thing.

I'm sure Chinatown will have some suggestions, one of which I know I will address. However, keep in mind that tuition reimbursement varies quite a bit. At Prime if you stay for one year past being qualified as an A-seat, your tuition will be 100% forgiven, and there are no payments for tuition taken from your paycheck. Many other carriers require that you pay something of the total.​

You'll probably get better answers by posting in one of the threads in the Prime forum.

The wait for a female trainer is probably not any different than it has been - long. However, Rob Low removed his objection to having male instructors and trainers teach female trainees. At this time if a female has no objections to running with a male trainer, that can be accommodated.

Currently, Earl Henderson drivers pull exclusively Prime freight on Prime trailers... even if it says "Earl Henderson" on the side of the trailer. Prime now owns those trailers, and the sooner they junk that crap the happier I'll be. From my discussions with Henderson drivers, they are being dispatched by Henderson employees under Prime rules. Their solo drivers are paid significantly less than what a solo driver in Prime's reefer division receives. I see no advantage to starting off with Earl Henderson, except if you enjoy being paid less than everyone else for doing the same job.

BTW... every last Henderson driver I've talked to is POd about being on an elog system. The good ol' days of Henderson allowing their troops to run multiple paper log books evidently are over.

For the sake of KLLM and Celadon drivers, I should hope not!

 

I was out of work for seven years before coming to trucking school because my dad was terminally ill and my mom is physically handicapped. During this time I occasionally attended college and worked odd jobs for cash. As long as you can account for the past ten years' activity, you should be alright. In your cases, you really only need to worry about the four or five years since high school. They aren't looking for perfection...they just want to know if they can trust you with $200,000 worth of equipment and half a million dollars' worth of freight.

If it is any help, I chose Celadon over KLLM. KLLM was much closer to home, but my brother is an experienced driver who came over with me and he did not want to pull reefers. Celadon does not have a formal repayment requirement, but they do want you to drive for them on a reduced rate contract coming out of school.

Celadon has a school in Texas (I believe it is in Laredo) for residents of Texas only. This would eliminate any complications that can arise from going to school in a different state (as an example, Illinois does not accept any out of state licenses and requires everyone to retest). I know that Indiana residents qualified for additional financial and work benefits here at the Celadon school in Indianapolis, so it is possible that you could benefit from staying instate.

 

So you get paid less... that sucks.

Prime solves the Illinois restrictions by having the new CDL holder return with his trainer within 30 days for the restest. They use the trainers truck, and since it's such a short period from the initial tests and road test, it isn't a problem to pass... from what I've heard.

 

My hubby and I attended a technical college and completed a two month truck driving course. They offered a low cost and we liked the extra training time we had to practice backing.