Schneider National Carriers - Green Bay, Wi.

If you both think you can team up together and make a go of it, then do it.

Schneider would welcome the opportunity to allow this to become a reality, however the two of you would probably have to train separately and then get together once you have completed training, which would be estimated to take about ninety days or so.

Contact their recruiting department for the details on all of this...

 

If you REALLY want to drive trucks, i would NEVER suggest Schneider. My wife and I teamed and you think you are going to make money when you do the numbers, but when you look at the first couple of checks, there then lies reality. I was laughing when I was in training because they said that you could not work more than 70 hours a week. I was thinking I've NEVER worked more than 55 hours. Well you do good not to go over 70 hours. You get a good 3 hours of sleep if you’re lucky. We stayed with the company 3 months before deciding that our lives were much better without the job. If you have to drive a truck, you should do 3 things. Do solo. You will get more rest and get more time to make runs. Believe me you will be happy not to have to drive 24 hours a day. Plus remember, you are putting your life in this person’s hands! Secondly, stay only one year, then move to local driving. In general you will make more money per hour. We divided the money up we were getting with our hours and we were making 7.50 cents an hour. If you do local, even in my small crappy town, you can make 17 or more an hour. Even if you are out 12 hours a day, believe me, you are working less than you would out on the truck. And finally, never go with Schneider. You can find someone else. I can’t tell you a better company, all I can say is stay away from them. All jobs lie to you but this one lying to you will get you and others killed. We tried telling them once that we couldn’t make a run because we got no sleep in 22 hours and they didn’t care. Said we should have slept in shifts. Easy to say but when your rig is in the shop for 8 hours, you can’t sleep in it. They lied from day one till we finally quit. They still try and get their money everyday but recently have started sending us more info on trying to get our job back! That’s how desperate they are. My stepdad drove for Walmart for 15 years and said it was the best company he had driven for. I would tell him what happened with Schneider and he said that they are not a good company. Everyone I have talked with since has said the same thing. So there may be worse companies, but you don’t have to drive for them either! Hope I have steered at least one person toward a better career!!

 

I'm having a lot of trouble with your post. Schneider doesn't push people to violate the rules. Their safety numbers refute that assertion cold.

Not many people are cut out for team driving, and I'm one of them. There is no way under heaven I would consider teaming with another driver, even if it were my wife.

Maybe you had a rogue dispatcher, or maybe you and your wife were not good time managers, but Schneider doesn't push drivers to exceed the hours of service limits.

 

From what I've seen at Schneider terminals, I wouldn't drive for Schneider. Last time I drove by one, there were tens of empty, clean-out trucks sitting around waiting on their next drivers. May have been more than a hundred.

There are good reasons those trucks have been cleaned out and good reasons their drivers are long gone. I don't know what those reasons are. I just know they're there, meaning I won't be going to work for Cinderella's pumpkin anytime soon.

 

While I am sure that Schneider suffers it's share of turnover, sitting trucks doesn't always mean that they are empty. Drivers may be home, taking time off as a part of the reason why there are so many trucks sitting in a yard. You may be seeing new trucks that are waiting to be assigned as drivers bring though the terminal, those that are slated to be traded in.

I don't see counting trucks that appear to be empty as a reliable means in which to size up a company's worthiness as an employer.

 

You're right, TT. Trucks could be sitting on the lot waiting to be serviced, waiting to be traded in, waiting for drivers to return that have gone home for a break, and so forth. One would have to actually go up to these rigs and look inside them to be able to tell their status. At at least one of my ex-outfits, there was a special place reserved for the cleaned-outs. I assume a big company like Schneider would have one of these.

The process of deciding if a company is good and its orientation is worth going to starts way before that orientation. The "pre-orientation" phase has three parts: help-wanted-ad checking, terminal lot checking, and new-hire head-counting.

No, one can't rely solely on a company's lot to tell him if that company is worth checking into further, but it is a piece of the puzzle. If one relies only on the lot check, he'd miss out on a good company like Crete. I know some of Crete's terminals have several dozen rigs parked at any one time on their lots. Some are empty cleaned-outs. Most are there because of other reasons mentioned.

But I wouldn't rely on only the lot check. Before saying "yes" to a company's orientation, I'd perform the other two checks as well. First I'd watch the help-wanted ads for a week or two. If a company I'm interested in advertises daily, that company would be marked off as a bad apple. Nope, you won't see me working for a company that advertises every day of the world in the help-wanted ads.

If that company passes the help-wanted-ads test, I'd then do the drive-by to look at the lot, count the empty trucks, and count how many new hires are going to that week's orientation. If these two things looked good, THEN I'd go to that company's orientation.

And those two things probably WOULD look good, as a company that advertises a lot in newspapers will have lots of new hires going in each week and lots of empty trucks sitting around, and vice-versa. In other words, the newspaper help-wanted ads would predict lots of empty-cleaned outs and lots of new hires going in, meaning I wouldn't be looking at these cleaned-outs anyway. I'd have scratched the company off before hopping in my car to do the drive-by.

Of course, a company could pass all three "pre-orientation" checks and I'd still not be working for them after the orientation. I may not be hired because of my work history, or I may bolt while in orientation because the company sucks for some unknown reason. But I probably wouldn't be bolting. A company that I'd walk away from in orientation would fail my pre-orientation checks most likely anyway, so I'd never be at that orientation in the first place. And I'd make sure the company would hire me on given my work history before even going to the orientation.

 

If you did a drive by to any one of my company's terminal you would see anywhere between 500 to 1000 truck's parked at any one time.

My company also hires thru news paper ads, and they start a new orientation every Monday. The class size depends on how many people apply I have seen as many as 19 and I have seen as few as 1 person for oreintation.

The only way to figure out if the company is right for you or not is to talk to some of the driver's, and a good place to start is right here.

If a driver post here this is a bad company and you are still interested in them, then read why this poster think's it is a bad company. Most time if the company has a good record in here and someone comes in here and say's don't work for that company then, it was probably a minor thing the driver got upset about and quit them. Now they come in here to vent about it as a sort of revenge, retaliation (Trying) to get driver's not to go over there.

OTRsux only worked for Schneider for 3 months

this is not someone I would listen to or believe anything about a job I was interested in. I am taking from OTRsux's post they went to school thru Schneider and went to work for them there after

I am guessing they got p*ss*d off about something and just quit.

Schneider has to many people working for them that are happy to be pushing them to violate the rules.

I agree with TT not to many people are cut out for team driving.

 

I try to form a strong (educated?) initial opinion about a company I might be interested in while back home in my laz-E-boy. One has to make a quick and efficient call when deciding which trucking companies are worth considering further. Instead of picking those companies' names out of a hat or picking them by throwing darts at their names, drivers can use common sense and clues those companies leave behind that tell us what they're like before deciding to commit to an orientation.

You're right about asking drivers, 168. After I get up from reading the help-wanted-ads, I'd then go do the drive-by. After that, I'd go ask a company's drivers about these companies to add them to the puzzle as well. If one asks enough drivers, he can form an idea in his mind if a company is good. Emphasis on "enough".

You hit it on the head. A lot of "opinions" that show up on websites are indeed the ventings of drivers who feel like they've been wronged by the companies they've recently left, sure. Like you, I'm skeptical about those opinions. I'd go as far as to say in probably two out of three of those cases, those drivers have been at least partially at fault. And one of those drivers out of the two is probably mostly to blame if not solely to blame.

Yeap, judging how fiercely companies compete for drivers' services today, drivers shown the door have probably contributed to their own downfalls at least a little. For some, it was totally their own #### faults.
For this reason, asking "enough" drivers about a company is critical if you want to form a valid opinion. And most drivers-to-be should want to do exactly that.

Where did you get that avatar, 168? It's pretty cool. You're in a union someplace?

 

Thanks my avatar is my union's logo. IAM stands for The International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers.

You can read about them here> http://www.goiam.org/

 

Yeah i was mad, not at the job, at the company. But i didnt just quit. I gave up a lot to go drive trucks. Given it to do all over again i prob would not have teamed. Maybe i wasnt cut out for teaming, or maybe it was the company. But if you want to find out about a company, talk to the drivers. Not someone that looks up statistics. Not someone that "thinks its a good place" because of numbers. Hell i just got on here to give my opinion, not to be told i'm not cut out for something. I gave up my house, my job, and those 6 months of my life to try and do it. Could have done better with another company possibly, but i went through more during training that a lot of people do their first years. I did spring training with them after i just started and got a higher score than some moron that had been there over 5 years. The trainer said he even scared him. I know i was scared but i was thinking maybe some people just drive like that. Is that to say that all the drivers are bad, course not. But to tell ME THAT I am not cut out for something, well is just as ignorant as me saying that your a typical backwoods truckdriver. I only know what i and 20 people i talked to went through. If you look at the posts, there are quite a few people that feel the same, and they didn't quit, they just were unhappy. I outlasted several people in our class because me and my wife had no place to go back to, and even though we were lied to the first day, we didn't just get po'd and leave. So think what you want, take my advice or don't, but dont talk #### about people you know absolutely nothing about. Delete this postingeven if you want, i'm not sitting around letting some yahoo talk bad about me or my wife!!!!!!