Obtaining Class A CDL

Surprisingly some people think exactly like this. I just haul over flow for one of the larger companies that has quite a few OO's. They will not hire anymore companies to haul the overflow anymore, so we get it all or have for the last several years. One of their oo's told me he tried to even told them he would haul it for the same price they are paying him now, if they would let him haul it under his own authority, which would be a substancial cut in pay.

 

Once in a blue moon, and I mean really blue moon.... we'll get a pallet. Literal one pallet say 9 layers high 5 to layer. 45 boxes of something.

Some of those loads for all of the trouble snorting really big stuff and so forth would have been far better in the trunk of our cars and just gol

 

I hauled a load from Amarillo TX that specified it had to be a dedicated truck to upstate NY.
When I got there to a warehouse to load, the guy brought out some junk used shelving, the stack was just over a foot high and 8 foot long and 18 inches wide. He ask where I wanted it and I ask how much there was of it. That was it. I ask why he didn't put a stamp on it and mail it. The whole mess was probably worth less than 50 bucks.
It was going to their parent warehouse and was left over from when they moved in to this one 2 years before, he said the manager up there had been hounding him wanting him to send it back for 2 years, and by god he was going to pay for it. lol
He also told me he didn't care if I went ahead and loaded out, he just wanted to pay full truck rates on it. lol

Now to the op, there is no reason to go to school, take your test in what you have and upgrade at some point if you want to or need to, unless you just want to spend bucks and time going to school.

 

This is my point exactly! Do the full rig drivers really think they're missing out on loads to hotshotters that fit better on a 30-40 foot flatbed as opposed to they're 53 foot van? Each has a place in the business. Hotshots compete with each other not the truckers, right? The truckers sound bitter that they had to go through and pay big bucks for training that hotshots dont and that they're overhead and startup costs as o.o is 3x that of hotshots. One guy mentioned getting a real job like the big trucks! Why, so YOU have more competition?! Is the goal here to talk as many hotshots out of business as possible so cdl holders can get that rooftop 8x8 ac unit on they're 53 footer.

 

So I make about 90k a year, never went to a school so I never had a bill for that and I never have and never plan on having any start up costs because I work for someone else and plan on doing so until I retire again....where do I fit into your conspiracy theories? How long have you been in business? What kind of gear are you running? Do you have a CDL? How did you find work when starting up? You could say a few of these things and help the op out instead of telling him everyone is out to get him lol.

 

@Desmund94 you have got a lot of solid advice in here, basically just take your time and figure out everything you are gonna need etc which you seem to be doing (good thing) and then this dude comes in to tell you how everyone is out to get you and your freight and make you spend money lol. These are the guys I told you about....these are your Bros lol. It's the same way with rig drivers when we see the fat, flip-flops, stinky sweatpants, crapping in a parking lot dudes.....our Bros lol. No matter what end of trucking you decide to do there is always that guy and you will always be associated with him no matter how hard you try to be different lol.

 

I'm not in the business at all. So you definitely got me there. There is no replacement for experience and my response was a result of frustration. My frustration is that no one really knows for sure how the guys who take low paying loads operate. Maybe they had a truck given to them. Or maybe they saved for years and bought a pick up cash in hand. Maybe they're very savy with they're money i.e sweatpants vs jeans. Those guys can afford the cheapest of loads and still profit vs the guy starting out 100k in the hole and needs 2.00 loads at least just to make it. From the outside looking in it appears that those with a good work ethic and good money management can make it. To be honest, any time I hear anything negative about this industry its pertaining to a "company" that someone works for, or dispatchers or brokers. Its a common theme. do this for the freedom of calling all the shots and they seem happier and more successful, when they cut out the b.s middlemen. This is my honest humble opinion as I have zero on the job training. Maybe I'm out of line but I can take the criticism and learn from it by opening up to the other person's perspective.

 

First and the most important thing. This is a business.

You can get a CDL with a dually pick-up and a trailer.
It will have restrictions on the license. Having that could cause problems in the future. Should you want to change the equipment your using, you could be restricted from doing so because the CDL has restrictions.
Better to get an unrestricted CDL.

 

You can change the cdl at any time too, or at least you always could the last I knew.