2 years yard driver = how many years road driver experience?

It's worse. I had one employer tell me my Class A is overqualified to my face. While i look out the window of his plush office eyeballing the 18 wheeled low boys parked around his yard behind the office in the rain. I managed to drill him down with questions until I got the truth. I never forget.

 

I get zero credit for OTR, Line Haul, or City experience. I upgraded to an A a few months back, spent the first month thrown in the fire feet first with a trainer. I rarely bump a dock, never loaded or unloaded, usually just get in, drive off to a safe place, do a pretrip, then deliver it to a yard somewhere. It is odd I can recover a truck and load for a company, drive it and drop it off, yet they won't even consider hiring me due to lack of experience. I am trying to decide if I want to keep doing this, look at a line haul job, or just bite the bullet and go OTR, do my time with a trainer, then get out on my own. The job I have now is feast or famine, last week was so so, this week is looking like a famine.

 

It will always be feast or famine.

Become Ceasar and it will be a feast every week.

That trainer did you a disservice, coddling you. You should have been back in the trailer throwing soda cans by the case until you dropped. Or backing in between produce trucks tucking your mirrors in...

 

@Moose1958 nailed it. Backing trucks into docks isn't building a skill-set that allows you to drive on the open road.

 

And what they are telling you is horse crap. Many local outfits will hire you without OTR experience. Some of them may even be outfits that will take a good dock hand and train him to be a driver.
This needing OTR before you can go local, is something the megas will tell you, to get you to sign on to their crappy companies, with crappy policies, crappy pay, crappy dispatchers etc.

While this is true, having that backing experience is priceless to a driver out in the real world. How many times do you see these mega outfit trucks have backing accidents? A lot. One hell of a lot.
So while the companies likely won't count running the yard dog as "driving" experience, it will still serve to help a person become a good driver.

 

100% agree. But without things like winter driving experience, or downtown during rush hour experience... he's starting from scratch, and most companies won't want him. It's unfortunate, because I'm sure he's got tons of skills that just haven't been fully developed yet.

 

You don't have experience OTR without barrelling down the road for at least 11 hours a day, white-knuckling it in the rain and snow, navigating up/down grades, keeping the equipment safe, managing the clock and making appointments.

Granted, yard work has its own challenges and applications once OTR. It's still no comparison.

 

It depends on if you have any prior experience driving.

Firstly, how many years experience do you have besides Spotting? Did you have any prior experience driving? Or was yard jockeying your first and only job? I ask this because a lot of LTL companies will train you from the docks to become a Switcher. If you have no prior driving experience, you most likely won't be qualified for an OTR job, unless you go through they're training program and be treated like a new student. Same goes for Local as well.

Secondly, do you have a CDL? Because sometimes a CDL is not required to become a Yard Jockey, as long as you don't leave the property.

Thirdly, do you know how to drive a Manual? Because driving an Automatic Yard Horse will be detrimental to you if you don't know how to shift gears. It'll limit what type of jobs you can obtain. But then again, automatics seems to be the wave of the future.

And lastly, what is your main goal? Is it OTR or Local? If it's OTR, you'll may have to take a refresher course if you do have prior experience. If you don't have any experience, you'll probably have to go through their training academy. On the other hand, If you're looking for Local, most LTL Companies will have some type of dock to driver program, or have their own training academy to become a Switcher, P&D Driver, or Linehaul Driver. YRC, ABF, FXF, ODFL, Estes, to name a few. And so does UPS and Fed Ex Express. Beverage companies like Coke and Pepsi will train you in-house to become a Driver. And many Foodservice Companies will train you become a Driver as well, like McLane and GFS, or start you off as a helper before becoming a driver.

 

On it's face you are right of course. However backing and hitting a dock in a regular road tractor is a bit different then doing it in a switch truck. I have seen switch truck drivers have all kinds of problems doing this. The angles and the set up is the same, but most everything else is different in a road tractor because you can't see much of anything. I once operated a switch truck for several days helping a friend out. Docking a trailer with one is just so dang easy. Realistically though a yard driver has no experience on the road. I for one have never put much stock in that OTR before local argument either. Because I think driving local and especially doing local retail deliveries is some of the hardest driving a CDL holder can do. Local drivers also have to go even when the weather is bad sometimes. I have a lot of respect for local drivers and I have never considered them OTR wannabes. Yard drivers are not truck drivers though and to me even if you have been doing this for 20 years I still would not hire you for local or OTR unless or until I can get you trained.