24yo no-lifer, need company / newbie advice.

Are you set on doing flatbed? I only ask because most guys who go that route want to be home weekly, or as close to it as possible. Many, if not most, of the customers are M-F operations as well. If you intend to live in the truck for months at a time, you might want to look at van or tanker so you're not frequently stuck sitting for the weekend waiting on your next load or to deliver the one you got. I've never driven flatbed myself, so I'm not speaking from personal experience on that.

If you want to work for extended periods, then take long breaks, you might look into "JetSet" jobs with different companies. Basically, I think they just fly those drivers all over the country to take over on dedicated/local routes when there are drivers out for a while or they lose someone. Once the drivers come back, or they find a permanent replacement, they send you to the next place or home for a break. I'm just guessing, but maybe they'd be more flexible with time off than traditional OTR.

 

I'm not sure how much hometime tanker outfits will tolerate, especially if they train you. Plus, if you're dealing with hazmat, they may need you to stay up to date on company training, which could preclude long breaks. You might have to literally resign every time you want more than a couple weeks off, and then go through rehire all over again every time you come back. I'm just speculating, though.

Look into van, dry or reefer. Keep in mind that your first company might be garbage and something you just do for 6 months to a year until you've got the experience to do something better. Being in Kentucky, you might want to look at PTL. They're based out of Murray and I see a lot of their trucks these days, so they must be doing something right.

 

Wait til he starts selling an online course, teaching people how to become owner operators.

 

idk, not enough like everywhere else. it's a good job

 

Just starting out, using CPM and consistent freight as your primary metric, I'm gonna say reefer is probably the best bet. It can have longer load/unload times than dryvan, but if you end up not liking it, the reefer experience will also count as dryvan. (Flatbed and tanker will gladly crosstrain you later as well.) Since most megas run reefer and dryvan, you shouldn't have any trouble switching from one to the other. If you're doing traditional OTR, they might even give you both.

Get your tanker and hazmat endorsements as well, and that'll open up more load opportunities. If they put more than a specific amount of certain products in a van, bottles of bleach for example, the driver needs both endorsements. That'll help keep you running.