Advice Needed for Newbie Interested in Truck Driving

Milwaukee is a good area for freight. I am from Janesville originally so I was in and out of the Milwaukee area often when I lived there. You are in a good position for Roehl, they have a nice terminal in Appleton and a drop yard not far from you in Oak Creek. I went through their CDL program in 2012 and worked for them for a year. Nothing bad to say about them!

Getting home every day will be a bit of a stretch, but you can check with their recruiters to see what dedicated accounts they have for that area. That means you only serve one customer, so your customer locations and freight lanes and schedule will be much more predictable, and when I was there, most dedicated drivers got home every weekend. I worked on their Silgan Cans account, and liked it, but not sure if they are still doing that one.

They also have (or used to have?) what they call the “dairy land fleet.” Those drivers stay in the Wisconsin/Illinois/Minnesota area and would probably get you home more often.

Good luck!

 

Hey, hey, a local boy,,before I moved to Colorady, I spent 62 years in that fablunga state. Grew up in Milwaukee, John Marshall HS, 1972, trucked 3 million miles, most all in Wis.( or UP) so I've been there.
1st, these types of " throwing it out there" threads puts our resident job finder, Chinatown, into overdrive, when BEFORE all that, we need to find what you are looking for( or getting away from), to make a better decision. Wisconsin was the KING of trucking. EVERYTHING either came into or went out of Wisconsin. Now it's cheese , beer, or paper going out and Lord knows what happens next( backhaul)
2nd, regardless of what some say, I'm not sure you'll be happy. Your wants are not unreasonable, I just think many are unprepared for the life of a trucker. Remember, a sobering fact, 50% of new drivers quit in the 1st 6 months, and half of the remaining don't make it a year, so the odds are clearly against you. How upset are you really with your current situation, to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire?
People have admonished me for "telling it like it is", but if I help ONE person to reconsider( $5grand is a lot for schooling) and plenty of good jobs these days, it's a drivers market, as Chinatowns submissions indicate.
3rd, the reality is, long days, loads cancelled, while you spend Christmas in a Loves in Nebraska, distracted drivers, UNdistracted drivers, weather, HOS( hours of service) rules, crappy food that costs a fortune, and some places you'll not want to get out of the truck. It's not all new warehouses just off an interstate, and lastly, heaven forbid you get sick on the road.
The good news, if you are still dedicated to that lifestyle, marriage and family will certainly take a hit, although social media has helped, to be honest, I just don't see you as a trucker. I don't mean any disrespect, but today, it's entirely possible for someone with no experience to actually make it. Trouble is, they are totally bamboozled by recruiters that need to fill the seats. I don't mean to rip on the Badger, it's still "home" to me.
If you made it through all that, Fox Valley might warrant a local job, but most, if not all, is OTR. Good luck, pal, GO PACK( next year)

 

My My My. All of these Cheddar heads in one place and no one brought the beer & brats? What a crying shame dontcha' know?

1st, EXCELLENT ADVICE worth re reading American Traveler! ChinaTown threw all of this at me several months ago when i started out also. I chased down the leads what would work for me and am quite happy in trucking no matter what 201 says, lol. The caveat? 201 is exactly, precisely and 100 % right!

Local Tech college was going to cost $7500 and be a 6 month wait to get in. This is down in the Stateline area (Janesville, Blackhawk Tech). Overkill imo.
Sun Prairie driving school is where i should have went. I wouldn't have a cursed Automatic Restriction. Manuals are where the $$$ is at and i don't expect you to understand until you get a lot more skin in the game. I certainly didn't understand until watching my stupid truck still shift in "manual" mode, losing all of my rpm's and momentum and sliding 125 feet backwards down a driveway in Darlington.

Now get this in your head! The trucking companies that will hire a scrub like you are full of beans! They need warm hands holding steering wheels. As many others on this forum adequately warned me, you will be lied to, taken advantage of and have $$$ stolen from you. Have a plan a, b and c. With that said even if you find a decent training company as i did then you have good trainers and bad trainers. My cdl school buddy got an awesome trainer! Hell they are probably wife swapping by now, lol. I got the trainer from hell who was certainly a headcase. He was quite happy with his fridge full of his stuff as i dehydrated & starved. Living in a truck with another full grown man is going to be hard especially if you get a nut job like i did.

Are you still here American Traveler? Ok then, when you run the numbers which you don't have, are you going to be satisfied working for about $9.50 an hour starting out for a year? HOS (Hours of Service) will doom you to low pay when (not if) those tires aren't spinning. You will make "better" money in training as you will typically be paid for your trainers miles also. You are essentially team driving EVEN if the company claims you aren't. Many seemingly want to leave that up to your trainer. Many trainers are bored. Finding a good one will be the key to your success at any company sponsored cdl training school.

Chinatown mentioned WIOA. You are unemployed so you would qualify. Be careful though and research how to beat their personality test. They quickly disqualified me based upon me being a "conceptual learner" bound for greatness or intellectual pursuits just not the drivers seat
Training is free but they send you to a local driving school such as 160 driving academy. No training on manual transmissions.

I would HIGHLY recommend Millis Transfer and their Millis Training Institute. Contact thetruckersreport member MIT. I can confirm we knew some of the same people and you want them as a trainer and not the nut ball i had. You will train over in Germantown on MIT's range. You will road test in Germantown by Eric from BeerCity, good guy and very fair! You wont need a hotel but if you choose will be reimbursed $30 per night. You will be paid $600 per week to train.

When you realize that you are only going to see your wife on average 32-48 hours every three weeks you will only be on the hook for $2500 with them. Most starter companies want you to be out for 2-3 weeks on avg. You're not getting home every week, sorry to be the bearer of bad news for you there bud.

I should have complained immediately to Millis about my trainer and i have no doubt they would have been fair and moved me to another trainer but to what end? I implore you to ask intelligent and thoughtful questions IF you make it through training and get the chance to interact with REAL drivers at terminals across the country. The recruiters and trainers will not portray the company/culture accurately.

 

34 hour off at home means getting home Saturday night about 9pm and leaving 7am Monday. I did that for a couple years it gets old pretty quickly. A regular job you home or off work at 5pm Friday and return 7am Monday. That's about 60 hour off.

In trucking lots of companies will say two days off every week or 48 hours. You can lose time because if they get you home at 10pm on Friday you still have go back to work 7 am Monday.

I get 2 days off every week, last week at 5pm dispatch says grab empty trailer and go home. Sounds great, but it's was 180 miles to my house and very high wind. I had to stop or risk getting blown over. So, I stop and waiting till morning to go home. I don't get extra time at house because I'm now getting home 12 hour late. I still have to leave home same time every week basically. Sometimes I get lucky and get home 2pm and get 2.5 days off. It all basically depends on how the loads are for when I get home and have go back to work.

 

Transport National
2500 Southbranch Blvd
Oak Creek, WI 53154
Hires new cdl school grads. Transport National will train for these high paying loads.

 

Darling Ingredients: We Create Solutions That Sustain Life
Hires new cdl school grads. I think also reimburse cdl school tuition.
Home every day.
Several terminals in Wisconsin:
Berlin
Eau Claire
Hazel Green
Milwaukee
~
Various types of trucks to drive and probably some stick shifts.

 

Old Dominion Freight Line
www.odfl.com
401 W Layton Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53207
Hires new cdl school grads from approved schools.
Need all endorsements.

 

Just to be clear, Chinatown does a wonderful service, but goes a bit overboard on these "exploratory" posts. Many times, a person checks in, along with several other options that may or may not have anything to do with trucking. When job hunting, it's a viable consideration today. Chinatowns submissions are all creditable, or he wouldn't post them, however, it's "putting the cart ahead of the horse", and is overwhelming, to say the least. Once someone actually commits to the job, and what they want to do,THEN hit them with the jobs. I may be a bit presumptuous, but with only one post, I can pretty much guarantee, they've heard enough,,,and that's okay. Years ago before a site like this, it was trial and error, mostly error, and I'd have loved a site like this back then..

 

Heck, I still find ChinaTowns posts helpful, I bookmarked that Darling company just in case. Just in case a 40-50 hour per week driving job really exists.....

 

Are you in Pueblo?