AZ School is 5 weeks away...what to do in the meantime?

Don't got into your first year expecting to not make a single mistake and get paid $100,000 to do it.

You are going to make a ****-ton of mistakes, and get paid pennies to do it. This isn't winning the lottery. It's hard work, long hours, and unless you love driving with every fibre of your being, you will last about 6 months before quitting.

 

Bison is slip-seating. All drivers, all trucks. You won't know what kind of mess you are getting into. Mechanically or otherwise.

 

You need to really flesh this one out. It’s a bad deal.

 

Go back and re-read my comments about Bison on this thread Choosing between different schools [Need opinions].,

and my comments about them on the kid going to Challengers thread
Challenger Motor Freight?

What the deal with them? Simple, they are the epitome of the evil ####ing corporation. No BS, they spend TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS on marketing and acquiring awards, while paying nothing to their employees. Software, Management Talent, Endless Red Tape and Continuous Improvement, Lean Sigma 6, 4DX ########. Professional Liars, every last one of them. (105% turnover rate also)

The "Safest Fleet" this is also BS, as they self insure, thus hiding most of their incidents. Or they throw the drivers/ownerops/leaseops under the bus with the RCMP/OPP/CVSE so it doesn't affect their carrier profile. Just remember, before they started winning this award, SWIFT won it every year for 10 years; so how much do you think It really means?

Trust me dude, you're in the trucking mecca of Ontario, you have unlimited choices, DO NOT #### YOURSELF OVER WITH BISON!!!!!

 

Re-posted from another thread for easy reading.

As a former Bison driver, who did DFP (and bailed), I would avoid Bison at all costs; unless its comes down to Bison, Challenger, Arnold Brothers or TransX. Being in Ontario, you have tons of options, that will be way better than Bison. Hyndman Transport for example, I had a bad experience with one of their recruiters, so I went to Bison back in the day instead. The friends who went to Hyndman made more money, drove better non-slip seated trucks, and had better runs. Hyndman advertises a base rate of 0.36cpm to Bison's 0.39. But the lane premiums and such, your average at Hyndman is closer to 0.47 while Bison is 0.43.

The DFP program, has to be one of the biggest scams going. If you went to a decent school, you will MAYBE do 6 weeks of training, then go slip seat for 8 MONTHS!!!! (they say 6, but add 2 more months, since you did well in Training, go figure eh?) at 0.33cpm. The trucks are junk, and filthy, Bison has no cleaning or detail program what so ever (or even a washbay at the terminals). In Training you get paid net $640/week salary, once you go slip seat, expect 5/3 schedule making roughly 5-700net a week for that 8 months. Some weeks will be worse, since they will burn off your 70 in 4.5 days, so you have a bunch of extra days off during the pay period.

Once you get an assigned unit and a raise, its not much better. Since the truck doesn't have to be back for someone else to drive; they can dick you around endlessly. expect 500-800/wk net, maybe 1000 if you get a solid 5 day plan at the start of the pay period. Just be aware they are going to share your assigned truck with everyone and their dog, sometimes people will be waiting for your "assigned truck" with all your stuff in it; as you roll into the terminal. You will also be run ragged, the travel times are never doable, so most guys are taping a bottle to their dick and eating while driving from a cooler beside the seat.

If you survive the 2 years, they will try and not pay you your pay hold back escrow. This happened to every single DFP I know, and its just downright shady. They gamble too see if you know what the payout is supposed to be, half it, and claim it was an "account error" if you #####.

They will literally say anything to get you in the seat, and keep you there. They told me I could go turnpike early, get dedicated runs to Cali, AZ, NV, that I could get on a Pacific NW short haul fleet and make 1500/wk net, etc etc etc. All Lies, not one driver, DFP or not with less than 5 years of taking their dick, would ever get anything but open board OTR or OTR Reefer. Reefer fleet is a disaster, which claims to pay more, but trust me; its not worth the headache with how they run things.

Also if you bail, expect to get sued and have collections sent after you, for whatever amount of money they decide you somehow owe them.

Quite the introduction to trucking I tell ya.

If I had to do it all over again, I would not have done Heyl or Bison.

I would have gone to the same amazing school, and I would have gone to either Hyndman, Schneider or ERB.

 

First rule of trucking: Never, ever, EVER believe what a company's website claims, or what the recruiter tells you on the phone. Talk to people who actually drive for the company.

@BigHossCummins already covered the details I was going to mention (and many more because he unfortunately had first-hand experience with it). Find yourself a company that does steel hauling into MI/IN/OH/IL. Flatdeck companies generally don't fart around, and pay for hard work. Robin Son in Harrow, ON is looking last I saw as I drove past their shop (not sure if they hire new drivers though).

It may be a whole lot more difficult and time-consuming to pound the pavement and actually go in to talk to a lot of these smaller companies, but you would be surprised at how willing they might be to work with you.

The company I work for loves drivers right out of school because they don't have bad habits. They can mould them into whatever they want them to be. I started just over three years ago, fresh out of school, and am now one step below top rate running 2800 mile rounders through the US, back up through Ontario, home every 5-6 days.

Pretty much every trucking company in Canada is desperate for drivers, and hard-working, English-speaking, Canadian-native drivers that can go Stateside are becoming harder and harder to find (not saying new Canadians can't be good drivers, they are just as rare as any other good driver these days).