Career choice, get my CDL at 20?

I originally chose reefer for the consistency of freight, i.e. people gotta eat.

A lot of guys hate it and I can see why. Appointment times can be any time of the day or night, meaning you have to flip flop your clock and sometimes split the sleeper. Some hate the reefer noise and babysitting the temperature setting. Customers can keep you waiting and you have to sometimes deal with lumpers (though this has gotten easier and is mostly electronic). Trailer washouts.

On the flip side reefer is known for long runs and you tend to keep moving. Once you get efficient at trip planning and managing your clock, you can make some decent scratch. For me it works overall.

It's definitely different strokes for different folks in this business and as somebody mentioned there are a lot of options out there. Some guys bounce around a number of different options before finding a winner. You just have to start somewhere and see where it leads.

 

I never recall ever having any non-reefer freight rejected in 28 years of CDL driving. Having freight rejected in reefer is standard. How much time did your dispatcher build into the schedule to get rid of a few boxes or pallets of tomatoes that are 2 degrees too warm?

 

I had a load of apples rejected because the little stickers you see on each apple, was the wrong one.
Called the broker and within a few minutes I was on the road taking the load to another company that accepted them. Took them about 30 minutes to unload with a small electric pallet jack.
So, I got stop pay for both places, plus milage pay to the place that accepted the apples.

 

I pulled dry van for awhile and it sucked. That's when I switched to reefers. Made a lot more money then.

 

From my experience, yes. They're both challenging at times, but that's a big plus for me.
When I pulled dry vans I felt like a brainless robot.

 

Weekly and annual pay is less and there's just no challenge to it.
I like night driving and there wasn't as much of that pulling dry van.