Couple seeking to team drive...no prior experience.

Don't go with CRE, the wife and I went that route about 8 years ago. They did train us together. Three people in a truck is not a fun experience, but it did keep us together which is what we wanted.

Between the third and sixth month we did actually try to put each other off the truck. It is definitely an adjustment being together 24/7. After the first year or so we started to enjoy the closeness we now have and are basically inseparable today.
We had been married almost twenty years when we started driving.

 

You have no idea how much I would have absolutely loved to see that. Talk about entertainment!

To the OP. CRE has an awful reputation. One goes to them if they simply can't go with anyone else. Put up with the awful everything. Get the experience. Then leave. Much seriously bad about them.
Even in the same "neighborhood". Try Pride. They might work with you. ???

 

Read the posts on here about them. Just hit that search key. There is reason they have the reputation as one of the worst companies out there.
Yes, they will train you, somewhat, but will treat you like absolute crap. The biggest problem we had with them was calling us on our 2nd or 3rd day of a scheduled 10 days at the house demanding we get rolling towards a load that night. This after being on the road for three months. And the threats we would get if we didn't go along and get rolling. Things like, we would be immediately terminated, someone was already on the way to get our truck and my personal favorite, we'll mess up your employment record so no one would hire us.
We put up with that for a little over a year before leaving them.
Drivers I've talked to that trained with Prime describe a completely different experience. If I were to do it again, I would've actually read up on these outfits and chosen anyone but CRE.
There are other equally bad companies not named CRE, they're just the one I have experience with.

 

She pushed me out of the truck at a shipper. I literally was on my backside in the gravel lot!
We laugh about it now but I was steaming mad and surely embarrassed at the time.

 

Let me offer you a situation that happened with my spouse with FFE together when we were a team with them. I had been with my spouse and married a few years at that time (We are looking at our 22nd year this thanksgiving now... as cancer survivors) and she was progressing well as a student with certain challenges such as a little bit of backing.

Here is what happened and I did not know this from her until it happened.

We left Vegas bound for Reno NV before running Donner to Sacramento and then Portland-Seattle on a big run. The problem with Nevada was that you had a couple hundred miles of nothing. Valley of Fire, Death Valley etc. Nothing. No towns, civilizations nothing. Just bad water, rocks and dirt.

She pulled into the Military Arsenal gate pad at Hawthorne at Walker Lake and said I have had quite enough of this *&^%.

So I wake up come out into the Pax seat and ask her what is the problem.

Turned out she has never been exposed to such emptiness in her life out here in that part of the USA she did not handle that very well at all. It kind of hurt her mentally. And lead to a disrupted driving time, disrupted rest time for me and so on.

I logged her out, logged into driving and took us into Reno while she hid in the bunk with curtains shut watching videos. In those days it easily done the way HOS worked back then. Once we got to Reno with the trees, city and so on she was fine. It is not her first rodeo in the west, she was raised in the west particularly Alaska. Which is saying something.

We had a problem with her as a team driver refusing to drive because the situation is intolerable for her. It could have easily gotten her fired by FFE if they found out there was a problem. But we resolved it.

Me on the other hand... she learned a couple things about me, particularly in dangerous places. I become a totally different person. A predator myself if such a word is possible. Not so nice, not social, not approachable etc. One time we had a load to Chicago Market. She clapped her hands and thinking oh goodie we deliver to a food market YAY. It was her first. Little did she knew why I turned into a black cloud and make ready for battle going there.

By the time the trailer was empty she was on a cell with a nice dispatcher holding her hand through the night as various predators visited my cab looking for money, drugs, smokes and so on. They did not have a clue that I had a wife in that berth and for some of them it would have been worth chasing.

Which leads me to one final thought. In Jackson TN we had a sexual attacker follow my wife back to our truck. I was asleep she got into the tractor being chased by this sexual offender trying to get ahold of her right behind into our cab. She fell into the passenger side and made a final defense hole for her self and got ready to fight marine corps style.

I came out of the bunk while the offender was dealing with climbing over that huge drivers seat and so on trying to get to her. Blade got into my hand from it's little nook by the bunk.

He was not going to stick around and possible get his neck slashed to death. What a huge neck that was all that blood and lust extended blood vessals as he tried to complete the attack and consumate the sexual act on the wife.

Not happening as far as we were concerned. He ran. And saved himself. And us too. It would have been such a mess.

You learn things about each other out here on the road.

Trust me.