Finishing 7 weeks of Company training.

Some people asked me to keep them posted

Recap: we are both 50ish years old, my wife and I attended CDL school in March together and were hired by Amhof near Davenport IA to run as a team. We are their only team And we agreed to be patient with them as they adjust to dispatching a team and they agreed to be patient with us Midlifers making a career change. When we were hired Originally we were hired to do dry van only but we agreed to do tarp-less flat bed & conestoga as well as dry van. We have both done three weeks of dry van training and three weeks of flat bed training. Our training was local only with our trainers who go out and get loads and bring them back to the yard for the regional drivers to drop and hook to. Occasionally we will deliver Loads that the regional drivers have brought back to the yard. Because we’re with the local drivers doing our training, we were doing 6 to 8 dry van dockings a day and 3 flat bed loads per day. Usually 9-11 hrs a day, sometimes more, but we go home together every night.


We have now finished our training to our company standards and need to do three days each of evaluation with the head of training. My wife went first with longer drives to Wisconsin & Chicago but home each day. driving about 10 hours/ on duty 13 each day She did great I will do my check rides this week with the same guy.

They have said they don’t plan to send us too far to begin with but will expand our driving as we tell them we are comfortable. Like I said, in the first paragraph, Amhof and us agreed to be patient with each other for this process.

Freight has shifted over the last few months and Amhofs yard is now 60-70% (instead of 40% when we hired on) flatbed loads that are going all over the country. we are happy we agreed to train in flatbed because this seems to be the trend with low dry van rates right now.

Amhof has been fantastic so far. They have under promised and over delivered so far. For instance, they are giving us a brand new truck with a big sleeper cab, Overtime pay for over 40hrs while training local, and gave us a day off with bereavement pay to attend a funeral while just over 30 days with the company. No company is perfect but this family owned business tries to be a class act and is succeeding according to the other drivers I talk to. One driver who has left Amhof and returned after a few years told me “you’re never gonna find a more family oriented/friendly trucking company.”

We feel like we are ready to be on our own to make our own mistakes and learn from them as we go I’ll probably wait a month or two of us driving before I give another update.