First company and home location

i chose swift as they had the closest terminal too where i lived

 

As long as you are in their Hiring Area, it doesn'treally matter how close you are to any of their terminals.
Being close does have some advantages.

 

Terminal location isn't the issue so much as it is freight flow for that particular company. I live in florida, closest terminal is w. memphis. I get there maybe a few hours a month. First, find companies that take students. If you are a Veteran, thank you for your service and be sure to ask them if they have a vet program.

Then, call the companies direct. See if you are in their hiring area, get all the details about training, pay after training, training pay( different from training and pay), solo or teams, do they want you to lease a truck, what is the payback period if they pay your tuition, etc

You should find about 12 companies and weed it down to best 3 for payback over the first year without leasing a truck. Go back to the recruiters at those companies and move forward with getting pre-hired. You can cancel the other two after you make your final decisions.

Pre hire is basically reserving you a seat in a class. With any company you will be un-hired if you fail drug tests, driving tests, written tests, get a moving violation even just driving to or from school, or they find something in your background that you forgot to tell them about earlier.

That's about it. Ask policy questions to the company directly. Ask general questions in here. That is your best bet for getting straight answers for your decision making.

Finally, if your top 3 choices don't give you a pre-hire, find out the reason, and work your way through the rest of the list and bring up the issue when you talk to the recruiters

Good luck.

 

When you look into a company look at their hiring map. The other thing to consider is where their running lanes are, and, how much hometime do you expect or need.

The first year is tough, I agree. But, this can be a very rewarding career if you let it.

 

You can hire on with any company you wish provided they have shipping lanes where you currently live. They will usually bus you to wherever there orientation is. When you take home time they will just get a load heading in the same direction as where you live. If you are interested in a particular company then call the recruiter and see if they are hiring in your area.

 

Yes. Whatever terminal you live closest to will be your home terminal. Sometimes though some companies go by where your dispatcher is out of. When we drove for Central we had a planner and he was out of Salt Lake so that was our home terminal even though we lived in Florida.

Say you decide to work for Central. They have a small terminal in Henderson so that would be your home terminal. If not there then the next closest one would be Salt Lake.

In reality it doesn't matter. Its not like you spend any amount of time at any of the terminals anyway. There really isn't any kind of correlation other than you just live closer to a particular one. In case of going to orientation though you usually just go to the closest one.