Getting experience

I think plenty of O/O's would like to do that but very few insurance companies will allow anyone with less than a year. Since you got your cdl 9 months ago you are close to being able to tell an insurance company that you have been driving for a year (most wont check).

 

What's wrong with working for those companies?

 

You're touching on an industry-wide problem here. Everybody needs drivers, everybody wants drivers with experience. How do inexperienced drivers get that experience without working for the crappy driver trainee companies ? In my area many drivers start out working for large farmers hauling grain. But even that can be problematic now because not only do OTR companies want experience but they want recent OTR experience. If you've just been hauling locally they won't qualify you even with a couple years experience. Or even say a large flatbed carrier may not hire you even if you have OTR experience if you don't have flatbed experience. I think it's a shame, I miss the days where you would go in and shake somebodies hand and they would make the decision based on their impression of you rather than a bunch of data collected by the government and insurance companies.

If I was you maybe I would consider finding that company you really want to work for and they may not be able to hire you but say "Okay, so you can't hire me. What do I need to do so you can hire me ?" And maybe they can point you in the right direction. That way if they tell you go work here for a year or two, if you do that you can go back in there and say "I did just what you said and now I'm ready to work for you".