Help Truckers. I need a job and Im unemployed, please tell me about the industry

There are a lot of companies that do have hiring freezes in place right now. The ones that are hiring drivers are going with experienced drivers. Not very many local companies hire rookies either.

 

It is getting hard to find a job even in trucking, and yes many are getting fired so that the ranks can be reduced right now, the schools are still trying to get people to pay for the training, because that is what they are in business for, but that is no guarantee that you will be able to land a good Company right now to work for. You may get in with one of the big ones, but they will use you and then spit you out. Miles are down right now and many of the companies have placed hiring freezes on right now.
It pays to research it right now to see if any companies will hire you right now as a new driver once you get the training.

 

Well, you came to the right place. If you look through the site your questions are already answered. All I will say is that trucking isn't a good answer if it's just because you need a job.

 

You will not make 40,000 and be home every weekend. You will need to go to school then you will need more training once you get hired.

Your best bet would be finding a job even at micky d's or somewere that you do not drive a truck.

Most of the time you can not get hired at any local job with out 1-3 years otr experince.

If you want to drive otr you will be out anywere from 4-6 weeks then you may get 4 days home but that us all.

 

Mgassel is right, but i don't agree with him entirely. The truth is this.

First you need to go to school to get your CDL. That $5 grand is pretty steep. I paid $1700 at a community college, but then that was ten years ago. The school does not teach you how to drive a truck. They teach you to pass the CDL test. There is a huge difference. Once you get through that 4 week program, you know about enough to be extremely dangerous. From there you have to find a company that hires students, and there are only about a dozen or so of them out there. Swift, Schnieder, and England come to mind, but there are a few more. There you will ride with a trainer for a period of time, and during that time, they'll usually give you around $400 a week salary. You are going to spend $150 out of that on eating in resturaunts. It's rough. This last 2-3 months, depending on how well you adapt. After 3 months, if the trainer still feels you are having too many problems, they will likely just send you back home. After that training period, you will get a solo truck. They will pay you crap. Ten years ago when i got my first solo truck, they were giving me $.22 a mile. I made roughly $300-400 a week. The only raise I got from riding with the trainer was now I was on my own truck and could stop at Walmart and fill up the cabinets with canned food to keep my resturaunt bill down. All the training companies have this in common, they don't pay much, and they treat you like crap. Until you get that one year of experience you have no where else to go and they know it.

The bottom line is this. Trucking is a great career to get into, but the first year is a challenge. We all had to go though the situation I described above. And, even for experienced drivers, those local jobs that get you home everynight are few and far in between. Most of them don't pay nearly as much as the over the road jobs where you are gone all week. After ten years of bringing $750-1000 a week home every payday, I just can't afford to take that local job for $15 an hour.

It looks like in your situation, desperate as you are, that this company is trying to take advantage of you. I can tell you this, freight is slow out here. I found myself having to work through Christmas this year, because I needed the money. In Michigan it's a real challenge because it's one of the slowest place for freight in the country. That company, it sounds to me, isn't interested in hiring you, they just want that 5 grand. My best advice I can give you is get the hell out of Michigan. I live in Ohio, GM just closed the doors on my town's last GM plant. 5 years ago we had 4 GM plants. As of this week we are down to zero. I told all my friends they need to sell everything and get their butts down south. Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia are the places to be where a guy can still find a decent job. When I get down there, my dispatcher can keep me moving. I get to the mid-west and I'm parked for a day and a half.

 

I'll make it real simple....trucking industry in a nutshell.

Can you work a 70 hour work week without whining? Can you be gone from your family 4 to 8 weeks at a time? Can you learn by keeping your mouth shut and listening? Can you learn to accept most people "outside of drivers" think you are a third class citzen? Can you handle the change of weather overnight (85 to -10)? Are you a very patient person? Are you ready to miss a lot of what goes on at home? Can you wife, girlfriend or significant other handle things while you are gone? Better yet.....What does you wife, girlfriend or significant other think about this? If that person is not with you on coming into the industry..it will be a very tough first year and every year you continue in it.

Trucking is not something to do because you can't find something else. It is a passion, something you cannot live without. It's the pull of the road and if you don't understand that you don't belong on the road.

 

Your timing is bad, the industry is on slow at the moment and it may get a lot worse. Sorry but that's just the truth of the matter.
I know we're not hiring where I work and we never hired driving school grads to start with.

Good luck

 

like others have said trucking is a life style you got to make a change and be able to be gone weeks at a time being new if you goto school and then to work your first time out you wil be gone avg 60-90 days then when you get your truck you wilhave to be gone 3-4weeks at most places.
Trucking is getting full also with the flow of everyone getting into it because is about all thats hiring but at the same time frieght is going down really fast to and becauseof this most places are not hiring grads atm

 

Take unemployment, see if the state will pay for job training. I did and I'm miles ahead of my contemporaries in Truck 101.

If you've got $5k in the bank you'll need it more than some cut rate driving school.

I could make more delivering pizza, but that's only part time work.\

then again,,,, I haven't had a load since the 22nd.