I’m gonna be finishing up driving school in a couple of months

Cool, good to know.

 

My very limited reefer experience was 2020 and 2021. I got the impression my company was getting the reefer freight from load boards and not regular customers so my bad experiences could be due to pulling low-quality reefer loads. I avoided reefer work for all of my career except for those years. What I experienced was worse than I was warned it would be. I much preferred tanker, but my experience was mostly dedicated dry van with drop and hook loads for most of that dry van period.

Most newbies don't focus specifically enough to find a company. Just because tanker or flat-bed may have less of problem A, on average than some other type of freight it doesn't mean that if you throw a dart at a list of companies that pull tankers or flat-bed you won't have LOTS of problem A. You should shop for a specific job at a specific company and talk to drivers doing that specific job at that specific company. Most newbies are attempting to do an online-only search. I don't think that will produce good results unless you are very flexible about everything and have no strong preference about schedules, pay, working conditions, policies, etc and you live where there are many choices of trucking companies that are hiring.

 

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind, I have a list of things I want to ask companies when I call them today, so based on the results from that list, I'll make my decision.

 

My reefer experience was very similar.

Pretty much like a bad dream.

Apparently -- some reefer jobs out there were/are real unicorns....

-- L

 

The company representative may not know the answers you ask. They likely will only know the average miles per week, they divide the billed miles in a year by the number of drivers and weeks and tell you their drivers average X miles each week. This disguises that many of their drivers will get more miles per week than average and many other drivers will get a lot less than average miles. Ditto for pay each week or year. This is assuming the person on the phone is being honest and not just giving answers you want to hear. My recommendation is for you to have the trucking company give your contact info to a current working driver, doing the work they will hire you to do, when he contacts you ask him to tell you his pay and conditions last week, plus describe the amount and frequency of home time, does he pick the driving route, fueling locations, what's it like on the weekends if there are problems. Typically on the weekends one dispatcher covers a lot of drivers but doesn't know anything about your trip. So if you need a question answered you may not get one until Monday at 9pm. Consider your commute to and from the company terminal. That eats into your home time.

They key is NOT to ask just "do you like working at the company?" It's better to ask for the driver to describe his week and then you decide if that is a good match for you. EVERY new driver wants "good money" and "a good truck" and "enough time at home." You need details, not vague

 

Jeez, sounds like a bunch of hoops to jump through just to get some answers from companies, aren't recruiters supposed to know these things? I'm not asking "Out of this world" questions, simple questions like "Average miles per week", "The CPM they pay" and "home-time", etc. I've already ruled out Werner because all they have is team driving ( STILL... ), and I'm not doing that, you mean to tell me recruiters can't be honest with these simple questions? Man...

 

No. Recruiters job is to get qualified applicants hired, not inform the applicant. Is a car salesman's job to tell you every detail of the car and make sure that what is important to you is in the car he sales you? His job is to get a car sold. It is YOUR job to get the info you need to make a decision.
Life is not a spectator sport.

 

Just to add to the above post....

As stated earlier, & elsewhere -- the CDL job market is so bad right now in Florida (below I-4) for new drivers -- that it may well boil down to a matter of simply taking what you can get.

Get in a year (or more) of experience -- with a clean safety record; & get those CDL endorsements -- then the job field could open up considerably for you, after that.

Don't feel singled out -- when I first got started, I pretty much had to do the SAME THING.

-- L

 

####... Thanks for that perspective.

 

An honest company that wants you to get the info you need to make a decision will not object to passing along your phone number or email to a driver working in the division that you would work for. It would be better if you found drivers working for the company you want to know about and asked them, so you don't just speak to the one driver the company knows will tell you what you want to hear. In trucking you deal with lots of people you don't know. Get over being shy or nervous asking them a question. Ask them the right questions. "Describe your work last week, how many miles, how much money, schedule, etc." After you hear his side, ask if he can confirm whatever info you have heard the company claim. It doesn't hurt to ask a question for which you know the answer to check if he is telling you what you want to hear instead of what is true. Unfortunately this isn't a 30 minute Google search kind of process. EVERY good company has some bad reviews and every bad company has some good reviews. You are making a decision about your next year's income, work conditions, time off, insurance, etc., etc.. Any driver working at a company will have phone numbers of other drivers at the company, if you suspect the company-provided driver is just giving you a sales pitch. It can't be done online only, in my opinion. I wish it could.