If im a rookie straight out of school and get my own truck, can I go local???

Wait a second here. You've been driving 2 years, the last year for an oo. That means you had only a year with the previous company. And had been promoted to trainer, training three students? So you started training within, what? Six months of finishing your own training? Is that time line about right?

Holy Mary mother of Jesus!! No freaking wonder we have such atrocious high accident rates in this industry.

 

I forgot about the insurance difference, but you could start out if you can afford the insurance. If you can't then get a few months behind the wheel. Schneider may take you without the experience as an oo. Also try some local smaller outfits. They may take you as an oo.

 

Incorrect, I do not count my millitary experience of driving as experience in the civilian world where I drive now but that is a side note. I drove solo for a year and a half before training students. One year as a company driver, then swapped over as a "contractor" in a truck my buddy owned outright.

Keep in mind to be easy on the assumptions.

 

Easy hoss, want a personal attack on you, was about the company even offering you a training position with that little experience. As for assumptions, dude I specifically asked if the timeline was correct based on the info you gave.

 

Understood, I wasn't upset or anything but i can see how it would be taken as such. But yes FFE does allow students to train in a ridiculously short period of time, at first it was working for them and they had a decent csa score.... BUUUUT time makes fools of us all, and their csa score dipped quite a bit when they lowered recruiting requirements (to horrible standards) due to not being able to hire out of state. The whole kllm thing didn't help either, and the students they were pushing us were... for lack of kinder terms... horrible.... not only as drivers but as human beings. Them pushing these drivers on trainer trucks was the reason i stopped training for them.

 

if you already have the thousands of dollars needed to get your own authority on top of buying your own truck/trailer/insurance/taxes, you probably have better investment options than getting into trucking

 

I like your ambition and confidence. It's easier to deal with people when they have high self esteem rather than low. You could be self insured like Schneider , also buy your own terminal with a shop and gas station to save on diesel

 

my answer is yes starting out is starting out OTR or local is just a choice, same pitfalls with both just with local the tow bill is less

 

28 Post for a guy that does not have a clue about what he is doing and is just trolling!!! WOW!

 

Money Mike, lets look at this from a different perspective-

The majority of local freight is LTL. There are local p&d companies who have been in business for 30+ years and struggle to turn in a profit. Theres no realistic way you can be a local owner operator. The only way to be a local O'O would be to lease your tractor on with a company.

Intermodal would be one realistic option. Theres alot of intermodal activity where you are in philly. The big intermodal companies like roadone and mason dixon hire day cab owner operators for local runs within a 200 mile radius maybe even less. They cover a percentage of your fuel and have an insurance program. You will still have some expenses to cover on your own and you won't get rich off this. I saw that money is your prime motivation.

Im not sure of your money situation but i suppose you can get out of school and work towards buying a used day cab w/automatic transmission. Theres plenty out there in the $15-20k range. Of course you wouldn't want to register it because you don't want to get in a mess paying for insurance on a truck thats just sitting around. Roadone and Universal/MD both have websites you can do research on. And of course theres always some local companies that hire O'Os to pull tankers or dumps but i would look into intermodal first.

Its good to have the minimal 1 year experience at the least but lets face it, its not much different from what you would be doing if you got hired by a local company right out of school in my opinion. Who says working for a company is a better option. These local companies take people right out of school without the minimum 1 year experience. They get into accidents in their first week and just like that their tractor trailer career is over.