Is BIGGER better?

A smaller company will not screw you or lie to you as bad as the big ones. The big company dispatchers don't care about you, and wil tell you what you wanna hear and get away with it for awhile because you don't know any better. No offense.

The biggest lie out there is " you will be home every 7 to 10 days " or what ever time frame they have. Add about one week to a month on that so you don't get upset when your sitting in Chicago or someplace with no load when you were suppose to be on home time.

 

They are all the same, different color trucks. Find one with your fav color and go with it.

 

Not all smaller companies are that way. There are small companies that will screw you and lie to you as bad or worse than the big companies.

 

And often that's why they will stay small, they can't keep enough employees to grow imo. If I had to pick one though I would go big company to start, personally im real picky on equipment down to knobs missing or crap bent/missing on the truck. At a big one you may have a bigger selection of tractors to choose from at least when you need another unit.

 

Chicago would be good, its only about 45 minuits to Cary from Chicago

 

I"ve been doin this 7 yrs,and now I"m confused.

 

I'd say go for a big company. Big companies have terminals around the country and better support for breakdowns.

Small companies may have just the home yard and that's it and not a real 24 hour phone response for break downs except the boss' cell phone and it's not fun calling the boss or boss' wife at 2am.

With the big company "stuff" is a bargain though that you are indeed just a truck number getting shuffled around and that can have related frustrations.

For a beginner I think it is still better to chance that then work under a small fleet owner doing things half assed.

 

I'll look at a big company as a last resort. I spent enough time working at corporate HQs (in another industry) to know that the last thing those outfits worry about is the folks doing the work on the front lines.

If it seems that a lot of these decisions and policies at mega-carriers are stupid...it's because they are. The nitwits making the calls are first and foremost focused on raising their share value and lining their pockets. Drivers are a commodity to be used up in the process.

Just reading these mega-carrier training and orientation stories gives me the creeps. It sounds like a low-rent version of military basic training, run by a bunch of drones and sociopaths.

I'll try to find a place where if I have issues, I can walk in the front door and talk to the boss, not some schlepper who's ten levels down in a corporate bureaucracy, and only knows me by a "driver number", instead of my name.

But, whatever turns your crank, go for it!