Job hopping...let my experience be an example

If I remember correctly, you used to live in hop bottom right? small world.

 

I'm married with a lot of mouths to feed. The last thing I need is to start over every few months and have no benefits, orientation pay, etc. I've been at JB for over 7 years now and see guys leave and come back more than once. They always tell me that they should have stayed. Then they leave again. I don't know what it is about the lure of another company. I can understand trying something different but at some point it's gotta be like chasing your own tail.

 

Were any of the five jobs you took in your first year of driving a step UP in your career, or were they a step SIDEWAYS?

My advice for anyone in any career is NEVER move sideways. Always look for UPWARD opportunities.

In the world of truck driving the BEST opportunities have VERY low turnover. That's why companies like that look closely at your resume, and weed out applicants that have too many jobs in X years. They aren't interested in quitter's.

Look at it from the point of view of a fleet or company owner. You have twenty trucks with twenty great drivers serving the customers you worked HARD to get. You need ALL those twenty drivers to be on their "A game" to keep that customer happy. Then you hire a habitual quitter. Next thing you know that driver up and quits on you (what a SURPRISE!). Now you have a truck without a driver and the other 19 drivers have to cover for the quitter OR if they can't cover then your service to the customer suffers and the door is open for your competitor to take over the account.

In this scenario 19 other families are counting on YOU to help keep them fed. A quitter puts 19 families at risk.

That's why the jobs that are a move UP look closely at your job history. Quitters are weeded out and aren't hired in the first place.

Sure, folks can say they've had umpteen jobs in X years, but I would place a good wager on those being umpteen SIDEWAYS moves. I certainly wouldn't give a driver like that the time of day.

 

I don't remember any Pete cabovers with JBH. Now those danged 9670's, or the one they called a bus, they were everywhere.

 

Yup. A driver with a clean MVR and only 1 or 2 companies in their 10 year history will be hired quicker than a driver with a clean MVR and 10-20 companies in their 10 year history.

Think about it this way. If you're in charge of hiring and running background checks, how many prior companies do you want to try to get information from? How many companies are you going to want to be bothered by in the next few years if this new hire quits? Bottom line, if you have a history of job-hopping, you're a hassle to hire, probably won't stick around, and will continue to be an annoyance for years after you leave...and a lot of folks just don't care to make any extra work for themselves if they don't have to.

 

Some day you will get your CDL and instead of bad mouthing everyone you can be a real trucker LOL LOL LOL

 

Sitting in an office at JN Hunt for 7 years! Must be one heck of a recruiter lol