just got my cdl today

Congratulations. As for your question, be sure to check out the "Motor Carrier Questions - The Inside Scoop" section of the forum, but also take some of the things you read with a grain of salt, as someone who fails in this industry because they don't have what it takes is 99.9% likely to blame the company, rather than themselves. You haven't really given us any idea of what you're looking for in a company, what kind of trailers you want to pull, etc. That would do a lot to help narrow it down.

 

Welcome to trucking, sort of.
Welcome to being pissed off* that's it.

You're gonna need to do a year or so through a starter company and more than likely, have to pay or sign a commitment/contract to go through that companies "school" so they can train you in, and teach you with their own preferred methodology. I say this in spite of having read about your ag runs- unless they are a verifiable companies. with verifiable miles added to a dac or something along those lines; good luck.

You can shout and scream about how much work you've done in a rig until you're blue in the face when it comes to non-verifiable or hard to verify miles. 9/10 times you'll get a response along the lines of " that's nice, but we don't care." And the other 1/10 times is "we genuinely do not care."

You can try finding work with a few different companies starting out and on this forum you're much more likely to find companies to NOT go with, than companies TO go with. Part of the reason is that drivers expected to much getting out of the gate, or they got fired ect ect.
I will say this, give both c.r England and swift trans a good wide berth. Those, unanimously from almost every driver you meet from each company are not going to have necessarily good words associated with them- there's a reason for that.

But I don't want to blow smoke up your ###, you'll be getting plenty of that in short order. This job is not for everyone. Of course no one immediately turns away from driving because some guy told another guy that statement on an internet forum. But never think you have a reputation to hold on to. If you don't like the job, find it interferes with family and home too much or you're just generally getting no where, it might be time to consider kicking the moss of that stone. But completely to the contrary of what I just said, getting anywhere in this business requires you to eat a lot of ########, smile at the chef and say "mmm-mmm good."

Nonetheless, if you have children or a wife...then it might not work out. That in particular is a lot of drivers downfall because trucking is not a job. Its a lifestyle (get use to hearing that.)

The truthful amount of time you'll have to wait to get a better job and stop playing with driver mills like crst, or swift or any number of them, is right around 18 months. Why 18 months?

Its a fairly simple breakdown, but it doesn't always hold true- just usually;

It will take 1 year of otr experience to make you employable by a decent company. No one is going to hire and pay any decent wages to someone with almost no experience...though in the big picture a years experience is just enough to make sure that you're not taking corners in 7'th and other stupid things. So, right there you have 12 months.

It will take another 6 months (if you managed to find a job the day you quit a driver mill) to get settled into a route if you plan on going local, or 6 months to learn how to work a new admin staff with a different (and hopefully better) company.

So, its a long haul.
If you're in anyway normal (which is a relative term in this industry) you might end up fantasizing about quiting every night you lay down in the sleeper.


Not everything is bad. I've seen things out here that blow me away in term of natural beauty and on a social sciences level. You will often find yourself thinking "how can a sunset be that beautiful" immediately followed by "how can a single person be that stupid?!"


Good luck! Hope we scare you good!

 

Its probably already been said but without any schooling or verifiable OTR on a dac report you'll have to start at the bottom and work your way up, regardless of what you've done before. Many people believe that just earning their cdl is enough to get through the door, but most companies want you to have graduated from one of their approved institutions before they'll hire you. Moreover, some will even want a refresher course if you've been out of the drivers seat for a year or more. So even if you pay to go to school, if you decide not to use your cdl for a little while, you're going to get screwed out of another twelve hundred and fifty dollars...

 

I'm not saying you should ignore it by any means, but also remember that there will be people who will blame a company for their shortcomings. I started with Swift's flatbed division - and you'll never find any shortage of griping about that company. Yet, all in all, I'd rate my experience with them as fair. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I don't have the horror stories to share with you which others post about, and I know I'm not the only person to ever have worked for Swift without such stories. Did I ever get pissed off at 'driver managers' and others in the company? Certainly. Was there ever a time I felt maybe I'd been treated unfairly? Absolutely. If a safety related issue came up, did the company ignore it? No, they did not. Was I paid on time? Always. Did I get miles? Yep. Were maintenance needs taken care of? For the most part, yes. I did have one negative experience with this regarding a headlight wiring harness. Did I ever have negative things happen as a result of my own actions or inactions? Yes.
So just remember that there's going to be two sides to every story, and sometimes the story you see on here may be a bit embellished or may be missing some key elements.

 

iF YOU ARE GOING TO A "PRIVATE "DRIVING SCHOOL THEN SEE IF THEY HAVE A JOB PLACEMENT OPPORTUNITY UPON GRADUATION. THEY COULD POSSIBLY OPEN A FEW DOORS FOR YOU...ALSO CHECK OUT SOME THE "LOCAL" CARRIERS THAT ARE CLOSE BY....THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE BIG TO NEED HELP...YOU MAY HAVE TO WORK THE DOCK FOR A WHILE OR TIL A SPOT OPENS UP OR MAYBE EVEN TAKE SWITCHERS JOB TIL AN OTR JOB BECOMES AVAILABLE...BUT YOU'LL BE CLOSE TO HOME AND MAY BE ABLE TO GET A LOCAL DRIVING SPOT AND BE HOME EVERY NIGHT...GOOD LUCK IN YOUR SEARCH WHEREVER YOU WIND UP!

 

Congratulations!!! Be safe and have a Merry Christmas!

 

Grats. I start school in Feb.