looking for work

I think the only good advice will be in hindsight. Apply for any and every job in your area. In all honesty you should have been looking and applying before and while you were in school. At the very least you could take a OTR job for a couple months until you can locate something local.

 

Try to look here jobs in trucks.com,maybe is something for you,good luck.

 

Where in north jersey are you from?

 

if you have hazmat..try conway freight,u.p.s freight. also apply to beverage companies and food deelivery.

 

It is usually rare for a newbie to land a local gig. Especially in this economy. Put yourself in the employer's shoes. You have one position open and in this economy you are really pinching pennies. You have spent your hard earned money on nice expensive equipment and your freight is your livelihood. Two guys apply for the position. The first guy just finished three weeks of trucking school. Hasn't spent anytime on the road in the real world. Has backed up a big truck a grand total of 30 times in his life up to date. He has no DAC and no proven track record. Has never filled out a log blah, blah, blah... The other guy applying for the job has driven for 5 years over the road. He has backed up thousands of times and his record says he has never had an accident in doing so. He also has a very good DAC report. He has a million mile safe driving award. He is very familiar with trucks so if anything goes wrong chances are he will know how to fix it or what needs to be done to get it fixed. His driving is also refined so he won't be tearing up your transmission, and tires and brakes will last you 10 times longer than if you hire the other guy. Also due to his refined driving you will spend a lot less money in fuel. Being in the city all of your customers are extremely hard to get into and high volumes of traffic make it even worse.

Who are you going to hire?

Keep in mind probably 90% of the drivers on the road would like to be home or have a local gig so that they can be with their families and have a normal life. Problem is there just isn't enough local gigs for everyone to do that. The other problem is that they don't pay shzziiniittt!

Unfortunately like anything else in this world, you must pay your dues. The recruiter at the school you went to should have made this more clear before you forked over $6000 of your life savings or borrowed against your house! This is why I tell all newbies wanting to get into the game that it is near impossible to get a local gig and not to go to school with the hopes of being a local driver. If you are fully prepared to go over the road then if the local gig doesn't happen you aren't in financial ruins and are ready to do what needs to be done. Put your time in and do your one year and then with all that whopping experience you can try to get a local job. You do have the benefit of being in Jersey so your chances of getting a local gig are better. Here is a website that may help and keep checking Craigslist.

http://www.truckdrivercentral.com/truckingcompanies.html