Looking to get started, company sponsored CDL school?

true .... I avoid pretty much everything that has an appointment anymore especially early am

 

Some companies, and I don't know if CFI is one of them, don't really do a background check on potential newbies until after they start orientation. Some companies call orientation "on-boarding". When companies operate that way it's not unusual for newbies to find out they will not be hired until a day or two into orientation. At many trucking companies the only people you can communicate with before you arrive at orientation are Recruiters, who may or may not even work for the company. Some recruiters only have a summary of pay and benefits the company provides and a few details by which to screen out potential newbies. DUI, certain criminal/driving history items, located outside the company hiring area, etc.

You might scan the CFI forum to see if that is how CFI does background checks. You might also try contacting the Safety Dept, somtimes called Risk Managment at som companies and explaining anything in your background you think may disqualify you from hire and get their opinion. I would probably only do this if the company waits until you show up at orientation to decide about hiring you. If you can talk Safety/Risk Mgmt without using your real name I would try that. Then if they alert you to a problem, you haven't waved a red flag in front of your file.

The industry is really looking hard for new drivers so it could be you are at the right place at the right time. Trucking is not like most other jobs in this economy. CFI is a decent to good company as far as I remember hearing much about them.

Good luck

 

Ok I read some of the details you posted about past employers. Maverick, Jim Palmer, Prime have among the strictest background requirements of many trucking companies. So getting accepted by them shows you could get hired elsewhere, but not getting accepted doesn't necessarily mean you can only work at bottom of the barrel trucking companies. Jim Palmer accepted me but wsn't counting my 3 years OTR back in the 1990s or my previous 18 years driving dedicated regional as recent OTR experience so I would have been put in their pipeline with newbies with zero experience and ride with a trainer for up to 30,000 miles before I was in my own truck. I'm not doing that again for ANY company.

I would call and ask CFI to mail you a paper application and carefully read that application and answer only the questions on that application. It's not a therapy session where you share all of your hopes and dreams and confess everything they MIGHT want to know about you. You answer ONLY what they ask and nothing more. Companies really prefer lengthy full-time stable employment because it makes it easy to verify. This industry is lousy with newbies that don't finish their first year of driving and they are making a guess about a stranger, you, to see if they will make back their training costs. So it helps to have a stable work history, but it's not a deal breaker at most companies, just the very strict companies. After a year of CDL driving at the same company your options really open up.

You should look into your self and honestly evaluate what are you going to do when you are in a crowded strange city in crummy weather, you haven't gotten a lot of miles ($) during the week, and you might have to wait a day for your next dispatch, which means you probably aren't going to get back home when you were hoping. Those type of situations make some newbies quit and quitting what can be a decent paying job soon after you start will not help anyone, including you. The company knows they lose a lot of very new drivers in situations like that. You may not know how stressful that is when you haven't been sleeping very well in the truck and you've been dealing with the stress of finding customer addresses in cities you've never been to. You need to be clear you are going to stay for 1 year unless you are being asked to to illegal or dangerous things and mean it. EVERYBODY has felt like quitting and riding with a trainer is very hard and your first few weeks solo after you leave the trainer is pretty stressful, but then it eases up and gets easier if you never allow quitting to be an option. If it's an option just waiting to be activated you'll have plenty of reasons to pull the trigger and leave during the expected difficult periods before your new job becomes your new habits. It's not hard it's just very different from highly supervised "civilian" jobs many of us had before CDL.

Your issue doesn't seem like a show stopper to me. It's probably just going to be something that needs a written explanation for somebody before they get an approval and hire you. If not with CFI, then another company, maybe many companies. There is room for almost anyone that wants to be out here, even SOME guys with felonies, and past DUIs. I think you have a speedbump issue.

 

YouTube video has been taken down. Any summary of what it spoke to?

Thanks