Mega Carriers?

Just look for the recruiter that visits your school. He tells you how special and how important you are and how lucky his company would be to have a person of your caliber working WITH them. "See, we are all a big family of morons at Moron Trucking." He convinces you to bend over and he injects pure sunshine in a place that wouldn't see sunshine at a nude beach (barring an unnatural gape), sunshine finally reaches Uranus!
Wow! That's almost a religious experience to most people and so after that natural high, they sign on to Moron Trucking. Some people even go as far as drinking the company KoolAid (see the footage of Jonestown and Jim Jones).

You see pictures of people piled in to what looks like inner city housing. You wonder, "Is that a crack house?" No, that's the roach motel where the drivers for Moron stay. They didn't mention such deplorable conditions during the sunshine injection. And they all say the same thing, "Oh well, you have to start somewhere."

 

It's a term used to describe a company that trades you at a drop of a dime. A company that has ads telling you this is the place to make a career and will fire you so fast you'll not know what happened. Then the next guy that's just out of school is ready to start his or her career in the truck you just left. They promise you what the decent trucking companies offer then you wait to see it happen but you leave either by being fired or moving on. The job is cheap and a dime a dozen. Go for a job that doesn't advertise.

 

Once upon a time there was a thing called regulation. The government decided what the price of freight should be. Companies were only allow a certain number of trucks. Wages were high and unions had a good control of the trucking industry. Unfortunately so did the mob. The Kansas City Teamster Union loan lots of money to the mob who built Vegas. When Robert Kennedy become Attorney General he went to war with the mob. This changed the Trucking industry. Deregulation began. Trucking companies in small towns could no longer compete. It was not profitable. The large companies would come into the smaller towns and undercut the freight rates. They were large enough to take a loss in some markets to bankrupt the small carriers. They then took over and raise rates. These companies grew and became the Mega Companies.

Now how does that effect your life. Mega companies are self insured. Therefore they can hire people right out of school. They do not pay much because they don't have to. Any company that hires you right out of school is going to pay you less then I would work for with 10 years experience.
My advice is to take any job that is offered to you. Understand that you have to keep your nose clean and keep the wheels safely on the pavement for the first six months to a year. Then move on. After two years most companies will take you if you have kept your record clean.

Good luck and welcome to the world of trucking.