Memphis help please.

You can go for free training at a mega trucking company but hook you with driving for less money per mile. So you kinda pay anyway. Without any experience it more difficult to get a job also. Maybe see if you find out who would hire a new team drivers and see what they pay vs going to megs trucking company locked into 1 or 2 year contract.

 

Go to green bay. Save 2 grand.

 

You will learn just enough to pass the State's CDL tests, endorsements and so on without hurting people or breaking stuff.

Your actual education will begin with your first meet up with the company trainer in his truck assigned to teach you proper how to manage trucking from the first 10 minutes on for the rest of your life.

This is NOT a demeaning post, it is a hard truth that has been bought and paid for on the tears, blood and sometimes lives of those who did not take to learning lessons very well when they are absolutely very new to trucking industry and what they don't yet know is a REAL SERIOUS LIABILITY.

Make sure your trucking school has a manual transmission 18 wheeler ready to go take the State CDL test at the DMV.

If the school only has Automatic big trucks for testing at DMV do not go to that school. Your new CDL will be stamped Automatic only banning you from ever being able to legally drive and shift a manual transmission equipped 18 wheeler.

That's one tiny example of our fine Government being so stupid with rule and law making as soon something came along like Automatic transmissions 25 years ago that tries to make life a little easier on you poor overworked drivers. They are intent on regulating everything.

Post 9-11 rules and security measures against the pending 2020 real id act will horrify you in it's extent and Orwellian requirements just to get a chance to get something like say a Hazmat endorsement. I believe you two are not terrorists intent on driving a Propane tanker into Congress on monday morning at the Captiol. But there are so many new rules, regulations, requirements and excessively over much weight being put onto ordinary truckers to be where they are harmless to all of the other wonderful American citizens on the road around them at all times. (Slight sarcasm)

If you are in the Memphis area as home, then I call you dear neighbors and offer you both a pitcher of iced tea very cold to enjoy.

You also already are keenly aware of the truckstops and drug dealing etc going on in your Memphis town. So we don't need to go over the possibility of contracting crabs hopping out of the unshaved eyebrows of a hooker standing on your fuel tank behind the Pilot truckstop at night.

I offer you one particular word. "McKesson" as in the medicine shipping facility in Memphis. You will never find ads publicly advertising from third party contractors who drive loads in excess of a million in value with tractor trailers that are both unmarked with just enough plate, markings and writing on them to be legal on the highway. In addition to satellite tracking of both the trailer, and your tractor as well as the load itself contains other tracking devices and so on. Those medicines will be in Detroit in the morning for example. In exchange you are reloaded with cardboard right back to McKesson in Memphis.

If you visit McKesson and write down the DOT/MC door numbers off the sleeper trucks bobtail coming and going and have a batch on paper all the different numbers, Google searching will reveal the companies and their addresses behind them. You can then contact them and try to apply for employment.

The reason I say this is two. You must be on time with delivery, you cannot and will not stop until you get there or must due to HOS ELD in those things and you will NEVER EVER ENDURE the abuses by Shippers and Recievers who treat you like trash and dirt because you are in their way, on their property and causing problems while you wait hours or days to get a dock. These forums overflow with stories about such abuses heaped upon truckers who deserve much better treatment.

Whatever company you go with, make sure you have personal conveyance. IN that ELD or otherwise. If you have that, then you know you have the freedom to actually use it with a empty truck to go get food, sleep, shower or whatever. Some companies have none of that and the ELD becomes your ball and chain. Where you stop is where you stay even if you are having the police called on you by the shipper for refusing to get off his or her private property on request because you cannot legally move a inch per the ELD in your truck. Truckers have had to call towing companies in the recent past to move the rig to a location where they can actually get the sleeper berth time in a lawful parking spot before they can go anywhere or any thing.

This industry has undergone changes. Some of which is a enforcement tool designed to eliminate you as a employed trucker because you did something silly, preventable or stupid. As a trucker (Medically retired, but I will die a trucker) I feel prosecuted for being a trucker in a 18 wheeler full of computers, alarms and push button stupid stuff designed to make me feel as if nothing in the thing is for me to know about. (Three gauges for example instead of say 60+ in a old iron truck where you actually needed critical thinking and honest to goodness old fashioned KNOWLEGE of every one of those things and what they mean and what to do about them.)

In short truckers are being treated as 4 year olds instead of the true professionals they are. And some of that is a problem that will never stop.

I am not that bitter in life but I can tell you that school is easy, fun. But the real learning will begin with the first trainer you are told to go out with for the next three months at your first employer. What you do not yet know now is a very dangerous, serious liability if not outright threat to your continuing ability to stay a professional trucker. For very long.

 

My wife and I did our CDL training and testing at Tennessee Technical College, $650.00 each and seven weeks later we had CDL and NO commitment to any company. This was at the Nashville campus 9 years ago.

 

Try a local Tech School.

 

You can get out a lot cheaper than Roadmaster.
Look for a cheap 160 hr. school and go that route and many outfits will hire you for team runs.
If you want to team and make the big money right out of school, contact Old Dominion Freight Lines and ask which school they hire from. They're picky about which school. Once you get a good coast to coast team run, it's possible to make 1/4 million a year, split between you and your team mate.
Old Dominion Freight Lines team truck photo.

 

I know you don’t want to necessarily tie yourself to a company, but there is a thread on here about Ozark Motor Lines. They are right off Raines/Perkins and Lamar. I have talked to their other drivers who seem to like the hometime and working there.

You also have several companies like Old Dominion on StateLine, Star Trasportation on Old Hwy 78 in Olive Branch and a few other that hire new grads or train, it’s escaping me right now, been a long day. Check craigslist too, you can score some pretty decent gigs on there.

I second the opinion of going to a tech school like Northwest or any other community college. You will pay less than $1000, better instruction and 400 hours of extensive driving and backing.