Misinformation at trucking companies

Were they specifically suggesting mega carrier training or did they mean go there and get experience? A lot of the drivers at the mega carriers went to independent schools and then went to work there.

 

Reazchi, for some reason the 1 year OTR experience is the highest requirement for many local driving jobs. The reasoning behind this completely escapes me, but if I had to guess it would be due to the fact the local outfits would rather a rookie driver get his first few screw-ups on the company dime of a bigger outfit.

 

The small trucking or private carrier is typically insured through normal means. A small company can't afford for a new driver to go out and potentially kill somebody in a CMV accident with their name on the door of the truck that crashed. The larger carriers are self insured, and have accepted accidents or the liability exposure of new drivers as an accepted cost of doing business. I'm not saying Swift doesn't care if 1 or 2 of their drivers kills somebody in a year. I'm saying that a fatality accident can literally bankrupt and/or make uninsurable a small[er] company. At the very least they could expect their CMV insurance rates to double or triple overnight if a major accident occurs in the infancy stages of a small company.

Just going to a Community College and leaving with a CDL is only a third of the training process. It's those first 3 months solo where most accidents occur if they are going to occur.

 

Their is no real training unless a company has a training program. A small local company dose not do that. Plus city driving is the most dangerous. Driving down the highway is the easy part. That is part of the problem and why just having a CDL is not enough to get a job. If someone gets in accident you have to explain why it happened and why the driver did not stop before having accident.

 

i have always told folks to go to prime, etc, get your butt kicked, learn the industry and come out the wiser

 

I worked at fedex express PT package handler and they have internal postings for there RTD(Ramp Transport Driver) truck driver delivering freight to stations that they will train you all you need is a permit but it a bidding process so it goes off senority. I was there for lil over a year in jax, fl and there were 3 postings the whole time I was there needless to say I didnt get one. so its a crap shoot if you want to try it. If this helps.

 

The amount of skills you will aquire, the amount of knowledge you'll attain in the first 6 months at a mega carrier that has a decent training program will be more than you will likely learn in a small company in the first three years.
It's brutal, hard work, but it's like boot camp. I have yet to find a single person that went thru it, that would do it again...but I have yet to find a single person that went thru it that isn't glad they did.

 

EXAMPLE:

The bigger companies are going to hand you the tools for the job, the regs book, hazmat books, permit book...etc. They're going to make sure that you are ready for the road. You will hit all kinds of traffic, all kinds of weather...etc. Good drivers will survive and bad drivers will degenerate. The smaller company needs you to be ready to hustle. Bad drivers hurt big companies, but it only takes a single bad driver to put a small company out of business.