My 16 Week Experience with TRANSAM

Ran 260.
I do not have enough posts to reply to PM's. I hope you will not be upset that I am replying here.

Ran 260,
As far as I know, there is no other info check that will be done after you arrive at orientation. You will have to pass a drug screen and normal physical again. If there is something in your background that will cause a trucking company to dis-qualify you as an employee and you did not disclose it; you will be let go if it does come to light. It should be disclosed in writing on the job application. It will come to light eventually if you have an accident or some other incident that requires a lawyer or the police to become interested in you. The proper way to apply to a trucking company is to disclose up front everything that is in your driving record and criminal record. Many trucking companies do not care about criminal records over 7 years old, or driving records over 5 years old. They do care if you did not disclose something that happened during the period they request info for.
Many of the drivers for TransAm are former felons. Many of them have drug problems on their records. Some even have DUI's. What counts is how they dealt with their problems and how honest they were. TransAm has drug and alcohol treatment programs for employees, but I do not trust the ######## to be straight with you.
I have a friend that went with Werner. He had been out with a coach for about two weeks when Werner found an undisclosed DUI on his record from 1979. He did not think they would find it. When they did, they kicked him off the truck 800 miles from home. If he had disclosed the DUI they wouldn't have cared. He disclosed everything when he applied to Swift and they took him and he now drives for them. Honesty is the best policy on all job applications. Good luck with TransAm. Don't trust them.

 

A tip that might help is to take a copy of everything that you have already filled out or sent to TransAm (or any other trucking company for that matter) to copy from when you fill out the same app during orientation. Inconsistencies in information (even minor unintentional ones) are red flags to the people who check the info. (probably because so many people cannot keep their stories straight) and are used to weed out those that have not told the truth. They will cause you trouble even if you have told the truth if your info is not consistent between all your paperwork. If you are at all concerned that you might be sent home, be sure to have enough money with you to get yourself home including cabfare to the bus station because TransAm will only get you off their property. It is a good idea to keep enough cash in reserve to get yourself home from the road during coach time also. The coaches are not all sane or easy to get along with.

 

One of the last new driver stories that I heard at TransAm concerned a new driver on his first load. He picked up his load and went to fuel. He pulled into the fuel island and got out of the truck and went into the truck stop to get the pump turned on. While he was gone the truck rolled out of the fuel island, down a hill, across the street, through a chain link fence and destroyed a car and a wrecker as well as the tractor, trailer, and load. The new driver had forgotten to pull the parking brake. I have long thought how crazy the driver training system is when you take people with less than 200 hours of driving experience and put them in a $125,000.00 tractor; a $30,000.00 trailer; give them a $500,000.00 meat load and send them out on their own across the country to sink or swim in this industry. It just does not seem like an intelligent thing to be a part of.