My 4 month review of central transport and a question regarding experience

I've been driving trucks since this past February and it's been a few ups and downs. I started out with US xpress and I went through 6 bad trucks. Then I wanted to give Cypress Truck lines about try but that ended worse than us xpress because I got fired from there. It took me almost a month to find a job but I ended up landing with Central transport in Tallahassee,FL and I've been there for 4 months now. Here's my pros and cons so far and I have some questions.....

Pros:

• I'm home each day and on the weekends. Very similar to my white collar career.

• Pretty decent pay each week even though it's a little slow.
• Im getting more backing experience that I've needed for a while
• I get to utilize my TWIC card as I'm the only one who has one.
• I've learned a lot about my local area and places that I've never knew existed.
• I also get box truck and semi experience
• Hourly pay

Cons:

• We don't have any electric pallet jacks to move this freight off
• Because of this I'm starting to get joint pain. My hands hurt the most after working each day. I can't bend them when i first wake up in the morning.
• The terminal manager loves for you to work through your 30 minute DOT break. I've seen some other LTL companies be stricter with their drivers.
• Got an overweight ticket of 1k because they wanted to load so much stuff on the truck.
• Short training time IMO.
• Kinda wish I could do the night shift work but we are full right now and those guys aren't leaving anytime soon.
• Overtime starts at 55 hours.
• I was on the panama city route but a vendor kept complaining about the time that I was coming even though I was being held up at other deliveries. Now I basically so a floater route.

All that being said I am thankful for my experience and the terminal manager taking a chance on me given I don't have much experience. That being said when I get my year(which is Feb 5th, 2026) i was thinking about going to something else that was no touch and a gaurenteed minimum. My dad's friend has been trying to get me to go to Landstar because there's an owner that wants me there and they mainly run out of atlanta to the southwest, but they will not count my experience as an LTL driver. I tried to search around on her to see if I could see something on here about that but I didn't see anything. Which companies can accept LTL experience if you're trying to do regional or OTR? I thought about staying local with dump trucks but idk how that work is or if it really slows in the winters.

 

Don't waste your time with the Landstar deal especially if it pays on a 1099. Sounds like that o/o is desperate for a driver anyways, it's a red flag.

Get a couple or 3 years in at your current LTL job while keeping your record spotless and clean between now and then. In that time the economy will likely have turned for the better and trucking will be booming again. You'll be able to take your pick of whatever LTL job you want to upgrade into then. A company you can earn a solid living from, get good home time and retire from.

 

On a sidenote even though in their ad they say they'll help you get your endorsements, Central Transport will ghost you after the interview without your hazmat, doubles, and triples before you apply.

 

Very true. Honestly I do have to say that there's a LTL position that opened up 10 minutes from where I live. So instead of driving an hour to get to work each day it's 10 minutes. It's an XPO terminal. Been debating on applying.

 

That's good to know but I already had all of my endorsements and TWIC card before I applied.

 

Tell me more about the white collar career

 

Sure thing. I have a background and environmental compliance and science. Also I studied meteorology and geography for undergrad and environmental compliance and occupational safety. And health for one graduate degree, and also emergency management services for the other graduate degree. I work with the state of Florida for 10 years. And environmental science and compliance where I worked for the department of environmental protection. The department of emergency management also, the department of economic opportunity, where I was a construction specialist where hurricanes Things that damaged people's homes and I was the construction specialist to manage those projects and make sure that they were on track to finish. I love what I did. But the pay was just not there. It was a very hard endeavor to get $50000 a year, so I had a lot of friends and family. Tell me the trucking offered way more and less stress compared to the white collar world.

 

You’re home every night, weekends off, decent pay, managers, that seem understanding, and you’re wanting to try something else? I work for a good company. I’ve been out here 10 years now. I have a flawless, perfect record. I never know when I’m going home. I never know how much Hometime I’m gonna get when I do go home. It’s usually a reset. I stay out up to 60 days at a time. Never knowing anything. My vacations are nothing more than bank days off. And that still falls short if you calculate year-to-year days off. I’ve never had a weekend off and in four years? Only two holidays off. Pay is great, but the grind is real!

My advice is to think real hard in real long before you jump ship and think something is better. Because it probably won’t be.

 

Why limit yourself to garbage Florida government wages and not branch into the private sector? Those credentials easily earn $150k in the corporate agricultural sector with a considerably high work-life balance.

 

I think not. It ain’t like the old days. You’ll find out.