My wife and I want to start driving as a team, where to begin? wife has NO experience

Hey there...we are kinda in the same situation. My hubby has his CDL but I dont and we are looking into team driving. There are several different threads on the topic of couples/teams OTR. I started a thread for sharing advice, experiences and questions. I will post links there to other threads with good info. http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...usband-wife-couples-teams-geting-started.html Feel free to check it out from time to time and post anything useful you come across.

We are considering having my hubby train me as well. My schedule at work is such that I would have to quit to go to a school ( I am an RN). We are in Texas/Louisiana and I can take the written test and get my learners permit, then take the actual driving part of the test when I am ready.

We are also trying to figure out how much money can be made as team drivers. I have had some tell me up to 175K.....but I havent been able to back that up with any load rates. Seems it would be hard (or impossble) to make that with the cpm pay rates I see advertised. WE are going to the Great American Truck Show (GATS) in Dallas this weekend, hopefully will be able to talk to a lot of people and get some answers to those questions. I also plan on spending a day or two at a truck stop talking to drivers and get some "real life experience" to think about.

Good luck aand please share what you learn!

 

My wife and I drove team and loved it! We made very, very good money! Started out driving company for a year basically to refine her driving and make sure this what she wanted to do. We ended up going owner op and also sold our house and one vehicle and pretty much put everything we earned straight into the bank. It was the adventure of a lifetime!

I would personally recommend that the easiest way to approach would be to find a company you are both interested in driving and best suit your needs, maybe not a mega-carrier but a medium to larger size company. This way they will be able to keep you busy and the opportunity for drop and hook will be there optimizing your mileage. As a team you want to average 1000 miles a day or 7000 a week. The best way to go about this would be for you to go ahead and sign on with a company and put some time in. Usually most companies require about three months before you are able to train. During this time your wife can go through school and get her license. When she finishes and you have your time in she can sign on and you can train her. Otherwise yes you will most likely train three in a truck or even worse they will make train separately with two different trainers. Most all companies require the same amount of training time. Its more of an insurance thing than company policy.

Once you guys get going it will take a good three to four months out there before you are used to the day to day happenings and are comfortable with things on the road. Maybe a little stressful during this time but have no worries it will get easier. It is always tougher on the female than the male to get used to living on the road. Have no fear though it is more than worth it and you guys will make very good money! Husband/wife teams are the cream of the crop and are treated like gold!

Good luck to you guys if you have any questions feel free to "pm" me. You can also check out my profile to see picts of our adventures...

 

Keep us posted on how that goes! Let us know if it was a good program and worked for yall!

 

Just posted in the thread above some useful info I learned at GATS.