need good advice

Your husband may have his CDL, but if he has no experience he will be hard pressed to find anyone that will hire him and send him off in a truck by himself.

Don't blame his previous employer, I'm willing to bet the main reason he can't hire your husband is because his insurance company is telling him he can't.

Your husband may be able to get hired by a local company running dump trucks or some similar class B work at a substandard rate, but if he wants to make decent money he will probably have to sign on with one of the major carriers and will be required to go through a training program.

Once he gets as little as 3-6 months of experience he will start to see options open up to him if he keeps his driving record clean. Once he gets 1 years experience he will see a significant increase in opportunities.

It's just a matter of "paying his dues". Just remember, a clean driving record is like gold in this business.

 

Unfortunately, your husband is caught in the great CDL meat grinder.

Rule #1 If it's not OTR (24 states or more) experience. It's NOT experience.

That's why your husbands employer won't vouch for the experience.

Rule #2 If it doesn't involve a tractor trailer combo. It aint experience.

My advice, search this forum carefully. Contact some of the companies. Go from there.

I understand your concern about BAD companies. But for all intents, your husband will be considered a rookie driver by most companies. Been there done that...own at least 2 of the T-shirts myself.

 

??????

I don't know how many state are in a typical Regional route but lets say 10. 10 states. Your saying if I'm regional for 2-3 years it doesn't count for experience?

 

Many companies look at it that way. Blame it on the insurance companies. It goes back to the "Basic Skills" philosophy. If you haven't done it, you have no skills.

Look at it from the OTR companies view. The majority of regional driving is done by the larger freight companies (UPS, Fed-Ex, Yellow, etc) they schedule the drivers out to avoid traffic, then shut them down during really bad weather. You'll never see a set of pups in downtown Manhattan.

Many of the smaller local companies run the same stretch of road, day in and day out.

While you may get a wink and a nod at some companies, others will not consider it as OTR experience. Their first question will be, "How many states, and what states did you drive in?" There are exceptions.

Many will even require that you ride with a "finisher/trainer" for a couple of weeks to verify that you are able to handle the various road conditions.

Long story short, A UPS driver applying for OTR, runs into the same issues as I would trying to hire on with UPS. Lack of recent experience. Although both of us drove a truck for over 250 days within the last year.

While many OTR drivers are excellent drivers, I would be hard pressed to turn them loose with a bucket of asphalt on a 2 lane skinny road, without some training/additional instructions. But, I know the dangers of driving a heavy bucket truck on skinny roads.

 

I had my Class A and drove a Transfer Dump truck (80,000# gross)300 miles a day in and around Phoenix, AZ for almost 5 years.

Guess what, when I decided to go OTR I had to run with a "trainer" for 6 weeks. My "trainer" had been driving for a whole year.

Just something we all have to go through.

 

As far as getting mixed up in a "bad" company.

Just do all the reading you can on this board and others.

Do a Search on any company you are looking at. Keep in mind, there will be good and bad said about all companies. Just look at the balance.

I would suggest staying far away from Swift, Werner and CR England. They really have bad reputations. Schneider seems to have a very good training program. Their pay is less than impressive, but most of their drivers I've talked to speak highly of the company. Also, take a look at Roehl, TMC, Decker, CFI, etc.

The Key,

Do as much research as you can, don't jump in blindly as so many do and best of luck.