New CDL Holder Looking For Advice

Home - Leonards
@xlsdraw drives there.
Recent CDL A Graduates have a home at Leonard’s Express!
Leonard’s offers a tuition reimbursement program up to 10K!

 

CDL Jobs | Hiring Now in Utah | Pride Transport
HTTPSwww.pridetransport.com
Hires Chicago drivers.
@Snowshoes works there.

 

USA Truck – Capacity Solutions
HTTPSwww.usa-truck.com
Trucks run 70 mph.
Has a program, once you qualify, where you dispatch yourself and run where you want to.

 

Empire Express | Dedicated to providing safe, on-time delivery, …
HTTPSempireexpress.com
Trucks run 69 mph
Dry van/APU/refrigerator/cdl school tuition reimbursement.

 

My advice is look into Estes. They have 4 or 5 yards in Chicagoland and is one of the few companies that I would willingly go back to work for if I ever lost my lease. They do treat their drivers pretty good. After you have a few years experience, buy your own. By then you will know where to go.

I worked there for 2 years as a line haul driver out of Minneapolis and routinely ran to Chicago (actually I have been to 70 some of their yards from Salt Lake City to Harrisburg PA) but spent more time in and out of the Chicago area than any other.

 

Nationwide Transport Leader | Experior | Chicago, Illinois

 

I'm working on retiring early, unless I get a particular cushy job I've applied for. I've been doing this since 1994. My experience is 100% as a company driver, and employee. My dad was briefly an Owner-Op O/O in the 1980s. I learned I didn't want anything to do with O/O. It's about 2-3 times the work of driving the truck for about 150% of the pay of driving. Every moment of every day your mind is occupied with plotting and planning every detail of the business because the margins are so small. O/O is the only way anyone is going to make much over $100k per year. The very best driving jobs will pay $100k per year, provide benefits, supply trucks/tires/maintenance, and time off.

Right know trucks are at their historical most expensive prices. There is./was about a 12 month waiting period to take delivery of a truck even if you had all cash in a suitcase to give to a dealership. I last worked for a small Owner-Op fleet out in Idaho. That's where I saw the numbers. Prior to that I was a driver in a 100-3,000 fleet. I never saw their numbers. My brand new truck In Aug 2020 cost $160k with all the bells and whistles. In December 2021 the same truck cost $220k and was on a 12 month back-order. At the same time the freight rates the company was getting paid were almost half what they had been in Aug 2020. Fuel cost more than doubled. The costs of operating a truck went from $0.70 per mile to $1.50 per mile just for fuel. Freight rates have collapsed. At this moment, trucks have never been more expensive, fuel more expensive, and rates customer will pay lower than ever before. It's like starting a stock brokerage in 1930.

Even with YouTube you cannot know what this job is like until you start doing it. You don't live on the Hours of Service schedule, you don't sleep in truck stops, if you can find a spot to park, you don't get treated by customers like a diseased skunk just because you hand them your paperwork and showed up that the appointment time. You have been banished from real bathrooms to porta-pottys. You haven't tried to sleep beside the trucks with screaming pulleys and air compressors popping off every 3 seconds. You haven't been 2,000 miles from home when you are told somebody is on the way to the hospital or dead. You haven't had the 30th car TODAY swerve in front of you and slam on their brakes so they can exit from the left lane. You haven't busted your rear and "fudged" your logs to show up ONLY 45 minutes late, due to being told the appointment was later or waiting for a dispatcher to make a decision, knowing that every customer and dispatcher's FIRST excuse when THEY screw up is to blame you for sleeping too long or getting lost.

You will need to choose a place to work. That choice among Company A, B,C, and D will largely decide how much money you make, how often you get home, if you get home for more than 34 hours, what parts of the country you drive in, which determines the traffic and aggression of the car drivers, What kind of health insurance and the cost of it, etc. It will determine of you decide which route you drive and where you fuel or if all of that is determined for you NO MATTER WHAT. Your choice of company will decide what comforts you truck has installed or may be installed, such as inverter to use household device in the truck. An auxillary power unit APU that provides electrical power and air conditioning/heater when the truck is shut off. There are many other things company choice decides. Choice of company will decide if you can bring a pet or a passenger. As you work that first year you will see which of the stated details are VERY important to you and which are unimportant to you. The normal pattern is you pick your first company, and then slowly learn why you want to work somewhere else over that year, unless you picked very wisely for your first company. As you work in this industry you learn more and more which details really decide your quality of life and which are important to other people. The company and the driver fit, or don't fit, each other like a pair of shoes. Giving me the highest quality shoes made by the Davinci of shoemakers using the finest Italian leathers from the King's own private herd does nothing if they are too big or too small. It doesn't matter if others think those shoes are worth more than my house, they don't fit me and I can't walk in them. Likewise, if they are the cheapest quality possible. If they don't fit, or fit everyone but me, they are of no use to me. I learned in the last 2 years I would never ever pull refrigerated trailers. I loved tankers, did mostly dry van. There is not an obvious path to big money or everyone would be there now making it.

80-90% of new drivers leave the industry before they have 1 year experience. IMO, most of that is due to the new drivers doing nothing to find out what they are getting into and relying on Google ad placement to determine who to work for. Watching YT videos and mentions of trucking in the media will make you think this job is just one long vacation drive past national landmarks at sunset. If you pick the wrong company it's a lot more like working in a sweatshop. ALL COMPANIES ARE NOT THE SAME, although plenty of people like to claim that so they have an excuse for working at some junk company that treats them like a prisoner.

 

the company did not do those programs to lose $$$. dispatch plays a large roll in your success. i tried l/p for 6mo @ trekker logistics. had a bad dispatcher for a couple weeks, she got fired. new dm was good to a point.
6 of us started orientation only 1 stayed beyond 6 months.
i had near 4 yrs exp when i tried l/p..
read my contract & asked questions.
imho, get 1yr minimum otr exp b4 trying that.
better to learn on a companies dime than yours. lol.

 

The best info you can get about a company is from current working drivers doingbthe type of work you are considering. For example, if you work out of Chicago terminal or yard, for ABC Trucking they can tell you details about ABC Trucking that may apy to all ABC drivers and they tell you about the Chicago yard (break ins to personal vehicles), etc. But if you want Over The Road OTR and they are Dedicated or Owner-Op they cant tell you OTR info, like forced routing, forced fuel stops, idling limits, etc. Ignore whst company reps tell you. Make the company give your info to drivers doing OTR out of the yard you will be based. Adk them the pay rate, how many miles they got last week, do they pick the route to customers, what fuel stops do they use, does truck have an APU, are repairs done quickly, are you expected to "be creative" with your ELD, how long are they home, do tgey leave truck at company yard, anything you want to know.

Many companies pay current drivers if they refer outsiders to join the company. You can ask the driver the company refers you to give your number to another driver, in case you suspect the company is settimg you up with a "company man".

If all you know about a company is what it says on their website andvwhat the recruiter tells you, you don't know enough to make a decision about them, IMO.

 

The only O/O that made really good money that I ever met personally. O/O means Owner/Operator. He was leased to Landstar in April 2016.
There may be more like him. His secret was his preferred lane.
I'm inserting a quote from the original post bellow.
Maybe it will help you.
Good luck.