Opportunity for LTL trucking job

If they have the home time you want; go for it. Several LTL companies hire new cdl drivers, so that's not unusual. Just take it slow and easy in the beginning.

 

To be perfectly honest, you’re gettin thrown in the deep end right out of the gate. Multi stop setting with heavy traffic, customers to serve, and performance numbers to meet. However, I don’t think this is a bad thing. And if you look at it in the way of you’re gonna cut your teeth quick, you’ll be fine. Just take your time, and don’t stress out over the amount of stops you have or anything, just take it one at a time. I’m sure your company would rather you bring back 1 or 2 stops you missed that closed early, than you bashing into stuff trying to hurry. When I first started LTL I would stress out over stuff, and a Senior driver told me “Relax. Hell its just freight.” You’ll be ok.

 

I did ltl for 10 years and sometimes I put a ltl load together on my own truck now but that’s alittle different. Yes you can get in some very challenging backing situations. Moneys good heck with 10 years I was making 85-90k a year at 50-55 hrs. Try it you will either like it or hate it. You won’t know until you try. Take your time backing in places and get out and look at where you are backing in before you start backing. Make a plan one thing they won’t tolerate it backing into things. Where I worked three incidents in a year they canned you. Scrape alittle something and don’t tell them your gone. One guy I worked with jumped a curb and just touched the pole no damage. Cop saw it and called the office he was called at home and terminated. I just got wore out mentally doing it and needed a change. Most ltl places your on call for sometimes years before you get steady runs. You wait at night to get the call on when to come in. Getting started is the worst part. We had no minimum hrs or days. Sometime in slow weeks you only worked one or two days. You better be there when they call ready to work. Everything is senoriry if you have patience it’s a good gig.

 

When I was new, boss sent me to Van Nuys. I spent thirty years in so cal.
When I got there, I was extremely oriented. Had an attitude of; You better not screw up here. You know what to expect from the drivers. Which is mostly very good, experienced, mature, people during rush hour. You know what to expect from the streets in different areas. You better play it smart here. You know and have no excuses. It actually helped me to get to driving good early on.

 

Lots and lots of backing. Be ready for it

I would suggest applying to carriers like Old Dominion Freight Line, Fedex Freight, Estes, XPO, R&L, ABF and even Nemf. Hopefully you have hazmat, tanker and doubles/triples endorsements.

 

When I was in LTL I had a city driver using my truck during the day. He came over from waste management using his B license. He tore up my fender on a pole. I talked to him after he rolled in. He said it was his 3rd incident in a month his first month and he thought he was gonna get fired. Needless to say he got canned. My company at the time was very hard to get fired from also. One of the lower paying LTL’s.
The big LTL companies are way less forgiving and can be a one and done. Yes the moneys there but if you screw up and tear up equipment they’ll send you packing.

Some new drivers can succeed at a LTL company. I know everyone wants to be home and make the big money but sometimes it’s better to go the old fashioned route.

 

It depends how you look at it. With LTL you are going to have a lot of backing and a lot of local traffic. As time goes on you probably will service a lot of the same places, but especially in the beginning you'll be going all over the place and you're going to have to be able to back in.

The good news is that if you have LTL experience if the company you're working for isn't really a good one, you can go to a good one. There are a lot of LTL places you can make a lot of money and be home daily and some of them are union jobs also.

So that opportunity has its own set of challenges and Rewards.

So let's say you go OTR. You will be away from home probably weeks at a time. If you're married or have children you won't see them. You may have to team with a dirty filthy stinky trainer. You may end up working for nothing or just about nothing while you're away from home and spending money on the road for food and laundry etc etc. You'll be eating truck stop food and probably more often than not driving 10 plus hours straight... basically Non-Stop and instead of sleeping in your own bed you'll be sleeping in a bed that you're sharing with that dirty filthy stinky trainer and you'll be trying to sleep while he's hitting every pothole on the road.

And you still are going to travel through strange towns and you're going to have to find out of the way places and you're going to have to back in just like if you were working LTL.

Honestly, City Driving makes you a good driver. I remember seeing guys that drove Coast to Coast especially for places like Swift that it would take them maybe an hour to back their truck in.

You just have to be a good safe Dependable reliable driver.

And I think some of the LTL companies do have their own driving schools.

The only problem that I could foresee is that you're going to need someone to coach you on how to backup if you've never done it before. And you're going to need some practice.

I would imagine they have something in mind for that because I can't believe that an LTL company would cut someone loose in a tractor-trailer that's never backed up before and have them go make deliveries all day.

But if you can get the backing under control, that's the hardest part of the job.

Just be safe and reliable. And when you're backing if you're not 100% sure where you are or what you are near get out and look. No matter how many times you have to get out and look, do it. You did your job if you did not hit anything.

 

Im also in socal.. jump on that opportunity man their gonna train you for about 5 weeks before they cut you loose..

Learn the hard stuff first so everything else in trucking becomes easy later on

I did 2 yrs city driving with a 53 dry van all over Los Angeles. San diego, inland empire and lots of airports.. had some really tough days and some really good ones..i learned everyday got better and didnt hit nothing lol

Now im working for the best non union LTL company as a linehaul driver..easy peezy