Starting school, forgive me if this has been asked!

These hire new cdl grads:
Calex Logistics - hauls lots of produce out of California and back to Northeast.
Abilene Motor Express - good mix of dry van & refrigerated freight. 72 mph trucks. Coast to coast and also has Northeast regional. They also haul produce out of California.
Freymiller - one of the best refrigerated carriers around for new grads. They hire new cdl grads & drivers with less than 6 mos. experience through the "Restore Program" which is on the website.
Schuster - nations largest ice cream hauler; largest account is Blue Bunny Ice Cream.
Navajo Express - coast to coast refrigerated trucking.
FFE (Frozen Food Express) - coast to coast refrigerated trucking.
Contract Freighters Inc. - www.cfidrive.com - coast to coast dry van trucking.
Magnum Ltd. - excellent reputation with drivers.

 

The schools usually push 4 or 5 major carriers that have major driver retention issues and really push companies that have "driver unload" accounts such as Dollar General. There's reasons they can't keep drivers on those accounts; high accident/incident rates and drivers realizing they just spend thousands of dollars on cdl school and spend more time hand unloading trucks than driving, plus the stores aren't set up for trucks and have no docks.
Trucking is a good career and you'll enjoy it.

 

Flatbed is ok, I've done it coast to coast.
Reefers are good because they haul food and no matter how bad the economy is, people have to eat. During winter months or holidays such as Thanksgiving & Christmas, many companies freight really slows. Reefer freight picks up during that time because people are buying extra food for the holidays. I've hauled truck loads of hams, turkeys, holiday candy, etc. and keep the wheels turning. It's surprising; you might pick up a load of candy in Ohio and take it all the way to the west coast then bring produce or canned goods back to the east coast.

Another positive about reefers; for example, I was empty in Ohio one time, and the only load available was cans of spray paint going to Los Angeles. Since I have hazmat endorsement, I got that load. That put me in the right place for a "newspaper advertisement insert" multi-stop load running to newspaper printing companies up I-5. That put me in position for canned goods in Lodi,CA going to El Paso, which put me in position for a ceramic tile load in Texas gong to Jacksonville,FL. All this was done with a refrigerated trailer because you're not limited to just refrigerated freight.

@Gunner75 worked for TMC and can explain that.

 

Yeah reefer is good for an O/O but for a company driver it's just more hassle for the same money as a dry van.

 

Abilene Motor Express probably has what you want.They have Northeast regional and also coast to coast.

 

Navajo one of the lowest paying companies out there, so only stay there long enough to move to a high-paying company.