Switching career to trucking, need advice

If the job attached to the contract is the right job at the right company for you then the contract is mostly irrelevant if you drive like you are trained.

Do enough research to know what driving job will provide what you need & make it easy to stay for AT LEAST a year & the contract is just some paperwork.

Terminal near home.
Truck parked at company yard with maintenance.
50 CPM or more.
2500 miles per week.
Benefits cost less than $150/mo
No driver cam.
Driver-choice on fuel stops & routing.
Reimburse driver for truck expenses.
Tolls paid/reimbursed.
Hometime as preferred
Anything else that's important to you.

 

If you can get the CDL through the WIOA program there will be no contracts.

And with Swift there is no actual contract that requires you to stay with them if you go through their school.
You agree to pay for the CDL school, which is taken out of your pay over a one year period. If you quit before it is paid off you will owe them the balance.
That is the only obligation you have.
And Swift goes one step further. If you stay with the company for 2 years the entire amount is paid back to you over that second year at the same rate is was deducted. So after two years you would have paid nothing for the CDL school.

 

thanks, I've only become a whiner since turning 65, stupid Medicare,,I'm not that selfish, I belong to this site because as GROUP, we can help people. My views are particularly dated, but some things are still universal. You'll be fine.

 

Just wanted to add my $.02 on a couple specifics which weren't covered (or covered completely..) by other respondents:

I hope you realize that, as soon as you go OTR your 'social life' will nearly completely disappear.

First, I'd like to make one thing crystal clear: When you are driving for a living, you are NOT a tourist. Making your schedule on time and sticking to the legal truck routes takes priority over everything. Many 'tourist attractions' don't have parking for anything larger than a small motorhome.
Your life will revolve around keeping on schedule, and planning your driving hours to correlate with legal hours-of-service regulations.

Easier said than done when you are more-or-less a captive of whatever food your fuel stops serve.

No. Trucking does not work that way. Nobody wants to sent a part-time driver out on the road. If you only want to work 3-4 days at a time, look for a 'casual' job as a local driver for an LTL carrier. But don't expect to get one in your area, not with all the LTL carriers that went bankrupt in the last 2 years. Besides, that job is mostly unloading and loading, multiple times a day.

When you are OTR, your schedule is every day, 7 days a week. If you run too hard and run out of hours, you need to do your '34 hour reset' wherever in the boondocks you landed. Plan ahead, and you might end up someplace interesting...

Ummm,.....yeah, you can dream, but it ain't gonna happen!

To be honest, I think you have a fantasy understanding of what the career of a professional truck driver is like. You'll find plenty of the reality about the industry here, as well as quite a bit of exaggeration, buffoonery and just general hogswallop. As it is right now, you sound like a guy who will probably wash-out in the first year. As a result, companies looking for a long-tern prospect will pass you by (as long as you still don't have your CDL).

I'd suggest that, if you are REALLY serious about it, you get a CDL from a REPUTABLE CDL school; this will set you back I don't know how much (maybe $10k???), which will show a potential employer that you are serious. If you go with one of those 'we will train you' companies like Swift or Western Express, you will have to deal with the marginal people they hire on a daily basis, PLUS if after 6 months of taking their cr@p you want out, you will STILL owe them thousands for their (substandard) training school.

I may be a bit harsh with my observations, but I doubt anybody will say I'm not truthful. Before you leap into something you may not be satisfied with, I suggest you do a LOT more research.[/QUOTE]

 

There was a time,, my time, when yes, the faster you went, theoretically, the more money you could make. We paid the price for that, and now trucks are all regulated for a max. speed of about 63 mph. More or less. Social media has brought the truck driver a lot closer to home, imagine, years ago, you might be out for a month and nobody back home would know if you were dead or alive. Today, that's all changed, and you aren't so alone anymore. Trouble is, the boss knows too, and that was something we never had to deal with. I think you are a great candidate for a driver, BUT, don't be over optimistic. Trucking isn't like most jobs, where you come in at full pay. Takes a while, things out of your control will slow you down, weather is the biggie. and you'll learn what loads not to take, but it takes time. I still suggest a company that has their own training, and a job will be waiting for you. Sometimes, you can work off the cost,a big plus. Choose wisely, we've heard it all here, some heartbreaking, after the fact stories, if they only would have come here first. Good luck.

 

I will go out on a limb here.....& suggest that "Mac 9" refers to a macro #9 that is sent to/from a driver's tablet.

It is probably in reference to a dispatch function, or request.

-- L

 

I guess that if I were broke and looking to get into trucking PRONTO, I might consider Swift. However, experience has taught me a couple of things that a rookie probably wouldn't understand:

If you work for a Mega (like Swift), try to avoid company terminals and other company drivers as much as possible. Going into a terminal means you can be taken off your load and re-assigned to a different (usually less desirable load), and be sitting on your keester all weekend in that terminal building. Also, large carriers attract back-stabbers, so steer clear of other company drivers.

Secondly, if you want to go OTR and you have a house or an apartment, get rid of it. You won't be there enough to justify the cost, or to be able to maintain it.

 

I listed questions that I thought would help me find a place for me. Your list might be different.

With trucking appointment times govern most of your day. In CDL school it's easy to get an idea that you will just DECIDE how many of your hours you will drive, how long your break will be & then how long you will rest. You will be given a pick-up appointment, a delivery appointment, and you have whatever time on your various clocks are available. Only on your first trip since home-time or reset do you start with a fresh 70/11/14. After that 1st trip you have whatever time hasn't been used up. In addition to the appointment times & Hours of Service clocks you have speed limits, truck max speed, and traffic laws. My suggestion is follow those traffic laws like they are enforced with an immediate career death penalty. You cannot speed fast enough & for enough hours in a day to make virtually any difference in arrival time. If you are going to be late the chances you can be on-time by speeding is almost zero. There is a better chance you will become more late when you get stopped for speeding & waste all the time it takes for the traffic stop & finishing out the trip at the speed limit. BTW the company will know your speed because all the electronics snitch all of the time.

A maximum effort involves trying not to be late by driving at the speed limit, or up to 5 mph faster, and taking nothing but theegally required 30 minute break every 8 hours of driving/work.

When you are given a dispatch, or dispatcher asks can you be at X by 8am, you need to quickly calculate going driving from here to there at the speed limit (plus a safety margin) or not. If the trip is all on federal interstate highways then divide the distance in hundreds of miles by 50. For example if the distance is 200 miles (2) & you estimate an average speed of 50 mph then you calculate 2 (hundreds of miles) multiplied by 2 (2 hours per hundred miles, or 50 mph) and expect to arrive in 4 hours plus 30-60 minutes (safety cushion). You tell dispatcher "I can be at X in 5 hours (4 hours of driving + 1 hour for traffict/whatever) if absolutely nothing goes wrong AT THE EARLIEST." You never say "I will be at X on-time unless you have done the calculation & you will be on-time. It's a service failure to "promise" and be late. It's not a service failure to say at the beginning I cannot be there until a later time than you wanted. You dispatcher will tell the customer you will be on-time & then blame a lazy driver for not being on-time. Just like a lazy customer will be required to ship a load on Monday & to them that means if they ship at 1 minute before midnight on Monday night it's the same as shipping it Monday at 0600 for a Tue morning delivery 500 miles away.