Team Driving - is it a way to start?

As with most of the newbies here, I'm having a ###### of a time getting my foot in the door. I made a good friend when I was in school who's in the same boat I am. Would it be easier if we approached some of the rookie-hiring carriers (Swift, JB Hunt, etc) and offered to drive as a team for them?

 

Carriers want teams anyway . Offering to run team won't be an advantage . As far as JB goes they are moving more to intermodal and using less teams .
The problem is the number of applicants increases as job losses also increase and freight continues to decline . It'll get harder and harder to get hired .

 

Dont do it. If you go with certain carriers who will force you to team drive, if something happens to him and he has to get off his truck (Maybe he quits, or wrecks or gets a girlfriend he wants to team with, whatever. maybe he gets hurt and has to go on workers comp), you will be stranded wherever you are. Happened to me before. Also having an extra person in the truck is just a crutch for both people. You'll never learn how to reallllllly back up until you're solo, and get to your consignee and realize that the dock is IMPOSSIBLE to back into. But it has to get in there, and you're the only one thats gonna do it! When i went solo at werner, it seemed like they intentionally gave me loads with impossible docks. But dispatch doesnt know what a dock looks like. LOL. One load in particular went to three Mac's Fresh Foods stores near Alexandria, LA. The first dock, had EXACTLY one trucklength of space in front of it, and you had to back around a wall, and for about half of the back you could not see the dock. No room to pull forward to straighten out whatsoever. The next store's dock, had LESS than a trucklength in front of it. When i finally got it in the hole, my sleeper was nearly touching my trailer. The next store had an easy dock with plenty of space in front of it but no room to turn around. Truck has to be backed through an intersection onto the property.... And sure, the workers "helped" me out by yelling things and making gestures, but they arent truckers. They dont really know. However, they were not at all surprised at how long it took me, insisted that this happens every time they get a delivery. When you have a dock with less room in front of it than the length of a truck, you kind of tend to understand. LOL.

THATS how you learn. If you want to team drive after that, go for it, but it has no advantages and lots of stress.

 

Desperate times etc........ Do whatcha gotta do etc......

.Keep kicking, you'll get your foot in a door !!!!!

 

By the way, i was in kind of a mood when i posted that, PO'd at my company etc..but...I didn't mean to discourage team driving so much as I did, but I feel like it does not force you to learn what you need to know. When it's gotta be done and you're the only one thats gonna do it, thats when you learn how to drive. Also, a lot of companies that only hire solos will not even count it as experience at all. And don't even work for a company that *forces* you to team drive, because they wont let the truck roll if your codriver bails.

 

I think team driving would only be worth it if it's a husband/wife team. Too bad my wife is scared to death of semi's due to an accident with one.

 

Teams are ok if you know your co-driver real well.I did it for a while with my brother so it was easy but with someone I don't know,not for me.

 

I could teach my wife to drive and she could do it, but she won't! She says that she hates the way I get when I drive OTR and she has gone with me many times. I think it would be the perfect way to finish off a long career,
but I just can't get her to do it.

She sees what it has done to me I suppose.

 

Teaming is difficult for many reasons and it can place stress on even the strongest of marriages. I'll be blunt: I've loved my husband and been married to him for 28 years next month. We've raised our kids, other people's kids, taken care of my invalid parents, fought law suits and won, he spent 20 years in law enforcement, we fought my cancer together and won, we lost our son to drugs and prison and through all of that we barely ever argued. We do now. In fact we had to figure out how to argue effectively. LOL

It's hard, it's non-stop if you're getting good miles and it can be darn stressful. I wouldn't team with anyone else because frankly I think I'd have bludgeoned someone else over the head with my tire thumper by now. The only reason it hasn't happened to my husband is I love him and I don't want to be a widow and have to date. Also because I had good friends in GuysLady, Otherhalf and Truckrswife who listened to me let off steam.

But please don't tell my husband I wouldn't team with anyone else...........I use it as a bargaining tool! LOL

Anyway the point of this incredibly long and boring post is this: yeah teaming is currently the best way to get miles with some companies but be VERY careful about whom you team with. Knowing someone through CDL school may not be a long enough time to know if you can live with them 24/7 in a small metal box (as my husband likes to say).

 

after I finished my 300hrs with Werner they wanted me to team up. I decided to team up with a guy who I met during Orientation. He lived next to me and we have kept in contact with each other during our training period.

I later found it to be a big mistake because we really werent on the same page with alot of stuff. This caused a lot of issues between the both of us. Add to the fact that he cant back a truck to save his life. I had to get out almost EVERY SINGLE TIME just to guide him. It was really pissing me off. Luckily he quit around christmas.