Terminated from Schneider - unemployable?

Posting for my son who started with Schneider - last update was here. (One month update on the kid and Schneider )

He finally got his dedicated run out of Carlisle and almost immediately had a ton of issues with his truck and the freight. I honestly can't remember all of the details but I know he was constantly on the phone with his boss(es) about stuff going on. The last two months he was there, the miles were disappearing. He'd get a message to be at a stop at X:XX am and he'd be there, only to be told that it would be a 5 hour wait. So he'd call it in, and they wouldn't even take the calls the last two weeks he was there. He'd be told his boss was on vacation or out of the office but he could hear them in the background talking to other people. He was getting pretty frustrated. Paychecks were maybe $500/week.

A few weeks back he got caught in some bad rain. It was dark and pouring down and he'd been #####ed at once again because the client had taken too long at one stop and the next stop was wondering if he'd make it on time. He was alongside a school bus that then stopped and put out the sign and lights while he was still alongside. He couldn't safely stop. A cop pulled him over. No ticket was given but the cop gave him an earful. Kid called it in to his bosses as he says he was supposed to do. Boss asked to see him when he got back to the terminal and they confirmed that the camera said he was going under the speed limit, that it was raining, that there was no ticket given, and that it probably would have been unsafe to stop. They terminated him anyway because he was using cruise control in a residential area - something his trainer had done and taught him to do - and that was against Schneider policy.

Now he's trying to find work. No one will touch him. JB Hunt said his report (Driver IQ) said "safety violation" and he could dispute it. Driver IQ said it says "company policy violation - other". Then they notice that his medical card is for intrastate only. Never noticed it. The trucking school paid for that medical card and so he's gone and had that redone. JB Hunt says they were incorrect about the termination reason but they want him to get 6 months experience somewhere else and reapply.

Prime, CR England, US Express, and TMC said to come back in a year since he'd been terminated. Swift, Stevens Transport, and Western haven't responded to the two applications he's submitted. Werner said they'd give him 1000 miles/week but they want a 45 minute phone interview to verify work history for the last three years.

Any advice is appreciated. He was with Schneider for 7 months. We're in Virginia (Winchester area) and he'd prefer something OTR. @Chinatown ?

 

Stevens Transport says he needs three months experience somewhere else first because he was terminated.

 

He hates social media/forums, I guess. He's been on the phone and running around to submit applications, do drug tests and get his medical card redone. Just hasn't had the time to sit down and do this himself.

 

It definitely appears to be a little slow where we are. Even listings on Indeed for local stuff have dried up. He's applied to Lily Transport and a couple of local gigs in the last hour. Most everyone wants several years of experience around here, though.

He knows it now! Schneider insisted that he was terminated not for the school bus incident but because he was using cruise control. The safety guy for Schneider said that the camera showed a row of houses along one side of the road and that made it "cruise control in a residential" which was against their policy.

 

I kinda figured as much! They really drilled it into him at training to call in whenever a cop is involved, even if there's no ticket. He thought he was covering his butt by calling it in because the cop was yelling at him and saying he was going to have his job even if he couldn't ticket him.

Kinda thought that, too. He says he's just been telling them he was terminated for "company policy violation" and when asked, he says that they let him go for using cruise control in a residential. (New info now that he's off the phone - apparently safety told him that because they could see houses on one side of the road on the camera, that he was supposed to treat that stretch of road as "residential" and stayed at 25 mph. Instead, he'd been going 35 with cruise control in a marked 55 because of the rain and the curves in the road). So when a company asks him about why he was terminated, that's what he's telling them. "Company policy violation" and expanding with "Schneider told me a new policy requires that drivers slow to 25 mph if they see houses, no matter what the posted speed limit is." He says he hasn't mentioned the school bus to anyone since they told him explicitly that the school bus wasn't the violation.