This trucking is confusing, help.

It dosent matter what school you go too comm college or rub of the mill school get the cheapest one possible your real training will start when u get hired.

 

You're going to love it. You have the right attitude. I think you'll be just fine, because you actually want to do it and you are making an informed decision. You aren't coming on here looking for highest paying companies right out of school, you want to learn. It's a lot of new drivers who get a license out of desperation for money and think they're going to get rich

 

You will find that most community colleges have company recruiters that visit and offer jobs after you get your cdl.

 

I prefer straight OTR work to LTL (Less than truck load many stops in a trailer)

I do not fall for recruiters going to schools. They and I do not always get along. #### few are worth their weight in gold.

Swift is a whipping post for all things going wrong in this industry currently. In decades past if you cranked a paper towel machine you might have seen gratfitti referring to "[insert company name] landing gear simulator" or something snarky.

There are smaller companies that do well. I do better with them when I deal with people all over and know who to take care of what such as a ruined box of butter for OSD (Over Short or Damaged) and refused at the dock. It becomes a compay's decision to either literally eat the retail loss, bill insurance or deduct from trucker pay check and have that person eat the butter. Or... resell the butter whole sale meaning to go to a second location and deliver it damage and all. Or worse case scenarios go and landfill it. Meaning climb a trash hill, dump the cargo and it will be buried forever.

You need to learn manual. No restrictions when you take a test in a manual. You can enjoy the autos later if that is what you probably want. There are many things companies do to trucks secretly. Drivers are to just shut up and drive somewhere where and when they are told to go. No backtalk etc. Some companies buy trucks or have trucks leased or built for them that are not necessarily the kinds of trucks you want to take into battle across say Wyoming in the dead of winter.

You will run into the real id act of 2020, meaning you have to have a enhanced license, fast pass and probably a passport as well for Canada is probably in your future. Ive run books from Random House in Maryland straight up past Elmira NY upstate into Toronto several times. Nice fun little runs. Nothing major. Drop trailer and come out empty through customs. 9-11 changed everything and make things much more harder and challenging.

You will probably learn that NY state is excessively expensive to maintain a home. You might choose to relocate pernamently into another part of the USA and enjoy less property tax, hardly any to no personal tax to state etc. Your home will be that tractor trailer.

We are in the high summer, fixing to experience pretty intense heat. We had a couple of days of 110 and it's getting hotter slowly into the burning months of July and August pending Tornado and Mud season in the fall. You will learn to carry water in your storage. And food etc. You will learn that you will truly be not in a position to resolve home sqabbles over the phone. Your first duty is to your assigned load. But this is not here or there.

School is something you will discover for yourself and sometimes people learn things about themselves and must overcome problems. For example backing, or shifting or mountain work. For me it's mountain work. The instructors discovered I worried too much and was a little fearful in mountains. So they flipped it in my head and when finished in 4 months I was bored if I was not on a mountains somewhere. Turned me into a true monster.

In short. You will be learning what fear is. The best thing is to accept that yes you are very scared sometimes, but it's superior to simply make decisions and execute and follow through whatever the big scary problem is. If you decide wrong, well... the possibility of law enforcement against you, your company, your truck etc plus injury, death (Singular or plural) and so on everything you do in a semi will affect your future. If you have one. Not everyone with you in school now will still be with us years later. Some will be lost and others disabled and so on. (Im disabled but not by choice... Im already deaf so I have to overcome barriers in this industry. I know of maybe 5 people who were like me deaf and rolling OTR in class A back then. In fact, I lost half my family the day I got my DMV test done. Approx 200+ people flesh and blood said to me that they will be ######### if they share the road with me in a big 18 wheeler. In those days deaf people don't get to do a #### thing. Well. That's not me. When some one says you don't do, cannot do or wont do etc. It's totally the wrong words and I'll go learn it and do it just to prove it.

But that's water under the bridge. There is less than probably 30 left creating a generation of babies to which I have no connection to other than the family tree. I hope that if they choose to be truckers growing up, it's not going to be the same. If they are allowed to grow up at all.

Ive said enough. You are going on a journey in life for yourself doing this. I cannot do it for you, none of the people here can write or do it for you, no one in your family will do it etc. You have to do it yourself your own way and earn it.

Then you will learn just how bad part of trucking will be when walking across a urine soaked trucking stop parking lot in the blazing heat of the day wondering how in the world can people do this?

That would be something to go over another day.

 

Yes this is true...and it's not just LTL, but local jobs in general. There's no megacrap carrier or OTR job out there that will even come close to what local will pay...other than perhaps Walmart or Car Haulers. For example....

LTL (Estes, ODFL, UPSF, FXF, Saia, etc.) - $100k +

Foodservice (McLane, Sysco, Domino's, National DCP, etc) - $80 to $100k +

Parcel (UPS, USPS) - $100k +

Grocery Private Fleet - (SuperValu, ACME-Albertsons, Grocery Haulers-Bimbo Bakeries, Food Haulers-Wakefern-ShopRite, Wegmans, etc.) - $100k +

Praxair - $100k +
Waste Management - $100k +
Dean Foods + $80k +
Shaw Flooring - $80k +
Etc.

A lot of the reason why local pays more than OTR is due to Unions. Like them or not...Unions tend to set the bar on wages. Non Union companies will increase their wage...not just to compete, but to keep them out too. You won't see many...if any OTR companies that are Union...and thus, they don't have to compete for higher wages like local jobs do. Right now, most LTL jobs in the NE are Non Union and make close to $30 an hour for P&D, and around .65-70 cpm for Linehaul. UPSF, ABF, some FXF barns and YRC-NewPenn are the Union gigs in the NE. The rest are Non Union (Pitt Ohio, Campells, A Duie Pyle, Saia, Ward, FXF, R+L, NEMF, XPO, ODFL, Estes, etc.). Saia makes close to $29 an hour. So does UPSF and FXF. The Union gigs tend to pay OT after 8, whereas some of the Non Union jobs don't pay until after 45-60 hours...with the exception of FXF and I think Pitt Ohio.

And oh...I forgot to mention that LTL is A LOT more difficult than OTR...and they deserve every bit of what they make. You'll have multiple stops, pickup and deliver to some UNGODLY places, fight city traffic, use pallet jack and liftgate deliveries, and constantly rushed to make all your pickup and deliveries before everything closes down... that's for P&D. Linehaul...toughest thing you'll have to do is to try to stay awake since it's nightime work

 

Often times smaller companies don’t offer a schooling program but they will offer tuition reimbursement. They add YYY amount of money to a paycheck each month and that’s their reimbursement plan. Also make sure to apply for any state grants. I got more than half my coats covered by grants which really helps me out.

 

Most people are not aware that the States are investing in people, that's you and you and you.

Arkansas paid my tuition a couple of years and I did well actually in IT, after a particularly tough review of what is possible after the damage was done back in the 2000's they have a program where if you are suitable, they will send you to school to learn a trade with the your end of the deal being you keep yourself and your skills, wages, taxes etc productivity inside Arkansas 4 years after graduation. Otherwise guess what, you get billed. (it's only fair..)

You wont believe what plan B was. Literally Riverboat barge work, specifically navigation after specialized schooling and other training that would take a while. They said that they were interested in sending me up the river so to speak, we have three here that are pretty big for freighting.

The problem with that was I would have been gone 6 to 18 months and then home a month and back out a month at a time up and down around the USA. Spouse was not open to that idea. It would have been quite something else. But I don't build a life on what would have been. You can only do what you can do.


The third year for me I ran into discovery of certain aspects of IT that started to happen in this state bring in H1b workers from overseas. Literally India. I was not able to find a opening to work the Little Rock or airbase data center (These are akin to a castle filled with internet stuff. Big stuff. Warehouses full of floor to roof computer stuff.. with millions of wires to play with etc) I realized that I had other challenges and cut my college off then. The State was more than gracious. I did pay my own way that third year So.. it's sort of a team effort to do what is possible.

Considering a possible future hovering over a sick server while 12,000 irate customers call the trouble desk demanding their service back on NAOW.... I think Im blessed not to be involved in that to be honest.

 

Not all local jobs pay that great. You named a few but there even more that don't pay that great....some jobs like of you haul drinks to convenient stores and grocery stores are contingent on your route. If you have a good route, you'll see more money....if you have a crappy route, you'll do ok. You won't do horrible, you won't see more than 50000 or 60000K in a year. I worked for Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. My route wasn't so great. I was paid based on case count. Most of the time, I may have had 500 cases on my truck tops. The guys making the bank had the bulk stops and convenient stores, 1500-2000 cases. When you're delivering to poorer neighborhoods, you sure won't make the best money. From what I heard it was better than Pepsi and Coke, but it just depends on what you desire. Local is ok but I much prefer OTR