Trying to start a career in trucking

Call the school to make sure the companies can fax them there, or see if they can email them to you.

 

You are not going to be wide awake focusing on tiring work inside a property waiting on a dock to be loaded or unloaded. It is the time to be sleeping and storing up your energy for the pending overnight run for morning delivery after you are loaded or unloaded. You will be sleeping where possible, at a moment's notice and resting big time in between epic marathon driving sometimes storms, other times grid lock traffic that kills you 3 miles in 10 hours stop and go and stop after 10 feet.

I imagine you are 100K in debt for college. Who cares if you are another 5K in debt for truck school. All of that is still Uncle Sam's money. The main thing is NEVER EVER sign a contract or a promissary note to repay a COMPANY should you be fired, dismissed or quit within a year. (Which you WILL do... so many legions of drivers wanna drive a truck has come and gone within 3 months ever since the late 1930's)

When I started trucking at 21, bright eyed and bushy tailed as well as strong, my elders told me I will probably make it 56 years before I am injured, disabled, killed or in prision for killing someone or a family or whatever. I made it to 42 before forced to stop OTR and made it to just about 48 before the State says here hand me your CDL due to medical reasons. Im over 50 now. And sick of trucking, particularly the grotesque flip of technology from tracking and delivering to a total and absolute totalitarian enforcement against YOU the driver for being late, holding cell phone or visiting your girl out of route or anything. You are fired.

Most people can barely get to your classroom on time without rushing and being scared that the teacher will be late slamming the door in their face. And in Trucking YOU will be rushing 2000 miles through three winter storms and 5 cities filled with garbage traffic plus two wrecks and god only knows what else to get to somewhere within 10 minutes or you are fired for being late.

While you are trying to get some sleep, your body will be rumbling gassy and leaky from that crappy undercooked over priced meal you gulped in a hurry and pissing bad from that awful tap water in which your body isnt used to and god only knows what else that can make you sick. Even the desert dust if you are not used to it can contain problems if you breathe in enough or roll in it plenty. Boom run a big time fever. Take you 4 days to break it. But don't worry. A few more seasons running that area will get your body hardened to it. Literally immune.

And sleeping? HA. People will bother you. Your bosses will be texting you on the satellite BEEEEP! You moving YET?! Youre late, call me. etc. Cops, Hookers and strangers will be banging on your door. HEY MOVE IT YOU *&^% Or asking you for money or sexual favors and god only knows what else.

You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Trucking is a journey in which America requires the food you are hauling. Or the machine it took Korea to make a year, two months to cross the pacific and now on your tractor with the buyers saying Where YOU AT! We want it NAOOOW.

And the papers. Since 9-11 security stuff in real ID act of 2020 plus customs and god knows what else has to be a colonsocpy probing your ### and everything inside of you and your life in particular. You will not be allowed to touch a big truck if there is something wrong with you. Especially drugs and bad mouthing social media etc etc etc. You will sign a inch thick stack of papers, some of those NOT in your FAVOR. If you are like most hungry impatient people in orientation (Stinking dirty unwashed masses who cannot rub 10 dollars for a basic chili meal...) will rush the signing process reading nothing. They are digging themselves a hole. You will be dangled and trolled a luscious 80,000 tractor and told you will make 3 dollars a mile but sign here. Don't worry about all the annoying scary words and numbers like 1099. You will get to all that later.

When the IRS comes after you for that 1099. If you are still in the leasing then... You wont be anymore trucking at all.

If you are that high up in university to get a masters or some rarified PHD on some haw haw degree.. STAY in school and finish it. You will make a million dollars your first year with that haw haw degree. It will take you a lifetime to get close to a million. And half that will be owed to the company who WILL give you a 0.00 paycheck for weeks if necessary before they fire you for excessive borrowing. And then bill you the remainder few thousand you still owe them.

If I sound bitter. I could be. But I am not. What you don't know yet will be bought and paid for by 10 years of tears, blood, sweat and being yelled at. The USA cannot stand truckers. At the same time they cannot exist without truckers. Not many can say they are going to die a trucker. Everyone else tasted it and ran back to home to do whatever it was they did before they tried trucking.

And finally the enormity of BS in the entire industry will sink into you one day. And you will question your very existence on that day wondering how in the hell you got yourself ### deep into such a monstrous lie that is our Trucking Industry.

and forget you ever thought you could have a CAREER in trucking. Such monumential BS.

You take it one day at a time in trucking. You could be dead off Sandstone in a raging storm tonight.

 

You will have to graduate from cdl school that's on their approved list. Talk to the terminal manager in person.

 

Pre-hires from companies that hire 22 yr. old drivers:
Stevens Transport
Navajo Express
Butler Transport
Schuster- nations largest ice cream hauler
Southern Refrigerated Transport
Sygma Network
TransAm
May Trucking Company
Jones Bros. Trucking - Missoula,Montana
Contract Freighters - www.cfidrive.com
Halvor Lines
Carolina Cargo

 

This is what gets me, they have overhead, you don't have a cdl, so 5k should be alright t get a cdl.

If you want to be robbed, try working for a cheap owner.

 

You just made me want to turn in my 2 weeks.

 

Some days I have a hard time understanding people on this forum. 5k is not a lot of money for a school that will teach you the skills to provide for yourself and your family for as long as your willing or able to do the job.

Everyone says you need to stay at your first company for a year so you're not considered a job hopper. In the very next breath they say don't sign a contract to work for a year to get yo ur CDL. "No company provided schools!"

Instead it's go to the government. Ask for a grant so school is free! Their just giving that cheddar away!

I found the starter company that best suited my needs. I went to their school and signed a contract. Paid the company back with 1 year of service. Once that year was done we were straight and I took my school cert, my 1 year safe driving and went to greener pastures.

It's not in me to walk into a government office with my hat in my hand asking "please sir, may I have food stamps, a free apartment and money for a cdl?" Your mileage may vary.

 

The guy who rode with me to get my CDL was in school for some warehouse management degree, after graduating he immediately went back to full time water hauling for natural gas industry. Couldn’t find work that would pay off his student loans with that degree. As for your ticket my boss laughed at me when I told him about my disobeyed traffic device ticket. Most companies will not care about one simple violation your meat in the seat, Good luck brother!!

 

Rooster, I think it is that they want something for nothing. Its just a job, and they should never have to pay for anything to do a job. While some of us consider this a career, those among us who think it is just a job outnumber us 30 to 1.