Two Team Students Looking for Decent Company

Hi,

My name is John and my friend and I have just graduated from MTC Trucking School (a place I would never recommend in my life) and have our CDL's with Hazmat, Tanker and Double/Triple endorsements. We're financed through the school, so that has limited our choices somewhat. Unfortunately, the company which we had planned on working for (Covenant) won't be able to take on people for orientation until at least mid-January, so at the moment we're looking for alternatives. The companies we've received pre-hires with that deal with the financing aspects of the school are:

Werner
Covenant
KLLM
FFE/Conwell
Wiley Sanders
Roehl
Swift
CRST

We're already aware Swift and CRST have a fairly bad reputation, so we're not especially interested in them. Now like, I know there are probably a hundred threads just like this every week, so I feel sort of bad for posting this at all, although in my defense, we've called all of their recruiters and gotten all of their basic information like training pay, per cent, average miles/salary/bonuses, truck make and models used, per diems, health care etc. But unfortunately, most of the companies came out really close, and what a recruiter might say is the average salary or miles per week isn't necessarily what it actually is. So I just wanted to get some feedback on what company you guys might recommend for two trainees planning on driving team.

Basically it seems like all the companies have something going for them, as well as something working against them, so I was mostly wondering if any of the information I have is wrong, which might help us make a decision. For instance:

Werner has really nice trucks and seems like a good company to work for, but their per mile seems really low ( Iwas quoted 29.5 split)

Covenant is basically in the same boat as Werner, although they pay a bit better, but again, we'd have to wait a couple extra weeks to start work

KLLM has really decent pay and fairly new trucks, but give almost no time off, as well as the fact they said we probably wouldn't be able to drive team right out of training

FFE/Conwell is basically the same as KLLM; good pay, but very little home time

Roehl pays about the same as Covenant and we'd be able to start immediately, but I've heard their drivers aren't getting a ton of miles and their trucks can be kind of iffy

and Wily Sanders pays well, but their drivers are getting very few miles lately.


So I was just wondering if any of that sounds wrong, or if there might be a company we're overlooking, or just if anyone would recommend one of those companies over the other for... whatever reason, I guess.


I think we are mostly interested in information on Wiley Sanders, FFE/Conway and Roehl, as those are the companies we're probably considering the most.

Anyway, thanks! And I guess the big thing is, we're really asking what a good company to drive *team* is, not solo.

 

Really? I haven't heard a lot of good about Swift, to be honest. The main issue with Swift is that we'd have to do that whole, four-months-with-another-guy thing, and we wouldn't be able to be team for that period either.

Thanks for the input, though.

 

Does that mean you're recommending Swift?

 

Oh by the way, in contrast to what our placement adviser told us, a couple sources I've found are saying Con-Way might be taking student drivers at the moment. Does anyone know whether or not that's true? (These sources were online, so I'm a bit skeptical, but I've heard a lot of good about Con-Way, so we'd definitely be interested in researching them if they are taking students)