Want to get off to the best start possible

Let me paint a picture for you...

Mega Carriers (Swift, CR England, Prime, ect). They hire ANYONE. They train them and send them out. Only thing they really care about is you NOT breaking their truck. If you do, youre gone. Dont matter if it was your fault or not. THOUSANDS of drivers. You can paint yourself green and you wont "stand out".

LTLs (Estes, Old Dominion, Yellow, ect). These guys have actually started hiring rookies (although they prefer to train people that have been working on their dock for years - dont know if they hire untrained drivers off the street). You are going to be running linehaul (10pm-6am) from home to someplace close, work the dock for a few hours and go home. Assuming they will take someone off the street.

Mid size and small companies wont touch you. They are owned by 1 guy or a family and they arent going to let anyone they dont personally know TOUCH their truck unless they have a proven track record (ie clean work history). Part of this is because if you total a truck in lets say a 20 truck fleet, you just wiped out 5% of their power units. Their insurance rates jump, so their operating costs go up, profit margin goes down and frankly it isnt worth the risk. Where as a mega, 1 truck is a drop in the bucket. They make it up by not paying anywhere near what other companies do and hope that the slaves bring in more dough rae mee than what goes out in broken trucks.

 

The whole 'you are a number' thing has many sides to it.

Asking for your truck number is how they pull you up on the computer.
With a company with hundreds or thousands of drivers you won't be known by your name except by a few people you work with most often.

And you are just a number, until you establish relationships with the people you work with.
There are a few hundred drivers out of my terminal, but I could call my fleet manager and say, Hi, it's Duane, and she would not even ask my truck number.

I have a new driver manager, so he will still ask for my truck number. That won't last very long, as he will learn it as we go along.
But he knows me as a person already.

And heck. If I was a driver leader with 50 drivers to keep track of, it would not be easy for me to memorize all those truck numbers to each driver.
So asking for my truck number is really no big deal.

 

You're right and Im wrong. I dont know what the hell Im talking about. Good luck impressing all the companies that will be lining up wanting to talk you into joining their "family".

 

-- L

 

So you are the only dispatcher? Or you only talk to your 50 drivers? If someone else that isnt in your 50 talks to you about their problem, you say "your fleet manager isnt here right now, call back later" right? No? You try to help them? Hmm, and your FIRST question is "truck number" because their name doesnt mean a thing to you, correct? So your point is what?

Yeah, I worked for companies that only had 10 trucks and everyone knew everyone. And I got screwed over big time by this "family" trucking outfit - Q Carriers, they still exist - but they got a few more than 10 trucks now - I drove tucks numbered 11, 13, 17, and 25 thats how long ago it was. My hub meter (we got paid off the hub) was 10% off the odometer. I made 9 cents per mile (yeah, really) and left for a place that paid me 13 cents a mile (nearly 50% increase). Was there a year and a half. Smaller isnt always better.

 

Many poster here are not telling the truth why they are rejected. A lot of people don’t prepare their lives to keep a clean driving record or a good employment record and don’t seem to understand that limits them in life.

right now companies are struggling to find decent drivers, many on the road are garbage drivers who just don’t seem to be able to handle a truck just going straight, and this is part of a revolving door of employment, which just feeds the industry more garbage.

starting out, having longevity in a company is more important than making a shining example of how you enter the industry. Some fleets look for drivers who have been at companies a long time and who actually have skills (safety) to keep the truck rolling, it won’t matter if you take a piss test before you are out of school, even though that’s a good idea but it does matter that you learn how a truck works, how to be safe and how to handle emergencies,

it is a good habit to get into, I am all for good habits.

 

Downside? There isnt one. Other than it wont REALLY help you. Like I and others have said, the ONLY thing that matters is your driving record.

And Im ex military also. Basic training, medic school, airborne school, ranger school and the first thing I did as a fully trained airborne ranger medic? Change the front tire on a duce and a half...

 

This above description/explanation mirrors back to my post (#8) in the following previous Forum thread:

<6 months results | TruckersReport.com Trucking Forum | #1 CDL Truck Driver Message Board (thetruckersreport.com)

For that reason alone -- an easy case can thus be made for you to start out with one of the so-called "mega-carriers".....Swift, Schneider, Prime, Werner, Melton....blah, blah.

Put in at least a year there (preferably 2)....& then decide if you want something else, or not.

If you already have a CDL -- now it's just a matter of finding who has the freight type you'd like -- and the volume to keep you the busiest.

-- Lual