What to expect during my mentorship

You will find that most, like all, the good jobs in trucking require a minimum of 1 years experience, with a clean record.

During your first year, don't jump around. This company you are starting with, no matter how bad it gets, just stay there and do your year.

Because if you start to jump around, you will really screw yourself with chances of future employment.

And you would find at any company that will take you with less than a year, it will be the same BS, with a different name on the door.

Aside from not doing drugs, crashing into things, or getting moving violations, this is the most important thing you can do for yourself.

 

I guess if you've paid your own way through CDL school, you have more leverage to tell gross him and the company to f-off (assuming you don't sign a contract that you wouldn't have read)?

 

A simple set of scales. Westbound as you cross it for the first time.

I picked it for a imaginary situation that could go a dozen ways when you reach a simple scale and pull in.

I like to tease gently with lots of love. But at the same time I want you to understand you are about to get involved in something in which the training might not be as quality as you expect (*And rightly so as a student.) At some point your first year, should you survive will be over and some day you will love this industry for what it is in your own way.

 

MINIMUM being key. Yessir. I was looking into an OTR company here in Ohio (well, two...one not so much) to help another member, and I'm like DANG..... maybe I'll actually entertain that again my OWN self. They want a crap ton of experience, and at least 2 years open deck, but their Pete's are sure pretty~! Who knows what tomorrow holds.

@Penumbra i WISH you well, as do most of these gents on here. My wife's landlord (before I stole her and married her) was an older gent, drove for PAM and switched over to their regional / local / dedicated MTD account. Was still doing it, before he caught ill in 2010 between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and never came home after we took him to the ER. He was almost 80 and still working, pulling for MTD via PAM.

^^^ This guy was MY mentor...through many of my earlier OTR days. Yep, helped me rock my truck out of a ditch on his property, circa '03. Whole truck; not just tractor. That was fun, (not..)

BELIEVE AND ACHIEVE. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It's NOT THE NAME on your door, it's the man (or woman) on the OTHER SIDE of that door.

Best wishes, man. Hang in.
Tomcat

ps: I know a few people at Driver Solutions if that's how you are going about this. I teamed for FedEx/LineHaul for some time...it wasn't for me, but wasn't that godawful, either. Teamed with my wife... for a skoshe (works for some, didn't for us) LoL... Look at @blairandgretchen for instance. Find the right teamie, and you'll be banking before you know it.

pps: That was a long ps, sorry, mods and O/P ~!

 

You can do that to anyone at anytime. But the people that will hire you for that first year are all pretty much the same.

You only hurt yourself hopping around.

 

And it took me 5 paragraphs to say that... time to lay off the sweet tea, methinks~!

 

Actually I did pay my own way. $3500 at Lonestar College in Houston. 6 weeks/240hrs.

I never ran for a mega because of all the BS they were tossing out at students.

But this isnt rocket surgery. You get in the truck, you run the loads you're given and try to keep your personal bs to a minimum and everyone will be happy.

 

I went to Roadmasters here in CMH, in '03, because the Vactors I was running got re'classed to A, not B. Had to get legal. Went to USX, FedEx, and Transport America a while after...didn't leave the Vactor Rollofs right off the bat, and did my dues like a 'good boy' ... because it is what it is. Got a Sweet AF gig pulling asphalt tanks and open decks in the winter (when asphalt doesn't move, obviously in Ohio) and.... never looked back. I've been regional / intrastate for OVER 10 years, but.. put my time in. WIOA paid for me, since I was already driving; just had to meet reg's.

 

I had one trainer I miss very much. Our Friendship was sealed when he answered a religious question by saying he was a Hellion. which led to a working out of music selections when he sleeps and when I sleep and how to run the radio controls in the sleeper back then. So he could rock out and I'll be ######. lol. I last visited in a TA up in Harrisburg when he was in a H/W team with Millis about the 1995-6 era.

 

I still keep in touch with Harold (the FX/LH contractor, tbh..) What a great guy. Money was fine, teaming not so much.