Your New and Got Your Foot In The Door, Now What

First welcome to the best career in the nation!!! If it weren't for trucks and truckers, people wouldn't have anything to eat, wear, drive, medications, etc. This is the very real fact in life.

Why did you get into this? I grew up in a trucker family. My grand pop ran shine in a old beat up truck, my father delivered furniture and took loads from Louisiana to Texas doing the earliest form of OTR before that term became known. It was in my blood from the age of 12.

Most get into this because they don't have anything better? they are searching for something that pays well and they find it in trucking over time. You noticed I did not say from day one!!! The reason is because the one hurdle newbies are faced with is having to prove themselves and you do that by not abandoning a truck, not quitting, not being a hothead, and by doing a good job.

Our job whether you've been out here one day or 45 years as I have is to get freight from point A to B on time and safely. This is it, nothing more or less.

When your new, you have two options, go to a trucking school or go to a carrier school, that's it. There are many companies that will take a newly licensed Class A driver in, but they are going to want you to have a certificate from a big school such as RoadMasters, Smith and Solomon, etc but these schools are at a cost of $5000 to $7000 dollars and loans are available if you can get one.

A carrier school is available from CR England, FFE, Prime, CRST, and a few others. FFE will not even talk to you if you were fired from a job any job, asked to resign or you quit without good cause. CR England will take you in but you'll get into a truck with 6 others and each will get about 30 to 45 minutes a day of driving. They expect you'll get all you need from a trainers truck.

CRST which has been my home for 30 years now will take you in, send you to a school contracted with the company and upon finishing training and getting your license, will hire you on as a contract driver with a 8 month commitment.

Once you get through all of this, then your hitting the road and depending upon who your hauling for, you may be a solo driver or in the case of a CRST, a team driver. Teaming is where the miles are, solo is limited to about 2200 to 2800 miles a week. That's anywhere from 400 to 600 miles a day of driving.

Now what to expect and what not to expect. Expect to work hard and drive in both good weather and miserable weather. Expect to have to deal with big company blues, meaning you may not get a friendly response when you call in. Some companies have 1000 plus trucks on the road each day to monitor and deal with.

Dont expect hand holding because your not going to get it. Expect to be treated like a driver number because at the end of the day, your just another driver.

Dont expect big pay and sometimes a paycheck that doesn't stretch very far at the start. The reason is your at the bottom and your at starter pay. After time on the job and proving yourself, you'll see bigger paychecks.

There truly are some perks to this job. You will see the country, even if it's from the interstate. You will meet good people out there who you will see over and over, especially at truck stops. We get through Texas a lot and we always make a point of stopping at The Petro in Weatherford, TX when were on I-20. One or two of the woman working in the restaurant have been there for more than twenty years, so we always take time to stop for chow, shoot the breeze and share stories of life.

We've fished in Colorado and Florida, been to car shows in NY and Philly, been to the State Fair in Texas, etc. My point is that if you've never traveled, you can get paid to see the country and enjoy some if what that area offers.

Expect to get out of this career what you put into it. Whiners, cry babies and naysayers seldom have a good overall experience and they manage to make their way here to expose the trucking world to their self inflicted heartache.

Seldom do they tell the whole story, and it's always the trucking companies fault or the dispatchers fault or they were stuck at some distribution center for the weekend because they didn't arrive on time to deliver on Friday because they didn't plan their route right or they stopped to have a steak dinner and forgot the 5 between San Diego and Los Angeles crawls from 3 pm to 9 pm.

My point is make your career choice on what you expect to get over the long road instead of the short haul because the short haul in this business rarely produces much.