Profile For Papa Pig

Welcome

There are many new carriers that offer a good start. No perfect ones and a lot will depend on you. Werner is the only big carrier that I worked for and they have a lot of team positions. They will pay for your school “road master” but you will pay them back for it . As you will for most companies.

After you both earn your cdl you will have to do a period of training with a company certified trainer. Most companies will not have you both on the same truck during this time. Be cognizant of that. I think CR England actually has 3 people on the truck during some stage of training. But don’t quote me on that.

Be prepared to show past addresses and explain any gaps in your work history. All companies will want to know ALL of it.

Good luck!

From Papa Pig:

breaking a contract ... try other companies

How about that when any company you apply to finds you tried to break out of a contract, they put your application in the round file.

Errol I don’t think the question is him breaking a contract but wondering if them not continuing his services is them breaking a contract.

Nick. While dollar General does use bigger carriers like Werner, Schneider, etc to haul their freight they have an expanding private fleet. Kind of like how Walmart or Publix has their own trucks but uses outside carriers for a lot of the workload. They also have a program that will allow warehouse workers to sign a contract and they will pay for their cdl if they haul and unload dollar General freight for a certain amount of time. I personally thought that was awesome because I used to get so mad at the warehouse for how badly they loaded the trailers. Almost like justice and now you get to be in the receiving end of those badly loaded trailers 😂. Either way I have my suspicions of why this arrangement didn’t work but that’s not my place. Our job now is to try and advise and help this driver move on.

With that being the case I definitely would not pay a private school for a cdl. Because a school will be happy to train you if you pay them but it may be hard to find a job after.

I would suggest to try and apply at a company sponsored training program and if accepted they already have an investment in you

I agree that the only recourse is to apply to everyone and see what bites Werner does hair follicle. Maybe western express?

There's half a story here, Seth. Six weeks of training before they let you out on your own is a standard thing. Then you wrote that you were "recycled" through two additional trainers, but you haven't explained why.

I have to assume there were problems in how you handled the job, either from misunderstanding, missed training, or worse, some problems with your attitude.

Fill in those blanks and you'll get better advice.

I don’t know your situation but It is very unusual for them to take you off the account.

Will you be expected to repay the cost of the cdl school you went to? I’m assuming road master. These are questions you might want to ask.

Ask yourself why you were given so many trainers. Was there any situations that they felt were a red flag such as too much time off during training? Were there any incidents involving property damage or damage to the truck? Were there any customer incidents? Were you not able to unload the trailers in a timely manner? I am not saying any of those things happened but those are general reasons that things won’t work on the dg account.

Right or wrong that whole training period is an extended job interview for any company. As stated above I would go back and try to at least find out the reasons why if you don’t already know.

As far as breaking a contract I am not sure. But doubt it. I would suggest you try other companies. Apply everywhere and see who bites. Just be completely honest about anything that happened with dg with your recruiter.

Good luck and be safe out there!

Dan

Welcome to the trucking world. Wishing you luck. Most large companies that will hire you will not care to have a resume. It will be applications and question and answer with a recruiter. Some local companies and private fleets will require a resume. I know my company did.

The backing and the shifting will come. Just try and come up with a rhythm and a mojo on your pretrip. Lights ccc color , cleanliness, not cracked. You have the benefit of being able to get a flow down setting in your living room. “My television and securely mounted to the wall, not broken or cracked, and the cord has no abrasions cuts or frays.” My yeti cooler is properly mounted and secure with cap. The seal has no abrasions bulges cuts or dryrot and it’s not leaking” you get the picture 😂

You can also learn the sequence of your air brakes test from studying and repost home. It is IMPORTANT that it is done in sequence because it is pass or fail! Remember leaks , alarms, buttons. DO NOT FORGET to put the key back to accessory mode after you build air pressure and turn the truck off If you do happen to mess it up by say…. Pumping the breaks and the alarms do not go off at the appropriate time. You most likely have forgotten to turn the key to accessory mode. If that happens ….sometimes…. Stop lol and ask the evaluator if you can start over. And most times they will say yes please. Daniels pretrip is good and a great tool before going to school but I would suggest to use the material that your school gives you as that is generally what your evaluators are going to be looking for.. Good luck!

Your school will teach you how they prefer it done. Especially if they use their own testers.

Generally you start with a walk up . No leaks and not leaning.

Do the front of the truck with the clearance markers Down the hood to the lights

And I preferred to start on the passenger side of the hood and then over to the drivers side. That’s how we taught it when I was a cdl instructor.

Consistency is key..do it the same way

Some testers start you off with the brake test so if you fail that they don’t have to listen to the rest of it since it is go/no go

I didn’t do dollar tree but did dollar general. But I know a few people that did dollar tree.i worked for Werner and do not really know what the pay package is like with cr England. But I do know that with Werner it is possible to make that type of money if not more after you get through the learning curve.

Personally I wouldn’t like the dollar tree/ family dollar account because you have to set up the rollers. You can be working really fast but are reliant on how fast the store employees can empty the roller on the bottom. Or you may have to wait on them to get a crew there to receive the load which can kill your time/ how much revenue you can make that week. You have to be fairly precise with the backing because the rollers have to be set up just so.

You will do some city driving but will be doing a lot of small towns. Going around shopping centers in not so great areas

Go visit a few stores . Find out when they are expecting trucks. Talk to a few drivers that are doing the job. See what they are making .and be honest with yourself about your backing abilities. I am not going to join with the others saying definitely don’t do it. But definitely put some thought into it. I was successful partly because of luck and partly because I had a very good trainer.

There is nothing wrong with normal trucking. Flatbed, dry van, reefer.

If you decide to go a touch freight route. Personally I would pick dollar general. Or food service.

Whatever you decide I wish you luck and if you ever need advice or help I will try my best.

Bobcat Bob You just reminded me that I don’t see much about doubles on here. Would anyone like to see a how to of how to hook up or anyone that is interested in getting doubles like to see the components that you are studying for? I know it was all Greek to me and I passed the test without really understanding. Bobcat Bob would you be willing to contribute? We may have a different way of handling Dolly because if different types. We use silver eagles . Would you be willing to collab with a how to? Brett. Do you thing this may be something of interest?

So I have been pulling doubles for 6 months now and I have truly enjoyed it. The transition has been overall very easy. The biggest thing besides the extra time of hooking doubles is there are 2 additional pieces of equipment to pretrip. The converter dolly and the additional trailer. A few weeks ago I had to drop in one of our outlier yards where my company is renting spaces. I drop my loaded trailers and hook their empties and bring them back to my yard. When I hook up the empty set which is on a brand new trailer , I notice that the piston which comes out of the tow hook to secure my dolly is upside down.

So I have to break the set down and reverse the order which is ok since both are empty. When it is finished it is supposed to look like this

If you look at both pictures you will notice one barely has any overlap and one goes over the hook quite a bit. This prevents the hook from popping out. Well the thing that sucks was when I went over everything and checked my hoses to the dolly . A “bubble” appeared. Wasn’t there when I broke the set down but appeared when I supplied air the second time.. it can happen that quick

This sucked because I didn’t have anything to repair the hose with. It would have been as simple as cutting it at the bubble, and putting a new compression fitting on and screwing it in. But I didn’t have said fitting. I decided that I couldn’t pull the rear trailer so I had to leave it. Drive 1.5 hrs back to my yard. And drop the 1 trailer and the dolly , bobtail back and get the trailer I left. I normally only have about 8 hrs a day on duty time but I had about 20 minutes left on my 14 when I shut down. I went to maintenance the next day and got some extra hose and some extra fittings which I secured to my dolly for extra. I will NOT get caught off guard again. I am just happy I caught the bubble and didn’t have that line pop and have my rear trailer lock up while going down the road!

Good news is also I was recognized as shuttle driver if the month for our southeastern division for the month of November.

I am still enjoying my time here and feel that if you do your job correctly you will be paid fairly and left alone.