Profile For Malcolm H.

Yeah I think I would enjoy that. I will send an email to the address in your bio to figure out the details. My house is about 3 miles away and my business about 1 mile, I am sure I will be at one of those.

Thanks guys, All things I think I really knew but you know sometimes you just need a slap on the back of the head. Now time to make sure I have a better idea what type of work I want to de e.g. Flatbed or Van.

Absent of being able to personally watch someone secure and tarp loads, I am going to see if Youtube or some of the megas have any training videos I can watch and see how the different tasks look. If you know of Youtube channels that you have seen that explain it well it might be helpful.

Sorry I don't see a smiley to bow to the wisdom of the group on here!!!

I like your dedication to HO Wolding, that is a company I want to work for. From what I see by looking at the other messages you are not a plant by the company to draw people in and seem sincere.

I am going to hop into the car this morning and drive by, now I realize that Saturday of a holiday and also deer hunting season is maybe not the best to but we'll see. In my experience those are the times you find the boss working, I know I was at my company everyday unless at the cottage.

Speaking to a recruiter is talking to someone who makes money by getting you onboard, but at this point I am at a point that I don't know yet what I don't know.

One thing I wish this site showed was who someone drives for in the profile, Brett I sure you have considered this, do too many drivers want to keep that a secret or what?

Do you know of other current Wolding drivers that frequent this site? I have seen some of them post on this forum but it takes a while to find them again. I hope they have time to drop a post on here about what they like about HOW and what their experience and stories of why. Maybe you have ties to some and reach out to ask them. I really like the idea of a company culture that gets to know the employees, it only helps them, I can offer much experience to a company on photography and trade shows that I would gladly help with 24-7.

The more good stories I can hear the easier it is to make a committment.

Thanks - nice to meet you in posts.

Hi Grumpy Old Man, Earlier on in my search I had HO Wolding as one of my top 3 on the list. As I am typing this right now at the family cottage 30 miles from Amherst HQ.

They do recruit direct from a CDL school just 12 miles from where I am so that is still a good choice to go with Wolding. And this school is only $4300

I would prefer a company that is nationwide instead of Midwest and Eastern. It sounds like the do some to the southwest Arizona area but I seem to remember that those might have been kind of dedicated accounts, do you know how much happens west of the Minnesota-Texas divider line.

I know I can change later but it just rubs me wrong - going into a job thinking that I want to jump ship after getting my time in. I know it is normal in this industry, but I don't like it, to me it does not breed any kind of loyalty. But that is probably a different longer conversation that won't change anytime.

Do you know if the normal Driving area is different than what I have above? I know this website does say they do service all 48 states and wonder how many loads toward the west might be available.

It seems like the information on the company page of this website needs to be updated. It is showing pay for entry level and .29 and pay for experienced starting at .33. Some other posts seem to indicate that when you go solo about 3 years ago it was .41 per mile plus other Bonuses.

As you saw earlier in the post I was kind of leaning toward flatbed, but that was after I ruled flatbed out before that. I guess that's something I need to did deep down in my sole and figure out.

Did you start out at HO Wolding then or somewhere else first?

Hey Old School, thanks for the reply!

I just came across your very trying times these past months, I hope the eye is getting better every day. Just a dumb question about the future of driving, would you still be able to be a trainer even if you couldn't drive? Best thing is just to beat this thing and get back out driving, I am wishing the best for that.

Now back to the conversation if you don't mind: As to the slower times, I was figuring a rookie driver is not going to be near the top of the list for a little while, but if you say that you might be down for less than a day waiting for a load, if I have to wait double that I am ok, paying my dues until I become more valuable.

I am no stranger to hard work and the git'r done attitude. Running a small business for decades you have to do that, even changing the entire market we were in at one time from commercial photography to Trade show displays, in 2001. I just picked the wrong industry to be in this year!

I see that you drive for Knight so you must think they are a great company and they certainly seem to be as they stood behind you these past month which is a testament to a great company. If you had to give someone the top 5 companies to check into for getting a CDL and moving into the Flatbed arena what would you say? I reading you old posts that you started with TMC, but on TMC website they don't show any openings in Central Wisconsin. I don't know if they have any leeway for that or not.

On another personal note on some of your posts I was thinking that this guy sounds a lot like me,

Get well man!

Thanks Rob - I think I read both of those already, I think in the past week or 2 I most have read about 20,000 web. pages blogs, diaries, youtube videos, etc., the better ones seem to come from this site but also on the truckersreport.com. That site definitely has a lot of people that seem to make their life own unhappy. But as I am picking up more bits of wisdom hear and there I will read them again.

Couldn't agree more with you about just doing a good job, make the bosses happy and doing what they expect and more. I've been doing that since 1977 in the family business and our long time clients can attest to the fact we I would go above and beyond what they expected, there were several clients with or company for over 40 years, even when we made the transition from doing commercial photography to designing and selling trade show displays. I would still be doing the display business if it wasn't for COVID, we lost about 80-90% of our business since March.

One of the reasons I am asking some of the question is a bad experience with the only trucking company I ever had dealings with the management and I was extrapolating that out to all the industry I guess. I think it was 1 of 2 clients that I ever "Fired" when we were doing photography. The management was not obnoxious or rude when I was over at their place doing photography for a day, but how he treated his drivers was absurd, I wonder what his driver retention rate was!

It will definitely take awhile to understand the work schedule jargon with the 12/12, 6/6 you mention and a couple dozen others I have seen talked about in posts. Talk about jargon I am starting to grasp the hours of driving and service a little bit.

Oh, and just while remembering, I heard someone say that they would do their paperwork, route planning and maybe the safety check while off duty, but I thought I remembered that by law isn't that all suppose to be on-duty time?

The money is somewhat secondary to me, I have never made over $50k except for maybe a year or 2 owning my own business for other reasons we can talk about later, so it might be possible to make more than I made last year in my 1st year trucking. This year with the COVID crap I will probably make only half of that.

I guess I might be getting crazy in the head because the more I am looking around watching stuff on Youtube and reading things like Old Schools posts, I am getting more excited about doing that. I will work on some more questions for his response after this one. I will have to look up Rob D's posts I sure I must have read some already, but do plan or reading those front to back for both. I just think I want the challenge, bring it on kind of mentality. Cold and snow doesn't bother me all that much but wet cold rain I could do without.

When you mention Packrat's experiences I think I just read some of that last night, where he would open up the back door and stuff wouldn't be strapped or anything, and the trailers be broken.

I see what you mean that the home time would work good to see some areas a little more, I am not sure if a 10 hour break would do too much since you still would need to sleep, but I get it you just work together with your dispatcher and figure out what works once they trust you.

Team driving and Owner Operator were just kind of a passing question and I think deep down I have had enough of running a company and figuring out if we can make the next payroll. Let someone else figure that part out for a while.

I am sure I will be asking more and hearing more from you as this process goes on, I just wish I could get this my business close quickly and get started trucking, I am just afraid it might not happen fast with all the legal crap nowadays. I have a building that must be sold also which is complicating it more, but luckily I might have that part figured out.

Thanks for all your help.

I put some startup questions in post last night and now see that I did it in the CDL training diaries. Even though I do need to go through all that I would consider many of the questions more general about the industries and the companies so it should have been on this forum. Can or should that be moved or copied to this forum, I don't know how that works.

Like many newbies on this site, I have many hours looking on this site, youtube and other trucker forums, the safer web site. But to me it boils down to trying to figure out if the management runs a good operation and is fair to the employees.

I really got excited thinking about driving and was worried that at 61 I was too old, but this site convinced me it's not a problem if you are relatively healthy. This is certainly not a planned career change, but one brought about by this COVID mess. I am in the process of closing down a 70 year old business my parents started, and I've been leading for almost 35 years. I had planned on doing that for a long time yet.

Now to the trucking stuff. I did so many 180’s in my thought process as to whether it was smarter to do private school vs company paid. what to pull, or going with a big medium, or small company.

Companies I always seemed to be pulled back to Millis. So as of right now Millis is at the top of the list.

A couple of these below would require private school but I agree with others on this site that it seems smart to do the company training.

Next tier on my list, HO Wolding, Prime and Roehl - I do like prime a lot in that you have choices of which things to pull and leasing is pretty easy etc. But I don’t like the Team driving during training.

Third tier maybe WEL Companies, Veriha, or Nussbaum. The only reason I didn't look harder into Nussbaum is they seem to kind of hide the fact that if you have a cdl with no experience they will train you.

A couple others that were strictly flatbed, but I felt that I would be stuck if there was no other options.

What Division -- Dry Van -- Reefer - Even though I have heard people talk about not even noticing the refrigeration unit making noise all night I think that it would be quite annoying, maybe one could get used to it pretty easily -- Flatbed – I think I would like the challenge, and regularly lift and throw heavier things around but mixing that with cold, snow and rain does not necessarily sound that great sometimes.

Also in flatbeds how slow can it get at certain times of the year, I have read that the winter can slow down. But how cyclical is it?

Solo vs Team – I have no desire to do Team Driving, not even during training. Especially for training makes no sense to me, how does it help make me a better driver if the trainer is sleeping in the back, or worse yet being paired with another student. I am used to figuring things out on the fly but this makes about as much sense as solo driving after a week! I seems that pairing 2 students together is going to help the student that struggles more and not help the one that picks things up easier. But this is rant for someone that is only looking form the outside-in. Plus the other thing about team driving is that my whole life I could never sleep at all in a moving vehicle be it cars or airplanes.

Company vs Owner Operator/Lease – my thought is now I am only considering Company driver. If things go well and I think I want to go the next step I can consider it then. To me it seems like the Lease or O/O would only just be if I wanted more flexibility with running my own pace and goofing off more, but I also know that there are lots of expenses with being on your own.

Free Time If a driver was established a bit, and the company knows they can count on them, what are the chances of being more flexible with scheduling? By this I mean if say I got a load to somewhere right next to the Smokey Mountains in October could I ask to hold off on a return trip out of there for 2 or 3 days and enjoy some of the sites that are not truck routes, or is that only going to be were you work for a smaller company?

Millis Driver Specific Questions - Due to the business stuff I have to wrap up I have no idea how long that will take. I want to get started with school right after that, typically if accepted how long before you can get into the school? - Is Millis 100% dry vans? Like I said above it would be great to be able to get a taste of flatbed - Are things still pretty stable after the Heartland buyout - I would enjoy a quick tour of the headquarters and possibly a quick intro with some of the people, do you think that is something done much in these social distancing times. I was also assuming there would be drivers around I can chat with a bit about the company, you know, get the real story. I am a little more than 2 hours east of there so just a quick trip. - Do you think there is any chance they would expand the area served to the western states, or since Heartland seems to go there already is that not likely? Or is it just kind of a sales thing, if you can find the customers somewhere on a regular basis they would do it.

I have just played with the first few chapters of the CDL Training Guide, it seems very good, about the only questions I got wrong is when I read the question too fast and skipped an important word in the question, otherwise it seems pretty easy so far.

I really appreciate this website, it is packed with information. Plus the decorum on the site is far better than any of the other ones I have come across. I don’t like all the negativity people show on some forums. My thought is that the majority of time they bring all their problems upon themselves. If there is one problem with it is that there is too much information!! But that is the best problem to have.