I Am Considering A Career Change To Truck Driving, But I Can't Make Up My Mind.
Topic 1297 | Page 4
I too am considering driving as my new career after being laid off for a year and a half from 15 years in customer service in the mortgage industry. I am overwhelmed by all the opinionated reviews about the different companies to obtain training. Currently I am looking into Driver Solutions to get me started since I am broke. I was wondering if there are any unbiased opinions about them. All I can find is old negative reviews. How hard is it to get approval to train and then get the contracted employment? Oh I have so many questions and can't seem to find a strait upfront answer anywhere. I looked on here and got a generic overview of the company. Any one able to help with this?
Jason a couple of companies that offer paid training that I have been looking into is Prime and Millis transfer. I haven't seen anything bad about Prime except they try to push you into leasing, but thats it. And nothing bad about Millis! But several more offer paid training that are probably just as good. Daniel B on here works for Central refrigerated and went through their paid training program.
Thanks guys. I have been doing a tone of research on the different companies and as of right now am in the approval process for drivers solution. Training will be in Indy and it looks like USA Truck may be the company. Based on where I live this could be good as they try to place your region close to 500miles to your house on e you go solo. The hardest part is I have been on unemployment so long that to day was my last weeks to claim, so we will be on just my wife's income till I get to the OTR training. Maybe a month or two of just one income. We are killing our 401k to send me up. I was wondering if most companies put you right into OTR training or is there a couple days between cdl schooling and the training?
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
OTR:
Over The Road
OTR driving normally means you'll be hauling freight to various customers throughout your company's hauling region. It often entails being gone from home for two to three weeks at a time.
I was wondering if most companies put you right into OTR training or is there a couple days between cdl schooling and the training?
There could certainly be some wait time - even a week or two. Sometimes there's a backlog of drivers waiting on trainers. They want to get you out as quickly as possible but there's no guarantee.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
OTR:
Over The Road
OTR driving normally means you'll be hauling freight to various customers throughout your company's hauling region. It often entails being gone from home for two to three weeks at a time.
Got another question, Since I have no other choice than to do company sponsored training by doing this Will it keep me from getting a job at some company's? Western Express wants you to have graduated from a trucking school that had at least 240 hrs of classroom and driving training!
Company Sponsored Training:
A Company-Sponsored Training Program is a school that is owned and operated by a trucking company.
The schooling often requires little or no money up front. Instead of paying up-front tuition you will sign an agreement to work for the company for a specified amount of time after graduation, usually around a year, at a slightly lower rate of pay in order to pay for the training.
If you choose to quit working for the company before your year is up, they will normally require you to pay back a prorated amount of money for the schooling. The amount you pay back will be comparable to what you would have paid if you went to an independently owned school.
Company-sponsored training can be an excellent way to get your career underway if you can't afford the tuition up front for private schooling.
Kylan, you've probably noticed that we stress on this site that you need to stick with your first job in the trucking industry for at least one year. The answer to your question is a part of that reason. When you call Western Express or most any other trucking company and tell them you are looking for a job and that you have one year of verifiable experience driving a big rig, then they don't even want to know how you got started or what school you went to or how many hours your school was. From that point you are considered as an experienced driver, not a trucking school graduate. Now they are going to just look at where and how long you were working.
So, once you've gone through a company sponsored training program and finished out your first year working for that company then you can feel free to start looking around at other places of employment. That first years commitment is important for a host of other reasons also, it's going to be the greatest learning curve time period in your whole career, it will also be the time when all that learning your experiencing will begin to under gird your confidence in your abilities to handle the job.
Some people think a year is a really long commitment, but it really is a small drop in the bucket of the whole scheme of things. If you take to this career and really enjoy what you're doing that first year will fly by so fast that you will hardly even have thought about it being gone by. I'm sitting in Denver Colorado tonight with a load of pipe that I picked up in Tulsa Oklahoma late yesterday afternoon. Everyday is a new adventure, with a new load of goods that somebody needs. I witness a fresh sunrise every morning and enjoy a different sunset each evening. Life on the road makes this job so enjoyable for me that the days fly by like a pleasant dream.
If money is tight, and it is for most of us in this economy, get trained through a Company-Sponsored Training program and then you can write your own ticket to where you want to go work next.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
Company Sponsored Training:
A Company-Sponsored Training Program is a school that is owned and operated by a trucking company.
The schooling often requires little or no money up front. Instead of paying up-front tuition you will sign an agreement to work for the company for a specified amount of time after graduation, usually around a year, at a slightly lower rate of pay in order to pay for the training.
If you choose to quit working for the company before your year is up, they will normally require you to pay back a prorated amount of money for the schooling. The amount you pay back will be comparable to what you would have paid if you went to an independently owned school.
Company-sponsored training can be an excellent way to get your career underway if you can't afford the tuition up front for private schooling.
Company-sponsored Training:
A Company-Sponsored Training Program is a school that is owned and operated by a trucking company.
The schooling often requires little or no money up front. Instead of paying up-front tuition you will sign an agreement to work for the company for a specified amount of time after graduation, usually around a year, at a slightly lower rate of pay in order to pay for the training.
If you choose to quit working for the company before your year is up, they will normally require you to pay back a prorated amount of money for the schooling. The amount you pay back will be comparable to what you would have paid if you went to an independently owned school.
Company-sponsored training can be an excellent way to get your career underway if you can't afford the tuition up front for private schooling.
HOS:
Hours Of Service
HOS refers to the logbook hours of service regulations.
Has any of you, heard of anyone being let go from company sponsored training because of not being able to pass the cdl written tests?
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
Company Sponsored Training:
A Company-Sponsored Training Program is a school that is owned and operated by a trucking company.
The schooling often requires little or no money up front. Instead of paying up-front tuition you will sign an agreement to work for the company for a specified amount of time after graduation, usually around a year, at a slightly lower rate of pay in order to pay for the training.
If you choose to quit working for the company before your year is up, they will normally require you to pay back a prorated amount of money for the schooling. The amount you pay back will be comparable to what you would have paid if you went to an independently owned school.
Company-sponsored training can be an excellent way to get your career underway if you can't afford the tuition up front for private schooling.
Has any of you, heard of anyone being let go from company sponsored training because of not being able to pass the cdl written tests?
Yes. This is very common actually.
Here's the best way to look at it. The schooling is a boot camp. They're going to breakdown everybody and send the weak home and keep the ones who have proven that they can learn and perhaps have a real chance at being successful drivers. They'll teach you, but they won't work on you forever. Think about it, they have at least 10 students coming in every week sometimes 20, why spend extra time on the ones who probably won't make it when you could just move on to the next group. It's all about weeding out the "bad" ones and keeping the "good" ones.
It really all depends on how you do on them that decides how fast you'll be kicked out. If you pass 2 but fail 1 then they'll give you that 2nd try and probably a 3rd too. If you pass 1 but fail 2 of them they'll give you a 2nd try but probably not a 3rd. If you don't pass any on your 1st try then you better pass them all the 2nd try or you're out. Two members of my class of 7 got kicked out because they couldn't pass the permit test.
You shouldn't worry about it. They came in not knowing a single thing about trucking because they were too lazy to study before class. Learning all that material in the small amount of time that the schools give you is extremely stressful and difficult. Study the High Road Training Program, and ask questions - and you should be fine.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
Company Sponsored Training:
A Company-Sponsored Training Program is a school that is owned and operated by a trucking company.
The schooling often requires little or no money up front. Instead of paying up-front tuition you will sign an agreement to work for the company for a specified amount of time after graduation, usually around a year, at a slightly lower rate of pay in order to pay for the training.
If you choose to quit working for the company before your year is up, they will normally require you to pay back a prorated amount of money for the schooling. The amount you pay back will be comparable to what you would have paid if you went to an independently owned school.
Company-sponsored training can be an excellent way to get your career underway if you can't afford the tuition up front for private schooling.
OWI:
Operating While Intoxicated
Alright thanks! I try not to worry about it lol. I got my states cdl manual a while back and have been studying it. I will also read the High road program.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
Kylan, I promise you that you won't even need that boring state manual if you just go through the High Road Training Program. Everything you need to know is built right into the program, I don't care what state you're in.
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
- Any combination of vehicles with a gross combined weight rating (GCWR) of 26,001 or more pounds, providing the gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of the vehicle being towed is in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any single vehicle with a GVWR of 26,001 or more pounds, or any such vehicle towing another not in excess of 10,000 pounds.
- Any vehicle, regardless of size, designed to transport 16 or more persons, including the driver.
- Any vehicle required by federal regulations to be placarded while transporting hazardous materials.
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Jason, I can sense your frustration in the tone of your post, and I completely understand it. The problem with trying to get started in trucking lies in available credible information on how and where to get started. There are so many things that are easy to research on the internet that you'd think trucking would be right up there at the top of the list.
You don't have to go through Driver Solutions just because you're broke, there are plenty of great trucking companies out there that will train you with no up[front costs and then give you a job after your successful completion of their training program. These programs are called Company-Sponsored Training and if you'll follow that link you'll find some options that just might work out really well for you.
You see the problem with looking on the internet for information in this industry is that there is not only a high demand for drivers, but also a high turn-over rate. Therefore you've got a lot of disgruntled people who couldn't "cut the mustard" out there blaming their failure on the "greedy ruthless trucking companies who could care less about their drivers and just discard them like they're worthless pieces of used toilet paper only to be replaced by another round of soon to be discarded rookies that will be discarded as soon as they are up for their first pay raise."
Seriously, I know you've seen this attitude in the places you've been looking. The reason the available information is so ridiculously lopsided is because the guys like me that love this industry and career are busy busting our tails working long hard hours to earn a decent living, and frankly we just don't have time to sit around telling people what an honorable career this is for the guy whose cut out to face the constantly changing challenges of life on the open highways. The losers who just couldn't cut it have got plenty of time because they can't get a job in the industry now so they're hell bent on expostulating their false premises just so they can feel they'v gotten even with the trucking companies. It's a fools paradise when looking for information on some of the trucking forums out there.
Fortunately you've found a great place to park yourself and find the truth. Why don't you get started by reading in the Trucker's Career Guide and How To Choose A Company, you'll have a lot better understanding of how all this stuff works after doing that and we've got some great training materials for free in the High Road Training Program.
You just keep coming back in here with your questions and I guarantee you that we can remove 95% of the frustration you are experiencing now and get you headed in the right direction from here.
Welcome aboard!
CDL:
Commercial Driver's License (CDL)
A CDL is required to drive any of the following vehicles:
Company-sponsored Training:
A Company-Sponsored Training Program is a school that is owned and operated by a trucking company.
The schooling often requires little or no money up front. Instead of paying up-front tuition you will sign an agreement to work for the company for a specified amount of time after graduation, usually around a year, at a slightly lower rate of pay in order to pay for the training.
If you choose to quit working for the company before your year is up, they will normally require you to pay back a prorated amount of money for the schooling. The amount you pay back will be comparable to what you would have paid if you went to an independently owned school.
Company-sponsored training can be an excellent way to get your career underway if you can't afford the tuition up front for private schooling.
HOS:
Hours Of Service
HOS refers to the logbook hours of service regulations.OOS:
When a violation by either a driver or company is confirmed, an out-of-service order removes either the driver or the vehicle from the roadway until the violation is corrected.