Is There A Top 5 Or Top 10 List Of The Best Trucking Companies “to Start” With?

Amen brother Amen! Nick you should shoot for a company that will give you grace to royally mess up and still let you work for them. You are going to mess up, it happenes to the best of us and many times it can or will hurt your chances of getting in to another company but if you go with these Royal purple rob trucking companies that pay real good, they want you to drive real good; and I am confident that you can do that but those types of companies are less likely to give you mercy. If you want flatbed experience Melton, Boyd bros, Western Express, Swift Transportation, McElroy Truck lines, Maverick Transportation are good starts. Van companies= Werner Transportation, Swift Transportation, Maverick Transportation, and some others too. When you get into one, never forget to watch your mirrors, take your time, and GOAL a ton. Forget about the impatient people and you focus your career towards safe miles on top of safe miles and if you mess up, you can come back here and come to us for advice and help and support. We are here for you. There is no place out there for a truck driver like TruckingTruth.com! Hope to see you become a successful truck driver and celebrate with you brother Nick! God bless you my man and safe miles to you!

Hello, again, Nick. It sounds like you have a spanking new California CDL license! Great!

Don't worry about any "top five" newbie companies. You can go through our list of Trucking Company Reviews. And check these links out:

• Trucker's Career Guide: Choosing Your First Truck Driving Job
• Article Category: Finding The Right Truck Driving Job
• Forum Topics Tagged "Choosing A Trucking Company"

If you Apply For Truck Driving Jobs on this link, you'll get plenty of job offers. Good luck!!

Old School thats exactly what I am learning like you have said a million times. For me I love to talk and a couple shippers/carriers have said that llol. I struggle with leaving family and I am slowly but surely getting to the place where i can maybe stay out 3-4 weeks at a time. I LIVE AND LOVE FAMILY! I made my first check of almost $700 with Western. It felt nice.

Nick, trucking is very much a completely misunderstood career. Many people attempt it while only a small percentage of those aspiring to be road warriors ever make it. A major component of the confusion about trucking is this idea that there are certain companies out there that would be the best ones to start/work with.

The whole concept of success at trucking begins and ends with the individual. Drivers create their own fate. I started my career at Western Express, a trucking company well known for giving people their first shot at trucking, but also having terrible online reviews. We have to ask ourselves, "Who writes those reviews?" If we're honest with ourselves the answer has to be, "The greenhorn rookies who don't really know anything about trucking." That's right, how can we trust those reviews? They are penned by people who failed. They are produced by people who don't have the slightest understanding about the trucking career.

Making the transition into trucking is challenging on so many levels. One of those is getting accustomed to the concepts of "performance based pay." In trucking you get paid for how much you can accomplish. There's way more to this than just being able to drive long hours. Being able to accomplish way more than your peers is what sets you at the top of the food chain in trucking. It puts you at the top of the pay scale, and elevates your satisfaction with the career to a level unknown by most of those who just slog it out continually hoping it will get better when they find "the right company."

I hear my dispatcher asking me questions like these all the time...

"How did you manage to get unloaded at that customer after hours?"

"How did you get that customer to unload you in the middle of the night when they tell us the receiving cut-off is at 1500?"

"How do you always have the phone numbers of critical contacts at these customers when our other drivers can't seem to make any connections with them?"

"Can you explain to me how you managed to get that customer to move your appointment time forward? None of our other drivers can seem to do that."

There's a lot of important little nuances and details to this job that most people overlook. Properly executing the details is what makes the difference out here. Being a top performer takes a lot more than driving skills and know how. People skills are generally what's lacking in most truck drivers. Knowing how to effectively communicate puts a driver way ahead of the game.

None of this is given to you by any top 10 company. In fact, the name on your truck doors has nothing to do with your success at this. I was extremely successful at Western Express, and was one of the two people out of my orientation group of 50 plus drivers who actually went on to a successful trucking career. These days I work for Knight Transportation, yet I still see new drivers come and go here on a regular basis. They tell me they are leaving because they can't make any money working for this company. They say that to me! I'm earning twice the average truck driver's pay while working here.

Trucking is competitive. People simply don't get that. You have got to put up some impressive numbers if you want impressive rewards. The real question a newbie like yourself has to be asking is, "How can I perform this job in such a way that I am part of the top 10 percent or maybe even the top five percent of drivers?" Once you discover the answer to that question, you are well on your way to success as a road warrior.

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