Job Offer!

Just finished my first week of CDL school here in Fort Worth. I’m going through a school. Let me know what you think about this opportunity! It sounds good to me but maybe missing something? It’s a dedicated run that starts Monday and home Thursday evening usually. So 4 days on and 3 days off. Straight $1500 a week salary, $1500 a week to train, $10,000 signing bonus, vacation after six months, paid health insurance for me and my family, and referral bonus. Those are the highlights. I’ve looked at a lot of opportunities and that seems to be a fantastic one. I have another offer straight out of school that might pay more but time off isn’t as good and they don’t pay for insurance.

Give us some more details. Frankly, it sounds odd. It sounds like a small company or a 1099 job. It also sounds like you may be doing a good bit of physical labor in this job. Do you know the details?

Can you give us the company name or the account it is serving? Is it "no touch freight" or is it possibly a food service? All you really gave us are numbers, and that may be all you are interested in as a newbie, but buyer beware. This career has a lot of details that can sometimes make it very difficult on a new driver. Your best option is always one that helps you make the move into the career with the least amount of risk to yourself and your license. Your focus for your rookie year needs to be establishing yourself as a new driver. Once you get that job done you will have all kinds of years and opportunities to pick and choose the job you like the best.

Yeah, those are the highlights you wrote.

What are the lowlights?

1099?

Name of the company?

How long have they been around?

Who is the owner?

Truck company insurance carrier?

DOT number? ( Did you look them up on the web?)

How did you come about this job offer?

Have you talked to, or know any of their drivers?

I have many more....

Just finished my first week of CDL school here in Fort Worth. I’m going through a school. Let me know what you think about this opportunity! It sounds good to me but maybe missing something? It’s a dedicated run that starts Monday and home Thursday evening usually. So 4 days on and 3 days off. Straight $1500 a week salary, $1500 a week to train, $10,000 signing bonus, vacation after six months, paid health insurance for me and my family, and referral bonus. Those are the highlights. I’ve looked at a lot of opportunities and that seems to be a fantastic one. I have another offer straight out of school that might pay more but time off isn’t as good and they don’t pay for insurance.

We'd like to know, too!

Do they have a yard in Ohio?!?

ADVISE, please & thanks!

~ Anne ~

ps: One inch left on my rotator cuff until I can pass my DOT! (Fed Med) ~~!!!! PLEASE SHARE~~~!!!!!

Let me know what you think about this opportunity!

I know you've got dollar signs jiggling in your eyes right now, but this, "opportunity" has enough red flags to join the Chinese Communist Party. I suspect the OP has checked out since he hasn't responded to any of the requests for more information. I'm posting so that others might learn from his example.

1. They're recruiting trainee drivers. Fun fact: it costs a company more than $1,000/mo. to insure a driver fresh out of truck school than it does to hire an experienced driver with a clean record. Why would a company take the extra expense as well as the increased risks of accidents and incidents? Because they don't have a choice - experienced drivers won't bite their poisoned apple so their only hope is to find drivers who don't know any better. Dollar Store accounts are notorious for this. Not all jobs for new drivers are traps, but beware of companies who ONLY focus on the new fish.

2. They pay by salary. Why is that? So it's harder to compare what they're offering against other offers. Most jobs pay by the mile or the hour. Showing a salary is a way to dress up the same information and have it look better if you don't do the math. Four days is 96 hours. Take out your three ten hour breaks (30 hours) that's 66 hours you're either driving or loading/unloading (spoiler alert: YOU WILL be touching freight on this job). But wait! You don't show up at midnight on day 1, you show up at six. So, 60 hours? Nah, you're not getting off at midnight on day 4 either. You're probably getting off in the early morning hours of day 5. You still have the day off, right? So we'll add 4 more hours - 64 hours. You're driving and ******* freight for ~64 hours for $1,500 = $23.44/hr. No touch jobs in my area are paying $25/hr+.

3. Huge signing bonus. Companies don't hand out big signing bonuses to redistribute wealth - they do it when they aren't attracting any drivers. The bigger the bonus the more empty trucks they have. A bonus has several problems. Why don't they just put the money into their driver's wages? Then they'd have to pay all their drivers more, not just the new ones. There's also a dim hope that drivers lured in by the bonus will stick around when the bonus is done and then work for the lower pay scale. Department of Labor studies show that isn't the case, but they can dream. There's an even dimmer hope that the market will soon be flooded with drivers from foreign lands or high schools so they tell themselves the bonuses are just temporary. It's quicker and cheaper to offer a bonus than to fix the issues that are keeping drivers away.