Important Questions To Ask At An Interview/recruiter

I recently passed my road test on the 6th and will being picking up my graduation papers this upcoming Monday. I have been on this site with 20 tabs open almost everyday religiously for a while now so I finally decided to join. I am making this thread because now is the time that I am "shopping" for potential employers. Minus some of the instructors at my school (it was a private school) I do not know any other drivers to ask questions to. So this is what I got.

I did driving school with a friend of mine and we both want to stay together so we are looking for a company that will allow us to team together after training. Obviously there are many companies out there and I read on here the differences that tend to show up are pay, hometime, and freight hauled. We do not have any current endorsements on our licenses.

So I have my basic questions; How long is training?, What is the pay policy for training?, Is training run as a solo or team driving?(and can someone go further into this for me), How is hometime administered?, Is there a team driving division and if there is are we allowed to pick our partners or will the company match us up with someone?

This is what I can think of off the top of my head (from readings on this site of course), if anyone has any others that I didn't get please let me know. I want to get started finding a place soon, but I am very conservative in nature and personality so I like to have all the details and prep before I go into something if I can help it.

Also if anyone has any experiences with companies that hire new drivers either good or bad if you could share that would be appreciated. I know for my friend he has a family and all so hometime is important to him. Me, I don't have anything so really I'm looking into the best pay/miles I can get. (I know there are a lot of factors that play into miles given but just thought I put that in there)

Thank you everyone for your time reading this

Dan

Qualifier: I'm not driving yet. The other half of my team tests out with Swift at Richmond on Monday, and I'm not sure how I'll get through the next 81 days until I quit my current job!

Now: Most companies love teams. You'll have to train separately and that can take 6 weeks or so.

Pay during training, as my son says, will get you by. Try and have your debts caught up and at least under control.

Be flexible. Schedules change. My son just texted that their load was cancelled this morning when the shipper wasn't ready. They are in Tucson and scheduled to run to NJ this weekend and have him test out Monday in Richmond. Plans change!

With Swift his trainer ran him "solo" for the first 50 hours. After that they started acting as a team with Sean driving as primary to get his 200 or so hours. He's been blessed with an outstanding trainer who is showing him the ropes and training him to run hard and legal.

Home time depends on schedules and the trainer. Sean went out almost three weeks and had four days at home as they ran into Jacksonville a day early. We picked him up Wednesday afternoon in coal and took him back on Monday. He's been out two weeks now and hopes to get home for his grandmothers 90th in two weeks, but we are being flexible about that. If he gets some decent loads after testing out he may make it as he's only looking for a day and not a full home stay.

Again, be flexible.

Thanks you. Going by the information here and on company's websites training pay is more per week than what I get now. The other thing I think of is my debts. Maybe I can work something out with them once I get a definite job.

Thanks again